Address, Dallas Committee on Foreign Relations
“In it to Win it”
12 December 2024
Dallas, United States of America
In a recent interview with Foreign Affairs, the distinguished author of the End of History, Professor Francis Fukuyama, made an important observation about the nature of representative liberal democracies. He said, "liberal democracy is a political system with two separate parts".
He explained that "democracy really has to do with accountability to populations through elections, hopefully free and fair elections". He then pointed out that "the liberal part has to do with constraints on the power of the state imposed by checks and balances in a constitution and fundamentally by a rule of law that limits what the state can do to its own citizens as it tries to exercise power".
Fair enough, an important distinction. Professor Fukuyama then turned his attention to what he considered to be the real threat of populism. He said, "and in the case of these populists, the real threat is not to democracy, because they are for the most part legitimately elected.
"What they threaten … is much more the liberal part of liberal democracy, that is to say the rule of law. And so they want to skirt the kinds of checks that exist on their power by packing courts, by intimidating journalists, by trying to revamp the bureaucracy so that it will carry out their wishes more fully.
And I think that this is something that is true in every one of these cases where an illiberal populist has been elected. And I expect that's going to happen in the United States."
In less developed liberal democracies, where constitutional settings and liberal institutions have are less mature he can have a point. But to extend his analysis to the United States and the election of President Trump, and imply an equivalency between the institutional and constitutional settings of the US with more nascent liberal democracies, is quite adventurous.
Implicit in his commentary, and common amongst progressives, is the deemed inerrancy of the institutions he charges with providing the guardrails for constitutional liberal democracy. To question the actions of such institutions and those who occupy them, is to apparently question liberal democracy itself. Such institutions are sanctified as untouchable.
However, in free, open and mature liberal democracies, scrutiny and accountability is not reserved for elected politicians. Our courts, journalists and bureaucrats are also accountable, as are our public corporations, their boards and senior executives as well as our religious and charitable institutions. To various degrees they all operate under some form of social license, and are thankfully all subject to the rule of law.
We can no more have blind confidence in the inerrancy of courts, journalists and bureaucrats, than we can in our elected officials. To place our courts, journalists and public servants beyond scrutiny, challenge and reform, especially by elected representatives when they have an electoral mandate to do so, would seem to violate the very principles Professor Fukuyama is seeking to espouse.
Professor Fukuyama's thinly veiled attack on President Trump suggests that his actions, as an elected President, to appoint qualified persons to the US Supreme Court in accordance with the constitutional requirement of congressional oversight through the Senate confirmation process, was somehow an assault on the rule of law and the constitution. This is puzzling. Furthermore, he asserts that when President Trump, as an elected representative, challenges anti-pathetic and even hostile journalistic narratives or seeks to reform the public bureaucracy in order to keep his promises to voters, he is undermining liberalism. To suggest that such actions equate to authoritarian intimidation when legitimately undertaken in a society where there is a proven rule of law, with robust checks and balances, not equally available in other less developed jurisdictions, really does defy credibility, even for someone as esteemed as Professor Fukuyama.
What these comments betray is a blindness to the disconnect that has been occurring between progressive elites who control much of our liberal democratic institutions, whether in the US or Australia - such as media, corporations, academia, bureaucracies - and mainstream society. It also falsely equates the virtue of the institutions themselves with the self appointed custodians of these institutions who presently control them. This in turn is eroding public trust and the moral authority of these institutions.
The dismissal by the citizenry of President Trump's conviction by the courts, intended to delegitimise his candidacy for the Presidency, proved only to demonstrate how perceived abuse of those institutions by political elites in pursuing President Trump, had delegitimised those very institutions. It is ironic that their target was then labelled as the threat to liberalism.
However what Professor Fukuyama describes as populist 'assaults' are not actually challenging liberal institutions themselves, but the unaccountability of elites who presume to determine the orthodoxy within these institutions, and our broader society, and to challenge that orthodoxy.
The elites who now control many of our liberal institutions, have accumulated significant cultural, corporate and political power over the past fifty years. Their authority is the product of their own progressive long march through our liberal democratic institutions, imposing their own values and priorities. Recent political events, at least in the United States, have demonstrated such values and priorities are not synched with those of the broader citizenry.
This is occurring domestically as well as internationally.
Domestically, it is serving to sterilise the dynamism of western market based economies and decommission the little Bourkean platoons fundamental to a flourishing society.
