Dependence

Finding the answers is often not half as important as asking the right questions. Desmond Ball has written an important book even though he raises more fundamental questions than he answers. The central question in A Suitable Piece of Real Estate is simply ‘What are the rights and responsibilities of a host country which allows installations of a foreign, albeit, friendly state, to be sited on its territory?’ The author has dedicated the book For a Sovereign Australia. Australia is the host country in question, with American defence, scientific, and intelligence installations on its territory; but the situation he describes in great detail could, and probably does, apply elsewhere. Contained in this book and undoubtedly published together for the first time are precise details of the history, purpose, and type and number of personnel involved in the most important of some twenty or more American installations on Australian soil. Successive Australian governments (Liberal-National Country as well as Labor) have sought by action and inaction to keep such details secret, and one could, as some reviewers have already, concentrate on this aspect of the publication as the book’s most important. The temptation to do so is very great given the publicity over The Age’s desire recently to print excerpts from a collection of top-secret documents on Australian defence and foreign policy. Ball, however, is reaching out beyond that issue when he states that the American installations constitute one of the most critical issues in Australian national security policy. In this readable well illustrated and well-presented account, Ball does not attempt to produce an exhaustive balance sheet on the presence of the American installations. He highlights the negative effects of Australia, amongst which. continued Australian ‘dependence’ on the United States is featured. He cites more far-reaching consequences of dependence on and identification with such installations. These installations are geared, not surprisingly, to America’s global, great power role. Accounting to Ball, such a situation precludes development of independent Australian foreign and defence policy initiatives, including the campaign for a nuclear-free Southern Hemisphere. Ball makes other charges which require some response from the authorities. For example, he notes: evidence that facilities at Pine Gap have been used to monitor Australian communication Continued lack of satisfactory procedures for Australian/ American consultation over the installations; restricted Australian access to the data collected by the installations even though they are now nominally run ‘jointly’; the gap between Australian official statements and the reality of the importance and implications for the global strategic balance of the installations. While he criticises the overly secretive approach of Australian officialdom towards details of the installations – in contrast to the United States where such information has been openly available – the author distinguishes between types of information which should not be withheld from the public and those which are legitimate matters of secrecy. He suggests two ‘fundamental conditions’ which should be met regarding the US installations in Australia. First, that Australian governments should be in possession of operational details of the facilities which should be continuously updated. The second condition is that as much as possible of the information should be made available to the public. Desmond Ball is a Senior Research Fellow in the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University, and is a serious scholar. Far from being a polemic, this work provides additional and useful perspectives in discussion of the Australian/American Defence and Foreign Policy relationship. Ball seems determined to draw attention to what he perceives as a lack of serious planning of Australian defence. He maintains that the existing arrangements such as those concerning the American installations impede progress towards consideration of a total defence concept for Australia.

Irwin Herrman

From the New Issue

Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The jazz singer who transformed American song by Judith Tick

Non-Essential Work by Omar Sakr

Missing Persons, Or My Grandmother’s Secrets by Clair Wills

Open Page with Anne Manne

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