Source — AITW Ep044 — The United States and the Alliance¶

Episode Metadata¶

Field	Value
Episode number	44
Title	Ep. 44: The United States, and the alliance
Publication date	2020-04-09
Recording date	Early April 2020 (internal reference to "a week or so ago" for recent podcast)
Guests	None (Allan and Darren only)
Allan present	Yes
Format	Thematic deep-dive — the US and the Australia-US alliance; companion to Ep032 (Australia-China)

Summary¶

The long-planned companion to Ep032 (Australia-China relationship), finally recorded once the Democratic nomination appeared settled. Milestone note: 50,000 downloads in 20 months. Darren leads off questioning — Allan explains the format inversion: "your initial angle of view begins from inside the country, from the domestic, and works outwards, while mine starts from events in the outside world and works its way back in." On Trump and COVID: "I really can't remember a global event of this magnitude over the past 50 years in which The United States government has been so absent from a leadership position" — with a deliberate contrast to George W. Bush's $80 billion PEPFAR AIDS relief program ("even another Republican president more than making up for it"). On the ANZUS treaty: Allan deflates it — the language is "not very remarkable," similar to Australia's 1987 Joint Declaration with Papua New Guinea. The real value is the intelligence-sharing framework, defence technology access, and "access and standing in Washington to make our case at the highest levels when we need to that we simply wouldn't have if we were one of the also-ran middle powers." On reputation vs interests: Darren draws the theoretical distinction; Allan partially collapses it — Australia's interests are best served by a US that lives up to its reputation, so the two are not cleanly separable. On the Lowy Poll: trust in the US down from 83% (first Obama term) to 52% (2019), 28% in the 18–29 bracket; but alliance importance holds at ~80%. Allan's worry: four more years of Trump will drag alliance support down with trust. On Australia–US character differences: "America is an idea, Australia is a place. They're romantic, we are sardonic." On the foundational value of foreign policy: "without foreign policy you've got empire." Book disclosure: Darren reveals the podcast subtitle Australia in the World was borrowed from Allan's book Fear of Abandonment: Australia in the World since 1942 (La Trobe University Press) — "part of my cunning plan to persuade you to join me."

Key Quotations¶

"America is an idea, Australia is a place"¶

"Despite that though, no Australian who's lived in the US or even visited for an extended period fails to realise that there are deep differences in the way we look at the world. It's always sort of seemed to me that America is an idea, Australia is a place. They're romantic, we are sardonic, there are reasons for that. The early European settlers in North America set out from the East Coast and found the Great Lakes and the Great Plains, whereas the early European settlers in Australia found the Great Sandy Desert. Americans want government out of their lives, we just want it to be more effective."

— [00:18:01.440 --> 00:21:22.680]

A series of compressed national character contrasts, culminating in a single clean antithesis: "America is an idea, Australia is a place." The Great Plains / Great Sandy Desert geographical explanation is characteristic: he reaches for a historical-material grounding rather than a cultural or ideological one. "They're romantic, we are sardonic" — two adjectives that do more work than paragraphs of comparison. The government formulation is also precise and non-pejorative: Americans want less government; Australians want better government — different philosophies, not a hierarchy. He is not romanticising or disparaging either. Probably his most distilled comparative statement on the two national characters in the corpus.

"Without foreign policy you've got empire"¶

"Foreign policy is what links the US relationship and the alliance in a comprehensive whole and foreign policy is the mechanism through which we manage the different sets of interests we have with both The United States and China. Without foreign policy you've got empire."

— [00:36:11.620 --> 00:37:08.560]

The most compressed statement of Allan's foreign policy philosophy in the corpus. The logic is exact: if you substitute power for negotiation, you've abandoned the management of differences between sovereign states and replaced it with command. "Without foreign policy you've got empire" is not rhetoric — it is the logical terminus of removing the diplomatic mechanism. The sentence is five words and follows a careful build-up through the episode about what foreign policy actually does (manages the US relationship AND the China relationship simultaneously, as a unified process). Characteristic: the long analytical preparation, then the five-word conclusion.

