3y 4-~~ fA\ 4~
J!,_ AUSTRAI4
PRIME MINISTER
WEDNESDAY, JULY 8, 1981
SPEECH TO UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINACOLUMBIA
You have asked me here today as the Prime Minister of Australia.
Had I the time and you the patience, there are many aspects of
my country that I could enlarge upon: Australia's role as a
significant, independent-minded middle power; Australia as a
leading member of what people are starting to think of as the
Pacific coammunity, a region which contains the most rapidly
growing economies in the world; Australia as an ally of the
United States, ( and, incidentally, one of only two countries
which have fought alongside America in four major wars in
this century); Australia as the world's leading exporter,
or very near to it, of a range of important minerals iron ore,
coal, alumina, mineral sands, lead, zinc and several others;
Australia as, along with the United States and Canada, one
of-the--wor'Ld's-maj-or--efficient producers and-exporters of food.
But it is another aspect of Australia that I particularly want
to draw your attention to today, for it is pertinent to my
theme. Along with New Zealand, Australia is the only stable
democratic, liberal, Western society in the Southern hemisphere.
While we are thoroughly Western in our values and institutions,
all our neighbours are Third World countries. They belong
to the " South" in terms of the " North-South" dichotomy that is
now widely used, while by almost every test except geography
we belong to the " North". Li vin9 near to these countries and,
I might add, associated closely with many more of them
through the Commonwealth we are of necessity very much aware
of their perspectives and problems, more so perhaps than other
developed countries of th ' e Northern hemisphere. Our situation
requires us to give serious, constant attention to relations
between the West and the Third World.
It is about this subject that I want to talk today. But before
I do let me make one thing very clear. If I concentrate on
these questions on this occasion, it is not because Australia is
indifferent to or complacent about East-West questions, about the
seriousness of the military threat of the Soviet Union to freedom
and democracy in the world. On the contrary, we are most concerned.
-2
Since assuming office in 1975, 1 and my Government have
constantly emphasised the gravity of this threat and the
need for an effective response by the West. We did so even when
belief in detente was in the ascendancy and the views we
expressed were unfashionable and characterised as
provocative.
Now, and none too soon, things have changed, partly due to
the blatant nature of Soviet behaviour and partly to the
remobilisation of will in the United States which
President Reagan embodies. In my talks with the President
last week, I made it clear that Australia profoundly welcomes'
the re-found resolve and firmness of the United States towards
the Soviet Union. As a middle power, Australia will do all
within its means to encourage and support strong and purposeful
American leadership in this respect.
I say with absolute conviction that such leadership from you
is an essential precondition for the security of peace, freedom
and democracy in the world. I say also, and with equal
conviction, that you are entitled to and must receive support
from other democratic Governments in this task.
The American nation has carried a huge burden in defence of
freedohm over the last four decades. Its shoulders are strong.
But itiorally and materially the burden must be shared, shared
by other democracies which have grown wealthier and more
powerful behind the protection you have provided and, in the
case of Western Europe, as a result of the economic help you
gave -_ in, t he -_ imm , dei a , te-post-war years.-( The Marshall Plan still
stands out as a magnificent example of enlightened
self-interest, a definitive reminder that generosity is often
very sound policy.)
We all know now that there is no such thing as a free lunch;
Western countries should also recognise that in the long run
there is no such thing as a free ally. Australia well
understands this. It is because we do, and also because we
owe it to those Australians who fought and died in earlier
wars, that we have spoken out and will continue to speak out
about the need for a concerted effort on the part of the
West. For such an effort is the surest guarantee of peace.
I stress this not only because it is of vital importance in it~ s
own right, but because it is a necessary background to what I
have to say abodt relations between the West and the Third
World. For my position is somewhat untypical.
In the West, those who are tough-minded and realistic about
East-West relations sometimes tend to be sceptical and
dismissive about the Third world and North-South issues.
They are disinclined to take them very seriously.
-3
Conversely, those who are concerned about North-South
issues, who accept they are important, only-too often dismiss
a serious preoccupation with the Soviet threat as outdated,
exaggerated and a diversion from the crucial problem of
managing global interdependence.
