Speech
to Chatham house, London
31 October 2002
The Global Strategic Environment: An Australian Perspective
Well thank you very much Lord Marshall, Excellencies, including Michael
L'Estrange, the Australian High Commissioner, distinguished guests,
ladies and gentlemen. It is indeed always a great pleasure for me
to be back in London. I lived here for eleven years of my life, off
and on, when my father was the High Commissioner here and our family
spent some time living in England after he concluded his term as High
Commissioner. So, London is one of those cities that I confess to
knowing my way around fairly well, although I also note how it's changed
in all those years since I used to live here, in particular the quantity
of traffic. I'm not quite sure how you would manage that issue and
I'm not here today to try to explore it.
It's also a pleasure to come to the Royal Institute of International
Affairs. I've been here on, I think, two occasions before and your
reputation is great and the role you play in generating public debate
on important international issues is also very substantial.
I've been in London for the course of today, and tomorrow I will
be participating in the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group of which
I am the Vice-Chairman to talk about issues such as Zimbabwe and Pakistan.
But while I've been here in London, I've had the opportunity to meet
with Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, and also the Defence Secretary,
Mr Hoon, and others and it's been in many respects an important occasion
for me, not just to compare notes on the issues I'm really going to
concentrate on today (the issues of terrorism and Iraq), but also
an occasion for us to reflect a bit on where our bilateral relationship
is at. I think we are going through a period now, given the great
challenges that Australia and Britain, together with many other countries
in our region and of course the United States, need to meet, where
our relationship has consolidated and consolidated substantially.
It's a relationship which, over the years has had its ups and downs.
There was a lot of debate in Australia, that might be a way of putting
it, back in the late sixties and the early seventies, in the lead-up
to Britain's accession to what is now called the European Union, the
EEC as we used to say in those days. And we were certainly struck
in Australia by the impact of Britain's accession to the European
Union on our agricultural sector and this has been, of course, a very
substantial issue in our relationship, more broadly with the European
Union, ever since that time in early 1973 when Britain finally did
accede to the European Union. I would just like therefore to begin
my speech by saying that I was delighted to see the British Government
take such a strong stand last week in support of reform of the Common
Agricultural Policy in the teeth of some opposition to reform, or
at least limited support for limited reform. I think the Common Agricultural
Policy as it's currently structured, is unsustainable in the long
run and it is inimical to one of the challenges that faces us as a
global community and that is to ensure that developing countries have
the opportunity to escape from poverty and to achieve higher levels
of living standards which is their right. And the Western world,
the developed world, should provide opportunities for developing countries
to do that. There is a lot of talk in developed countries about the
importance of overseas aid, but I think this one statistic makes a
very clear point about what appear to be the priorities of developed
countries. That developed countries spend 50 billion dollars a year
on development assistance, on overseas aid for developing countries,
and they spend 250 billion dollars a year supporting their agricultural
sectors. And that support for the agricultural sectors of developed
countries does enormous damage to agriculture and therefore to living
standards in developing countries.
I mention all of this because I think that Britain and the Netherlands,
which are two countries which have pushed for reform of the Common
Agricultural Policy, deserve to get good support from countries like
Australia which chairs the Cairns Group of agricultural free trading
countries for the strength of their resolve and I hope that the British
Government will continue to stand by the position it's taken and have
success in achieving reform of the Common Agricultural Policy over
the years ahead.
Lord Marshall referred to the Bali incident on 12 October, an incident
that had a very substantial impact on Australians but also on Britons
and let me acknowledge and express to this audience our condolences
for the deaths of Britons and the injuries to Britons that took place
in Bali alongside deaths and injuries to Indonesians, to Australians,
and to people from a number of other nationalities.
For Australians, as our High Commissioner said in his address at
St Paul's Cathedral last week, this was an occasion where our 'hearts
were broken but our spirit was not broken' - where Australians were
shocked at the savagery of the attack and the loss of life, including
Australian lives, the injuries and some of those injuries of course
will be lasting for the rest of the lives of those people who were
injured. People were shocked at the savagery of the act that took
place. But, nevertheless, I think also Australians were reminded,
(if they needed reminding - and maybe they didn't) that we have to
work with the international community to try to overcome the challenge
that we're confronted with of terrorism, of, if you like, globalised
terrorism. We were reminded of the importance of our regional relationships,
the close relationships with our neighbour, Indonesia. I acknowledge
the presence here today of the Charge D'Affaires of Indonesia. I'm
delighted he was able to come. The friendship that we have with Indonesia
and the capacity of our two countries to work together when confronted
with a common crisis which is what happened on this occasion. The
co-operation and collaboration between Australia and Indonesia in
the wake of the events of 12 October has been very successful and
very close.
