US puts greater value on Australia as an ally than any time in decades

Mike Green has visited Australia many times and four months ago he moved his family to live here but he hasn’t been able to bring himself to call anyone “mate” yet: “I still have trouble saying it. It doesn’t trip off my tongue.”

The well-known US scholar and former White House official covers his lack of cultural fluency by calling people “man” instead. The new head of the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney has been persuaded of the authenticity of “mateship” nonetheless.

Illustration: Andrew Dyson

When former Australian ambassador to Washington Joe Hockey kicked off a “mateship” campaign a few years ago as a piece of alliance diplomacy, Green found it “a bit contrived”.

But now he says his most pleasant surprise since relocating “is how quickly my family and kids and I have been embraced into communities, sports, social circles. We knew Australians were friendly but it’s really been remarkable.

“It’s obvious that mateship is real and it’s quick and strong and one result is that my kids are absolutely loving school and sport.” His kids are 15 and 12. Wife Eileen Pennington works as senior gender adviser to the Asia Foundation. Not that there aren’t some tricky adjustments to make.

“The hard part for the kids is that elite US schools really emphasise self-advocacy – ‘I believe’ or ‘I think’. In Australia, you do that, you’re a tall poppy.”

But if he’s confirming those two cultural stereotypes, he’s challenging a couple of others. His experience getting a driver’s licence “was so positive I wanted to do it again”, something you won’t catch locals saying.

More seriously, Green has found Australians to be in denial about the extent of racism here. This, he says, is the most unpleasant surprise since arriving: “I find that Australians are very, very aware of racism in the US and frequently discuss it and the US does have a much larger problem.

“In Australia, I’m surprised at how people are unwilling to see racism and to admit that it’s a problem.” He cites work by one of the academics at the centre, David Smith, in explaining that the US “arbitrates racial issues very visibly in the courts and in politics” while “in Australia when debates do surface – over the Voice to parliament now – it’s striking that they are less open”.

Green’s job at the US Studies Centre is to help Australians better understand the US and the alliance. The Japanese-speaking, bagpipe-playing black belt in the Japanese swordcraft of iaido quips that it was easier explaining Kim Jong-un to Americans in his last jobs.

He worked as the Japan chair at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, as well as director of Asian studies at Georgetown University.

So what does Australia need to understand better? Three points. First, Green thinks that pessimism over US democracy is misplaced: “I’m an optimist because I’m historically minded. US democracy has been a 250-year struggle” defined through three wars on US soil in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War and the War of 1812 and the civil rights movement.

And the US midterm elections last month showed a nation moving away from anti-democratic Trumpism: “Candidates who challenged the Constitution were defeated, with the sole exception of J.D. Vance”, who contested a Senate seat in Ohio.

“It was a repudiation of anti-democratic candidates across the board. We’ll see with Donald Trump but even some of his supporters said he was deflated” by the results.

Former president Donald Trump announces his bid for president in 2024 at Mar-a-Lago in November.Credit: Washington Post by Thomas Simonetti

Green was one of 50 former senior Republican national security officials to sign a 2016 open letter declaring they would not vote for “dangerous” and “reckless” Trump.

Green had served as the senior Asia policy adviser in George W. Bush’s White House. A registered independent, he had earlier worked in the Pentagon in the Bill Clinton administration, reporting to Kurt Campbell, who is today in the Biden White House as Indo-Pacific co-ordinator.

Second, Australians should know that the US today puts a greater value on Australia as an ally than at any time in recent decades. He says: “When you asked Americans whether the alliance with Australia made America safer, typically 40 to 45 per cent said yes. This year, that was almost two-thirds.”

Why? “The combination of Ukraine and Taiwan, and Americans realising that our allies are on the front lines. The traditional US view was that ‘we are powerful and should defend our allies’. Now there’s a subtle shift; ‘we are not as powerful and we really need our allies’.

“You can see it in the Biden administration, too. The Indo-Pacific strategy from the White House mentions allies more than 30 times. So it’s elite opinion as well as public opinion.”

Green says Australia is at “the pointy end of the spear” in the confrontation with China, which makes it more valuable to Washington. It also makes it more pertinent for Green to study professionally, and helps explain his move to Terra Australis.

Third, the alliance itself, he says, needs “retooling” after decades of stasis: “Rotating Marines is good but it’s not a grand strategy. There’s a real opening for the Albanese government to shape the alliance. Not through lecturing Washington about how Asia works but through ideas.”

Indeed, in a recent essay in the US journal Foreign Affairs, Green says Washington needs to shut up for a minute and listen to its Indo-Pacific allies. The response was revealing: “Really senior people in the US said it was a good point and they’d never thought of it that way, which is alarming.”

Australia’s China debate, says Green, has reached a point of “equilibrium” after the May election. Labor, he says, had “skilfully neutralised” China policy as a partisan issue. And Australian policy was more advanced than in Washington because it both confronts Beijing’s aggression but also allows for peaceful co-existence.

“In the US, attacking China is very popular. It hasn’t yet been able to envision peaceful coexistence with China.” Australia, he says, can be a pivotal influence here. Now that would be an act of mateship.

The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up here.