Here (link) is a (long) podcast of conservative Australian journalist Greg Sheridan promoting his new book on the Australian/American or Howard/Bush partnership in the war on terror by giving a couple of stories from his book (typical Australian rah-rah stuff on the wonderfulness of our special forces) and the book's key messages.
For many Winds of Change readers, the podcast may be almost all they need to understand how the Australian-American strategic partnership looks from a highly self-interested, national-interest Australian conservative viewpoint.
A few of Greg Sheridan's points:
When George W. Bush was elected, John Howard and (Australian foreign affairs minister) Alexander Downer toasted in champaign and immediately began planning all the goodies they intended to get from him, and how they would cash those goodies in politically.
In the asymmetrical Australia-America relationship, because America is so much more powerful it has vast responsibilities, which puts the initiative in Australia's hands. An American president could spend 1% of his foreign policy time thinking about Australia, if that, but an Australian prime minister who wants to can afford to spend 30%, 50% or even 70% of his foreign policy time planning how he's going to get everything he wants from the Americans. The left-wing image of America the big bully driving and dominating its relationships with its weaker partners is unreal.
Howard wound up getting goodies is every area he went after: closer military co-operation, closer intelligence cooperation and a trade deal. This happened in the context of the response to 11 September, 2001, and was based on willingness to take political and military risks, a genuinely shared strategic understanding, and (least importantly) shared conservative views. Another issue was that Australian armed forces had to and did prove to the Americans (specifically Donald Rumsfeld) that we brought something to the table, that is that closer military ties would actually be of mutual benefit.
While George W. Bush's diplomacy may look disastrous to the Left, it looks brilliant from a cold-blooded, self-interested Australian point of view, since the bits that worked are India, Japan and China - in the most important part of the world, near us.
Greg Sheridan - "The danger for the future in my view, the only danger to the alliance, lies in the anti-Americanism, the visceral, atavistic anti-Americanism of so many of our media and artistic elites in Australia, especially our academic elites and civil liberties class."
Success is boring, so this may be too. But if you want to check out a part of the diplomacy of the George W. Bush administration where everything worked swimmingly you know where to go.