ANZUS the trellis that supports fruitful relations

The ANZUS Treaty is signed in San Francisco on September 1, 1951.

Our friendships are often tested in times of trial. We remember friends who stick close during adversity. My grandfather, Flight Lieutenant Norman Hastie DFC, knew adversity aboard an RAAF Catalina on March 31, 1945, during a dangerous air-sea rescue mission. He also knew friendship when an American medic – a Virginian by the name of Sergeant O. Mayberry – saved his life when he was struck by Japanese gunfire.

The Australian and US aircrew of Playmate Four One flew into danger to rescue two downed Australian airmen in Indonesian waters. All relied on each other to get home. Together, they got the mission done. Back at Morotai Island, an American surgeon operated on my grandfather and gave him another crack at life. Without those American friends, I wouldn’t be writing today.

For me, on the 70th anniversary of ANZUS, our partnership with the US is personal and strategic. My story is not unique. It is part of our enduring bond that begins with individual connections and rises to the highest levels of government. Many Australians have worked closely with our American friends in defence, intelligence, law enforcement, trade and foreign affairs. Many of us share the same sense of personal and strategic friendship.

As former ambassador to the US Kim Beazley said a few years ago: if you want to appreciate the depth of the alliance, go granular. Observe the people-to-people connections. Observe the integration of our people at the tactical and operational levels. There you will see the alliance – alive, healthy and active. The evidence shows Beazley was on the money.

This year marks 10 years of the US Force Posture Initiatives in Australia. We’ve seen numerous rotations of US marines in Darwin, training and exercising with the Australian Defence Force. We’ve achieved greater air-to-air integration through the Enhanced Air Co-operation program, our RAAF crews regularly exercising with their US partners in the skies. We are investing in our neighbourhood, even as we withdraw from Afghanistan.

In 10 days we will commemorate the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks in the US. On September 14, we will recall when prime minister John Howard invoked the ANZUS Treaty in Washington in the turbulent days after hijacked commercial planes hit New York’s World Trade Centre twin towers and the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and one crashed in a field in Pennsylvania 20 minutes away by air from Washington, DC.

Howard’s decision, the only invocation of ANZUS since its ratification, committed us to destroying al-Qa’ida and its affiliates in Afghanistan. Our troops fought in the mountains and valleys of Afghanistan alongside our American friends to defeat those who would harm us at home.

Sadly, after two decades of intermittent struggle and war, Afghanistan has fallen to the Taliban. The evacuation has been tough to watch. We grieve the loss of the 13 US marines and 200 Afghans cruelly murdered by ISIS-K at Kabul’s international airport.

But who can forget the picture of fallen US marine Sergeant Nicole Gee cradling an Afghan infant at the airport. She died doing what she loved. The image reminds us of the US at its best, leading and helping others in need.

Despite the setback in Afghanistan, we have work to do in our region. And we need the US to lead in that task, as it has done since 1945. Australia’s priority, as ever, is to support a rules-based international order that encourages habits of co-operation with our neighbours. American naval power has long underwritten this rules-based order, and so we welcome a continued US presence on the Indian and Pacific oceans. This is where the great geopolitical questions of the next decade and beyond will be resolved. Our shared vision of freedom – a love of democracy, the rule of law and ordered liberty – must be clear when authoritarian voices grow louder and more insistent.

In this moment of regional instability, the ANZUS alliance acts as a trellis: it gives shape and form to that shared vision of freedom. It turns personal connections into fruitful networks across governments. It takes words and enlivens them into statecraft. ANZUS is central to Australia’s future security and prosperity, so we must never take it for granted.

On this 70th anniversary, we are reminded that good friends stick close in adversity. We’ve stood shoulder to shoulder with the US in dangerous times, from the battlefields of World War I to Kabul airport in Afghanistan last week. As we shift our gaze back to the Indo-Pacific, we must be guided by bonds of the past as we navigate problems of the future.

Andrew Hastie is the Assistant Minister for Defence and the member for Canning in WA.