While Foreign Minister Bob Carr advises us that he has been consulting with Australia's "traditional friends" regarding our candidacy for a stint on the UN's Security Council, one wonders what he is doing about the remainder of the UN membership.
The rest of the world has great difficulty differentiating between Australia's foreign and defence policy, and that of
the US. African, Middle East and Asian members of the UN, in particular, are aware that Australia never votes diff
erently from the US.
Canada, Malaysia and Indonesia are countries whose ties to the US are as strong, or stronger, than Australia's.
Remarkably, each of these countries has been able to publicly differ with the US on major issues such as Iraq, Afghanistan and China, while su
staining a healthy relationship with the US. Only Australia has reduced the tenor of its relationship to that of being a lickspittle for the US.
Paul Varsanyi
Kambah
