Hugh White | February 16, 2009
VERY soon the US administration will put real pressure on Kevin Rudd to send more troops to Afghanistan. That will pose a real problem, because the Prime Minister has adopted a strange and ultimately untenable position on this ugly and difficult war. His words do not match his deeds, and they probably do not match his convictions either.
On the one hand, he has talked up the importance of the conflict, the depth of Australia's interest in a successful outcome, and the need for the international community to send more troops to make it work. He even went to a NATO summit in Bucharest last year to lecture NATO leaders on the need to do more. On the other hand, he has no plans to send any more Australians. The 1000 troops committed by the Howard government is only about 2 per cent of the total coalition.
It's not hard to see how Rudd has got himself into this position. He talked big about Afghanistan before the election in 2007, to show that his promise to withdraw from Iraq didn't mean he was soft on national security. Once in power, he was eager to show the Bush administration that he was a loyal ally, and happily accepted their deal: they would not complain about his withdrawal from Iraq if he would help pester NATO members about doing more in Afghanistan.
But Rudd probably knows that, even with a lot more troops, the chances of success in Afghanistan are very low indeed, and the risks to Australian forces there are relatively high. And he probably also realises that much of what he says about Afghanistan being critical to Australia's security is at best exaggerated: it is not the central front in the war on terror: that is Pakistan. And he knows that Afghanistan is not popular with the voters. Hence his reluctance to send more troops.
And now George W. Bush is gone. Like Rudd, President Barack Obama based his national security credentials on Afghanistan, and as President he desperately needs to make it work. Obama seems to think that the surge strategy, which he opposed but which many believe has worked in Iraq, will work in Afghanistan too. However, fulfilling his promise to rebuild the US's global leadership depends on his ability to persuade other countries to surge with him. This is his first big chance to show Americans that he really can do better than Bush. He can't afford to fail.
Australia's response to Obama's call for support will thus be the first big test of Australia's relationship with the new administration, and we should not take that relationship for granted. Obama has no reason to be more than mildly interested in us. For his own political purposes, Rudd hopes to build the kind of special relationship with Obama that Howard had with Bush. Whether he can or cannot will depend a lot on what he says when he gets this first big call.
The President's talking points are easy to imagine: he will remind Rudd that back in 2007 Rudd made political hay when Obama rebuked Howard for the mismatch between Howard's big talk on Iraq and his small contribution.
"Now you would not want me to say the same thing about you, would you?" the President might gently enquire. Obama did not become President of the US by being as nice as he seems.
As Rudd weighs up his political dilemma, two key strategic questions should bear on the answer he gives to Obama. The first concerns Australia's real interests in Afghanistan. Rudd, like Howard, understands that despite what the Government says, what happens in Afghanistan itself is at best a third-order issue for Australia. Success there would hardly guarantee our safety from terrorism, and failure there would not necessarily increase the risk much.
The important issue for Australia is the health of the alliance with the US. This reflects a long-established policy tradition. For almost 30 years, Australia has demonstrated its credentials as an ally by making small, cheap, low-risk contributions to US coalition operations in and around the Gulf. This has worked very well: indeed Australia's ability to leverage token commitments in the Gulf into glowing receptions at the White House is the envy of other US allies, and sometimes irritates the harder heads in the US strategic community.
For all the talk of 9/11, Australia's decisions to support the US in Afghanistan and Iraq have fitted squarely into this successful long-term pattern. The difference has been that whereas America's pre-9/11 operations in the Gulf were quick and successful, Iraq and Afghanistan have been anything but. So does it still make sense for Australia to pay alliance dues by supporting the US in this way, when they stop being small, cheap and low-risk?
Well that's a tough call, but let me offer this thought. To pull out of Afghanistan now would risk serious damage to the alliance and would not be worth that cost. But to substantially increase our presence might not be worth the benefits we would derive from Obama's gratitude.
Australia needs a good relationship with the US, but it does not need the kind of matey intimacy that Howard built with Bush. Bob Hawke built a remarkably strong relationship with the US while keeping a healthy distance from Ronald Reagan, and while Obama is no Reagan, the example might be instructive. Rudd's political interest may require him to build bonds closely with Obama by sending more troops, but Australia's national interests do not.
The second strategic question on Rudd's mind should be the credibility of Obama's operational plan. Alliance management never requires a prime minister to support a military plan he does not believe, after sober consideration, to be strategically credible.
His job is to keep asking questions until he is satisfied one way or the other before saying yes. Not doing this was Howard's mistake on Iraq: he was too quick to agree to support an operation that neither he nor, as it turned out, Bush remotely understood.
There are some big questions to ask today about the credibility of Obama's plans for Afghanistan. It is now being candidly acknowledged by some in Britain and the US that what we have been doing in Afghanistan so far has not been working, and never will. New operational concepts are being developed, drawing on the experience of the surge and focused more on building up indigenous Afghan forces.
But it is far from clear what difference the surge actually made to political developments in Iraq. It is absolutely clear that Afghanistan is very different from Iraq. And all the lessons of history show that trying to solve problems of weak government by building strong security forces leads to trouble. When the call comes, Rudd may find the best way to answer Obama's questions is with some questions of his own.
Hugh White is a visiting fellow at the Lowy Institute and professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University.