I believe that both groups and the either/ or mentality
they represent are profoundly mistaken. I believe that
East-West issues and North-South issues are of the utmost
importance. I believe moreover that the two sets of issues
are closely interlinked, that what happens 7 or equally
important what does not happen with respect to one will have
crucial implications for what happens to the other.
There is no question of choice involved. As a matter of basic,
rational self-interest they must both be attended to and
attended to urgently. As I judge it, the most immediate danger
to guard against at present with respect to relations between
the West and the Third World is that of scepticism and
indifference.
There are thoughtful, honest and responsible people who
maintain that there is really no such entity as the " South"
or the " Third World", that it is merely the figment of the
imagination of intellectuals, ideologues and journalists.
They Point to the heterogeneity of the Third World, the
great differences which exist among its claimed members, to
their disparate and conflicting interests. And they conclude
that there is no substance behind. the-jabels, . They maintain
_ th erefor etha't Western -dealings with the countries involved
should be bilateral and selective and that we should refuse
to accept the notion of a North-South dialogue.
There are others who say that even if there is some substance
there, it is fast disappearing as memories of colonialism
fade and as a significant number of Third World states become
more developed and wealthy. They anticipate a process of
" graduating out' which will leave the Third World an
increasingly unimportant rump. On this basis, they argue
that what the West should do i~ s to stall and play for timeto
keep issues " on the back-burner" as the saying goes in
anticipation that pressure and demands will diminish with time.
Most important of all, perhaps, there are those who maintain
that even if the'Third World exists and continues to exist, it
need not be taken too seriously. The advantages, they claim,
are all with the developed industrial countries.
You remember that Stalin once contemptously asked the question,
" The Pope? How many divisions has the Pope?" These people
take a similar attitude towards the Third World. -Overall, they
point out, it is poor, it lacks political and military power, it
is dependent on Western capital, know-how, aid and managerial
capacity. It needs us much more than we need it. / 4
-4
Therefore, they complacently conclude, we can afford to
resist its demands, to drive a hard bargain or, indeed, to
refuse to make any bargain at all. I believe all these views
to be profoundly mistaken.
Everything that is said about the diversity and conflicting
interests of Third World countries is true. But as well as this,
and despite it, there is also a real sense of identity, of
unity and solidarity among these countries.
You may recall that it was said of the Holy Roman Empire that it'
was not holy, Roman or an empire; yet it was a potent actor-in
European politics for centuries. In the same way, the Third World
is today a potent reality despite its internal diversity and
divisions. That reality is evident in the voting patterns of
the United Nations. It is evident in the institutions that the
recently independent countries have forged for tlxemselves,
particularly the Group of 77 and the non-aligned movement.
It is evident in the degree of support the now oil-producing
countries have given OPEC despite their interest in low oil
prices; in the willingness of non-African states to support the
Africans in their opposition to South Africa and apartheid; in
the willingness of non-Arab states to support the Arabs over
Palestine; in their ability to agree on the programme for a new
international economic order. It is evident most of all in their
ideology.
-Those-who-dismiss.-this.-ideology-as " merely rhetoric" are, I
suggest, ignoring the overwhelming and cruel evidence which this
century has provided of the decisive importance of ideology in
modern politics. I agree with Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan
that " the beginning of wisdom in dealing with the nations of the
Third World is to recognise their essential ideological coherence"
For in political terms the Third World is essentially a state
of mind: a matter of shared memories, frustrations, aspirations
and sense of what is equitable and just. Like the working classes
in the domestic politics of the 19th century, they want to have
full citizen rights in the world, to be subjects who act rather
than objects who are acted upon: Just as Stalin was foolish in
overlooking the spiritual power of the Papacy, so it would
be foolish to underestimate the binding and motivating force of
this aspiration in the Third World.
As to the claim that the Third World will disintegrate before long,
that there will be a'" graduating out", I simply observe that
twenty years after the main wave of decolonisation there is no
evidence of it. Many Third World countries have made great economic
progress in that time some have transformed themselves but none
has sought, as a result, to disassociate itself fromi the group
or shows any sign of doing so.
Surely, if there were substance in this thesis of a natural
" graduating out" process there would be some evidence to support
it by now. In this respect I am sceptical of the sceptics. The
Third World, or the " South", exists and is likely to continue to do
so for the foreseeable future.
