Marines in Oz signal U.S. priority shift

DARWIN, Australia — At first glance, there was not any connection between U.S. President Barack Obama’s stated intention last November to establish a permanent, rotating presence of 2,500 marines near this tropical city and U.S. Defence Secretary Leon Panetta’s shock announcement Wednesday that U.S. combat forces expect to quit Afghanistan early, beginning next summer, and would be gone by the end of next year.

But there is.

Washington’s latest Afghanistan twist and the president’s announcement that the marines were coming to Australia underscored how quickly U.S. global military priorities are shifting to the Pacific, where Beijing’s ambitions have become a white-hot issue.

The potential for trouble was made plain when the president flew on Air Force One to Darwin to personally declare that the Leathernecks would set up shop at an army base that is nearly as close to China as it is to Sydney or Melbourne.

Panetta’s Afghanistan pullout declaration and his desire to slash the billions of dollars now spent on mentoring Afghan forces may complicate the work of, and security arrangements for, the 925 military trainers Canada has promised to keep in Afghanistan until spring 2014.

But that was a trivial consideration for Obama, who wants his warriors home fast so he can catch a political bounce this November with war-weary voters.

The military focus is now migrating to Asia, where a new strategic order is being established, with the U.S. and Australia working closely together. Canberra’s strategic concerns were highlighted in the 2009 White Paper on Defence, which concluded that China was a potential direct threat and that the country must have "defence in depth."

The respected Sydney-based Lowy Institute for International Policy said more or less the same thing last year when it declared there was "a real possibility of diplomatic crisis and military confrontation" between China and other Pacific nations "because of over-confidence, national pride, resource pressures and sovereignty disputes."

Although no official would dare say so for the record, the U.S. is developing a containment strategy for China that is somewhat similar to the one it established with NATO more than half a century ago to hem in the Soviet Union, and Darwin is part of that puzzle.

Australia is walking a slippery diplomatic slope because its booming, resource-based economy depends heavily on exports to China. Yet there is strong support here for the kind of collaboration that has been agreed to for Darwin and that the U.S. and Australia have long had at the top-secret Pine Gap intelligence-gathering complex deep in the Outback.

Nowhere is backing for the presence of U.S. forces more obvious than in Darwin, where memories of 64 Japanese air raids on the capital of the Northern Territory during the Second World War are seared into local psyches.

The sacrifice of Australian and U.S. servicemen who fought and sometimes died alongside each other here is recalled today on plaques in a park that looks out towards the Timor Sea. So it was no great surprise to discover that it was an almost universally held view here that "everyone wants the Yanks back and the sooner the better." With the local economy prospering hugely because of big natural gas finds in nearby waters, the motivation for such positive sentiments was certainly not money.

A few Territorians joked that it might mean local pubs recently closed because of high levels of alcohol abuse and rowdy behaviour could reopen.

More of them said they welcomed the return of the Americans because they were still grateful for the U.S. forces under Gen. Douglas Mac-Arthur who helped protect Darwin and used it as a stepping stone to hopscotch across the Pacific on the way north towards imperial Japan.

Despite the Top End’s intense humidity, wild cyclones and flash floods, savage crocodiles and equally dangerous jellyfish and sharks, the marines dispatched to Robertson Barracks will undoubtedly greatly prefer their time close to the First World pleasures and verdant beauty of this port city to the austere, impoverished, extremely dangerous lives they will leave behind when they depart Afghanistan’s dusty Helmand province next year.

As for the renewed Australian-American ties, they will almost certainly prosper, although several folks good-naturedly reminded me of the "Battle of Brisbane."

During that infamous two-day punch-up in 1942, Americans fought Australian troops and male civilians fed up with their guests’ spending power and the great appeal they had for so many young Australian women!

Matthew Fisher is a Postmedia News columnist.