"Access and standing in Washington to make our case at the highest levels"¶

"Far more important for Australia than the rather weak commitment to mutual assistance in the event of attack is the framework and cover which the treaty gives us for exchanges on intelligence and access to high levels of defence technology and one thing that I've always regarded as really important and is often overlooked is that the alliance relationship gives us access and standing in Washington to make our case at the highest levels when we need to that we simply wouldn't have if we were one of the also-ran middle powers of the world jostling for attention in Washington."

— [00:22:35.680 --> 00:24:10.920]

Allan's most complete account of the alliance's practical value — and it is not the mutual defence commitment. He explicitly downgrades that ("rather weak commitment") and names three things that actually matter: intelligence exchange, defence technology access, and diplomatic standing. The third — access and standing — is "often overlooked" and clearly the one he values most. "Also-ran middle powers jostling for attention" is a notably frank description of what Australia would be without the alliance framework. He has been inside this system; this is not theoretical.

"I really can't remember a global event of this magnitude over the past 50 years in which The United States government has been so absent"¶

"I really can't remember a global event of this magnitude over the past 50 years in which The United States government has been so absent from a leadership position."

— [00:10:46.700 --> 00:12:33.760]

A direct echo and slight reformulation of the Ep043 claim ("I can't think of a global crisis over the past 50 years to which Washington has offered so little"). One episode later, the same assessment, slightly differently phrased — "so absent from a leadership position" vs. "offered so little." The consistency across two episodes confirms it is not a one-off; it is his considered verdict. He then adds the PEPFAR contrast (George W. Bush's $80 billion AIDS program) — making the case that Trump's failure is not a Republican failure but a specific administration failure.

"Treaties as someone said last while they last"¶

"Oh look it's always so good to find areas where practice and theory coalesce so nicely Darren that all sounds right to me especially because the ANZUS alliance unlike NATO doesn't compel the parties to do anything at all. Treaties as someone said last while they last."

— [00:26:51.480 --> 00:27:09.780]

Three words after a longer concession. Allan attributes it vaguely ("as someone said") — it may be a known aphorism or a recalled remark from diplomatic experience. The context is his agreement with Darren's theoretical point about the limited compulsory force of the ANZUS treaty; the quoted phrase confirms the scepticism while closing the topic with a wry finality. Characteristic: not dwelling, not over-explaining; a borrowed phrase does the work and then he moves on.

"Our interests are overwhelmingly best served by a United States that lives up to its reputation"¶

"I don't actually think the distinction you draw between reputation and interests actually plays out quite like that. In Australia's case, our interests are overwhelmingly best served by a United States that lives up to its reputation and embodies a particular sort of global leadership."

— [00:15:02.280 --> 00:16:46.520]

Allan's counter-move to Darren's reputation-vs-interests theoretical distinction. The distinction is real in IR theory (states act on interests, not on past reputations); Allan partially collapses it for Australia's specific case — because Australia's interests include the nature of US global leadership, reputation and interests are not fully separable. The move is not a theoretical objection but a contextual application: the distinction holds in some cases, but not for a mid-size country whose security framework depends on the quality of the dominant power's behaviour.

Biographical Fragments¶

Evidence type: Book confirmed — Fear of Abandonment: Australia in the World since 1942

Allan's book: Fear of Abandonment: Australia in the World since 1942 (La Trobe University Press) — Darren confirms it and reveals the podcast subtitle was borrowed from it: "part of my cunning plan to persuade you to join me in creating a podcast was to call it Australia in the World, the subtitle of your book." Allan's response: "Aha, I should have cottoned on." Allan gives the full title and publisher, calls it "essential reading. Moving on." — the self-promotion delivered with deliberate comic brevity. Title confirmed; La Trobe University Press confirmed; subject: Australia's foreign policy since 1942. (Ep044)
Generational formation — Cold War and Vietnam: "For my generation... [that] was forged really at the earliest point by the Cold War and Vietnam. We were more conscious I think of America's changeability but for most of us there was a sense that if you're going to have a global superpower then The United States is better than most." Generational self-placement: Allan's political and analytical formation was shaped by Cold War anxieties and Vietnam. His relationship with the US is neither naïve nor hostile — it is the considered acceptance of an imperfect but better-than-alternatives great power. (Ep044)
"From the beginning of the Lowy poll" — short reference confirming he was closely involved with the Lowy Poll from its inception; the poll's data on US trust vs. alliance importance is something he has tracked longitudinally. (Ep044 — corroborates Ep023)

