Canberra earns the right to ask to free Assange
Greg Barns says there is little political risk for Anthony Albanese by using his nation’s role in America’s China containment strategy as leverage to resolve the WikiLeaks founder’s case
Could Australia’s position as a key ally, if not the key player, in America’s strategy to contain China give Canberra the leverage to end Washington’s pursuit of the Australian publisher and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange?
Assange has been detained since 2019, after being ejected from the Ecuadorean embassy in London where he was granted asylum in 2012. The US is seeking to extradite Assange over the publication in 2010 and 2011 by WikiLeaks of military and security documents that revealed war crimes and other activities of the US in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
Before the election of Anthony Albanese as prime minister 12 months ago, Australian governments had showed no interest in supporting Assange. But Albanese’s left-of-centre Labor Party has begun diplomatic lobbying of the Biden administration to bring the case to an end – and allow Assange to return to his family and Australia.
Albanese has recently expressed his frustration that there has not been closure. US President Joe Biden’s cancellation of his visit to Australia for a Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) meeting this week was a missed opportunity for Albanese to put further pressure on the US, which he is in a good position to do – given there is precedent and in view of recent China containment policy developments.
There is a precedent from 2007 for Australia calling in a favour from Washington when it was prepared to lend unwavering support to US foreign policy and defence initiatives. Then, an Australian, David Hicks, who was captured in Afghanistan in 2001 and detained at the notorious Guantanamo Bay, was released and allowed to return home, courtesy of a deal between then prime minister John Howard and the Bush administration. Australia’s enthusiastic participation in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts enabled the deal.
The Albanese government is in a similar position of powerful leverage, if it wants to use it.
Australia must be aware that it is a critical component of Washington’s hegemonic determination in the Asia-Pacific
Over the past few years, Australia has established China containment arrangements such as the Quad and Aukus alliance, including agreeing to acquire a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines by the mid2050s at a cost of up to A$368 billion (HK$1.9 trillion). This means that when it comes to seeking a positive outcome for Assange – who faces potentially 170 years in jail if convicted in the US – Australia must be aware that it is a critical component of Washington’s hegemonic determination in the Asia-Pacific.
In a recent radio interview, Australia’s former foreign minister, Bob Carr, made this point: given that Australia has made itself a target in any US-China conflict because of its preparedness to be joined at the hip with Washington’s agenda, it should be insisting that Biden ensures the Assange case ends.
“Here you’ve got an American ally that makes itself a nuclear target by hosting several American communication facilities”, he said, referring to Australia, a nation that, “if this is the real meaning of Aukus, [is committed] to entering war against China on day one of any conflict” and therefore becoming a “surrogate target”.
In this context, Carr argued, Albanese should be emphatically saying to Biden about the Assange case: “You’ve got to trust our judgment on this. You must drop this.”
There is little political downside for Albanese in using Australia’s commitment to America’s China containment strategy as leverage to resolve the Assange case. A recent Sydney Morning Herald poll of readers showed that 79 per cent believe the Biden administration should drop the case.
Perhaps more significant is the change in the attitude of Peter Dutton, the leader of the opposition conservative coalition and a former minister in the conservative governments that were in power from 2014. Dutton, who has previously said nothing publicly about Assange, now supports Albanese’s efforts to bring the matter to a conclusion.
There has been much criticism by past leaders and other senior members of Albanese’s party about the “extent and intent of our commitment to United States’ strategic hegemony in East Asia with all its deadly portents”, as former PM Paul Keating said recently. But as Australia has given Washington exactly what it wants when it comes to China, it surely has the right to demand that Biden instruct US Attorney General Merrick Garland to allow Assange to walk out of London’s Belmarsh prison and catch the first available flight back to Australia and freedom.
Greg Barns is a former Australian government adviser and advises the Assange Campaign