The problem of establishing a perfect civil constitution depends upon the problem of law-governed external relations among nations and cannot be solved until the latter is.

Immanuel Kant

That quote is from Immanuel Kant's Idea for a Universal History with Cosmopolitan Purpose: Seventh Principle which Lee brought to my attention.

Kant argues that natural state of nature for mankind, and nations, is a brutal state of freedom. Where individuals and states act in arbitrary and violent means in order to preserve their perfect freedom and autonomy of action.

To Kant a perfect civil constitution is impossible while there are outside pressures on it, as the permanent state of war, or preparation for war is ultimately destabilising as the state bends the individual to the state's will.

Kant concludes;

As long as states will use all their resources for their vain and violent designs for expansion and thus will continually hinder the slow efforts toward the inner shaping of the minds of their citizens, and even withdraw from their citizens all encouragement in this respect, we cannot hope for much because a great exertion by each commonwealth on behalf of the education of their citizens is required for this goal.

Every pretended good that is not grafted upon a morally good frame of mind is nothing more than a pretence and glittering misery. Mankind will probably remain in this condition until, as I have said, it has struggled out of the chaotic condition of the relations among its states.

International liberalism's answer to this conundrum is meta-national institutions for nations to air their grievances. It attempts to replace violence with direct communication. This philosophy grew out of the depravities of World War I and World War II where violence between the nations consumed the whole globe.

Statesmen such as Woodrow Wilson and Australia's Doc Evatt were heavily involved in the forming of meta-national institutions such as the League of Nations and United Nations. Doc Evatt and John Burton often took the principle of brutal and honest communication to extremes, shocking diplomats from other nations in their plain talk.

The other side to international liberalism is power politics. This seeks to replace communication with sheer power in terms of military and economic might backing up diplomatic movements. The two purist players in power politics are the United States and France, the latter following the Gaullist tradition of foreign policy. Unsurprisingly the Americans and French butt heads often.

The neo-conservative movement in the United States has derided the United Nations as irrelevant. Ironically the United Nations itself often served as an institution for factions in its membership to push their interests. Wars were fought for instance in Korea with the United Nations against North Korea and China.

Power politics has left the Middle East in a maelstrom benefiting the control and collapse of power to the central governments of the United States, Iran and Saudi Arabia. While leaving Iraq and Afghanistan without an enforceable civil constitution. They exist in a vacuum of civil stability.

Is there a third way, or are we just left to hope that trade and globalisation will smooth out the wrinkles between nation-states?

Engagement

Paul Keating and Gareth Evans undertook a foreign policy known as Asian Engagement . This was a radical break from past Australian foreign policy doctrine which I don't think has been fully appreciated yet by political commentators.

The Howard and Hawke governments, as well as every government prior until Billy Hughes practised the Great and Powerful Friends doctrine [GAPF] of foreign policy. It was first developed by Billy Hughes at Versailles in 1919 when he used Australia's efforts of supporting Britain in WWI to get a seat at the table.

He was challenged by Woodrow Wilson to explain why Australia, a dominion of the British Empire, should be represented at the table by Hughes and not by Britain's foreign minister, Lloyd George. Hughes replied that he; " represented 60,000 dead. "

Once gaining a seat Hughes did not advance Australian interests, he advanced British interests. Britain was a huge trading market for Australia and he was worried that if Australia was disloyal, then Canada, and in particular its wheat, would get favoured access to British markets.

Hughes was also concerned that Australian security depended on the Royal Navy. So he subsumed Australian military and foreign policy to replicate British interests - uncritically - in order to guarantee British security for Australia and access to British markets.

It was a bit of a furphy. Britain knew it could not protect Australia if there was simultaneous conflicts in Europe and Asia. Australia knew it too. Australian subservience in foreign policy did not get us any improved access to British markets either. Australians found new markets to export into - as entrepreneurs do.

All The Way With LBJ!

That was Harold Holt's cry when he promised increased Australian involvement in Vietnam. It is indicative of the uncritical nature of our relationship with our Great and Powerful Friend which after World War II was the United States, not Britain.

John Curtin is often acknowledged for his courage in defying Winston Churchill and uttering the words in 1941;

Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom.

This is the same policy - just swapping Britain for America. Since then Menzies followed it, though grudgingly with America, seeking to return to Britain's fold through the Commonwealth. Both Fraser and Hawke did; and now Howard, who returned to the policy with an almost violent thud. Menzies and Curtin could not have scripted Howard's doctrine and its perceived benefits more closely.

Howard has added another permutation to this policy, namely the complete absence of power politics. The Howard government is highly uncritical of the United States, even when there has been plenty of room for meaningful criticism. Howard has acted in a similar way with other countries, particularly China.

