No good crisis should ever be wasted, as Rahm Emanuel, a one-time chief of staff to Barack Obama, used to say. Donald Trump is in trouble with both his American and his international constituencies. Australia ought to be taking advantage of the distractions this provides.

Subscribe now for unlimited access.

Login or signup to continue reading

First, it is an excellent time for the Australian government to begin creating some distance between itself and the United States. From the point of view of the Labor Party, it is an even better time for it to be creating that distance, which is becoming a political noose around its neck, particularly the neck of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. It may prove impossible to wrench the teeth of the Minister for Defence Richard Marles from the Trump teat, but if the effect of Albanese's reading the tea leaves was also to create some distance from Marles that would be a bonus.

The views, the character and the reputation of Marles do not matter much in this equation. Marles has not made much of an impression, either in the world, in Australia, or even among Labor followers, other than among the class of Labor folk on the public political payroll.

What drags Labor down among its followers is the uncritical adoration of the US from Albanese, and, to a lesser extent, Penny Wong. It is rather more an albatross because they once pretended to be of the political left, before becoming effective members of the National Right controlled (even over Albanese) by Marles. Now both have abandoned virtually all principles over which they fought with Labor's right, and are, on significant issues, to the right of some leading Liberals.

But Albanese needs room to manoeuvre. It is more than retrieving some reputation among old political colleagues, members of the Greens, most of whom were once in Labor's engine room of ideas, or even the teals. It is a matter of reassuring the general population.

Many of these may not be anti-American or opposed to the AUKUS alliance. But they expect some dignity and debate, not mere deference, from their national leaders, and some detailed discussion and explanation rather than invitations to be taken on trust.

Albanese showed no detachment when he, alone of the leaders of the Western alliance, gave wholehearted endorsement of the Israeli and American war on Iran. At the time of doing so, he projected no Australian interest, let alone any reason why Australia, with its position on the globe, might see things differently than Trump.

He gave no indication that he expected an energy war, or lasting increases in oil prices. Trump had advanced a smorgasbord of reasons, if none for his abrupt decision. He dipped in and out of them, occasionally spitting out the needs, and saying and then denying they had caused him to act.

Albanese, unprompted, picked one of Trump's offerings -- perhaps the most spurious reason of all. Australia does not want Iran to develop nuclear weapons, he said. The actions of Israel and the US would obliterate the Iranian program to build a nuclear weapon. This was one of the reasons given last year for an earlier attack, but the cause was still pure. Or not.

It quickly became clear that Trump's claim that an Iranian attack was imminent was sheer invention. And that Trump's own intelligence apparatus had assessed that Iran's nuclear capacity had been much degraded by the previous attack, and that Iran had not resumed any efforts to build a weapon or to develop its uranium to weapons grade. This is intelligence that would have been, or should have been shared with Australia intelligence services, and shared by them with its political masters.

The assessment was in any event like that made by our own spooks. Albanese may have been anxious to be out front and in complete lockstep with Trump (or perhaps........

© Canberra Times