We are also reminded of the enormous importance of some of our traditional
relationships with the United States, the United Kingdom and others,
of how we need to work together with the resources we have available
to us to try to counter terrorism. This, after all, is a very different
sort of terrorism than the terrorism that I know you here in the United
Kingdom have had to live with over quite some years. You have had
the savagery of the terrorist attacks by the IRA. You have seen more
broadly the consequences of terrorism coming out of the Northern Ireland
conflict. You can go to Sri Lanka to see the impact there of terrorism.
The terrorism propagated by the LTTE, by as they're called the Tamil
Tigers. In the Middle East itself there has been substantial terrorism.
Of course, there still is, directed against Israel. The activities
we all recall in the early seventies of the Palestine Liberation Organisation
and so on. But the point I make about those terrorist organisations
is that those organisations and their acts of terror have not had
a global reach. For us in Australia, the IRA hasn't launched terrorist
attacks against our people or within our country, and the same applies
to the LTTE. There are links in that there has been funding from
certain organisations and groups in Australia which has gone to the
IRA and to the LTTE and other organisations, and that's true of many
countries, but the actual acts of terror have not really directly
impacted upon us.
The sort of terrorism we are dealing with though today is trans-boundary
in its nature and sovereign states have to act together to try to
deal with it. I think we need to understand what the terrorism we
are dealing with today is, but we also need to understand what the
terrorism we are dealing with today is not. The terrorism that we
are confronted with, that we were confronted with in Bali, that the
Americans were confronted with on what they call 9/11, that has occurred
in other parts of the world in that period of time since September
last year (and somewhat before), that terrorism is driven by people
who pervert the message and the faith of Islam. People who are not
traditional mainstream Muslims but people who pervert Islam and try
to impose through acts of terror a particular and rather grotesque
interpretation of what the Islamic message really is.
I think it is very important in Western countries to ensure that
we transmit a message to the Islamic world that our concern with and
our fight against terrorism is not a concern with or a fight against
Islam. Indeed, one of the challenges for all of us that we have to
avoid is allowing Samuel Huntington's thesis of the clash of civilisations
to become a reality. We have to ensure that doesn't happen. We have
to ensure that moderate mainstream Muslims around the world are people
who understand that the Western world, the industrialised world, has
respect for Islam, admires the messages of Islam, can work with Islam,
and doesn't have any anti Islamic phobia. It is very important to
get that message across. Imagine how important it is in this country
with a significant Islamic minority. Imagine how important it is
in Australia where there are hundreds of thousands of Australians
who are Muslims, or in France where something like 10 percent of the
population is Muslim, let alone the importance of stable international
relationships between countries which are predominantly not Muslim
and countries which are Muslim.
Having said that, it is also important to understand the threat that
Muslim countries and non Muslim countries alike face from extremist
elements of Islam, the people who I've said earlier pervert the message
and the theology of Islam. Their objectives, and I think it's very
important to understand their objectives, are to overthrow not just
Western influence in the Islamic world, but to overthrow moderate
secular modernist Islamic governments and replace them with Taliban
style governments and that is the best way to describe it. To establish
on the Arabian peninsula Taliban style governments and to establish
through Islamic South East Asia Taliban style governments. To try
to impose that type of system throughout the Islamic world, and attacking
the West, attacking Western interests in Bali, or attacking Western
interests off the coast of Yemen where a French oil tanker was attacked,
or attacking American embassies in different parts of the world, or
attacking the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon is a method of attacking
Western interests, undermining Western interests and the Western presence
in the Islamic world and, in turn, generating, a greater capacity
to destabilise the status quo, to destabilise the governments that
are in place in the Islamic world.
I was in Jakarta on the Wednesday after 12 October, which was a Saturday
night, and the first meeting I had was on that Wednesday morning.
On the Tuesday night I arrived and had dinner with Hassan Wirajuda,
the Foreign Minister. The Wednesday morning, I met with the Co-ordinating
Minister for Politics and Security, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, and
he said to me at that meeting it was important to understand that
the attack in Bali was not just an attack on Westerners, including
Australians, but was an attack on Indonesia and an attack on the Indonesian
Government, and an attack on the Indonesian people, an attack on the
emerging democracy of Indonesia, the pluralism of Indonesia, and the
broad tolerance of Indonesia, a country which of course is not just
an Islamic country, a country that incorporates and embraces people
of other religions. Bali, after all, itself is a province of Indonesia,
is a predominantly Hindu province.
