The opening song in the Obama opera

Gillard, Obama

THIS week brought to a triumph one of the most relentless campaigns waged by the Labor Party - originated by Kevin Rudd and sealed by Julia Gillard. Its purpose was to swing US policy back to the Asia-Pacific in strategic, economic and multilateral terms.

Gillard, Rudd and Defence Minister Stephen Smith are ebullient. The Labor Party has put its stamp on a military intensification of the US alliance and a recasting of US global policy towards the Asia-Pacific.

Barack Obama's visit was one of the more substantial visits by a US president to Australia.

It constitutes a turning point of unpredictable magnitude for the ANZUS alliance and for Australia's task of managing ties with the US and China.

The alliance is recast to handle the rise of China to great power status. There is no precedent for this situation in our history.

The Prime Minister, a foreign policy novice from the ALP Left, seems an improbable leader for this job. Yet Gillard has plunged ahead: she has emerged as aggressively pro-American, keen to fashion a personal bond with Obama, anxious to strengthen military ties and supportive of the US recommitment to Asia.

Indeed, she seems a Labor variation on John Howard.

Smith told The Weekend Australian yesterday: "This Labor government has argued since it's been in office that power was shifting to the Asia-Pacific and that we wanted the US more comprehensively involved in this part of the world. That is now happening.

"I think this week's defence announcements are the most significant for military co-operation since the joint facilities in the 1980s."

Rudd, as PM and Foreign Minister, advocated a re-weighting of US security to the Asia-Pacific and a regional architecture in which the US could play a greater role shaping the region's destiny.

"Any single rivet removed from any single US ship in this region is going to be noticed," Rudd told the Americans when warning them against any retreat.

Convinced that China had stolen a march on the US during the post-9/11 decade, Rudd told the US "time was of the essence" in reorientating its strategy to balance the rise of China.

At the end of the President's visit, Rudd repudiated China's criticism of the upgraded alliance: "It's never been snap-frozen in time and it will continue to evolve in the future. This has been known to our friends in China for a long, long time. Obviously, China has stated publicly its policy is to see the elimination of US alliances in East Asia. We are not going to have our national security policy dictated by any other external power. That's a sovereign matter for Australia." Howard, for the record, never spoke to China or about China in such tones.

The message this week is how much the US alliance is embedded in Australia's political DNA. Outsiders have almost no grasp of the extent to which alliance thinking and arrangements are part of our governing culture. Witness the transition from Howard to Rudd to Gillard. What other policy structure is so resilent despite change?

This week testified to the pro-US faith of Gillard, Rudd and Smith and of the Labor cabinet, of the pro-US mindset in the departments of Foreign Affairs and Defence and of the Australian Defence Force culture that sees deeper US ties as basic to its mission and efficiency. As far as is known, there were no dissenters.

Gillard has won the backing of both Tony Abbott and Howard for these initiatives. Abbott said in office he would go further and offer the US another new joint facility. Howard told this paper: "I think this is a natural progression for the alliance relationship. I don't see this as some scene-changer."

Those Labor MPs who attacked Howard for deferring to George W. Bush are now silent. A conspicuous aspect this week was Gillard's platitudes and deference towards Obama.

Indeed, she seemed almost in awe of his presence.

Remember, however, the previous speech to parliament by a US president was that of Bush in October 2003. What happened the next day? Under Howard's planning, China's President, Hu Jintao, addressed the parliament in a symbol of Australia's ability to integrate its ties with the US and China. It is hard to imagine such a sequence today and that tells a story.

Summarising his experience, Howard said that closer ties with America made it "much easier, rather than more difficult" to build "a friendly, pragmatic association with the Chinese."

Play that again? Howard's axiom clearly doesn't apply under Labor. Is this because US-China tensions are deeper or because Labor isn't as smart as Howard?

Pivotal to Labor's new policy is the persona and outlook of Obama. His sweet messages of inclusion, human rights and international law make social democrats buckle at the knees and accept policy proposals that would enrage them if coming from the mouth of Bush.

