John Reeve calls the Anglo dominance of the oceans the
Lucky League
. Britannia carried blue water supremacy until they obsoleted themselves with the Dreadnought. British supremacy lingered until World War II, when the United States leap-frogged them, and all other nations in a four year bound. America has been the barely disputed champion of the oceans since. Reeve argues that our tangential inclusion in that Anglo dominance has been positive for Australia. He is arguing for the Great and Powerful Friends doctrine [GAPF] of foreign policy.
The Navy And The Nation
John Reeve has written the concluding article for the book,
The Navy and the Nation
. This book looks at the Navy's role in Australian nationhood. Since the Royal Australian Navy only appeared with the Defence Act of 1903, prior to that Australian naval involvement was as state based littoral ships, a federal tribute to the Royal Navy for defence purposes, and direct Royal Navy control of the colonies. The book focuses on naval influence in Australia rather than independent Australian achievements, even though pioneers such as William Clarkson are discussed.
This is a valid approach in viewing the naval history in Australia. The colony of New South Wales was founded with the intent of establishing a British naval outpost in the Pacific to counter French power in the region. Reeves writes;
The Royal Navy was the initial creator of modern Australia. The first British settlement was intended to serve the strategic interests of a global maritime empire, and the Navy was the protector and effectively director of the new colony.Until self-government in Victoria and New South Wales in the 1850s, the Governor's of the colonies were naval officers. Some of the big names in Australian political history were naval; for instance Governor's King, Bligh, Macquarie and Hotham. The book also discusses the achievements of the British officers in the sciences such as botanical and medical sciences in Australia. Joseph Banks being one notable example. But these claims are tangential. They occurred in Australia, rather than being Australian achievements in science. While they are examples of colonial R&D being done through the Royal Navy, they cannot be claimed as contributing to Australian nationhood, or Australian sense of self. The Australian defence forces are constantly starved for money in R&D - our politicians preferring low risk integration with American technologies than a trust in Australian scientists and engineers to produce revolutionary weapon systems. The integrating of American technologies also aids the GAPF doctrine, where we can slip in easily with the dominant force. Our Frigates in the Gulf being a good example of this. Naval Conservatism Reeve argues that a Navy is an extremely complex force to develop, maintain and use. Apart from being capital intensive, it requires a level of social, technological, political and bureaucratic organisation that few societies achieve. He argues that the British Navy in the 18thC was probably the largest and most sophisticated organisation in British society. But Australia has a pretty small and weak Navy. Until the 1940s we were dependant upon the British Navy for our blue water projection, and since then we have been dependant upon the United States Navy. So if the establishment of a Navy is an achievement in social organisation, we have not progressed far, as the Australian Navy remains a subservient force to our GAPF. Reeve notes that Australia did not want to give up the imperial protection of the Royal Navy with federation, and was dragged kicking and screaming into creating an indigenous navy. The Australian Navy has been the most conservative of the Australian arms, it maintained the British Naval white ensign until Vietnam which Britain was not involved in. Even then, the British which ensign was only removed on the request of Britain who did not want Australian ships confused with British ones in the warzone. The Navy did not have the culture of nationalism that the ANZAC myth gave the Army. Nor did it have the rugged individualism myth which the Air Force has. The Air Force was helped on by the very individualistic Richard Williams as well as the gun-toting fighter pilot ace image. It is probably no surprise that Air Force aces in WWII mounted a mutiny to protest that they weren't seeing enough action. But the conservatism of the Navy can be traced to the conservatism of a political elite who saw foreign policy entwined with security. This is the Great and Powerful Friends doctrine [GAPF] in a nutshell. Since Billy Hughes, every Australian government has placed Australian security in the hands of a super-power. In return Australia makes its foreign policy an extension of the super-power, but Australia also hopes for economic benefits in return. A good example is the Howard Government. Australian defence is an extension of the US military. We buy Abrams tanks, Joint Strike Fighters, LHDs etc etc. Any military excursion the US military is involved in, Australia supports. For instance Afghanistan and Iraq - even if it is not in Australia's direct interest. In return we hope for economic benefits. The recent Au-US FTA was trumpeted as an example of the benefits of our uncritical support of the US in military and foreign policy goals Cultural Syncopation The Navy remains the strongest example of the GAPF in Australia. Frigates have been in the Gulf non-stop since 1991. Other than a short blip when Australian maintained aircraft carriers in the HMAS Sydney and HMAS Melbourne, our blue water projection has not been strong. Even those carriers were not frontline, they would have been relegated to supporting trade routes in any flare up of the Cold War. The Melbourne was also maintained longer than expected due to tensions between Australia and Indonesia. The 1950s saw a cultural fault-line develop between conservative and independent minded Australians. When Dutton and Horne were writing their articles and books advocating a republic, Robert Menzies remained in the grips of anglophilia. Thich included loyalist clap-trap such as, "We love the Queen. We honour the Queen. And through her our greatness as a Commonwealth is emphasised and enhanced." This was when he wasn't telling everyone that he fell in love with her when she was passing by. We cringe at those thoughts today. But this was the conservative political environment that the GAPF and structural basis for the Australian Navy were dreamed up in. Yet despite the Australian people striding this globe with a humble independent self-confidence, the political elite and Navy still have not caught up. Our foreign, military and defence policies remain out of sync with the independent mind of the Australian people. Economic Development This is where Reeve's arguments are the strongest. He writes;
