Malcolm Fraser on Australia's dangerous policy

Listening to Malcolm Fraser and his robust criticism of the the Untied States and Australian policy, it is hard to recognise the Cold War warrior of the 1970’s

US a Dangerous Ally: Former Australia PM. “The US will eventually bring Australia into a Direct Conflict with China”

Want China Times,

24 January, 2015

In his new book titled "Dangerous Allies," Malcolm Fraser, the former prime minister of Australia worries that the Canberra's dependence on the United States will eventually bring the nation into a direct conflict with China. His words echo those of Georgetown University professor Amitai Etzioni in and article he wrote for the Diplomat on Jan. 20.

Australia has always been strategically dependent on other great powers since gaining independence in 1901. It relied on the United Kingdom until World War II and then transfered that dependence to the United States afterwards. The relationship grew stronger with the signing of the Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty in 1951. Fraser said that the treaty does not require the US to defend Australia, only nneding to "consult" it in case of an attack.

In Fraser's book, he describes how Australia's blind faith in the UK before World War II left the country unprepared for war. He then goes on to say that currently many feel more vulnerable because of the country's dependence on the United States. What Fraser and many Australian leaders fears most is that the United States will get Australia involved in a coflict not of its own making. "Australia effectively ceded to America the ability to decide when Australia goes to war," said Fraser.

Fraser labelled the United States a "dangerous ally" as Australia has become progressively more enmeshed in American strategic and military affairs since the end of Cold War.

Just as with the armed conflicts in the Middle East, Fraser said that the conflict in Ukraine took place partially due to Washington's attempt to include Ukraine in NATO. He went on to blame the United States lack of historical understanding towards Russia on the matter.

Washington's policy to "contain" China can eventually lead to trouble for Australia. Believing that the United States will eventually use Australia as a base to attack China, Fraser suggested the removal of all American military facilities from Darwin in the north and Pine Gap in the center of the country as soon as possible. The former Australian leader added that the country should be more independent of the United States in both defense and foreign affairs. While recommending that Australia shore up its diplomatic activities throughout Asia and at the UN, he also suggested an increase in defense spending to 3% of the country's GDP.

Jared McKinney, an American defense expert said that Fraser's book is often redundant and sometimes appears simplistic and one-sided in its historical interpretations. Still, he praised Fraser's great service to Australia and it said would be a shame if his arguments were unable to incite the sort of grand strategy debate.

This is what he said about Russia and Crimea back in March

US thinks rules are for inferior nations, it's in their DNA'

COLD WAR AND PEACE (ft ex Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser)

Kosovo's secession demonstrated that international law is only as applicable as the force used to back it. But with Crimea now free on the wings of that precedent, the West cries foul. Why does the western world fail to recognise parallels between Kosovo and Crimea? Is it a case of double standards or the result of decades of adversarial EU and NATO policies towards Russia? Oksana is joined by former Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, to canvass these issues.

Fraser's warning to New Zealand

A warning from ex- Australian PM Maclolm Fraser. As we have already seen he has definite views onAmerican policies in the Ukraine and towards Russia

NZ warned as US and China raise stakes

A former Australian prime minister has warned Australia risks being pulled into a war with China because it has surrendered its strategic independence to Washington, but a security expert says New Zealand's position is even more precarious.

Stuff,

27 April, 2014

In what is being labelled the most serious questioning of Australia's foreign policy by a former prime minister since World War II, former Liberal leader Malcolm Fraser said he had become "very uneasy" at the level of Australia's compliance with US strategic interests.

"Our armed forces are so closely intertwined with theirs and we really have lost the capacity to make our own strategic decisions," Fraser said yesterday.

With US President Barack Obama confirming the US would back Japan in any conflict over disputed islands in the East China Sea, Fraser called for a more basic interpretation of the Anzus treaty, restricting its scope to consultation initially - rather than the assumption of automatic military involvement.

Fraser has also called for a new debate about Australian-American military ties, warning that the secretive Pine Gap facility would become a target as it would likely be pivotal to the US capability to identify and neutralise Chinese nuclear weapons sites.

Strategic and security analyst Paul Buchanan said it was the strongest strategy critique he had heard from any Australian leader.

He said Australia was replacing the UK as the US's foremost military ally, but held leverage over China because the latter needed its vital strategic resources such as minerals.

New Zealand also traded preferentially with China while tying itself to the security interests of the US, but did not enjoy the same economic leverage.

"The Chinese have to tread much more lightly with the Australians than they do with us," Buchanan told the Sunday Star-Times.

"The trouble for New Zealand is that our position is untenable over the long term. At some point New Zealand will be forced to choose between its trading relationship with [China] and its security relationship with the US."

Buchanan said the US and China were "slowly edging towards a confrontation" but China's military capability meant any conflict was at least 20 years away.

Buchanan said if Australia was "deputy sheriff" of the US in the southern hemisphere, "then we're the deputy's assistant".

As relations with the US grew warmer and we once again became "first tier" military partners, it put New Zealand in an awkward position, Buchanan said.

"We continue to say we're independent and autonomous in our foreign policy, and we clearly are not, we're schizophrenic in our foreign policy.

"We push trade but then we want to be very tightly aligned with the US on security matters and I think that down the road, way before military confrontation, the Chinese are going to push the issue and say ‘you've got to choose, we can't have you as a major US security ally when your export markets depend so heavily on us'."