It is also serving to diminish the intrinsic worth of the individual citizen in favour of identity politics driven collectives. In a true representative liberal democracy institutions respect the primacy, integrity and worth of the individual citizen. They understand what Theodore Roosevelt argued was the true measure of national greatness, namely the character of the average citizen.
The visceral and hysterical reaction to Trump 47, both before and after, by the elite class is an acknowledgment of the genuine threat posed to their authority and the potential for the norms they have enshrined being reset. This is not a threat to democracy, as they would protest, or the institutions they occupy. It is in fact the opposite. It is actually a triumph of liberal democracy in action.
So what is this rebalancing in aid of -
● private property rights,
● personal responsibility,
● law and order and the right to personal safety,
● an entrepreneurial economy and market based economics,
● affordable and reliable energy to aid economic opportunity,
● respect for Judaeo Christian moral values and norms,
● equality of opportunity over equality of outcomes,
● sovereignty in all its forms - borders, security, industrial, trade, fiscal;
● fundamental notions of liberty - especially freedom of thought and speech, and
● push back against the encroachment of the state into the lives of citizens.
In the great state of Texas, you may be struggling to appreciate what I am referring to, as you are already benefitting from such a balance. Cherish it.
In this paradigm the state is no longer the answer to all our modern problems. Citizens are, communities are, businesses are. In this paradigm the agency of the state is not used to constrain or disadvantage its citizens to advantage others, but to create a society where the individual, their family and their community can flourish. Fundamental to this proposition is the notion of free choice - to have choices, to be able to exercise them and to be responsible for them.
The same is true of nation states when acting responsibly as part of an international community. Failure to do so only creates opportunities for our shared adversaries and the enemies of freedom, who are on the march.
A new arc of autocracy extending from Beijing and Pyongyang to Tehran and Moscow is now challenging the prevailing rules based international order and to rebalance it in their favour. At stake is the primacy of universal human rights over those determined relatively by autocratic regimes, the rule of law over arbitrary law; the $US as the world's reserve currency and the disciplines of our global financial system embedded in platforms and institutions such as SWIFT, in favour of an alternative, unaccountable and opaque economic system, untouchable by global sanctions, and a haven for criminals and terrorists.
In a speech to the Yomiuri Economic Security Institute in Tokyo earlier this year I noted that a popular misconception is that authoritarian regimes, such as in China, wish to rule the world and become the apex power of the international system. I disagree. They don't necessarily want to rule the world, they just don't want to be ruled by it. Rather than rule the world, they principally just want to rule their part of it, forever and unchallenged. The purpose of autocracies is simple - protect and perpetuate their regime - to hold onto and increase their power at all costs. 1,200 Russian casualties per day in Ukraine proves that point.
The Chinese regime and fellow autocracies have learned they do not need to tear down global institutions such as the United Nations or other international bodies, to undermine global rules and norms, they just need to infiltrate, distract and dilute them. Global institutions with Chinese characteristics. To this end they are having success. They also have witting and non-witting accomplices acting across the international system, supposedly in the name of inclusion, diversity, the climate and championing the global south.
The progressive drift of our global institutions has served to weaken the western liberal democratic values base of our international order, replacing it with economic, political and moral relativism, that is giving license to autocrats. But there is hope.
In October this year, now Treasury Secretary Designate Scott Bessent made the following observation in a fireside chat in relation to what should be a new approach by the US to international organisations. He said "a newly energized muscular Trump 2.0 attitude towards the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade organization, the OECD and others is critical to advance the aim of Americans rather than accept the gradual encroachment of US interest, in service of an unelected international community. If we are going to be in these organisations, we need to be in it to win it".
In 2019 I made a similar observation as Prime Minister of Australia, pushing back against what I described as the negative globalism and infection of global institutions with political and moral relativism, which I believed was contrary to Australia's national interests and the interests of western liberal democratic sovereign states.
Like Secretary Designate Bessent, I believe like minded liberal democracies need to be in it to win it. There is a strategic rivalry underway and we must contest it, and we must contest it together. The greatest asset the US has together with its allies and partners is our ability to band together to resist the illiberal and oppressive forces of authoritarianism that are the enemies of freedom. This is what our rivals fear most.
So before I close I want to highlight three areas where we must do this.
