Reassessing Australias policy towards European integration The security dimension Monash European EU...
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Transcript of Reassessing Australias policy towards European integration The security dimension Monash European EU...
Reassessing Australia’s policy towards European integration
The security dimension
Monash European EU Centre, 26.4.2013
Intro 1
• OZ attitudes towards European integration have attracted growing attention
• There is now a large body of literature on OZ/EU relations
• In this context some themes have
Received significant attention
Others have been neglected
• Trade/economic issues
Economic/trade implications of UK’s entry into EEC
Impact of EU agricultural protectionism on OZ economy
• Strategic/defence issues
Intro 1
Intro 2• I argued that strategic/security issues:
Have played an interesting role in shaping OZ attitudes/perceptions towards EU
• More specifically, I argue that while trade issues were uppermost in OZ minds, defence & security were not neglected in early years
OZ was concerned that UK’s “enmeshment” with WE would
Lead to a gradual UK disengagement from SEA
UK departure would create a vacuum in an area of great interest to Australia
• In addition, we should not forget that in age of decolonisation, the Six
Had lost interest in Asia
Too preoccupied (or absorbed) by the ongoing process of Euro integration
Hence, OZ sceptical that a more integrated WE would become a credible interlocutor on defence
Intro 2
• As Euro integration took off, OZ began to consider impact on its security in SEA
• In the early 1950s the Six embarked on bold plan
EDC Treaty (May 1952)
• Australian response was muted
• Collapse of EDC not without potential consequences for OZ
UK pledge to keep 4 divisions in WE
Troops tied down in Europe at the expense of Far East
Australia and the EDC
• In early 1960s Oz was again forced to consider impact of EEC on its security interests in SEA
• Catalyst for reappraisal was the news that UK sought membership
• British entry generated anxiety in Canberra
• Uppermost in OZ minds was the negative impact of entry
Commonwealth cohesion
Anglo-Australian trade
• But other considerations weighed heavily: UK role east of Suez
Australia and the EEC: strategic implications
Picture
• D
“[first: by joining a Western European bloc, the UK would see its freedom of action as a world power curtailed and …]
would also lose both the interest in maintaining, and the ability to maintain, an effective strategic role in the world beyond Suez, where Australia’s defence interests lie”
Picture
• D
“[Hence, the departmental view was that London would be inexorably]drawn into the acceptance of the strategic priorities of its Continental partners ... and into presenting a common European front upon these matters to the rest of the world — which would include Australia and New Zealand”.
Picture
• D
“[As External Affairs concluded that] The United Kingdom may or may not seek to move her European partners to give a higher priority to Asia. In a sea of speculation, the prudent estimate for Australia to make is that the European Community will resist giving this area a high priority; that Australia will have a limited capacity to move European policy in this direction”.
• French veto ended UK bid, but OZ concerns did not fade away
• OZ concerns powerfully resurfaced in 1966-67
• OZ govt feared that UK would use application as a pretext
to withdraw from East of Suez
Or to “find an alternative locus of power”
• Wilson did not bring UK into EEC, but withdraw from E of S
• When UK applied in 1970, Oz was no longer apprehensive of defence implication of EEC enlargement
• If anything, OZ govt began to glimpse possibilities for greater OZ-EEC cooperation
Australian concerns
Picture
• D
“[As the Australian Ambassador in Brussels O.L. Davis perceptively pointed out in a memorandum to the DEA in June 1970] the significance of the increasing integration of the Communities, commercially, economically, monetarily and ultimately socially and politically, is likely to be that its influence as a world entity will grow substantially over the years”.