RUTHFULLY YOURS

I do not know whether I have been more struck by the similarities between the American and the Australian or the differences. I incline to believe that the similarities are more superficial and the differences more fundamental.
—J. Pierrepont Moffat, American Consul-General in Australia, October 14, 1935

In November 2003, in an ABC radio interview, Andrew Peacock, once leader of the Liberal Party, and a former foreign minister and ambassador to the United States, was asked to identify the main differences between Australians and Americans. Without hesitation Peacock identified four areas in which national beliefs sharply differ: interpretation of the meaning of political freedom; attitudes towards the role of religion in public life and the challenge of American exceptionalism; the place of wealth and economic status in society; and attitudes towards war and the standing of the military. He went on to warn that while Australians and Americans are long-time military allies and share common Western liberal democratic values, they remain, at heart, two distinct nationalities shaped by very different histories.

These contrasting histories need to be carefully examined and understood, if only because casual assumptions about cultural similarities between Australians and Americans only act to conceal important differences—differences that carry with them risks of diplomatic superficiality and political miscalculation. When Mark Twain visited Australia in 1897, he observed that Australians “did not seem to me to differ noticeably from Americans, either in dress, carriage, ways, pronunciation, inflections or general appearance”. In the twentieth century, Twain’s comfortable image of similar peoples—what Alfred Deakin called “the blood affection” between Australians and Americans—was strengthened by the rise of the United States to global power and the pervasive Americanisation of so much of Western popular culture. Yet if Australia is to possess effective statecraft in the new millennium, we must probe beneath the veneer of popular myths and commonplace beliefs.

“We can, for example, avoid Islamic outrages by not having anything to do with Muslims. The world is stumbling towards that solution in the form of Donald Trump’s call for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States. In the Republican presidential contender’s words, “We’re gonna have to figure it out: we can’t live like this. It’s going to get worse and worse, we’re going to have more World Trade Centers. It’s going to get worse and worse, folks. We can be politically correct and we can be stupid, but it’s going to be worse and worse.” Mr Trump is aware that his advice in this instance is “probably not politically correct”. Yet that advice would be more palatable to the American public than President Obama’s acceptance of a tolerable level of terrorism.”
There are moments when it can seem the modern world is a dreadful place and growing worse by the day, what with terrorism and a political class terrified of offending with blunt truths those who richly deserve to be offended. But there is hope, genuine hope. Make no mistake about it.

It was in the Kimberly ten-or-so years ago, a couple of kilometres removed from a drill rig I had left at dusk to drive into Derby and drink homemade rum with my friend, Froggy. The wet season was on the verge of breaking. There were low, dark clouds and lightning was playing on the ranges in the distance. Suddenly, in the pleasant gloom, there was a light on the road ahead. I stopped beside it. It was a workman’s Dolphin-type torch with some grease smears on it and turned on, with the light shining in the direction I was driving.

This was a sign from God, obviously, with the message “Your path is righteous.” How else to explain the torch, which must have fallen out of a utility, landed on the ground without breaking, turned itself on in the shock of the landing, and pointed exactly in the direction I was going? The chance of that happening by itself would be infinitesimal. By elimination, the only other explanation was that it was a sign from God. That torch was the modern version of the Burning Bush – giving off light but not being consumed. Much pleased with this silent blessing, I picked it up, turned it off and put it on the seat beside me.

Two hundred metres further along, my headlights revealed a figure walking towards the rig site. It was a campie, a woman in her mid-twenties employed to cook and clean in the rig camp. I stopped and asked if she was OK. She answered in the affirmative and I then asked if she had left a torch on the road. She had, she said, saying that she had left it on in order to be able to find it again in the dark. I said, “you might be needing this” and gave her back the torch. So my communication with God had a human interlocutor, an interlocutor who was horribly profligate and too lazy to carry her guiding light. So much for the spawn of the Boomers treading lightly on the earth. The chemical energy in the battery of that Dolphin torch would have been one of the most expensive power sources on the planet.

