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UPDATED: September 9, 2014 NO. 37 SEPTEMBER 11, 2014
Diplomacy 'Down Under'
Australia should look beyond self-interest in balancing its alliance with the United States and its relationship with China
By Kerry Brown
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SECURE TIES: Australian Defense Minister Senator David Johnston, Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel (from left to right) attend a joint press (XINHUA/AFP)

Australia and the United States completed their annual military dialogue dubbed AUSMIN on August 12—the 29th since its establishment in 1985. The joint communiqué issued at the conclusion of the talks, held in Canberra and attended by Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel on the U.S. side and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and Defense Minister David Johnston on the Australian side, covered a vast range of issues from joint military exercises to concerns over climate change and terrorism in the Middle East. The document testifies to the close relations between the two countries.

So complete is the overlap between the interests of the countries that it might be permissible to wonder if they have, in fact, joined one foreign policy and wholly shared geopolitical strategies and objectives. For Australians, looking at the completeness of their mutual interests, the question might be where does Australia itself have proper autonomy? Where does it stand alone and define its own foreign policy position?

Multifaceted alliance

Australia evidently gains a huge amount from its close alliance with the United States—and not just in terms of military issues. Australia and the United States are hugely interlinked economies. They signed a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) almost a decade ago, the first such agreement ever entered into by Australia, and one which many Australians feel exposed their precious agribusiness sector and investment environment to easy U.S. access. U.S. investment remains the largest, even in the face of recent excitement about rising levels of Chinese direct investment. Added to this economic interconnectedness, there are also deep people-to-people links.

Australia is very sincere when it signs up to a statement in the Communiqué that it "expressed support for the United States' role in underpinning the region's security, stability and prosperity." With a force of only 60,000 active troops to defend an area almost as large as that of China's, Australia's sense of vulnerability to attack is well known and long standing. This is despite the fact that it is protected to some extent by the long distance it is from most other countries. In World War II, Japan only reached the northernmost part of the continent. But modern technology has made the Australian defense establishment very aware that even this form of protection is now no longer strong. This situation underlines the agreement between the United States and Australia this year to exercise closer cooperation on ballistic missile defense systems.

The practical detail of this U.S.-Australia cooperation is the implementation of the Force Posture Agreement, reached by U.S. President Barack Obama and Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott in June, setting out the legal basis for the presence of marines in Darwin. There are 1,150 of these at present, in the third rotation since 2011. This figure will increase to 2,500 over the next few years. This deal to have marines on Australian soil was originally set up by former Prime Minister Rudd and has proved controversial, simply because it marks a steep change in military relations between the two countries.

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