The end of Australia’s American Dream
The end of Australia’s
American Dream
WRITTEN BY MELISSA CONLEY TYLER
15 October 2020
All the data suggests that Australians are hoping for a Biden victory. Surveys by the Pew Research Center and Lowy Institute show less than a third of Australians trust President Trump to do the right thing in world affairs. 73 per cent would prefer Joe Biden as President.
This sentiment is reflected in Australia’s foreign policy and security community. I’ve been at webinars lately where there’s been a palpable sense that it’s almost over: the Trump aberration will end and we’ll be back to normal programming. In the words of Australian Institute of International Affairs National President Allan Gyngell: “For the sake of Australia and the US, I badly want this to be true. If it is Biden, the repairs can start”.
I think we’re going to be disappointed.
An internally focused America
First, even if there’s a clear Biden victory, we won’t have an immediate snapback. Yes, Biden will be more like the US presidents we are used to. Former US Ambassador Frank Lavin describes Biden as an internationalist while election analyst Charlie Cook sees foreign policy as one of Biden’s passions. But the reality is that the next president’s priority is going to be domestic concerns, with foreign policy a ‘luxury item’. As Allan Gyngell concedes, “the focus of a Biden Administration will be heavily internal”.
Australia will have to admit to itself that the US is what BBC New York correspondent Nick Bryant describes as “a post-American America”, one that’s almost unrecognisable from its past.
US public opinion has turned sharply away from foreign adventurism and is now evenly split. 53 per cent of US adults say “it’s best for the future of our country to be active in world affairs”, while 46 per cent say “we should pay less attention to problems overseas and concentrate more on problems here at home”.
There are calls for the US to turn away from global leadership – “being everywhere and solving every problem” – and to “accept that it is a normal country like any other”. As Michael Scrafton notes, the mood is less for the restoration of US global leadership and more for retrenchment or reinvention. These trends were already evident under President Obama.
A contested US election
Second, there are plausible scenarios where the election result can’t be determined immediately. While few are predicting a Trump victory — which might shake Australia’s bipartisan consensus on the US alliance — it’s not unlikely that the election result will be contested, possibly for months.
Trump’s continuing refusal to commit to a peaceful transfer of power raises the real possibility that he won’t concede. This could lead to legal challenges to postal ballots, the announcement of rival representatives to the Electoral College or a final decision on the floor of the Senate. It could be like the 2000 Bush-Gore election with its five-week battle over Florida’s hanging chads but in a much more polarised and militant America.
If the election result is contested, the effect on US soft power will be immense, raising doubts about US competence and societal cohesion. This is going to be very difficult for Australians who want to think well of the US and see its problems as regrettable lapses.
Australia’s nostalgia
Whatever happens, this election will bring to an end what I think of as a limbo period for Australia during which it continued to dream of its ideal America.
Over the last four years, many members of Australia’s foreign policy and the security community have continued to be immensely supportive of the US alliance while Trump has derided allies as free-loaders who have abused their relationships with the United States.
Australia’s Foreign Policy White Paper argued that Australia should continue strongly to support US global leadership to maintain the rules-based international order at the same time as Trump has been an international wrecker of multilateralism. During his administration, the US has withdrawn from the UN Human Rights Council, World Health Organisation, the Paris Agreement on climate change, UNESCO (for the second time) and — in a low point — even threatened to quit the Universal Postal Union.
Through all of this, much of the Australian foreign policy and strategic community has held to a view of the US as its best self. The 2020 Defence Strategic Update stated, ‘Australia is a staunch and active ally of the United States, which continues to underwrite the security and stability of the Indo-Pacific’.
Anything that didn’t fit this view of the US could be explained as a Trump blip. In the words of the Perth USAsia Centre’s Gordon Flake, “most countries have been trying to manage on the assumption that this time is an aberration and that the US will be back”.
This fits well with Australia’s disposition to nostalgia for a past where Australia was relatively more important and the international rules were largely set by our friends. This nostalgia was evident in the Foreign Policy White Paper which, in James Curran’s memorable description, “sees a new Asia but pleads for the old”. We want the US back to what we imagine it once was.
It’s going to be very difficult indeed to maintain this dream state if Trump is reelected or if there’s an extended period of contestation and civil unrest. In the gentlest scenario, it may fade steadily if Biden turns out to be less focused on US global leadership than expected.
Australia will have to admit to itself that the US is what BBC New York correspondent Nick Bryant describes as “a post-American America”, one that’s almost unrecognisable from its past. It’s going to be painful. If US leadership is no longer a given, Australia will have to take a bigger role in shaping its future in international affairs.
As the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Huong Le Thu describes it, up to now Australia has generally focused on “the challenge posed by China, rather than the challenge posed by both the US and China, which is how the ASEAN nations see the problem”. These views may start to align more.
If so, it will be the start of a less sentimental and more realistic approach to the US. It will not mean an end to the alliance; as Allan Gyngell reminds, the integration of defence and intelligence with the US is so deep that separation is inconceivable. But it may be the start of seeing the US with clearer eyes.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
Melissa Conley Tyler is Research Fellow in the Asia Institute of the University of Melbourne. Image Credit: Flickr/Geoff Livingston