CUT & PASTE: DON’T FORGET THAT JAPAN IS OUR BEST FRIEND IN ASIA

The Australian, Australia
April 11 2006

Former West Australian premier Geoff Gallop, in an address at
Murdoch University in Perth last week OUR growing links to China
and India [should be] put into the context of our long-term and
still developing partnerships with Japan. In all of our thinking
about Asian engagement we cannot ignore the strength of our links
to Japan. We share democratic values, face similar demographic and
social challenges, and have many interests in common in respect of
regional and international issues.

Let me take you back to the 1990s when Japan was in a protracted slump
and many questioned its ability to reform and revive. All through that
period Japan remained our major export market, with exports growing
by 44 per cent, and we worked together to ensure that the Asia-Pacific
[Economic] Co-operation [forum] was given a good start.

It has not just been a case of co-operation between the national
governments of Australia and Japan.

Each state of Australia has an active sister-state relationship
with a Japanese prefecture. There are 99 sister-city links and 369
partnerships involving higher education institutions. About 300,000
young Australians are learning Japanese today.

Add to that the 44 Japan-Australia societies in Japan and 15
counterpart associations in Australia, and you can begin to comprehend
the strength of the people-to-people links.

Deep beneath the surface of the high-level political relationships, a
level of trust and understanding has been built up and new directions
for the Australia-Japan partnership explored. This is an invaluable
asset and it is not surprising, then, that there has been an important
deepening and broadening of the trade and investment relationship…

All too often we hear Australia’s leaders using the distinction between
history (European) and geography (Asian) to describe our position in
the world. It is as if we are on the outside looking in, interested
but not really committed. This has led to mixed signals being sent
about our belief in regional participation and co-operation, and has
fed the assumptions of those who want to exclude Australia on the
basis of Asian values.

Japan is a country that supports Australian participation. In his
visionary speech delivered in Singapore in 2002, Prime Minister
Junichiro Koizumi outlined his conception of East Asia. He spoke
of an East Asian community, including Australia and New Zealand,
that sought harmony despite the diversity of historical, cultural
and ethnic traditions, and one that would not be exclusive but open
to those outside the region, most notably the US and India.

Australia was initially lukewarm about the idea but eventually came
to the party and the first East Asian summit was held in Kuala Lumpur
last December. Although incremental, this is a first move towards
consolidation within the Asian community … To be cynical and
half-hearted about genuine Asian engagement would be to let down our
people and take a risk with the future that we simply cannot afford.

William Pfaff, in the International Herald Tribune, on a welcome and
long-overdue debate about the Israel lobby:

THE note of panic in some of the attacks on distinguished US academics
John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt [who discuss the Israeli lobby’s
effect on US foreign policy] contrasts with the fact that what they
say is no secret in American foreign policy circles. People have for
years taken for granted the informal censorship, or self-censorship,
exercised in the government and the press on this issue. It is a
fact of democratic life in the US that determined interest groups
annex their own spheres of federal policy. Energy policy is run by
the oil companies, and trade policy by manufacturers, exporters and
importers, with an input from Wall Street. US Cuba policy is decided
by the Cuban lobby in Florida and policy on Armenia by Americans
of Armenian descent. The Middle East, or at least its part of it,
belongs to Israel.

However, in the Israeli case, the lobbying effort is linked to a
foreign government, even if the lobbyists sometimes take a policy line
not that of the government. Moreover, the lobbying involves issues of
war and peace. US President George W. Bush said a few days ago that,
in connection with the supposed threat of Iran, his concern is to
protect Israel. Critics ask why Israel should not protect itself. The
same has been asked about Iraq.

In this respect, the controversy over the Israeli lobby is potentially
explosive. This is why denials, secrecy and efforts at intimidation
are dangerous. David Levy, a former adviser to [former Israeli prime
minister] Ehud Barak, is right when he says that Israel itself would
be served “if the open and critical debate that takes place over here
[in Israel] were exported over there”, meaning the US.