My point to you today is that, when we are analysing the issue of
this so-called Islamic extremist terrorism, it's important to understand
what it is and it's important to understand what it isn't. It isn't
the world of Islam, it isn't the policy of Muslims, it isn't consistent
with the preaching of the prophet and the message of the prophet to
behave in this way, and most Muslims reject these acts of violence
as strongly as non Muslims do. But it is important to understand
what the objectives of these extremist organisations like Al Qaeda
or Jemaah Islamiyah in South East really are. It is also important
to understand significantly the global reach of this movement and
of these organisations.
We, for example, since September 11 last year, have come to understand
much better than we ever did before, that an organisation like Al
Qaeda has been able to infiltrate and infiltrate quite successfully
into South East Asia, and has been able to link up with organisations
in South East Asia which are indigenous, such as Jemaah Islamiyah.
Jamaah Islamiyah stretches throughout in particular Islamic South
East Asia and is an organisation which actively endeavoured to try
to destroy the British and Australian High Commissions in Singapore
and the American Embassy in Singapore in December of last year. And
it was fortuitous, and very much to the credit of the Singapore Government,
that their intelligence services were able to disrupt and stop that
attack on our Embassies and High Commissions. Jamaah Islamiyah was
the organisation that was behind that, and Jamaah Islamiyah has been
responsible for many acts of terror in South East Asia. By the way,
not just in Indonesia. And I think it is a great step forward that
last week we were able to get listed in the United Nations as a terrorist
organisation, Jamaah Islamiyah, and significantly to be able to do
so with the support of Indonesia, of Malaysia, of Singapore, of countries
in South East Asia, countries which are much more victims of the activities
of organisations like Jamaah Islamiyah than even we are.
So that is part of a successful evolution of the war on terrorism
that we are able to get together and co-operate in that way. But
my point is that organisations like Jamaah Islamiyah in South East
Asia, and there are others, do have direct links with Al Qaeda, and
it is our judgement, but we're not yet sure about this, that the attack
in Bali may well have been carried out by Al Qaeda people with the
support of people who have been involved in or are involved in Jamaah
Islamiyah in South East Asia. We're not 100 percent sure who was
responsible for the Bali attack but we think that that is.
When you say all these things about terrorism, not all of them of
course are new to you. But one of the great debates that comes out
of this is the debate about whether the war on terrorism since 9/11
constitutes a change in the international paradigm. I don't want
to give you a conclusive answer to that. Maybe it was more than anything
a reminder of the dangerous and difficult world that we live in, where
we had perhaps become complacent in the post Cold War environment.
Nevertheless, one thing that has changed is the way the world's most
powerful country, the United States of America, now addresses many
international issues. It has become more determined to ensure that
there are not further acts of terrorism against American territory.
It has become more determined than it ever was before, and it certainly
had some determination before, to address the issue of terrorism and
to work with other countries in the world to try to achieve that.
And more and more of our resources are being now devoted to try to
counter terrorism.
How are we going to do this? As Lord Marshall said, I have said
myself on a number of occasions that addressing this type of terrorism
is akin to wrestling with smoke. It is extremely difficult to do.
That isn't to say it shouldn't be done. Or we don't have to make
every effort to do it. We do.
First of all, sovereign states themselves have to take responsibility
for addressing the problem. It can't just be left to multinational
or multilateral organisations and it can't just be left to one country.
For example, as we address in our part of the world the issue of terrorism,
the Indonesian Government, the Australian Government, the Malaysian
Government, the Singaporean Government, the Philippines Government,
all have to take decisive measures themselves internally first and
foremost to address this problem. We appreciate, very much the difficult
decision President Megawati Soekarnoputri made the other day to sign
two decrees giving the Government of Indonesia substantially increased
powers to address the question of terrorism. That was a bold decision
of the President to make. I think it will be an effective decision
and it will give Indonesia a greater capacity to take action internally
to deal with these problems. The Singapore Government has been decisive
in addressing these issues and I gave you the example of its intervention
in September of last year. The Malaysian Government, too, has been
taking strong action.
But there is, of course, a substantial role for international co-operation.
And there must be international co-operation because this is a trans-boundary
issue. One area where there needs to be co-operation is in intelligence
sharing. We, as you will know, have a very close intelligence relationship
with the United Kingdom, and we appreciate the co-operation there
has been between our intelligence agencies on this issue, as on many
other issues and over many years. Recently we have signed with a
number of countries in South East Asia memoranda of understanding
on terrorism. We did this before October 12. We signed in February
of this year a memorandum of understanding on counter-terrorism with
Indonesia. I signed an agreement in the middle of the year with Thailand,
a very similar agreement. We have an agreement I've also signed with
Malaysia. We are in the process of concluding a similar agreement
with the Philippines. This is just one illustration of what Australia
is doing, but I do think that countries more generally, particularly
those afflicted by the problems of terrorism, which is going to be
most countries of the world, they need to work very closely together
through intelligence sharing and co-operation, and putting sometimes
in place frameworks to do that, such as memoranda of understanding
on counter-terrorism.
