Editorial: Trump vetoes resolution to curb war powers against Iran

Australia is embarked on some very dangerous games in company with its US ally, games which could easily get out of hand when played by a President as incompetent as Donald Trump, advised by a Secretary of State as aggressive as Michael Pompeo. This is very disturbing, especially in light of the facts that Prime Minister Morrison seems to have much more admiration for Donald Trump than the rest of us do, or than his more cautious predecessor Malcolm Turnbull, and he can decide to have us participate in any outbreak of hostilities, intended or unintended, without consulting Parliament.
 
The locations of particular concern are the Strait of Hormuz, about which I wrote in September 2019. Of more concern now is our enthusiastic participation in rising US-China tensions, including participation in naval exercises with our US ally in the contested waters of the South China Sea.
 
Every international action needs to be seen in context. The context in which the Chinese Government will see these actions is the Government’s demand for an “independent” inquiry into the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic - calls which were widely and in my view correctly seen as calls for an investigation of China’s behaviour, rather than for obtaining information which might assist the world to bring the pandemic under control. These calls, made without any of the required diplomatic preparation, have been described by former Ambassador to the US, Japan, Indonesia and elsewhere John McCarthy as “a nice hoary bellow from our domestic political ramparts, but ... a policy mistake”.
 
Although it managed to manoeuvre itself into a more respectable position, belatedly seeking the support of European leaders, and then aligning itself with a proposal put forward by the EU, the Australian Government’s initial call for an inquiry cannot possibly have been designed to elicit information useful to the handling of the COVID-19 crisis. If it were, the Government would have approached the Chinese Government quietly through diplomatic channels, suggesting that Australia’s internationally recognised experts get together with their Chinese counterparts to ascertain whatever we wish to know. This was our best chance of securing Chinese collaboration.
 
For Beijing, the impression that this was more about impressing President Trump than securing Chinese cooperation would have been strengthened by the fact that Prime Minister Morrison also called for the investigation to be conducted outside the aegis of World Health Organisation, the UN body with the international mandate for global public health matters, thereby aligning himself not only with the US propaganda war against China, but with the Trump Administration’s war on the WHO.
 
The situation has not been helped by the enthusiastic misrepresentation of some unwise remarks made by China’s Ambassador to Canberra when he was backed into a corner during a media interview. A more balanced view of this episode can be gained from this recent article by China expert Jocelyn Chey.
 
More recently, Secretary of State Pompeo claimed on Sunday 3 May that there is “enormous evidence” the coronavirus outbreak originated in a Chinese laboratory – but did not provide any of the alleged evidence. Australian intelligence agencies have questioned the evidence and the Government has distanced itself from this claim, with Prime Minister Morrison stating "There's nothing that we have that would indicate that was the likely source."   For a more detached and dispassionate analysis of the origin of the virus, and of the case for a credible inquiry, I would commend this article by Fillipa Lentzos in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
 
To return to the contested waters of the South China Sea, there is no doubt that some of China’s claims within the contested waters of the South China Sea are incompatible with its rights under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), to which it, unlike the US, is party. Australia can and should contest those claims to the extent that they go beyond China’s UNCLOS rights, both via diplomatic channels and in relevant international fora. But it is in our best interests to do so, and to be seen to be doing so, as an independent nation defending its own national interest, not as a member of the US’s supporting cast.
 
Consistent with that stance, we can and should assert our rights to transit the waters we regard as international by using those rights of transit, but again we should do so as an individual sovereign act rather than as part of a US-led flotilla. This is the manner in which the Turnbull Government acted. Former Prime Minister Turnbull recorded in his recently published memoir that his Government sent Australian planes and ships through the South China Sea in international waters only to find “those transits were regularly challenged by Chinese aircraft or ships”. But Turnbull declined to follow the US and send ships to transit within 12 nautical miles of the islands claimed by China.

My judgment was that we could easily play into China’s hands if we did. If one of our ships were to be rammed and disabled within the 12-mile limit by a Chinese vessel, we don’t have the capacity to retaliate. If the Americans backed us in, then the Chinese would back off. But if Washington hesitated or, for whatever reasons, decided not to or was unable immediately to intervene, then China would have achieved an enormous propaganda win.

He decided that it wasn’t a risk worth taking, and he declined US blandishments to participate in US “Freedom of Navigation”  or other US-led combined AS-US naval exercises.

For us to throw caution to the winds and participate in US naval exercises in the South China Sea, especially at a time of heightened tensions between our major ally and our major trading partner, is extremely foolish.

And for this to be happening at a time when the power to initiate military hostilities rests in the hands of two political leaders not noted for their caution or careful consideration of potential consequences is a matter for deep concern.
 
Paul Barratt AO
President, Australians for War Powers Reform; former Secretary, Department of Defence
 
Image: Lines of soldiers walking, Anon – Pixabay