Charles Krauthammer fully appreciates the rationale behind the alliance between America and Australia.
God, I love Australia....Of course I'm prejudiced, having married an Australian, but how not to like a country, in this age of sniveling grubs worldwide, whose treasurer suggests to any person who "wants to live under sharia law" to try Saudi Arabia and Iran, "but not Australia." He was elaborating on an earlier suggestion that "people who ... don't want to live by Australian values and understand them, well then they can basically clear off."Posted by Alan at June 25, 2006 01:12 AM... Australia is the only country that has fought with the United States in every one of its major conflicts since 1914, the good and the bad, the winning and the losing.
Why? Because Australia's geographic and historical isolation has bred a wisdom about the structure of peace — a wisdom that eludes most other countries. Australia has no illusions about the "international community" and its feckless institutions. An island of tranquility in a roiling region, Australia understands that peace and prosperity do not come with the air we breathe, but are maintained by power — once the power of the British Empire, now the power of the United States.
Australia joined the faraway wars of early 20th-century Europe not out of imperial nostalgia, but out of a deep understanding that its fate and the fate of liberty were intimately bound with that of the British Empire as principal underwriter of the international system. Today the underwriter is America, and Australia understands that an American retreat or defeat — a chastening consummation devoutly, if secretly, wished by many a Western ally — would be catastrophic for Australia and for the world.
When Australian ambassadors in Washington express support for the United States, it is heartfelt and unalloyed, never the "yes, but" of the other allies, perfunctory support followed by a list of complaints, slights and sage finger-wagging. Australia understands America's role and is sympathetic to its predicament as reluctant hegemon. That understanding has led it to share foxholes with Americans from Korea to Kabul. They fought with us at Tet and now in Baghdad. Not every engagement has ended well. But every one was strenuous, and many quite friendless. Which is why America has such affection for a country whose prime minister said after 9/11, "This is no time to be an 80 percent ally," and actually meant it.