Australia's foreign policy is clearly moving away from its focus on Asia during the 1980s and 1990s and is now headed for a more formal alliance with the United States, reflecting the Howard government's more cautious — even anxious — approach.

In a media briefing last week, a senior Australian Foreign Ministry official indicated that the Howard government's new 'White Paper' on foreign affairs, to be published in two months' time, will formally announce that Australia's single most important relationship in foreign policy is its alliance with the United States.

This reflects Prime Minister John Howard's deep embrace of the United States immediately following the Sept 11 attacks, when he invoked the Australia-New Zealand-US (ANZUS) defence treaty and committed Australian troops to the US-led attack on Afghanistan last year.

The 'White Paper' is a policy document, which is usually produced every five years. The last report produced in 1997 ranked the United States equally with Japan, China and Indonesia as countries where Australia had ""substantial interests"".

This year's paper ranks no other country in order of importance to Australia — other than the United States.

Signs of Australia's shift under Howard were evident even earlier. In 1999, Howard made the now-infamous comment that Australia could act as America's deputy sheriff in Asia, and Australia's role in East Timor's independence is now increasingly seen as reflecting this strategy.

Enthusiastic embrace

In recent months, the Howard government has demonstrated its enthusiastic embrace of US President George W Bush's anti-terrorism campaign and its tendency to look at Asia with a military focus.

"The foreign policy White Paper reflects the growing influence of Prime Minister John Howard over Australia's international policy," argued Geoffrey Barker of the Australian Financial Review magazine.

When the Review ran his story on the front cover under the heading 'PM dumps Asia for US Alliance', Australian foreign ministry officials took offence at it. They immediately went on the offensive, arguing that the briefing put considerable emphasis on the point that Australia does not have to chose between close links with Asia, on the one hand, and with the United States, on the other.

"We went to great lengths to underline the high priority accorded to Asia in current policy, including the new trade and economic agreements we are seeking with Japan and China, the Free Trade Agreements we are negotiating with Singapore and Thailand, and close engagement with Indonesia including collaboration in combating people smuggling," said a foreign ministry statement.

Australia's trade with the United States has increased in recent years, but Asia still accounts for 57 percent of Australia's total merchandise exports. As a region, Asia remains Australia's biggest trading partner.

Sign of growing bias

The growing trend of trade with the US trend worries some in the Australian business community, who see this as a sign of a growing bias against Asia in Australia's foreign policy that may have repercussions for Australian business in the region.

Interestingly, Australia's focus away from Asia and toward the United States in its foreign policy comes at a time when Asians in greater numbers are coming to Australia as fee-paying students, tourists and migrants, as well as asylum seekers.

"Indeed, Australia's engagement with Asia has been growing substantially, and this can be measured in many ways," argued Foreign Minister Alexander Downer in a recent speech.

"For example, we have never had more trade with Asia than we do now, or by the substantial numbers of students from Southeast Asia at educational institutions in our country, and again we have never had as many Asian students studying in Australia as we do now," he added.

If this is so, then why the government's policy shift to move closer into America's embrace?

"In domestic political terms, it has always been easier to sell 'anxiety' than the positive story of engagement, partly because the threat from the north (Asia) is deeply embedded in social memory and partly because anxiety has received a renewed impetus post-September 11," said Professor David Walker, author of the book Anxious Nation: Australia and the Rise of Asia .

Anxious nation syndrome

"Australia has routinely oscillated between negative readings of what proximity to Asia might mean in terms of defence and security, the 'anxious nation syndrome', and more positive understandings of the benefits that might flow from proximity, including closer trade ties, collaborative defence arrangements and a richer and more diverse pattern of cultural engagement," he added.

Walker, a professor of Australian studies at Deakin University, argues that during the premiership of Paul Keating in the early 1990s, Australia's strong preference for closer ties with Asia reflected "a more adventurous and innovative approach to Asia, a national self-belief, whereas Howard is invariably cautious, more concerned to shore up old attachments than create new ones".

"The policy does appear to represent a changed cultural alignment, a greater measure of comfort with London and Washington, than with Jakarta, Beijing or Tokyo. Even if this is not the case, it is hard to imagine that the policy change would not be interpreted as more Euro-centric and a realignment of interests along civilisational lines," he told IPS.

Paul Kelly, editor-at-large of The Australian newspaper, argues that the problem in Australia's foreign policy lies in the Howard-Keating cultural conflict of Australia's identity.

He points out that the draft White Paper does acknowledge that close engagement with Asia is essential to Australia's future. "The rhetoric is less euphoric than Paul Keating but continuity is clear." Observed Kelly. "No Australian government can afford to soft-pedal engagement because our commercial security and political interests in East Asia are too great."

Political assets

Since Howard came to power in 1996, there has been a clear shift in Australia's foreign policy priorities.

The October release of the latest White Paper may well be seen in many parts of Asia as a retreat by Australia to underneath the umbrella of US global military and economic power, and to the comfort and certainty of its European roots. This worries some independent foreign policy analysts.

"Political assets in Washington and US leverage will be helpful from time to time, as they were during the Timor crisis,'' noted Peter Drysdale, head of the Australia-Japan Research Centre at the Australian National University in Canberra.

"But political assets in Tokyo, Beijing, Jakarta, Seoul, other Southeast Asian capitals and New Delhi will be critical to dealing with a significant majority of our foreign policy problems over the coming years. And this has not changed since September 11," he warned in a commentary in the Australian Financial Review this week. — IPS