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https://theconversation.com/australia-fears-being-abandoned-by-america-but-do-the-two-countries-need-each-other-232517>
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Review: The Odd Couple: The Australia–America Relationship – Allan Behm
(Upswell)
In any presidential year, the Australian media – including social media – will
suddenly generate a vast army of instant experts on American politics, all with
a take you just have to read or hear. They’ll cover everything from laws
governing electoral delegates in Arizona to the impact of demographic change on
voting patterns in western Pennsylvania. In the 2024 US presidential year, when
so much is at stake, that ramps right up.
Allan Behm’s
The Odd Couple, a study of the Australia–America relationship
that also serves as a meditation on both countries, could hardly be more
timely. It belongs to a rather different tradition than that of instant
analysis with newly acquired (and dubious) “expertise”.
Behm is a considered and reflective commentator. An experienced former
diplomat, public servant and (Labor) political adviser who now works at the
Australia Institute, he is qualified to offer both well-informed critique and
constructive suggestions for the relationship.
He has a way with words and is widely read, displaying a formidable cultural
range that can take in the Argonauts, Davy Crockett and the Lone Ranger, the
foundational documents of the United States, novels and poems from the 19th
century, big thick books of political history and international relations, and
much in between.
The result is a valuable contribution to discussion of the Australia–America
relationship. The quality of this debate here is poor. There are too many
commentators with too much skin in the game, too many with warm recollections
of their last trip to that conference in Aspen, or who are waiting in hope or
expectation for their invitation to the Australian American Leadership
Dialogue.
The dissidents are there, but they struggle to exercise influence in a public
culture dominated by a news empire controlled by (American) Citizen Murdoch.
There are some who do a good job of questioning many of the pieties about the
alliance. They include James Curran (a University of Sydney history professor
and the Australian Financial Review’s foreign editor), Hugh White (former
senior public servant and Australian National University academic) and Behm’s
colleague at the Australian Institute, Emma Shortis. You will also find
penetrating critics further to the left, in magazines such as
Arena: Guy
Rundle, Clinton Fernandez and David Lee. They tend to treat the US as an
empire, Australia as a compliant sub-empire.
Critics remind Australians that the alliance’s risks and costs are only
magnified by the reflexive “follow the leader” approach to US policy pursued by
Australian policy-makers. But compared with the chorus of pro-alliance
commentators, the critics exercise limited influence with a political class
whose timidity is one of Behm’s themes. Australia’s “international policies
have been characteristically defensive and deferential to the interests of
others,” he judges."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
