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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