I think there is also a role for capacity building, to ensure that
law enforcement authorities, customs authorities, immigration authorities,
have a greater capacity to detect and deal with people who may be
or are involved with terrorism. And, in particular, developed countries
can provide some direct assistance to developing countries in that
area to enhance their capacity to address that problem.
There has to be much more done than has already been done to cut
off financial support for the financing of terrorism. A lot of the
financing of terrorism comes out of the Middle East. Not all of it,
but a lot of it does. There are UN Conventions designed to stop the
financing of terrorism. The proscribing of terrorist organisations
in many countries is a good way of stopping the financing of those
organisations but there are still ways of circumventing these rules
and regulations. They are being circumvented and more decisive action
has to be taken to cut off the financing of terrorism.
What about the role of the military? Well, the military role is,
by the nature of terrorism and how terrorist organisations work, going
to be a limited role. But we have seen in the case of Afghanistan
how a military role can be decisive. In the case of Afghanistan,
the government was a Taliban-Al Qaeda Government and provided shelter
and a framework within which Al Qaeeda could flourish. And it was
on the basis of that, that military action was taken against Afghanistan.
It has disrupted and substantially reduced the capacity of Al Qaeda
to operate because Al Qaeda no longer has the secure base from which
it could train, from which it could plan, and from which it could
operate in Afghanistan, around the world. It no longer has that base.
That's not to say that Al Qaeda have been completely eliminated in
Afghanistan. There are still people here and there in Afghanistan
and in groups in Afghanistan who are Al Qaeda members and supporters,
but its capacities in Afghanistan have obviously been substantially
reduced.
Some say, why would Australia participate as we do in the war on
terrorism in Afghanistan? Why would the United Kingdom participate
as it does? Well, the reason we participate is that while Afghanistan
is a long way from Australia, terrorism is a global problem. It's
not just a regional problem. It's not just a local problem. The attack
in Bali was almost certainly planned or at least implemented by people
from outside of Indonesia. There may have been people within Indonesia
as well. Almost certainly that's the case. But people from outside
of Indonesia were almost certainly involved. Al Qaeda was almost
certainly involved. And that is an illustration, if ever you needed
one, why a country like Australia needs to participate in the war
on terrorism beyond our shores or even beyond our region. Because
terrorism itself has a global outlook.
Let me finally say, in a longer term sense, it's important to address
some of the causes of terrorism and some of the crucibles of terrorism.
We can't do very much about religious extremists of whatever faith
they may be, and all religions have their extremists as we know.
It's not very easy to reconvert an extremist to be a moderate. Very
hard to do. But we do know something about the crucibles of extremism.
For example, in some of the more extremist Islamic schools. And one
of the important points here is to ensure that there is adequate support
for mainstream education in Islamic countries. Not for outsiders
to chart the curriculum but to make sure that the state education
systems of countries like Indonesia have the resources available to
them to fulfil their own charters. Since the economic crisis in Indonesia
in 1997, the capacity of Indonesia to fund and implement its education
programmes has obviously been somewhat more limited, and I think we
need to do more as developed countries, as donors, to assist the Indonesian
education system so that people in Indonesia will become less reliant
or less enthusiastic about a small number, but significant number,
of extremist Islamic schools that are used sometimes as alternatives
to mainstream state-based education in Indonesia.
We have to keep helping developing countries in the area of governance
and we have to do something I mentioned right at the beginning in
the context of the Common Agricultural Policy. We need to do something
more and dramatic through the Doha round to advance the success of
globalisation, to ensure that trade liberalisation continues at a
substantial pace and that developing countries have still better access
to the markets of developed countries than is currently the case,
and that particularly applies in the area of agriculture.
At the end of the day, for countries like the United Kingdom, countries
like Australia, we can't avoid participating on the war on terrorism.
We can't just roll ourselves up into a ball and hope the issue will
go away. Or say that for us, as Australians, like Britons, we live
on an island. We'll just shut ourselves on from this and the issue
will go away. We know now from our experience in Bali, if we needed
any reminding and we probably didn't, that we can't just opt out of
the war on terrorism. This is something that affects all countries
in one way or another and countries like ours and like some of the
countries in our region, we need to work together to try and address
and try to defeat this problem.
