Is Australia in Iraq for oil or is it because of the Great and Powerful Friends doctrine [GAPF] of foreign policy? In my opinion, while energy security plays a minor role, it is predominantly because of the latter.

There has been a media and blogger gotcha moment when Brendan Nelson mentioned that armed intervention in Iraq was related to securing energy supplies. We know that the Carter Doctrine from 1980 stated clearly that the US would use military might in the Gulf region if American national interests, read energy interests, were placed in danger. So any politician who denies there was a strategic interest in securing the region for energy purposes is being dishonest. Nelson was stating the obvious there.

But what does it have to do with Australia? Other than oil producing nations such as Venezuala (and until recently Indonesia) who buy off their populations dependence on government good-will through the subsidy of oil, America and Australia are two of the lowest cost energy nations on the planet. Certainly amongst the OECD nations, taxes and the cost of energy are extremely low in both the US and Australia. So we do have an interest in a stable Middle East and a breaking of energy cartels such as OPEC.

There still remains the question why we bought into the US military invasion of Iraq. That cannot be understood without a discussion of the foreign policy doctrine which has guided Australian policy making for the last century; the "great and powerful friends" doctrine or GAPF.

Australia has three competing foreign policy doctrines; the GAPF, the Engagement doctrine and International Liberalism. None of them are pursued absolutely, but they have dominated at different times the policy making decisions of Australian governments.

International Liberalism found a dominant voice under Doc Evatt after WWII. It sought to stop violence between nations by communicating openly and having a forum where international politics could compete in an environment that did not lead to brinkmanship or the breaking off of diplomatic relations. This is the basis for the United Nations which Evatt had a large hand in the construction of. Doc Evatt and Sam Burton were pretty blunt about the open communication component of it too, dispensing with diplomatic niceties and double-speak, often shockingly so.

Engagement is a very modern doctrine which Gareth Evans pursued. It seeks to leverage all the intangible soft power such as social, cultural, economic, diasporans and immigrants into national political power. The basis for it is that unless there is complete engagement by all aspects of the national character then security is impossible. It is a policy well suited to globalisation. It has its origins in Asian Engagement which is associated with Paul Keating, but stretches back to Australian support for Asian decolonialisation after WWII and Percy Spender's Colombo Plan.

Those two doctrines have had to compete with the GAPF; though at all times foreign policy has comprised a mix of the doctrines, the GAPF has been the one that has dominated policy making, while not absolutely, sometimes very close to being so.

The 'great and powerful friends' doctrine gets its name from a Robert Menzies speech but it was Billy Hughes in 1919 at Versailles who established it. The basis for the GAPF is that Australia makes its foreign policy subservient to the powerful friend in return for military security and preferential economic treatment. At the time the GAPF was Britain. Hughes was concerned that Australia was undefendable unless the Royal Navy could protect it; his other issue was that he believed, incorrectly, unless there was absolute loyal to Britain, then Canada would get greater access to the British markets for wheat. At the time Britain was a major export market for Australian products.

This was policy practiced by all governments including John Curtin in WWII. It is odd, Curtin's statement that "we look to America" without "any pangs" relating to our traditional relationship with Britain is seen as some watershed in Australian politics. It is not. It is the GAPF doctrine just with a new friend. WWII made it obvious that British blue water supremacy was gone, and replaced by American naval power.

Menzies tried to realign Britain back as the powerful friend, but it was obvious that America was the new western power. Percy Spender had his finger on the rhythms of cold war politics far better than Menzies did, it would have been interesting if Spender had the numbers to become PM. The 50s would have been far more interesting for political historians. Menzies was left promoting Briton culture in Australia while extending the GAPF militarily to the US.

Since Menzies Australian governments have embraced the GAPF uniformly, probably the only break being Keating's government who placed Engagement as a higher priority, but even then, the GAPF played a strong role in policy making. Just as Howard has had to embrace Engagement with China and International Liberalism with East Timor. They all play their role at different times.

The main problem with GAPF is that its three major premises are all based on fallacies. The first is having a subservient foreign policy. This does not isolate or inoculate Australia from bad decision making by the powerful friend. The most recent example of the powerful friend getting it all wrong is the invasion of Iraq. But there have been others in the past; for instance Ford and Kissinger knowing about the invasion of East Timor and not telling Malcolm Fraser; and the Australian involvement in the establishment of a dictator in Chile.

Related to this is the assumption that Australia can influence American policy by its subservience. As the examples above show, international politics is based on power, and the US is often belligerent in how it plays power politics - and why shouldn't it be? The US is the dominant economic, military and political power. Pretending that Australia can influence American policy is setting a national leader up for failure and denying the realities of international power politics. Tony Blair is a good example of this.

The military component of the doctrine finds itself mythologised in the ANZUS Treaty. This was negotiated by John Foster-Dulles specifically to stop Australia 'doing a Curtin' should there be a global war with the Soviet Union. ANZUS is a statement that the US will protect Australia in the case of a global war so that Australia will leave its troops in the Middle East and North Africa - and not bring them home - like it did in 1942.

ANZUS has been sold in many forms to the electorate, recently as the "US Alliance" and meaning more than it really does. When the September 11th attacks occurred and Howard enacted a clause in it, there was a pause from Washington, along with a thank you and a curt reminder that it meant no reciprocal obligations from the US if Australia is hit with a terrorist attack. It was seen as a blatant and clumsy attempt by Australia to force the ANZUS Treaty to be relevant in a post Cold War environment.

ANZUS is myth now, and is a hydra of Australian politicians making that will only end in disappointment when the US inevitably ignores it for reasons of power politics. We saw that level of frustration when the US did not want to take part in the UN mission to East Timor. It has led Australia and Australians to have a sense of entitlement for American involvement in Australian military issues. Which is another negative for the GAPF.

The final fallacy is that the GAPF brings economic benefits. In the last election the Free Trade Agreement with the US was talked up as being a direct result of Australian involvement in Iraq. It was not. Any nation who was prepared to give in on agricultural quotas and who would change their intellectual property laws to match the US's (including the DMCA) got one. Bilateral FTA agreements were US Trade policy; not a result of Australian foreign policy subservience. Singapore and Chile got FTAs despite opposing the invasion of Iraq, and Costa Rica got one, while supporting Iraq, but not sending any forces.

The GAPF is predicated on failure. The only reason I can see for it still being pursued is because it allows for lazy foreign policy, and has been built to mythical standards in the electorate that it is hard to dump it democratically. Then again, Evatt and Evans pursued differing doctrines and the sun didn't stop shining on Australia.

So back to the oil question.

John Howard and John Curtin have probably been the purist supporters of the GAPF doctrine. Securing energy in the Gulf is in American interests, hence it is in Australian interests both indirectly through the GAPF and directly for Australia as a low cost oil nation. Are we there for oil? Tangentially but not really.

Australia is there because of the GAPF doctrine.

More Reading on Foreign policy

• Foreign Policy
• GAPF
• Great and Powerful Friends
• Energy
• Comparing Australian Foreign Policy With Respect To Terrorism
• The Australian Defence Force and Australian Republican Doctrine
• Focusing Australian Policy On Afghanistan
• Proof That Terrorism Remains a Foreign Policy Issue
• Percy Spender and the Pacific Pact
• North Korea
• Australian Prosperity Through Indonesia
• The Natural State Between Nations
• Foreign Policy in the Korean Peninsula
• Of Constitutional Doctrine Past