US deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Secretary of State Colin Powell rammed home President George Bush's anti-Latham message this week. This raised the spectre of a muscling up if a re-elected Bush faced PM Latham.
http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/06/11/1086749893758.html

Also this week, US trade representative Robert Zoellick put Labor on the spot over its as yet undetermined attitude towards the Australian-American Free Trade Agreement. Howard is developing the argument that Latham is "indifferent" to the alliance and would weaken its "intensity". And asked a question about Garrett, Howard neatly segued into a broader observation that Labor policy had "increasing overtones of anti-Americanism".

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A question of sovereignty
http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/06/11/1086749892789.html

Memo Rich Armitage: Nations that stop putting their own interests first soon become client states. By Shaun Carney.

When the American Government wants something, it will do whatever it takes to get it. Eight days ago, Australians awoke to hear United States President George Bush describe the ALP's policy of bringing Australian military personnel home from Iraq by the end of the year as a disaster. This week, it has been the turn of Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who denigrated in sarcastic tones not just the Labor policy but Mark Latham's response to Bush.

Clearly, America wants to go on with it. Armitage has threatened to hurt Australia economically and to withhold intelligence from a Latham government.

Armitage's best friend, Secretary of State Colin Powell, has also applied the blowtorch to Latham, in an interview to be screened on ABC TV's Insiders tomorrow. Powell, who likes to be portrayed as the most conciliatory member of the Bush war cabinet, gives the Labor policy of withdrawal a real bollocking in the interview.

All this over the prospect of the withdrawal, six months from now, of 850 people - none of whom have a genuine frontline role - out of a total international deployment of almost 150,000.

The importance of the Australian contingent is much more symbolic than practical, a fact that was implicit in Bush's comments, in which he said that withdrawal would "embolden the enemy". In real terms, it is possible that Labor's policy of replacing its military people with civic and economic aid could help the newly reconstituted Iraq more than the present Australian contribution.

So the few international friends that Bush and his fellow true believers in his cabinet have managed to keep cannot be allowed to cast doubt on the correctness and wisdom of the course America has taken on Iraq. This is Latham's sin - or the sin that he threatens to commit should Labor be elected in the next few months. A Labor government that went ahead with the removal of its military contingent would embarrass Bush.

It seems beyond doubt that if Labor wins office the alliance with America will be in trouble. But what is the alliance?
Is it a framework for intelligence sharing and defence co-operation, or has it become something else - a mutual survival pact in the field of domestic politics, in which the respective governments tend to each other's political requirements?
If so, this calls into question the notion of sovereignty, not so much for America, which is big enough and rich enough to get by on its own, but for Australia.

The subtext of Armitage's comments in an interview with ABC TV's Lateline, in which he said allies could not pick and choose the parts of their relationship they liked, suggested that if Australia wanted a close relationship with the US it had to accept that it would have to go along on any military adventure America chose to undertake. There is no other way to interpret the comments.

Apart from anything else, Armitage's analysis of not just the American-Australian relationship but any accord between nations was false. Each Australian government, regardless of its political stripe, has an overwhelming responsibility to protect and further Australia's interests ahead of any other country. As in any relationship, nations pick and choose the parts that most benefit them. When they stop doing so, they cease to be genuine sovereign nations and instead become client states.

Then there is the question of democracy, which we are told, now that the stockpiled weapons of mass destruction and purported links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda have not turned up, is what the invasion of Iraq is all about.

A solid proportion of Australians appear to support the idea of a military withdrawal. It is not unreasonable for these people to have their views represented politically. There are two sides to the argument and two sides in Australian politics adhering, respectively, to either side of the argument. This is the stuff of democracy. It is what is being celebrated about the new Iraq. Surely it can be tolerated, if not celebrated, in Australia.