Let me say, finally, since I'm here in the United Kingdom and this
has been a big issue both in Britain and Australia, the people ask,
when we talk about terrorism, why is it that we're also talking about
the issue of Iraq? I just want to make one or two points about that.
Of course, terrorism is an enormous threat to our security and I
needn't articulate that any more. But so too are weapons of mass
destruction. The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is
something I have been arguing about for a long time as Foreign Minister.
I have made many speeches expressing my concerns about the proliferation
of weapons of mass destruction and, as a government, we have taken
many decisions to try to address that problem, not least bringing
into force the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in New York in September
1996 when Australia salvaged it from the dead hand of the United Nations
Conference on Disarmament and took it to the General Assembly in New
York and got it implemented through the General Assembly. Why did
we do that? Because we, back in 1996, just as in 2002, remained pre-occupied
with and concerned about the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
And just imagine if those weapons of mass destruction were to fall
into the hands of terrorist organisations the like of which I've been
talking about this afternoon. Just imagine the consequences of that
happening. Let alone the consequences of those weapons of mass destruction
being in the hands of somebody like Saddam Hussein. After all, he
has a very grim record of having used weapons of mass destruction
not just against the Iranians during the war against Iran, but against
his own people. Any man who uses weapons of mass destruction against
another country, let alone uses them against his own people, I think
is somebody who deserves the sharpest condemnation by the international
community.
This too, of course, is a man who has been responsible for the deaths
of over 1 million people in two wars against his neighbours which
he himself started and I don't think you need really me to say anything
more than you yourselves heard through the publication of your Prime
Minister's dossier, the Blair dossier, on Saddam Hussein's weapons
of mass destruction capabilities today, his weapons of mass destruction
ambitions, and his failure to comply with United Nations Security
Council resolutions over a long period of time.
What can be done about this? Britain and Australia I think are as
one, as close to as one as one can imagine on this issue, and that
was very much reinforced in my discussions today with Geoff Hoon and
Jack Straw. We want to see this Security Council resolution, this
tough new Security Council resolution, get through the Security Council,
and we hope that can be achieved in the next few days. I'm not sure
how long that will take. I'm a bit more optimistic having been in
Washington and London talking about it with two permanent members
of the Security Council and from reports I've had from our mission
in New York than I was a week or so ago. I think it is achievable.
And then we look to see compliance by Iraq with that new Security
Council resolution by letting the inspectors in. Letting the inspectors
do their job free of hindrance, free of obstacles and making sure
that we are all satisfied at the end of this process that Saddam Hussein's
weapons of mass destruction can be eliminated. And, if that process
can be followed, and if Saddam Hussein lives up to his obligations
under international law, then in those circumstances war can be avoided.
But it is a sad reality that, whilst there have been some who have
criticised the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, for
talking about the prospects of war if Saddam Hussein doesn't comply
with Security Council resolutions, we would never have got as far
as we have done down the diplomatic path if there hadn't been that
threat overhanging Saddam Hussein. It is a sad thing to have to say
that but it is a true thing to have to say. His agreement, we'll
see whether he implements his agreement, but his agreement to allow
weapons inspectors back in unhindered is an agreement which only came
about when confronted with the very real threat of military action
in particular, by the United States.
We have to deal with weapons of mass destruction proliferation in
North Korea as well. I had a long discussion with the Americans two
days ago about how we are going to address that problem. I'm hoping
the North Koreans will understand that they must abandon their uranium
enrichment programme and abandon it soon if they're going to continue
with successful engagement with countries of the Asian Pacific region,
the United States through to South Korea, Japan, Australia and others,
importantly China. They must understand that. That is an absolute
prerequisite for them to get back into the mainstream of international
affairs, including international economic affairs.
So let me say in conclusion. This isn't a time, a time in history
for Australia and the United Kingdom, countries which have very old,
very strong and very historic bonds, to distance ourselves from each
other. This is a time for us as two countries who know each other
so extraordinarily well, so intimately, this is a time for us to work
together as we confront these enormous challenges that I've been talking
about today. You've been concentrating for decades on the great European
project that you have been participating in. We, on our own project
Asian engagement - and we don't want to abandon these projects.
You don't want to abandon your involvement with the European Union.
Most of you don't anyway. We certainly don't want to abandon our
policy of engagement with Asia, but we can do more than one thing
at a time, and I think this crisis of terrorism that we are confronted
with today reminds us that all those bonds of history and kith and
kin, including a lot of our economic bonds as well that we have today,
are worth a great deal because they do give us a capacity to operate
and work together as two countries as we address this very substantial
challenge.
Thank you very much.
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Local Date:
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