But is it important? Should the West take seriously what it
represents? My answer to that is an emphatic " yes". In economic.
terms, something of the order of 25 per cent of the West's entire
trade is with the Third World. In the case of the United States the
figure is over 40 per cent and in the case of Japan 50 per cent.
This means that hundreds of thousands of jobs in Western countries
depend on this trade and that the serious unemployment we are now
experiencing would reach crisis proportions proportions which
would threaten tL-he existence of democracy itself if it was
disrupted.
There are manv in this audience and there are many In my own country
who can remer~ ber the demoralising effect of the mass unemployment
that occurred in the 1930s. In my own country over 30 per cent of the
workforce was jobless during the worst period. A recurrence of
unemployment on that scale would threaten the existence of
democracy itself. Rising living standards and growing markets in
Third World countries may play a critical role i n ensuring that
we do not.. In addition, of course, the trade we have with the Third
World involves commodities which are vital to Western economies
and societies.
Oil is the clearest and most important example, with 60 per cent of
the world's oil coming from a handful of Third World countries.
Out of conviction or prudence, or a mixture of both, those countries
have shown themselves unwilling to divorce the question of oil from
other matters of concern to their fellow members of the Third World.
Beyond this there is the fundamental point that the West's
commitment to a global market system requires and depends on the
participation of the 120 or so countries of the Third World, over
two thirds of all the countries which exist in the world.
One should not talk of these economic relationships purely in terms
of potential danger. The language of opportunity is equally relevant.
Over the last decade a number of Third World countries the so-called
newly industrialising countries have sustained growth rates well
in excess of those achieved by the rest of the world, including the
West. By doing so they have prevented the world recession from being
much more severe than ~ it would otherwise have been. Insofar as
this vigorous growth is * maintained and extended to other Third World
countries, insofar as countries which are now clients, through rising
living standards, are converted into customers and consumers, the
economies of the West will benefit. And insofar as this does not
happen they will be impoverished. / 6
-6
This is why it is essential that, in its dealings with the
Third World, the West should be true to its faith in the market
system, should allow the newly industrialised countries access
to its markets and should reject firmly the temptation to resort
to protectionist measures which deny those countries the rewards
for their own efforts and enterprise. In saying this I am
emphatically rejecting the Marxist notion that the prosperity of
the West depends on the impoverishment of the Third World.
Thomas Jefferson's observation that " it is a kind of law of nature
that every nation prospers by the prosperity of others" seems to
me to be much closer to the mark and a much better guide to policy.
Australia is in as good a position as anyone to appreciate all this.
We happen to live in a part of the world where-many of these newly
industrialised countries are concentrated, countries whose economies
have been growing at twice the world average, or better, over
recent decades. They together with Japan, which iuo many respects
has provided a model for them have proved invaluable to Australia
at a time when structural changes were threatening our traditional
markets in Europe. They have made possible a remarkable change in
our pattern of trade.
Of course, it is true that if the West is dependent on trade wi th
the Third World,-the Third World is even more dependent on trade
with the West. Over 70 per cent of its trade is with the developed
industrialised countries. But it is a serious error to assume, as
some do, that bec-ause of this or for that matter because of the*
substantial OPEC investments in the West the Third World can be
taken for granted, that in the last resort it has no option but toco-
operate with the West on Western terms.
The basic error here is to assume the primacy of economic
rationality over politics, an assumption that runs counter to the
fundamental experience and character of the Third World. We would
do well to remember the advice given by President Nkruxnah of
Ghana to African nationalists: " Seek ye first the political
kingdom". We would do well to remember too Sukarno' s " go to hell
with your aid", uttered when the economy of Indonesia was a shambles
and when it desperately needed all the American aid it could get.
For these words represent widespread and deep-seated attitudes in
the Third World.
More recently, despite its irrationality and intolerance, what
has happened in Iran has pointed to the same lesson: the lesson,
that is, that many cou'ntries in the Third World will not hesitate
to sacrifice their own immediate economic interests for political
reasons of status, independence and what they believe is justice.
./ 7
7
Those of us who fail to understand the force of this, do so only
because we have forgotten our own history because we have
possessed freedom and independence for so long, have come to
take them so much for granted, that we do not recall the
passionate intensity of feeling they invoke when they are newly
acquired. But the author of the Declaration of Independence
understood that feeling and shared it. " By the God that made me",
he wrote in 1775, " 1 will cease to exist before I yield to a
connection on such terms as the British Parliament proposes".
