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Meera Atkinson Australia is often touted as a “peaceful” nation, and many Australian express heartfelt gratitude for living in a country free of mass violent conflict and home turf warfare, a country of seeming plenty where its citizens are free to study, work and prosper, to raise children they can be confident will grow up to adulthood, all in the atmosphere of a generally temperate climate and “relaxed lifestyle”.
But are we as peaceful as we think we are? Professor Kevin Clements, Director of the Australian Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at Queensland University, says it all depends on what definition of peace you’re using. “If you’re using a negative definition like the absence of major armed conflict, internal insurgency and so forth you’d have to say Australia was a peaceful nation compared to the Solomon Islands, Rwanda, or other countries afflicted by civil unrest. But if you have a more positive view of peace, which involves the peace of justice and structural equality and where people have access to high levels of decision making and values around building consensus then I think you’d have to say Australia was deficient because there’s such a huge gulf between non-aboriginal and aboriginal populations in terms of poverty levels, health levels, suicide levels, all of which are indicators of structural violence.” Even when it comes to outright war we’ve seen a lot of action for a so-called peaceful nation. Battles between the “settlers” or “invaders”, depending on your politics, and the indigenous people of the land were commonplace during the colonial period. The most notable of these was the “Black War” in Tasmania, now generally considered to be an act of genocide that resulted in the annihilation of “full-blooded” Tasmanian aborigines. During this period the Australian government also deployed forces to help the New Zealand Colonial government in certain of its conflicts with the Maori people. We then went on to distinguish ourselves as a country prone to following our friends into war: Australian soldiers fought in Sudan, the Boer War, the Boxer Rebellion, World War I, the Spanish Civil War, World War II, Korea, the Malayan Emergency, the Indonesian Confrontation, and the Vietnam War. Our military was part of the international coalition active in the Gulf War, we sent “special forces” to Afghanistan to help fight the U.S.’s “war on terror”, and we committed forces to the controversial Iraq war.
Indeed Professor Clements sees us as a highly militarised society. “It seems to me odd that a country of 20 million people should rank in the top 20 of the world’s military spenders. It’s out of wack with other comparable sized countries.” The argument is commonly put forward that Australia follows Britain and the United States to war out of a need for Anglo-allied security, given that we are a “western” nation in an Asian environment, but Professor Clements says New Zealand is an example of a country that takes an alternative position, one that grants it more independence — and peace. “They didn’t choose to go to war in Iraq but did choose to send some support to Afghanistan,” he says. “Australia likes to think it has huge amounts of influence in Washington, that it has a special relationship, but I think there is a cost.” Professor Clements is correct in pointing to New Zealand as an example of a truly peaceful country. In May this year The Sydney Morning Herald reported on a world study that ranked New Zealand and Norway as the most peaceful nations on the planet. Australia came in 25th, the U.S. 93rd. The study used a systematic measure of peacefulness using criteria such as violent crime, jail population, human rights, deployment of armed forces as well indictors like military expenditure. The Economist Intelligence Unit carried out the research and its editorial director, Robin Bew, said a strong correlation was evident between low levels of corruption and a high level of peace. Our military role in Iraq, a non United Nations-sanctioned war, went along way to putting Australia so far behind its neighbour. And yet despite the spotlight on our involvement many cling to our image as a peaceful country viewing such involvement as necessary to ensure our peace and way of life. Professor Clements points out that on one hand we take great pride in Australia as a great place to live while on the other we are extremely nervous about our security, particularly post Bali and London, and he sees it as an anxiety that gets reflected in a certain amount of xenophobia that Howard’s been very good at tapping into. “That’s the curios paradox in terms of self fulfilling prophecy to some extent,” he says. “Preparations for the worst case scenario are generating conditions that make it more rather than less likely.” He calls the mentality that has grown up over the last four or five years “fortress Australia,” pointing out that it’s an attitude that has become known around the world as “the ugly side of Australia". In his view security lies in the quality of relationships with others rather than in disengagement from others. “For me the notion that a radical of engagement with Asia and the Pacific at a variety of levels and the development of dense interconnections between people is a much more positive way of guaranteeing your security than a hard view of state and the military capacity to inflict pain on those who might do you harm.” Professor Clements, and indeed many Australians, would like to see Australia be more mindful about the company it keeps and the degree to which it allows itself to be influenced by that company. To his way of thinking the way forward is positive diplomacy. Such a shift of focus just might see our rating improve the next time a world study on peace is conducted.
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