The Navy's contribution to the nation has been tangibly material in its roles as a guardian of seaborne trade and as a producer of industrial infrastructure.The Collins subs, the ANZAC Frigates are modern examples of Australia investing in its local industrial innovation and output. It is sad that we cannot expand this political confidence in the maritime industry to the aerospace industry. We once did, and Australian engineers and scientists responded with designs and innovations that matched Australian strategic needs. That aerospace capability has been lost for over twenty years now. Naval development is also a capital intensive exercise at the research and industrial level. Aerospace differs significantly in that the research component dwarfs the industrial component. Aerospace is more high-tech, rather than big-industrial. This may be related more to the ability of Australian lobbyists to get the construction capability of the naval weaponry being built done indigenously. Reeve notes that at the end of the twentieth century ninety-five percent of Australian trade by volume travelled by sea. I can recall being asked by a former American Marine many years ago why Australia doesn't have such a potent Navy. Given Australia's geographic location and ocean-borders he assumed Australia would be a maritime nation. We aren't. I answered, "We use your navy for that mate." But if brown and blue water trade stability is the reason for our Navy, why are we seeing regional piracy, illegal fishing and even sea-going bandits shooting RPGs at cruise ships? Where are our Frigates, Escort Carriers and naval UAVs in the Celebes, Sulu, Mollucca and Phillipine Seas working with other regional nations to deter this high-seas lawlessness? Once again we hope for the USN to provide it instead. The Lucky League Reeve calls the Lucky League those naval nations which stem from the decline of British naval imperialism;
As the maritime residue of the British Empire, including the United States - in the British Isles, North America and Australasia - the lucky league is effectively an extended family bound by various treaties and by informal but powerful bonds.We are lucky that we are the detritus of a broken empire? This is Donald Horne's thesis in the Lucky Country . It is not by good management, or by good political leadership that Australia is what it is today, it is despite this drag on the nation from the politicians, we have achieved what we have been able to. We have certainly done little to contribute meaningfully to the USN's or Royal Navy's dominance of the oceans. We have been lucky in the same way a cork is lucky in a tide. Without direction, without guidance, or independent input. Reeve is most likely describing the modern view of the Anglosphere. Compare the above statement of Reeve's to a speech made by Robert Menzies in 1954;
... the Crown serves as the legal nexus between all the British countries and all the British people; and that, because this is so, the existence of the Crown converts what would otherwise be a friendly partnership of people with some common interests into an organic structure rising far superior to a partnership of convenience. That is something tremendously important to us. For, although in the history of our race we have had many old and well tried partnerships and alliances, not one of them has had the unique quality which the association between the British peoples all over the world possess.Sounds like the same thing, though Reeve includes the USA in the anglosphere, which Menzies cannot in the Commonwealth. Instead the USA is embraced uncritically through the GAPF doctrine. Reeve writes on the international co-operation of this league making the modern globalised world possible;
It was during the twentieth century that the league made its greatest contributions to international stability and the principle of self-determination through the its roles in the two world wars and the Cold War. Sea power, with is ability to create global efforts, was fundamental to those contributions. Only navies could take Australians to France and Palestine, Britons to North Africa, New Zealanders to Italy, Canadians to Normandy and Americans to the South West Pacific. Only navies could support Russia in the 1940s and surround it in the 1980s. But the league, with its maritime power, has done more than help defeat tyranny. For almost half a millennium it has promoted international contact and commerce, enhanced scientific knowledge and gone on to fight pirates and slavers. It still has its work cut out for it. Its relations with the great powers of Asia and the states of the Middle East will be critical to the future of world peace.Reeve jumps around the fact that 99% of this lucky league as he describes it is the United States Navy. If we are part of the lucky league, it is by six degreees of connection and highly tangential, as opposed to a central or guiding role. Under this description, the Australian Navy isn't really an Australia Navy it is a "lucky league" navy. One that isn't demanded for national defence, or regional projection but for the purpose of slotting in to the nearest great and powerful friend. This is an argument for the GAPF and an anglospheric reading of it as a strategic and national defence policy. Conclusion Reeve brings nothing new to the debate, just an argument for the status quo. If the Navy is supposed to help provide national identity and purpose, the Australian Navy has failed that. According to Reeve, we are part of a lucky league, based on a collapsed naval empire, and where our national naval identity is subsumed by the GAPF. In the entire section of his article on the Lucky League there is no mention of the Australian Navy, just an amorphous international mix of naval assets. The GAPF is more Horne-ish than anything else and a left over of an Australian political demand to subserviency despite federation and self-government. cam