At the same time, there would be pressure from the US to join it in any military action.

"If push comes to shove in the South China Sea I have no doubt the US will ask us to help out. We will need to come on the US side."

Buchanan said the Chinese were "acutely aware" New Zealand was an active part of the "five eyes" spy programme and that could cause problems down the track, especially if it was revealed we have been spying on China.

"The friendship is not as honest as the Chinese may think."

Meanwhile, Fraser said the high level of military integration, including through bases such as Pine Gap, meant Australia would have difficulty convincing the world that it was not taking part in a US-led conflict even if, formally, Canberra tried to stay out of it.

Fraser described the American "pivot" into the western Pacific, announced by Obama in the Australian Parliament in 2011, and which relies heavily on Australia in an operational sense, as another strategic error that commits Australia to a wrong-headed US strategy of containment of China.

"Military encirclement was necessary in relation to the Soviet Union but China is quite a different story," he said.

His answer was to pull back by closing down the US training bases in the Northern Territory and advising Washington that Pine Gap will also be shut down.

Fraser was Australia's prime minister from 1975 to 1983. He sets out his thoughts in a new book, Dangerous Allies

A recent interview - 

Ex- PM of Australia, Malcolm Fraser

It is a real indicator to me of how much the world has changed when a conservative PM from the Cold War days can speak out in this way on Russian television.

'May you live in interesting times' - old Chinese curse

'US thinks rules are for inferior nations, it's in their DNA' - ex Australian PM

Kosovo's secession demonstrated that international law is only as applicable as the force used to back it. But with Crimea now free on the wings of that precedent, the West cries foul. Why does the Western world fail to recognize parallels between Kosovo and Crimea? Is it a case of double standards or the result of decades of adversarial EU and NATO policies towards Russia? Oksana is joined by former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser to canvass these issues.

Ukraine: there's no way out unless the west understands its past mistakes

Western leaders mostly paint the whole dispute as totally one-sided: it is all Russia’s fault. But the Crimea crisis is directly related to the misguided steps taken after the Soviet Union’s fall

Malcolm Fraser

theGuardian,

2 March, 2014

After the fall of the Soviet Union, many hoped the cold war ideology could be put behind, and that the powers could work for a more co-operative and a better world. Nato had done its job.

There were many ways in which the former members of the Soviet Union in eastern Europe could have been given security for the future. Nato chose to provide that security by moving eastward to the borders of Russia. The then president, Gorbachev, in negotiating with secretary of state, James Baker, had insisted that Nato should not move one foot east – this was an area of traditional Russian influence. President Clinton pushed to expand the Nato alliance to the very borders of Russia. There was talk of Ukraine and Georgia being included.

The move east, despite the negotiations held with Gorbachev, was provocative, unwise and a very clear signal to Russia: we are not willing to make you a co-operative partner in the management of European or world affairs; we will exercise the power available to us and you will have to put up with it.

The message was re-emphasised years later, when President Bush sought to place elements of the anti-ballistic missile system in Poland and the Czech Republic. America said this was aimed at Iran. Russia would not have believed that. The west was acting as though the cold war still persisted.

What happened a while ago in Georgia, and what is happening now in Crimea, grows directly from those early mistakes made by the west. The west has been angling over the years to draw Ukraine into Nato. It has been doing whatever it could to support a pro-European government in the Ukraine, and to oppose or to bring down a pro-Russian government.

In January, Seumas Milne described those fighting against the then government. If but a small part of what he then said was correct, the west has once again chosen some unsavoury partners and that does not augur well for the future. Milne then described the elements then fighting the government as pro-fascist, pro-nazi, anti-Jew.

The west has again been flat-footed and unprepared. There is a significant Russia minority in Ukraine; Russia would be bound to take steps to protect that minority. In addition, if Putin thought that the west was angling to get the Ukraine into Nato, he certainly would have taken steps as he has to guarantee access to the Black Sea ports in Crimea and to safeguard military establishments which could be used to threaten that access.

To protect assets in Crimea will always be a Russian objective. Western leaders and western media mostly paint the whole dispute as totally one-sided: it is all Russia’s fault, and Putin is preventing a true democracy emerging. The steps taken in the early days after the fall of the Soviet Union, the breach of what Gorbachev (I accept almost certainly mistakenly) believed to be a firm agreement that Nato would not move east, was bound to create difficulties for the future.

There will be no way out of this, unless the history and the west’s past mistakes are understood by those who are trying to grapple with the present intractable, difficult and extraordinarily dangerous problem.

There is another aspect of this which should give western powers even greater concern for the future. The US has embarked on what many regard as a foolish and dangerous policy in the western pacific: a policy of containment of China. Even Joseph Nye, a former Pentagon official, has said containment is the wrong approach to a rising China – the US policy should be one of co-operation. There have been discussions about possible strategic arrangements between China and Russia. Are the mistaken policies of the US and the unfolding drama in Ukraine going to push both Russia and China towards a strategic partnership?

Those who thought the cold war was over and hoped for a better world are being proved to be wrong. Those in charge of current policy are showing an inadequate understanding of the events unfolding before their eyes, and an inability to work co-operatively to guide the world more safely.