No progress on Assange no surprise when Marles is outsourcing defence to the US

Antony Blinken, US secretary of state, is a liar.

To be specific, his statement at the weekend that Julian Assange’s actions in publishing US cables and defence material “risk[ed] very serious harm to our national security” is a clear, indeed blatant, lie.

Let’s cite the authorities who over the years have confirmed that WikiLeaks’ publication of the Chelsea Manning material, including the Iraq and Afghan war logs, did little or no harm to national security:

• Barack Obama’s defence secretary at the time of the releases, Robert M Gates: “I’ve heard the impact of these releases on our foreign policy described as a meltdown, as a game-changer, and so on. I think — I think those descriptions are fairly significantly overwrought. The fact is, governments deal with the United States because it’s in their interest, not because they like us, not because they trust us, and not because they believe we can keep secrets … Other nations will continue to deal with us. They will continue to work with us. We will continue to share sensitive information with one another. Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward? Yes. Consequences for US foreign policy? I think fairly modest”;
• The US Department of Defense in a secret report obtained by Buzzfeed in 2017: no “significant impact”; “disclosure of the Iraq data set will have no direct personal impact on current and former US leadership in Iraq”;
• Officials of Blinken’s department briefing Congress in 2010: “We were told [the impact of WikiLeaks revelations] was embarrassing but not damaging”;
• US military officials at the trial of Chelsea Manning: “I don’t have a specific example,” when asked to confirm the much-vaunted claim that the releases had placed the lives of US sources in danger.

Blinken knows all this. He worked as an adviser to Joe Biden when the latter was vice president under Obama. Yet he continues to peddle the lie that the Manning material damaged national security. Instead, it exposed war crimes by US military forces — crimes that have never been prosecuted — and exposed the extent to which the US State Department is devoted to advancing US corporate interests.

As a senior member of the Obama administration, Blinken undoubtedly still feels the deep embarrassment that came from the exposure of US foreign policy by WikiLeaks — and the Obama administration’s ferocious war on whistleblowers continues to this day under Biden.

Standing on the other side of Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong from Blinken at the weekend was Defence Minister Richard Marles. Marles would know about the embarrassment of the WikiLeaks material. He was humiliated when he was outed as a US source by a cable from 2009 that showed him to be an overwhelmed and underinformed parliamentary secretary. (Highlight: Marles says he wants Australia to depend less on commodity exports; when asked what other areas he’d like to see exports grow, he can’t think of any.) Marles has hated WikiLeaks ever since, and peddled the lie that the material placed lives at risk.

As Defence Minister, Marles has been Labor’s Peter Dutton, driving the case for big increases in defence spending to counter the alleged threat of China and overseeing Australia’s biggest defence folly since the Iraq War, the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal, which amounts to the outsourcing of a key component of Australian naval defence to the United States.

In this ever-closer integration with the US military, Marles is a happy warrior. Yesterday he revealed another step in the integration of Australia’s defence systems into that of Washington’s: US intelligence officials will be inserted into the Defence Intelligence Organisation to vet our intelligence.

Australia’s signals-gathering systems are already deeply enmeshed in those of the US via the Five Eyes intelligence architecture. The Edward Snowden revelations showed what this actually means in practice: the ASD spying on behalf of US corporations against the trade interests of Australia’s neighbours.

However, the integration of US intelligence officers into our own Defence Intelligence Organisation is a step well beyond spying on behalf of the Americans. Like AUKUS, it’s an example of the outsourcing of Australian defence and foreign policy to Washington in a way that hasn’t been seen since the Iraq War disaster.

It’s clear now why the Albanese government, which insists it has been pressing the Assange case with the Americans, is unable to extract even the slightest concession for an Australian who is guilty only of being a publisher who has done what publishers should do — hold the powerful to account.

From the American point of view, Australia is a vassal state that is eager to hand as much sovereignty as possible to the US. There’s no need for its imperial overlord to give Australia the slightest concession when we hand the US everything it wants. Especially not over a man who deeply embarrassed Washington.

Just ask Richard Marles.

Should Australia just accept the Americans’ response over Assange? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.