In defence of diplomacy: A path to Australian independence

Australia cannot make diplomacy its first line of defence until it reclaims the independence it has long surrendered to foreign alliances, writes Dr Alison Broinowski.

I HAVE BEEN ASKED by the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN) for an (ex) diplomat’s perspective on the proposition that diplomacy is the first line of defence. Regrettably, it isn’t and never has been, even though diplomacy is the world’s second-oldest profession.

Rather than defending nations from their enemies, in practice, the task of diplomats is almost always to bring enemies together to end a war, or to pick up the pieces afterwards. Our question to a new government is: can Australia change that?

In the days and years after a war, diplomacy has its best opportunity. The Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 ended the Eighty Years’ War between Spain and the Dutch, and the German phase of the Thirty Years’ War. The League of Nations and the Geneva Conventions followed World War One, which was supposed to end all wars. It didn’t, but their successors were the Nuremberg Trials and the United Nations after World War Two, giving us the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Courts and the Conventions against Genocide and Apartheid.

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Conventions banning various means of warfare and international agreements aimed at limiting nuclear war have been followed by environmental and climate conventions. All these represent years of diligent diplomacy, backed by public pressure and political will.

But the UN has for years faced mounting criticism, not just from Americans who see it as supporting the interests of unelected dictators around the world, but from people elsewhere who want the UN to be dismantled and replaced, or at least to reflect their interests in the modern world, not just those of the victors of World War II.

Many Americans incorrectly believe they pay for most of what the UN does and resent the influx of world leaders to New York for the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) each September. When asked how many diplomats work there, wits say “about half”. When asked what difference it would make if the UN headquarters lost ten storeys, United States Ambassador John Bolton declared “none”.

Bolton then demolished a reform program that diplomats from more than 190 countries had patiently put together for years in time for the UN’s 60th anniversary. He is said never to have seen a war he didn’t like. So much for diplomacy.

Diplomacy provides no line of defence against war when a single member of the UN Security Council can veto resolutions against wars in Vietnam, Libya or Iraq for example. The U.S. did not practice diplomacy by supporting those wars of choice and aggression. Israel’s Ambassador to the UN was not practising diplomacy in the UNGA last year when he shredded a copy of the UN Charter: he was supporting genocidal war. Josep Borrell, who was the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy from 2019 to 2024, said nothing.

Then this month, having retired, the former Spanish diplomat condemned the U.S. and Europe for their complicity in ethnic cleansing in Gaza, and Israel for violating the laws of war and using starvation as a weapon against the Palestinians. Supporting diplomacy in retirement is no defence against war.

Diplomacy operates in four ways: international, multilateral, regional and bilateral. Australia claims credit for the international work by Bert Evatt at the UN, for our multilateral efforts in support of weapons conventions and environmental agreements, for what we have done regionally including forming APEC, supporting ASEAN, protecting Antarctica and for our bilateral initiatives in the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Cambodia and East Timor.

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It is significant that Australia often does diplomacy best when allies are not involved on the ground. What Australia has done less diplomatically is as an ally of the UK in Malaya, of the U.S. in Vietnam, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Israel. These did not involve diplomacy but war and were not the defence of Australia, either.

Diplomacy is exercised by and between sovereign independent nations. Australia, an alliance addict, has always been hesitant about independence and that has reduced our diplomatic effectiveness. By signing ANZUS in 1952 and allowing the U.S. to use Pine Gap in 1966 and then many other bases, Australian governments have diminished our sovereignty, security and diplomatic influence. The Force Posture Agreement of 2014 allowed unimpeded access to Australian airfields by U.S. combat aircraft and bombers that may be nuclear-armed, and to Australian ports by U.S. naval vessels, including nuclear submarines.

The AUKUS arrangement subjects Australia to the will of U.S. strategy in the Indo-Pacific region and commits us to mortgage payments for its dubiously deliverable submarines. U.S. personnel are now in place in the Australian Defence Force and intelligence services. Australia has designated critical minerals producers as suppliers to the U.S., and weapons manufacturing by both the U.S. and Israel has increased in Australia.

No Australian leader will reverse these long-standing practices and claim independence and neutrality, armed or unarmed. The last one who tried lost government in 1975. Ideas about non-alignment, discussed by some Australian diplomats and academics in the 1950s and 1960s, are now being revived in Australian civil society, but were not even considered before or after this month’s election.

Australians are left with the faint hope that our highly unreliable U.S. ally will abandon AUKUS and maybe even ANZUS. If President Trump does so, Australia could build sovereignty and independence, and rebuild diplomacy with our regional neighbours as respectful, collaborative equals. Only as a non-aligned sovereign nation can Australia make diplomacy our first line of defence, as our ASEAN neighbours do. For that to happen, we will need to invent the independent foreign and defence policies Australia has never had.

IPAN campaigns for such policies, emphasising diplomacy to resolve disputes with other countries before war occurs. It identifies three initiatives for Australia’s new government: sign the Treaty for Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, get out of AUKUS and terminate the Force Posture Agreement. As well, Australia should end the lease on Pine Gap, which was what Gough Whitlam was about to do in 1975. Now, with a Labor Government re-elected with a record majority, it’s time.