Reassessing Australia’s policy towards European integration

The security dimension

Monash European EU Centre, 26.4.2013

Intro 1

• OZ attitudes towards European integration have attracted growing attention

• There is now a large body of literature on OZ/EU relations

• In this context some themes have

Received significant attention

Others have been neglected

• Trade/economic issues

Economic/trade implications of UK’s entry into EEC

Impact of EU agricultural protectionism on OZ economy

• Strategic/defence issues

Intro 1

Intro 2• I argued that strategic/security issues:

Have played an interesting role in shaping OZ attitudes/perceptions towards EU

• More specifically, I argue that while trade issues were uppermost in OZ minds, defence & security were not neglected in early years

OZ was concerned that UK’s “enmeshment” with WE would

Lead to a gradual UK disengagement from SEA

UK departure would create a vacuum in an area of great interest to Australia

• In addition, we should not forget that in age of decolonisation, the Six

Had lost interest in Asia

Too preoccupied (or absorbed) by the ongoing process of Euro integration

Hence, OZ sceptical that a more integrated WE would become a credible interlocutor on defence

Intro 2

• As Euro integration took off, OZ began to consider impact on its security in SEA

• In the early 1950s the Six embarked on bold plan

EDC Treaty (May 1952)

• Australian response was muted

• Collapse of EDC not without potential consequences for OZ

UK pledge to keep 4 divisions in WE

Troops tied down in Europe at the expense of Far East

Australia and the EDC

• In early 1960s Oz was again forced to consider impact of EEC on its security interests in SEA

• Catalyst for reappraisal was the news that UK sought membership

• British entry generated anxiety in Canberra

• Uppermost in OZ minds was the negative impact of entry

Commonwealth cohesion

Anglo-Australian trade

• But other considerations weighed heavily: UK role east of Suez

Australia and the EEC: strategic implications

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“[first: by joining a Western European bloc, the UK would see its freedom of action as a world power curtailed and …]

would also lose both the interest in maintaining, and the ability to maintain, an effective strategic role in the world beyond Suez, where Australia’s defence interests lie”

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“[Hence, the departmental view was that London would be inexorably]drawn into the acceptance of the strategic priorities of its Continental partners ... and into presenting a common European front upon these matters to the rest of the world — which would include Australia and New Zealand”.

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“[As External Affairs concluded that] The United Kingdom may or may not seek to move her European partners to give a higher priority to Asia. In a sea of speculation, the prudent estimate for Australia to make is that the European Community will resist giving this area a high priority; that Australia will have a limited capacity to move European policy in this direction”.

• French veto ended UK bid, but OZ concerns did not fade away

• OZ concerns powerfully resurfaced in 1966-67

• OZ govt feared that UK would use application as a pretext

to withdraw from East of Suez

Or to “find an alternative locus of power”

• Wilson did not bring UK into EEC, but withdraw from E of S

• When UK applied in 1970, Oz was no longer apprehensive of defence implication of EEC enlargement

• If anything, OZ govt began to glimpse possibilities for greater OZ-EEC cooperation

Australian concerns

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“[As the Australian Ambassador in Brussels O.L. Davis perceptively pointed out in a memorandum to the DEA in June 1970]  the significance of the increasing integration of the Communities, commercially, economically, monetarily and ultimately socially and politically, is likely to be that its influence as a world entity will grow substantially over the years”.