For The Byron Echo, April, 2005

What use is the American Alliance? It's left us high and dry in Iraq with everyone else leaving. It's associated us with a President widely thought to be a bumptious god-bothering fool. Though America is a superpower with armies in the region, it hasn't lifted a finger to save our sacred site Gallipoli from the steam shovels. It hasn't saved the Bali Nine from the threat of the firing squad. It hasn't brought home Shapelle Corby. It hasn't brought home David Hicks. It hasn't brought down the price of oil. If Indonesia invaded, and surely this is the point of the alliance, would it send in the helicopter gunships and the bunker-busters to save our skins? I doubt it.

It's partly because America isn't much regarded, or feared, by anybody any more. Sharon does what he wants. Putin does what he wants. Mushareff does what he wants. Berlusconi pretends he doesn't know them. Tony Blair is concealing all photos of him and George Bush. New Zealand defies them. Spain, Portugal and others have brought their troops home. This is because, I suspect, of the new nature of power in a global world. It doesn't grow out of the barrel of a gun any more. It grows out of a record of perceived success.

So when America seemed successful -- in Haiti, in Kosovo, in Afghanistan, in the first days of the Iraq war -- it had power. Now it seems to be failing in Iraq, in the oil price wars, in the currency wars, in the votes on the UN floor for international respect, its power is less, and it's growing daily weaker. It's so far gone its President can't even save Terri Schiavo from euthanasia in Florida, or get his chosen idiot UN ambassador approved by Congress. It can't scare one extra barrel of oil out of the Saudis. Because America's on the ropes, and the Saudis know it. As in The Emperor's New Clothes, bluster covers nakedness for only a while. Even Rumsfeld is saying, 'It's not about winning.' Which means, I guess, it's about losing, as in Korea, with some simulation of honour.

How did the world's only superpower stuff up so badly? In the usual way, I guess, by scorning, like Hitler, wise advice. Don't go to war with too few soldiers, the advice ran. Don't spend a trillion dollars needed elsewhere. Don't go into half a billion dollars of deficit. Don't go into Iraq unless you know a way out. Check out the WMDs before you go. Don't kill twice as many civilians as Hiroshima. Don't kill 20,000 children, ever. Don't do things that might set oil wells blazing and prices rising. Don't tell friendly allies they're your enemies. If you torture people, don't take photos. Make sure nobody loots the great museums.

They didn't take the advice. And the net result is America is now a blind, stumbling giant bellowing about its vision. And nobody's listening much any more except for, yes, Australia. We're even signing up to Star Wars, that boyish Reagan fantasy nobody believes in. We make more friends by cosying up to Mugabe.

Will America, then, be there when we need an ally? On their record, no. The South Koreans, the South Vietnamese, the Lebanese, the Nigerians watch them scurry away. The Kurds believed they'd come, and they didn't. The Rwandans believed they'd come, and they didn't. The Taiwanese believed they'd come, and they didn't. The Sudanese of Darfur are still waiting. Their record is one of supersalesmanship and treachery. They talk a good war, and leave early, or fail to arrive. Every life we expend on their promise of help is usually wasted. And in the meantime, barking their slogans under their armpit, we've lost the respect of the world. Do we need an ally like this? Why not get a good one?