Style and Method Evidence¶

The format inversion explained: Allan articulates the difference between his and Darren's analytical starting points — "your initial angle of view begins from inside the country... while mine starts from events in the outside world and works its way back in." This is self-aware methodological disclosure, not just conversational housekeeping. He is naming his own analytical bias — external-first — and using it to explain why Darren should lead this episode.
PEPFAR contrast: After condemning Trump's COVID absence ("so absent from a leadership position"), Allan immediately invokes George W. Bush's PEPFAR as a counter-example — not to rehabilitate Bush overall but to demonstrate that Republican administrations are capable of international leadership. Analytical fairness through a specific counterexample.
Deflating the ANZUS treaty language: Allan compares it to the 1987 Australia-Papua New Guinea Joint Declaration of Principles — a deliberate move to de-mythologise the treaty. He is saying: the legal text is not where the alliance lives. The alliance lives in intelligence sharing, technology access, and diplomatic standing. The comparison to PNG is precise and probably surprising to most listeners.
Collapsing the theory into practice: Darren frequently uses IR theory to frame questions; Allan just as frequently finds the empirical case that confirms or complicates the theory. On reputation vs. interests: not a theoretical objection, but an application of Australia's specific structural position.

Reading, Listening and Watching¶

Allan — Ezra Klein podcast interview with Evan Osnos; Peter Hessler New Yorker article on the US Peace Corps in China

"I wanted to recommend an interview Ezra Klein had a week or so ago on his podcast with the fine New Yorker journalist Evan Osnos. It's a really excellent short account if you're looking for one of how and why China-US relations have sunk to what Osnos describes as their worst point since Mao. But then as a companion piece I also wanted to point to an article by another New Yorker journalist Peter Hessler. Hessler was a young Peace Corps volunteer teacher in Fuling on the Yangtze River in the 1990s. In 2001 he published River Town... In this article though that I'm referring to from the New Yorker he's reflecting on the meaning and consequences of the Trump administration's decision to pull the tiny US Peace Corps program — which he notes costs less than the State Department spends annually on membership of the International Pacific Halibut Commission — the decision to pull that out of China. So it's sad and a bit nostalgic."

Two paired media recommendations, not books — a podcast episode and a magazine article. Allan rarely recommends podcasts other than as a reading substitute; this is an exception. The pairing is characteristic: one analytical overview (Osnos on US-China trajectory) and one human-scale particular (Hessler on the Peace Corps withdrawal). The Halibut Commission comparison — the Peace Corps costs less than the State Department's Halibut Commission membership — is a sharp detail Allan spotlights without comment; it does its own work. He also flags Hessler's book River Town (2001) as "a really funny account" of his experiences as an opening-up-era China observer — a reader recommendation folded inside the article recommendation.

Open Questions¶

Fear of Abandonment: Australia in the World since 1942 — when was it published? La Trobe University Press is confirmed but no date given. The book presumably covers Allan's career period and analytical framework in sustained written form. Is it recoverable from the Lowy Interpreter or ANU archives?
Allan's "from the beginning of the Lowy Poll" — does any episode give more specific detail about the poll's founding, methodology, or his pitch to Frank Lowy?
The 1987 Australia–Papua New Guinea Joint Declaration of Principles — Allan cites it from memory. Is he right that the language is as weak as ANZUS? Worth confirming.
"Treaties as someone said last while they last" — source of the attribution? Diplomatic aphorism or specific person?