That, or something very like it, could have been said by many Third
World leaders in our time.
It is also worth contemplating the potential power of the weak, of
those who feel they have little left to lose the power to threaten
collapse, disorder and chaos.-This is a potent power against
those who have a large stake in stability and efficient working of
the existing order. In this respect, the question that should be
asked is not whether the Third World could conceivably reject the
existing system and establish a viable one of its o~ fi, but how
much damage would be done in any attempt to do so.
Edmund Burke said it better when he observed, in the process of
cautioning Britain on its treatment of the American colonies,
critical moments in the fortunes of all states, when they who
are unable to contribute to your prosperity may be strong enough
to complete your ruin." Today, all the Western countries need
to heed that advice.
Apart from all this, there are compelling strategic and geopolitical
reasons for taking the Third World seriously. Some of the most
sensitive areas in the world the Middle East, the Caribbean and
Central America, Southern Africa, the Korean peninsula are
Third World areas. Most of the key " choke points" in the world
the Straits of Hormuz, the Panama Canal, the entrances to the
Red Sea, the passages from the Indian Ocean to East Asia lie
within the Third World. Over and above this, East-West rivalry
has been and is largely fought out in the Third World and the West
is extremely sensitive, rightly so, concerning any significant
gains made by the Soviet Union in the Third World.
Moreover, despite its poor overall record in providing aid to
developing countries, the Soviet Union can exploit tensions in
relations between the West and the Third World. Given the
unprecedented military strength it has at present, the Soviet
Union is likely to make' a particular effort in this respect
during the next few years.
If the West is concerned to prevent these efforts from succeeding
there are several things it should do. First, it should act to
ensure that Third World perceptions of the East-West conflict
are not of a declining West and an ascendant Soviet Union. For,
as a political leader of a country allied to the United States once
succinctly put it on returning from a visit to Moscow, " no-one
wants to be caught on the wrong side". / 8
-8
Secondly, the West should act in ways which minimise the
need for Third World countries to contemplate turning to the
Soviet Union in order to get the aid and assistance they
desperately need. That in turn means maintaining a constructive
and forthcoming relationship which does not systematically
frustrate Third World hopes.
Thirdly, the West should do what it can to emphasise and show
understanding of the economic dimensions of Third world affairs
and the development aspirations of the Third World; for as long
as the principal issues are economic the Soviet Union is not in the.
race as a competitor to the West.
What is needed, in other words, is an integrated policy which
combines a stress on restoring, and then maintaining a military
balance which can preserve world peace and a positive attitude
towards economic relations with the South.
I repeat, there is no real choice involved between these two
components of policy. Both are essential. So far, I have
deliberately concentrated on making the case, for a serious
Western concern with the Third World in terms of direct political
and economic self-interest, for that case has to be established
if Wlestern Governments are to respond. But that does not mean
that I do not recognise other aspects and arguments. I should
like to mention two of these.
First, there are the altruistic, humanitarian dimensions of the
problem. We shculd never forget the extent of the stark human
suffering that is involved in the Third World, never allowannoyance
at ithe posturing and hypocrisy which sometimes
characterises North-South relations to obscure it.
According to the World Bank, not a body given to emotional
exaggeration, 800 million people are living in conditions of
" absolute poverty" in the Third World. The infant mortality rate
in low income Third World countries is twelve times as high as
it is in Western countries. Life expectancy in them is still
under 50 years. Thousands are dying every week from malnutrition
and outright starvation.
As a society which holds Christian and humanitarian values, we must
be diminished and damaged as long as we continue to live in a world
where such conditions are commonplace. It is not a question of our
masochistically accepting guilt for creating these conditions; that
is an absurd oversimplification of the historical record. It is a
question of our responsibility, in terms of our own professed values
rather than of the demands of others, to work for the abolition of
these intolerable conditions. And, again, of our interest in seeing
them abolished.
