In 2021,then opposition leader,“Enough is enough. I don’t have sympathy for many of his actions,but essentially,I can’t see what is served by keeping him incarcerated.”
As prime minister,Albanese said he had already made his position clear to the Biden administration. “We are working through diplomatic channels,” he said,“but we’re making very clear what our position is on Mr Assange’s case.”
So we can assume that at one of his seven meetings with US President Joe Biden he has raised Assange,even on the fringes of the Quad or at one of two NATO summits. Or perhaps in San Diego when they launched AUKUS,under which Australia will make the largest transfer of wealth ever made outside this country. This is a whopping subsidy to American naval shipyards and to the troubled,chronically tardy British naval builder BAE Systems.
But it clinches Australia’s reputation as a deliriously loyal,entirely gullible US ally. It gives President Biden the justification for telling Republicans or Clinton loyalists in his own party that he had no alternative but to end the pursuit of Assange. “Those Aussies insisted on it. They’re doing us all these favours … we can’t say no.”
In addition to the grandiose AUKUS deal,Biden could list other decisions by the Albanese government that render Australia a military stronghold to help US regional dominance while materially weakening our own security.
Candid words,but they aren’t mine. They belong to Sam Roggeveen of the Lowy Institute in this month’s edition of. In a seminally important piece of analysis,Roggeveen nominated Australia’s decision to fully service six American B52 bombers at,in the Northern Territory,as belonging on that list. It is assumed these are aimed at China’s nuclear infrastructure such as missile silos. “It is hard to overstate the sensitivity involved in threatening another nation’s nuclear forces,” Roggeveen writes.
In his article,he reminds us we’ve also agreed to host four US nuclear subs on our west coast at something to be called “”. Their mission would be destroying Chinese warships or enforcing a blockade of Chinese ports.
The east coast submarine base,planned most likely for,will also directly support US military operations. It’s another nuclear target. As Roggeveen says,all these locations raise Australia’s profile in the eyes of the Chinese military planners designing their response in the event of war with the US.
In this context,I can’t believe the US president is not on the point of agreeing to the prime minister’s request to drop charges against Assange.
Apart from the titanic strategic favours,two killer facts help our case. One,former US president Barack Obama,who had supplied Assange with the information he published. The Yank is free,the Aussie still pursued.
Two,the crimes Manning and Assange exposed involved US troops on a helicopter gunning down. They are directly comparable to the alleged Australian battlefield murders in Afghanistan we are currently prosecuting.
An initial refusal from Biden is only an invitation to ask a second time,in a firmer voice.
It’s possible to imagine an Australian PM – Fraser,Hawke,Keating,Howard or Rudd – being appropriately forceful with a US president. There would be an inflection point in their exchange – prime minister to president – when the glint-eyed Australian says,“Mr President,it’s gone on too long. Both sides of our politics are united. Your old boss commuted Chelsea Manning,an American,in the same case.”
A pause. A beat. Then the killer summation. “Mr President,I speak for Australia.”
Surely this counts.
I don’t believe the president can shake his head and say,“nope”,given all we have gifted – the potent symbolism of B52s,nuclear subs and bases on the east and west coast. It would look like we have sunk into the role of US territory,as much a dependency as Guam or Puerto Rico.
US counter-intelligence during court proceedings there is no evidence of a life being lost because of Assange’s revelations. Our Defence Department reached the same view.
If Assange walks out the gates of Belmarsh into the arms of his wife and children it will show we are worth a crumb or two off the table of the imperium. If it’s a van to the airport,then making ourselves a more likely target has conferred no standing at all. We are a client state,almost officially.
Bob Carr is a former foreign affairs minister of Australia and was the longest-serving premier of NSW.
The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge,champion and inform your own..