The Complete Approach

Asian Engagement is predicated on several premises;

• Australia is located in the South Pacific and South-East Asia
• We are a regional military and economic power
• Our main trading partners are regional (our biggest is Japan)
• Regional stability and prosperity will come through the complete political, military, economic, social and cultural engagement of the nations in the region.
• Australian power and influence can be advanced beyond the region through this engagement doctrine.

It is a kind of diplomatic globalisation where the nations enmesh to such a point that violence, warfare and cutting of communication is unthinkable. The radical nature of it is not only in how Australia projects itself, but also the confidence Australia has in being able to project its identity as well as absorb the identities of others into itself.

This policy is an improvement over the Great and Powerful Friends doctrine and in my opinion is superior for countering terrorism than a policy of hard power and the GAPF policy. I have also argued for the defence style of engagement that is inherent in the Engagement doctrine which would both secure our region while simultaneously advancing our interests.

Back To Kant

Neither of these four foreign policy methods solve the problem that Kant proposed that the constant violence and preparing for violence between nations must first be solved before a perfect civil constitution can be constructed. I believe that the Engagement doctrine is the superior one of all the options.

However, I still maintain that a policy of strong defence capability is necessary.

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One of the claims of the 'Great and powerful friends' doctrine [GAPF] of foreign policy is that it brings economic benefits to the smaller partner from the powerful friend. This stems back to Billy Hughes in 1919 being concerned that if Australia was seen as disloyal to Britain, then Canada would get privileged access to the British wheat markets. Which was a false assumption to base a foreign policy upon. Today the Free Trade Agreement [FTA] is being touted as an example of the GAPF working to Australia's benefit. It is worth reflecting if this is true.

International liberalism got a leg up as policy fashion after World War II with the successful establishment of the United Nations [UN]. Which has proven to be a resilient institution, surviving the Cold War and more recently American Neo-conservative policy. One of the other multi-national institution is the World Trade Organisation [WTO].

Fitting with international liberalism, and similar to the UN, the WTO was intended to be a forum for nations to voice their concerns over being shut out of trade in a non-violent body. Its goals were the increase of global trade and the lowering of protectionist barriers. It also contained arbitration bodies for nations to appeal to should they feel there were being unfairly dealt with in trade.

The WTO has fallen out of favour in international circles for several reasons. Along with the World Bank and IMF, it was unable to handle the issues of the Asian Economic Crisis and Contagion in the late 90s. The oughts saw the rise of Neoconservatism in the United States where international bodies, and the policy of international liberalism, were eschewed. Policy became unilateral and bilateral co-operation outside of the former meta-national structures such as the UN and WTO.

This has led to the international fashion of bilateral trade agreements - commonly called FTAs. The free trade part of an FTA is a misnomer, they are more managed trade agreements than free trade ones as a true FTA would be about three sentences in total.

The United States prefers bilateral agreements as they are a huge nation in terms of economic, military and diplomatic might, and a bilateral negotiations suits the US's manner of power politics. Inevitably, in any bilateral agreement, the US will get the better of it. This is just a fact of power politics and why the United States see it to their benefit to negotiate directly, rather than collectively through the UN or WTO.

So Free Trade Agreements have become the fashion. Has Australia's GAPF relationship with the US earned Australia our FTA? The answer is no. Back in 2002 the big issue in the Australian and American relationship was Iraq. The Howard Government became an avid supporter of, and promoter for, the Iraqi conflict.

By the run-up to the 2004 election, the Au-US FTA had been negotiated to the point that the Howard Government decided to put it through parliament. This was undoubtedly a political decision, done to try and wedge the Liberal party's opponents in parliament on the issue - splitting out the free trade Labor supporters and industrial protectionist advocates. It did not seem to have the desired effect, however, it is worthy to note it was used for domestic political purposes.

One of the political reasons given for Australia achieving a FTA with the United States was our support for the war in Iraq. From that same period the US had also negotiated FTAs with Jordan, Singapore, Chile and Costa Rica. Of these nations only Chile had supported the conflict in Iraq, and they had not sent any assets to the theatre. The other nations opposed the war - yet this was not an inhibition to a FTA with the United States.

If a nation was willing to give in on intellectual property provisions and agricultural quotas then the US would negotiate an FTA to its conclusion. The Au-US FTA contains the American provisions for intellectual property, including a DMCA-like clause, as well as quotas for agricultural trade - thus satisfying US requirements.

So the premise that Australia got a free trade agreement with the United States because of our close relationship with the US and the GAPF is false. Free Trade Agreements are the current fashion amongst nations and more representative of the loss of prestige of the WTO than anything else.

In 1919 when Billy Hughes dreamed up the GAPF foreign policy, something like eighty percent of our exports went to Britain. Today the United States is one of several nations that we trade with heavily. The other include Japan, our biggest trading partner, China and South Korea. Unsurprisingly Australia is pursuing FTAs with these three nations, further falsifying the claim that the Au-US FTA was a result of our foreign policy.

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