My second observation is that, even apart from the claims of the
Third World, there is another dimension of international relations
which points to a clear and urgent need for action. This is the one
covered by the now familiar phrase " the management of interdependence" / 9
9-
It is true that in recent years the case for this has sometimes
been overdrawn and it is foolish to maintain, as some have done,
that this task somehow renders obsolete the traditional concerns
of power and national interest. But even after this exaggeration
has been discounted, the basic case is sound enough.
The trebling of the number of states in the world; the very rapidO
increase in the volume of transactions among these states;
revolutionary changes in communications, transport and other
technologies; much greater demands and pressures on man's physicaL
environment; the emergence of trans-or multi-national corporations
as a major force in international economic relations: all of these
point to the necessity for developing multilateral negotiating
processes to deal with the new and unprecedented complexity and
to respond to the new awareness of global environmental problems.
The quality of the world in which our-children will live will
depend crucially on whether we succeed or fail in-this respect.
But improving the management of interdependence and the North-South
dialogue are intimately linked and progress in one depends on
progress in the other. They must be approached as parallel
enterprises. If the second is stalemated so will the first. At
present the North-South dialogue is stalemated. The global
negotiations which were to be held have been postponed and
postponed again. There is little evidence at present of the
political will necessary to break that stalemate and to initiate
progress. As I have indicated I believe that there are compelling reasons why
the effort to marshal that will must be made. There will be
opportunities to make that effort in the near future: in the
Ottawa Sunmmit this month; at the Commonwealth Heads of Government
Meeting which I shall chair in Melbourne in October; and at the
summit meeting in Mexico on North-South issues shortly afterwards.
If these oppor-tunities are not seized, if by the end of the year
no progress has been made, the outlook will be very bleak indeed
and the last decades of this century will promise tension, frustraltion
and instability rather than hope. The Western nations should seize
these opportunities.
In doing so I suggest that there are a number of guidelines we
should follow if we are to succeed:
First, and fundamentally, we should accept and take seriously
the reality of the outh or the Third World as . a political presence
on the world stage.
Second, we should accept that, given the great transformation that
has occurred in the world in the past 40 years, significant changE! s
in international institutions and processes are inevitable. The
question is whether these changes are to be orderly, negotiated
ones or imposed by disruption and breakdown.
10
Third, substantively we should adopt an innovative, constructive
attitude towards the North-South dialogue,. rather than be reactive
or passive, leaving all the initiative to the Third World. For
we have very important interests of our own in seeing progress
made. Fourth, procedurally the efforts of the West should be directed-'
to forging more effective and efficient forms of multilateral
negotiations, rather than to avoiding, delaying or frustrating
them.
Fifth, if we want to retain credibility we should not play fast
and loose with our commitment to the market economy. We should
not preach it in order to dismiss Third World claims while
simultaneously pleading special circumstances to justify exceptions
in our own case. If exceptions can be made for our needs, why notfor
those of the Third World? Conversely, if it is an overriding
commitment, why not apply it in dealing with the ' Third World's
claims for access to markets?
Sixth, we should always bear in mind the interrelationship betweeL
North-South and East-West issues and not treat them as two separate
categories. Success in dealing with the Soviet Union will always
require the -maintenance of a military balance. But in the middle to
long term-. it will also depend significantly on the resolution of
North-South differences. If Third World leaders come to us for the
teachers, the advisers, the technologies, the capital, and in some.
cases the political support they desperately need; if they make it
evident that, given a choice, they do not want to deal with the.
monolithic bureaucracy of the Soviet Union, that they are suspicious
of its demands for political association as the price for aid; and
if we still refuse to respond to them then we do so at our own
peril and the consequences should come as no surprise. The needs
of the Third World are such that, in the last resort, it will turn
for assistance to wherever it is available, rather than go without.
The West must ensure that that last resort is not the Soviet Union.
Seventh, we should act in such ways as to support and strengthen
the moderate elements in the Third World. Those elements which
seek co-operation and want to achieve accommodation with us. Too
often in the past we have behavea in ways which weaken the moderates
and strengthen extreme forces hostile to us.
Eighth, as well as working to reinvigorate the North-South dialogue,
each of us should do'what is within our means, bilaterally and
regionally, to contribute independently towards improving the
prospects of the developing countries and relations between them
and the West. Important as the North-South dialogue is, everything
should not be made to wait on it.