Gillard's recasting of the alliance, contentious in substance, falls upon a sludge of pro-Obama love that seems to paralyse discussion. More important, perhaps, is that both the Obama administration and Gillard government, neither known for its competence, orchestrated this week brilliantly.

It was a superb US-Australia head of government exercise in diplomacy. The upshot is Labor openly lays claim to Obama's Asia strategy as enunciated to our parliament. Smith said: "I believe the President's speech - his Canberra speech - will be seen as deeply significant in a new US vision for a greater involvement in the Asia-Pacific."

The history is critical. It was at the 2010 Ausmin meeting involving Rudd, Smith, former US defence secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that a working party was created to examine what Gates called "enhanced joint activities". This is the origin of upgraded military relations.

By this time Clinton was convinced the US had to switch its priorities to the Pacific. Rudd had earbashed her to this effect over the previous year.

The bigger geo-strategic story had a natural harmony: Obama wanted to quit Iraq and transition from Afghanistan. The Australians knew this and said: don't retreat; relocate to the Asia-Pacific.

From this conversation at Ausmin the idea arose of staging more US forces in Australia off the back of the US force posture review. Smith took a report to cabinet's national security committee and a second report before this year's Ausmin meeting in San Francisco.

Full cabinet recently authorised the alliance upgrade. It involves a permanent rotating US marine presence of 2500 by 2016 in the Northern Territory, greater US aircraft use of Australia and an enhanced US naval role at HMAS Stirling. Frankly, it is hard to object to such decisions.

Defence analyst Hugh White plays down their literal meaning: "I don't think they are operationally significant," he said. "They are a natural evolution of US-Australia practical defence co-operation."

Yes, but they are important in scale, giving the US more flexibility in Southeast Asia and both nations extra ability to handle security and disaster contingencies in the near region.

However, what transforms the alliance upgrade is its location within Obama's grand strategy.

It does not stand in isolation. Just the reverse. Obama says the US is returning to Asia "with every element of American power".

This is his personal decision. It means a stronger US alliance system and fresh warnings to China. What did Obama tell our parliament? "We see our new posture here in Australia."

Precisely. Australia is the opening song in this opera. Here is the Gillard-Smith-Rudd plan in action. Our enhanced alliance is located as part of Obama's new priorities and proves his words have substance beyond rhetoric.

In the past Rudd gave Clinton and Obama the formula for dealing with China: "multilateral engagement with bilateral vigour". You give China every chance of being a good citizen but prepare for any worst-case scenario. This is Obama's new policy. It is, in fact, the exact vision he offered. Sure, it's Obama policy, not Rudd's, but the point is made.

This weekend Obama attends the East Asia Summit for the first time. As Clinton has publicly said, Rudd's diplomacy was a factor in this outcome. Rudd's aim was to lock the US into the region's main forum to deny a "Chinese Monroe doctrine", which meant China's regional hegemony.

Labor runs a hedging strategy on China - to seize the economic opportunities but buy insurance against strategic mishap. Labor, the Coalition, the ADF and policy departments are united in this approach.

White is the sharpest critic. "America is seeking to build a coalition of nations to stop China from expanding its sphere of influence," he says.

"Viewed in the context of US-China rivalry, this decision redefines our US alliance and redirects it against China. I think this is really dangerous."

Labor rejects such warnings. It says most nations in the region shun conflict with China and see the US as a long-run force for strategic balance. America will play a pivotal role in Asia and Australia seeks to maximise, not marginalise, its influence with the US.

Any idea that Australia should buckle before China's staged complaints and retreat from its oldest ally would be a craven admission of weakness and despair.

As for Gillard, she revels in breaking the chains of minority government to lay down some big markers - deepening the US alliance, close with Obama magic, tough on national security, and backing the ADF.

This week she committed and emerged a big winner.