President Obama has staked much of his foreign-policy legacy on the Iran nuclear deal, but does that deal effectively give the Iranians veto power over legislation by the U.S. Congress? That’s the question at the center of Tehran’s “outrage” at a security law passed by Congress after the Paris and San Bernardino attacks.

The December omnibus budget law includes a measure revising the Visa Waiver Program. Expedited entry into the U.S. is no longer available to foreign travelers who have visited Iraq, Syria or countries that “repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism” on or after March 1, 2011. Thus the law covers those who have visited Iran, a U.S.-designated state sponsor of terrorism.

Foreign travelers affected by the new law will no longer have visas automatically waived. Instead, they must submit a visa application, pay a fee and submit to an in-person interview at the local U.S. Embassy or consulate, like every other businessman or tourist. The law passed the House 407-19.

Proponents of the nuclear deal fear the visa rules would deter the flow of foreign investors into Iran. So naturally the Iranians went, well, ballistic. In a Dec. 18 interview with the New Yorker, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said, “This visa-waver thing is absurd: Has anybody in the West been targeted by any Iranian national?”

Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates on Monday followed their Sunni Muslim allies in Saudi Arabia in severing ties with Iran. This came despite a lecture to Saudis, from the U.S. State Department and most of the Western press, for executing a radical Shiite cleric on the weekend. The execution of Nemer al-Nemer risks “exacerbating sectarian tensions at a time when they urgently need to be reduced,” said State spokesman John Kirby.

Well, what did the Administration and its media allies expect? The U.S. didn’t listen to Saudi Arabia about the Iran nuclear deal, which it believes signals a U.S. strategic tilt toward Iran and its Shiite allies in the Middle East. They see the Administration backing down on sanctions against Iran for testing ballistic missiles that can reach Riyadh long before they get to New York. They feel under threat from an Iran liberated from sanctions, and they don’t believe President Obama will defend them in a conflict. Why should they heed the U.S. now?

UNITED NATIONS—Senior U.N. officials and diplomats on Monday engaged in a flurry of diplomatic initiatives to contain the growing crisis between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

The effort, they said, was to prevent U.N.-led peace initiatives in Syria and Yemen from being derailed, after Saudi Arabia and its allies severed or downgraded ties with Iran over attacks against the Saudi embassy in Tehran.

The U.N. Security Council later Monday issued a statement condemning the attacks on the embassy and Saudi consulate in Mashad—by Iranians protesting the kingdom’s execution of a Shiite cleric—and sharply criticized Iran for failing to protect diplomatic premises. The council also called on all parties to maintain dialogue and take steps to reduce tensions in the region.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the foreign ministers of Iran and Saudi Arabia on Sunday and Monday to express his concerns over the escalating crisis and to seek reassurance that the two countries would remain committed to peace talks.

“The security-general urged both foreign ministers to avoid any actions that could further exacerbate the situation between two countries and in the region as a whole,” Mr. Ban’s statement said.

The U.N. said it was sending its special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, to Riyadh on Monday and to Tehran later this week to mediate and seek reassurance that the Syria talks would remain on track. Officials said the U.N. special envoy for Yemen also would stop in Riyadh this week.

Two thousand sixteen will be the year of America living dangerously. Barack Obama will devote his last full year in office to shaping a liberal legacy, irrespective of real-world results. America’s enemies will see his last year as an opportunity to take what they can, while they can. America’s allies, or former allies, will do what they must.

And then Hillary Clinton will likely become president. Whether the Republican Party chooses to remain intact remains to be seen.

For aficionados of political delusion, it must have been fun to watch Mr. Obama rattle off his list of foreign-policy accomplishments at his year-end press conference last month. There was the Paris climate deal, the Iran nuclear deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, the opening to Cuba—“steady, persistent work,” the president said, that was “paying off for the American people in big, tangible ways.”

Tangible means perceptible by touch. But the Paris climate accord is voluntary and unenforceable; the Pacific trade deal is unratified and unpopular, especially among Democrats; the opening to Cuba is “tangible” only if you enjoy taking your beach holiday in a dictatorship that, as my colleague Mary O’Grady has noted, made some 8,000 political arrests in 2015—that is, after it normalized relations with the U.S.