Australia gives Canada some pointers (Aussies point out what's wrong with Canada's weasels policy)

HONIARA, Solomon Islands -- Federal agent Simone Kleehammer dons a helmet and flak jacket before linking up with an army escort for her nightly police patrols. This is where her police colleagues were shot late last year -- one killed, one injured -- after local gunmen targeted Australian police on this anarchic South Pacific island nation 3,000 kilometres northeast of Sydney.

The shootings "felt like all of us getting kicked in the stomach," admits Kleehammer, 31, as she drives past the shooting scene. "But we were all here to do a job and we knew this could happen."

The deadly ambushes sent a chill through this dusty tropical town, demoralizing Australian police deployed here on a precedent-setting mission: to rebuild a failed state by reviving its faltering police force.

Australia reacted to the shootings by airlifting combat troops and arming its cops on the beat. Now, nighttime patrols are still tense, but by daybreak Kleehammer dumps her body armour, ditches her military escort and leaves the safety of a police outpost blanketed in barbed wire.

Relying on a smile and a nine-millimetre Glock handgun, she patrols with her local partners -- fresh recruits from the discredited Royal Solomon Islands Police. Hunched in a rickety cruiser, they begin a bone-jarring sweep through "Borderland," the deadliest district in this ramshackle capital.

Despite the threats, most residents of this dirt-poor island chain look upon the strapping Australian men and women in blue as saviours.

Two years ago, these outsiders rescued the islanders from themselves -- from the chaos of a failed state riven by ethnic cleansing and gang violence culminating in the government's collapse. In fact, Kleehammer is one of 300 foot soldiers in an Australian experiment that has redefined her government's approach to global trouble spots. The police deployment is the centrepiece of a massive, decade-long intervention launched in mid-2003 with an amphibious landing by 1,700 combat troops.

As they restored order, the $1 billion operation was bolstered by squads of elite civil servants reviving the moribund machinery of government, ranging from treasury economists to customs agents patrolling the airport. It is a virtual takeover of a sovereign country -- albeit by invitation. The Solomon Islands rescue mission has served as the inspiration for an equally ambitious police deployment in Papua, New Guinea -- another crime-infested, corruption-ridden troublespot off Australia's northern coast.

Saving the day is becoming a habit for Australians. The federal police have set up an "international deployment division" as part of its "core business," says Will Jamieson, who ran the division before relocating here to run the Solomon Islands police mission. Australia's biggest and boldest intervention came in late 1999, when its military deployed decisively into nearby East Timor as it was struggling for independence from adjacent Indonesia in mid-1999. While Western countries stood by paralyzed, the global spotlight was shining on 5,700 Australian troops as they stared down Indonesian-backed militiamen.

Today, Australia projects its power from Iraq and Afghanistan in the West, to the Solomon Islands and other South Pacific nations in the East. Beyond the sheer sweep of territory, Australia's increasingly muscular and activist strategy suggests a country that is

punching far above its weight. Bruised by the 2002 Bali bombing that claimed 88 Australian lives and left the country reeling, it emerged more determined to ally itself with Washington's war on terror.

An early clue to Australia's inclinations came when Prime Minister John Howard famously agreed with an interviewer that he was America's "deputy sheriff" in the region; he created an even bigger stir by threatening pre-emptive strikes against terrorists plotting against Australians from neighbouring countries. But Australia's influence is about more than muscle and sabre-rattling. Australians beat the rest of the world to the punch by donating a remarkable $1 billion within hours of last December's tsunami, and sending in the first waves of military rescue teams.

Compared to Canada -- with a similarly modest population and compact military -- Australia is emerging as a global player and diplomatic powerhouse. It is often said that there no two countries more similar than Canada and Australia in terms of size and British parliamentary traditions, but on defence and foreign policy the two countries are following distinctly different paths.

While Canada concentrates on peacekeeping and emphasizes multilateralism, Australia opts for rapid responses to shore up failing states -- even without United Nations approval. Canada proudly wears its multilateral memberships on its sleeve and heralds the United Nations as the foundation of its foreign policy, while Australia's government is openly dismissive of Security Council consultations that go nowhere.

Australia's long-serving foreign minister, Alexander Downer, is a harsh critic of "sclerotic" multilateralism that has become "a synonym for an ineffective and unfocused policy of internationalism of the lowest common denominator." Interviewed in his Sydney office this month, Downer restated Australia's determination to follow its own course -- in close consultations with its American ally -- rather than taking its cue from others overseas. And like many influential Australian foreign policy analysts, he made plain his displeasure with Ottawa's readiness to sit on the sidelines while others do the "heavy lifting."

Despite the apparent similarities, Canada can coast on Washington's protective umbrella while Australia has to look after itself, while keeping firepower in reserve for neighbours in need.

Downer says Australians are keen on looking after themselves because "this is our neighbourhood. Canada's neighbourhood is completely dominated by the United States." He adds that Australia is more than merely self-reliant -- it is also a reliable ally. "We pull our weight," Downer says pointedly.

