Charles Miranda: It pays to have friends in high places
Australia has a new weapon in the war on terror, and it has nothing to do with arms, writes Charles Miranda. It’s all about our well-connected new Middle East defence boss.
Australia has a new secret weapon in the war on terrorism, and it has nothing to do with any drone or spyware apparatuses or counter radicalisation program.
Rather it is one of the nation’s most experienced soldiers appointed to take charge of all the Australian Defence Forces elements deployed across the Middle East.
But the strength of the appointment of Major General John Frewen comes as much from his knowledge of the region and our enemies and his extensive decorated military experience as it does his contact book — which includes counterparts in the Arab world and the men who indirectly but effectively now run the White House.
In the past it was the White House and Congress tasked with keeping the powerful US military and their exuberant hawkish leanings in check, but with the inauguration of President Donald Trump and his at times loose warlike reflections, the roles have reversed.
And that makes the military men Trump has surrounded himself with very powerful, and the Australians who know them an asset to this nation as the Australia-US strategic alliance looks for a reboot amid emerging regional challenges.
President Trump has appointed all former or current military men to the central roles in his administration in what has had an immediate stabilising effect both domestically and abroad.
Former US Marine Corp generals and Iraq War veterans Jim Mattis and John Kelly and current Marine Corp General Joseph Dunford and Army Lt General Herbert R. McMaster have been appointed as defence secretary, homeland security secretary, joint chiefs chairman and national security adviser respectively. They are known in Washington collectively as “men of influence”.
In an exclusive first interview since his Middle East post appointment, General Frewen confirmed to News Corp Australia the men were “friends of the ADF” which has close associations notably with Mattis, whose influence on Trump was already revealed when he was credited with blocking the presidential order that would have reopened CIA “black sites” of torture and successfully pitching that Iraqis be left out of the president’s latest refugee and immigrations bans.
“Many of us have had close interactions with them over the years and if anything General Mattis I would say is not what you would call a hawk,” Gen Frewen said of the Pentagon chief who visited Australia only last September and dined with the general and ADF deputy chief Vice Admiral Ray Griggs.
“He is a guy who is very much that force should be last resort not first impulse but if you were going to use military force then use it to full effect. But force alone doesn’t solve the problem — you need... full integrated solutions that bring into play policy, diplomacy and economics and all those sorts of things so I don’t think President Trump could get a better adviser in that regard.
“The region here know Mattis and they know Mattis knows them so his role is really significant out here at the moment... President Trump will make a decision about what he wants to do but the region knows Mattis and they think that’s a real positive thing and he’s spent so much time out here and he has always been consistently engaging with them and he has always said coalition warfare is the only way and you’ve got to stay close with allies and partners and you’ve got to invest in that.
“And he has made public comments about that when President Trump has made comments which could be perceived as the opposite, he has jumped straight on to that sort of stuff and he has clearly come around and gone to all those important military and civilian leaders in the region.
“General Kelly is also a very experienced soldier but very thoughtful and considered soldier, former marine. I take some reassurance from that there is good advice coming from that.”
Frewen — who has a Masters in strategic studies and an Order of Australia for his leadership in the Solomons — also knew McMaster from college in the US where he spent a year. Frewen has also been making the rounds, only days into his new posting, visiting Iraqi and other Arab world military leaders engaged in varying degrees with the fight against ISIS.
Mattis, who this month visited Baghdad and was prompted to assure Iraqis the US was not planning to “seize” their oil despite the prospect raised by his boss Trump, has handed the president a report outlining a proposal for military and diplomatic solutions for the US and its allies including Australia, in the Middle East region.
There are expectations the US administration could ask Australia for more troops in the region to “win the peace” post the routing of ISIS. Gen Frewen wouldn’t comment, it was a decision for Canberra he said.
But should it happen, those relationships could influence the scope and size of any future ANZUS force and cement the broader strategic alliance both there and with the US in the Asia Pacific region including flashpoint South China Sea, far more effectively than any awkward and bruising phone calls between Trump and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
Originally published as Charles Miranda: It pays to have friends in high places
We’re replacing the kangaroo with this? What a waste of $10m
What happens when you get a self-serving mining billionaire whose fortune depends on the Chinese Communist Party to help rebrand Australia? A national symbol that looks like a COVID-19 cell, writes Miranda Devine.
Sorry for the scare campaign, the planet is fine
When a climate activist apologised for how environmentalists had misled the public over climate change threats, the fearmongers were not happy, especially when Greta is upping her fight, writes Miranda Devine.