Ninth and last, we should work on the assumption that time is a
wasting asset, that the longer the delay in addressing them the more
intractable will the problems become. / il
11
I should make it clear that in advancing these principles, I
am not suggesting that it only the West which must revise its
attitudes and behaviour if progress is to be made. The same is
true of the Third World and I hope that there will be voices
in it which will urge a moderate and constructive approach.
Neither am I suggesting that the developed countries should
simply accept the package of demands made by the Third World.
Rather that the approach should be a positive one which seeks
to identify what is justified and sound in the Third World case
and respond to it. In that process wider criteria than economic
rationality should be employed because more than economic interests
are involved.
In conclusion let me say that to respond to the North-South
dialogue adequately we must be prepared to see it in broad
historical perspective. In little over a generat-ion, over a
hundred new countries have come into existence. Nearly all of
them have a colonial past. Nearly all of them are very poor compared
with Western countries how poor it is difficult for us in our
prosperity to conceive. Think of how long it takes you to spend $ 200;
then contemnlate that there are over one billion people in the world
whose average annual income is less than that amount.
Again, and equally important in political terms, all these
countries are deeply concerned about their place in the world,
their dicani-tv, status and influence. These countries and their
needs have to-be accommodated, and accommodated in a world which
is simultaneously becoming smaller, more crowded and more complex.
The conditions must be created which give them opportunities to
break the grinding circle of poverty in which they are caught.
There is much they can and must do for themselves. But simply tc
tell an under-nourished man who is working hard, arid, poor soil
with a wooden plough, in the certain knowledge that his crop will
be at best meagre and there are millions of such men simply
to tell him that he must work harder and show more enterprise
is insulting and dangerous nonsense. We cannot solve the Third
World's problems; but we can help to create the conditions under
which they can be tackled with some hope of success; and perhaps
only we can.
This is essentially what the North-South dialogue is about and
the atmospherics and frictions of day to day events should not
be allowed to obscure it. Developing the statecraft and the wil.
to achieve this accommodation is one of the decisive challenges
of our time. It is not an easy challenge to meet. It lacks the
drama and crisis of war and political confrontations. It invites
the resigned answer that " the poor are always with us". if
we fail, the effects are unlikely to be immediately catastrophic,
they may not be felt this week or this year. But, make no mistake,
they will be felt and felt with cumulative force over the next
decades, and we will be cursed by our children for our shortsightedness,
our selfishness, our failure to seize opportunities
in good time. / 12
4 4 12-
Mr President, before I came to the United States on this visit I
had been told that the current mood of the. American people was
not receptive to accommodating the Third World. Given the burden
that you have carried in world affairs and given also the need for
that renewal at home which President Reagan called for in his
inaugural address, I could understand that some might feel like
that. I will not presume to assess the American mood on the basis':
of a brief visit, though I can say that I did not find indifference
or lack of understanding in Washington last week. In any case, I
believe that there are certain periods in history when timely and
bold adjustments to new forces are necessary to forestall convulsion,
disarm revolution and preserve peace. I believe also that
conciliation and magnanimity are usually sound policy.
At the tir~ e of the dispute between England and the American people
in the 18th century, a dispute not without relevance to the
contemporary situation, one of the wisest and most penetrating
of political observers said: " It is not whether -you have the
right to render your people miserable, but whether it is in your
interest to m~ ake them happy. It is not * what a lawyer tells me I
may do; but what humanity, reason and justice tell me I should do.
Is a political act the worse for being a generous one?"
In the 19th century, the countries which enjoyed domestic peace
were thcse who responded in good time to the aspirations of the
new working classes and adopted democratic political institutions.
In our lif etine we have the evidence of the magnificently generous
A-merican response represented by the Marshall Plan to novel and
dangerous circumstances. It is worth recalling, too, the enlightened
recognition of and response to the " wind of change" in Africa which
in a matter of three or four years transformed a continent of
colonies into a continent of independent states with minimum
bloodshed. I believe profoundly that we are now at a turning point in
global history which is at least as critical and important as
these great episodes I have referred to. The magnitude of the
problems, the scale of the adjustments necessary, the vision
required should be conceived in these terms. Mr President, ladies
and gentlemen, for the sake of this and succeeding generations, I
trust that they will be. o000000000---