The contrast with Canada, which prides itself on being a "middle power" that absented itself from Iraq, is inescapably unflattering. Despite significant domestic opposition -- the country is still split on the issue -- Australia didn't hesitate to send troops during the U.S.-led invasion and now has about 400 soldiers in Iraq. It is also sending more soldiers to Afghanistan, again. Nor did it wait for UN approval before dispatching forces to the Solomon Islands, fearing a Security Council veto by China.

"The political will comes from a commitment to try to make a contribution to dealing with some of the world's problems," Downer says. "Sometimes we can do it alone -- at least lead the operation, as we did in East Timor," he continues. "We did the heavy lifting. Same in the Solomon Islands. With Papua New Guinea we do it alone with the PNG government."

Australians are unabashed about flexing their muscle. "We're all very proud to be punching above our weight," says Susan Windybank, head of foreign policy research at Sydney's Centre for Independent Studies. "We don't want our backyard to become a junkyard."

The risk, however, is that Australia is stretching itself thin while trying too hard to please the Americans, says Owen Harries, a foreign policy advisor to previous Australian governments.

Despite his skepticism of Australia's over-arching ambition to be in the big leagues, Harries is contemptuous of Canada's more cautious foreign policy. "I don't admire Canada's foreign policy very much. For a country of its weight, it should be doing more than engaging in good works."

In September 1939, when Canada entered WWII, as was the case when it entered WWI, most Canadians were descendants of British or French antecedents, and the Canadian Government's decision to declare war on Germany was in-line with the democratic will of public opinion in the country. Although obligatory combat, when drafted, did meet considerable opposition in Quebec, even after Germany's invasion and conquest of France, it remains that the combat record of Canadian Francophones in both WWI and WWII was outstanding. Moreover, Canada's decision to enter WWI and WWII never met with the sort of massive opposition and disillusion among the Canadian public that now characterizes U.S. public opinion about U.S. military action in Iraq.

On the other hand, U.S. public opinion strongly opposed U.S. participation in WWI and WWII until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour left the U.S. President with no option but to declare war on Japan and Germany. Both nations are democracies, and their governments acted properly in reflecting the public will in entering (Canada) and not entering (U.S.) WWI and WII at an early date. Importantly, there was never the slightest criticism by the Canadian Government, and no significant sniping by individual members of the Canadian public, about the U.S. Government's decision in favour of non-participation in the early years of WWI and WWII. As I recall, when Canadians were regularly characterized -- largely by isolationist members of the GOP -- as being knee-jerk colonials who were mindlessly prepared to bend to the imperial will of Great Britain, they responded with stoic silence.

In the case of the war in Iraq, Canadian Governmental opinion has always reflected the will of the Canadian public (85% opposed), and this in turn, has been strongly influenced by the fact that Canada's demographics have changed markedly since WWI and WWII: the dominance of the 'French and English connection' in Canadian foreign-policy decisions has been severely diminished. Importantly, Canadian views about the U.S. led attack on Iraq have always been very much in-line with what are now the current views of a large, perhaps the largest segment of the U.S. population. It therefore seems that your objections to Canadian non-involvement in Iraq should, more appropriately, be directed to the corresponding large segment of the U.S. population that has no 'quarrel' whatever with the Canadian stance.

As recce guy has pointed out in this thread (post #19), your objections to Canada's military contributions require no reply from me. It is downright snide of you to suggest that you are paying due respect to Canadian forces serving in Afghanistan while you continue to 'worry the bone' about what Canada is NOT contributing to the U.S. Middle East effort to stabilize Afghanistan -- especially so after U.S. military courts exonerated the inept pilot whose 'friendly fire' accounted for the largest proportion of Canadian deaths in that beleaguered nation. Listen to the president more closely and you will note that he has placed emphasis on the quality, not the quantity of the forces that Canada has contributed in the Middle East and elsewhere. There is nothing "mythical" about Canada's peace-keeping record and it is beneath contempt for you to use such language in describing it in that way. On the other hand, it is worth noting, in passing, that the U.S. peace-keeping effort in Iraq has not merited much praise from anyone.

Soon after he was elected. Nixon had the wit, intelligence and courage to begin a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam, and to use the following four years, which ultimately led to a nearly full withdrawal of U.S. forces, as a platform with which to introduce lasting and constructive geopolitical policies that served his nation and the world well: the first meaningful arms-limitation agreement with the USSR, a detente with with the USSR/Russia that has lasted more than 3 decades, and the implementation of a foreign policy that led to the "generation of peace" he had promised his countrymen. By 'kick starting' the process with his 'opening to China', Nixon laid the foundations for the longest period of freedom from participation in major warfare that the U.S. enjoyed in the 20th century, and it reached a full generation (30 years) between 1972 (the end of the Xmas Bombing in the Indochina war) and 2003 (the beginning of the Iraq war). Hopefully, the Bush Administration will find some equally imaginative way to accomplish a similar generation of peace in the Middle East.

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