Where is the Quid Pro Quo?

The "Campaign Season" in Afghanistan is spreading. An Australian Special Air Service patrol was ambushed after a mission in Oruzgan province. While none of the Aussies were killed, one soldier is in critical condition and eight others were wounded, five of them seriously.

Before anyone shrugs their shoulders and moves off to refill the coffee cup, this report hit the Australian press on Thursday with a certain amount of alarm. This is the largest number of casualties the Australian task force in Afghanistan has taken in a single engagement since they initially deployed... and it immediately raised the ghost of another of Australia's wars.

AUSTRALIA has suffered one of its worst battlefield incidents since the Vietnam War, with one soldier left fighting for his life and eight others wounded in an ambush launched by Taliban forces in Afghanistan.

The lede in the Sydney Morning Herald was similar:

AN ambush of Australian troops in Afghanistan has left nine special forces soldiers injured - including one fighting for his life - in a battle that resulted in more casualties than any encounter since the Vietnam War.

Most other Australian media outlets used the same connection, referring to Australia's military involvement in Vietnam, with at least one giving a brief description of the 21 September, 1971, battle of Nui Le, a 14 hour engagement which left five Aussies dead and 24 wounded just six weeks before Australia ended its combat operations in Vietnam.

It was the reference to Vietnam which raised my curiosity. Not because I was suprised to see it, but because it was so prominent. The Australian involvement in Vietnam ran nearly as long as the United States, starting with the deployment of advisors and eventually reaching a peak of almost 7000 ground troops in 1967 which included a rifle company from New Zealand.

The Australian committment to Vietnam was less mysterious than one might think. Given Australia's proximity to Southeast Asia, weak and unstable governments immediately adjacent to them generate genuine concerns for the safety of their frontiers. Looking into it, I discovered this, sent to the prime minister of Australia from the Australian ambassador to the U.S.:

'Our objective should be ... to achieve such an habitual closeness of relations with the United States and sense of mutual alliance that in our time and need, after we have shown all reasonable restraint and good sense, the United States would have little option but to respond as we would want.'
'The problem of Vietnam is one, it seems, where we could ... pick up a lot of credit with the United States, for this problem is one to which the United States is deeply committed and in which it genuinely feels it is carrying too much of the load, not so much the physical load the bulk of which the United States is prepared to bear, as the moral load.'

So, the question of involvement in Vietnam had less to do with the unstable Diem government at the time and more to do with an opportunity to lever the United States into a position favourable to Australia in the future.

Countries do that. I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine when an itch develops. Mutual alliance.

Unfortunately, Australia's Vietnam history runs close to parallel with that the of U.S. in the same period, including resorting to conscription to fill army ranks and jailing protesters opposed to the war.

But it was the fact that Australia's primary reason for entry into Vietnam had little to do with Vietnam itself. It was to elicit a form of guarantee that Australia could demand U.S. military and political favour, quickly and without question, should the need ever arise. As ugly as it sounds, the Australian government was prepared to, and did, shed the blood of its own people in a conflict in which they had less than serious interest to enhance the relationship with the United States, gain a position under the U.S. military umbrella and develop a level of influence.

It struck me that perhaps a similarity exists now with Canada's involvement in Afghanistan. That Harper is trying to gain leverage with the Bush administration.

Except that Harper is accomplishing the opposite.

Harper is giving it away for free. He's not asking for anything. No ties have been strengthened and no influence has been gained.

Harper, like a six-year old looking for praise, is happy with a pat on the head. Far from attempting to establish a position of sovereign independence he's more than happy to truck anything the Bushies demand to anywhere the Bushies want. In return he is demanding, and getting, zip.

Even in Afghanistan the rotating command, which saw Canada in charge of operations in its AO every six out of eighteen months, is about to evaporate. Future U.S. plans include placing Canadian forces under U.S. or British command.

When Harper went with Bush to Bucharest whining for more troops from the NATO allies the response was predicatable. The long established European NATO members view every such U.S. plea with great skepticism. They know all too well that favours are seldom returned in such cases and particularly from the current U.S. administration. The NATO members that did offer to increase their committment were the newer ones. There is every reason to believe that the backroom session was not a negotiation but a reminder: We got you into this alliance, it's good for you and now you owe us. Cough up.

Harper's leverage wasn't there. His position on his beloved "world stage" was wholly dependent on the presence of his divine hero. If the Bush administration position had been different, Harper would have found himself several rows back in the audience, the major European allies being at odds with his demands.

Where the Australians were clearly looking for a way to enhance their national security and international influence by supporting the United States (Vietnam was a "fill-in-the-blank" conduit), Harper is out to stroke his own ego. Canada is little more than an instrument to sate his thirst for validation from something or someone he views as greater.

Harper is embarrassing this country.

It was difficult enough in the past to get the average European or Asian to believe there was a difference between the U.S. and Canada on any level. It took some convincing to get most to believe that Canada pursued an independent foreign policy and, aside from the well-known mutual defence alliances, cautiously engaged countries the United States shunned.

Since the arrival of Harper the independence of Canadian foreign policy has started to wither away. Where Canada once had international leverage it is now viewed as uncharacteristically tied to the U.S. The greatest evidence of this is Canada's apparent adhesion to U.S. positions taken at various United Nations conferences and on issues before the UN.

Harper hasn't earned Canada any new position on the "world stage" at all. We used to have a well-respected, albeit quiet, place all along. What Harper has gained is a place for himself among his American neo-con brethren on the "American stage" and given the degree to which the U.S. is now loathed internationally, it is not only the wrong place to be, it is, at absolute best, temporary.

What is even more incomprehensible is that Harper does not seem to understand that his position as a player on the American stage is so obviously insignificant. His ego won't allow him that self-examination or that self-awareness.

Australia, during Vietnam at least, expected something in return for their support of U.S. foreign policy. Whether that actually worked for them or not is open to considerable debate. Whether Harper's similar behaviour has resulted in anything but a pillaging of Canada's resources, the co-opting of our military and a loss of international favour, is not.

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Only slightly related to topic is this little piece from Australia. It seems the Australian army is also being scrutinized for their treatment of prisoners.