Firstly, like minded allies and partners must work in concert to ensure the effectiveness of global institutions to act in accordance with their foundational values and to frustrate the long march already underway through these institutions by our rivals. We cannot walk away. We cannot allow those who seek to invert these organisations in favour of their agendas to prevail as a result of our yielding to frustration, impatience and disillusionment. Their intent is to wait us out. We need to get back in the game. We must contest the global standards bodies, we must take back the universal human rights agenda, we must call out the masquerade of income redistribution and statism that has hijacked the climate action agenda, in favour of actually finding technological solutions to affordable, reliable energy that is essential for human wellbeing while also caring for our environment.
We must protect the institutions themselves, whether it be the WHO, the WTO, the IMF or the World Bank, while also holding them to account. As Prime Minister I called for a full and comprehensive inquiry into the origins of COVID 19 and felt the full fury of the Chinese regime in response. No such inquiry has ever been properly undertaken, despite a resolution of the World Health Assembly to do so. The impotence of the WHO to act decisively at the time, to properly investigate, to demand information from China, a member state, cost the lives and livelihoods of millions, and could do so again! There has never been any accountability, let alone an apology or even acknowledgement by the Chinese Government for their likely misadventure in the Wuhan laboratory that led to the devastation of the global pandemic. The WHO is no better able today to stand up to the coercion and control that it was clearly subjected to back in December 2019 and January 2020, when China worked to cover its tracks.
I highlight this because the effectiveness of such international institutions matters. They do important work. Similarly the dysfunction of the WTO and its inability to enforce trade rules, of which western nations are complicit, enables nations to disregard such rules. In Australia's case, the China's actions to impose illegal trade sanctions against Australia, when we challenged them over COVID 19, foreign interference, and their incursions in the South China Sea, showed a contempt for global trade rules and the WTO. Even more galling was the suggestion upon removal of these illegal sanctions, that it was an act of benevolence to the relationship, only secured after Australia dropped the actions we instigated against China in the WTO. You should never thank an adversary for ceasing to strike you in the face. They learn from your behaviour.
Now the US may argue that they can protect their interests through retaliatory trade sanctions. That is true. But for US allies and partners confronting the coercion and bullying of autocratic states, such protections strengthen our capacity, and enable us to be more effective partners. To this end there is a shared interest in making the WTO effective.
Secondly, we must continue to act together in smaller partnerships and groups to address our shared economic and security interests. AUKUS, the Quad and Five Eyes are all good examples of practical partnerships designed to achieve shared goals. Mini-laterals and an integrated network of bilateral trade, economic, technological and security arrangements all accomplish the same ends. As like-mindeds, we need to be more connected, not less.
In a post globalisation age of strategic rivalry, like minded supply chains are as essential to economic security as they are national security. Fundamental in this network, is gaining clarity on interoperability. How does it all work when the pressure comes on? This is as important as working out the command, control and coordination of allies and partners assets in the event of a conflict, as it is resisting the temptation to take up market opportunities created by the coercion of an ally.
These relationships must also be more dynamic, agile and responsive. They must not get bogged down in diplomatic activity and protocol. They should be leader led and flexible enough to shift course and address new and emerging challenges. Space, critical minerals, AI, quantum, new energy technologies, control of strategic infrastructure all require collaborative effort, just to name a few, to ensure that advantage is not yielded to those who oppose freedom and promote autocracy as the better way. Similarly, vulnerabilities in places like Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Cambodia and Laos, require more concerted effort to ensure we are contesting for economic and security influence, and not yield such places to our rivals by default. This requires engagement of our private sector and private investment institutions to align with these efforts. These mini-forums and networks are ideally framed to work up coordinated and timely responses in these areas.
Thirdly and finally, it will be important for the US to be clear and consistent about their expectations of allies and partners going forward. This will in turn create certainty, provide a more durable platform for engagement and avoid the recurrence of past disappointments and misunderstandings. These must be fashioned collaboratively and integrate the many different strands of relationship. It is important also for the US to appreciate the role allies and partners can play in strengthening the US. These should not be one sided relationships. The same rationale the US employs to engage allies and partners to pursue security objectives, is also applicable to addressing US economic goals, such as restoring the US industrial base.
The practical demonstration of this is the need for the US to increase the tempo of their production of nuclear powered submarines. This is the only real threat to the US fulfilling their undertakings under the AUKUS agreement. While I'm confident this will be achieved, it is in Australia's interest that we support the US to achieve this task. The success of AUKUS is critical to our collective deterrent in the Indo-Pacific. Any failure of AUKUS would be disastrous and a dream come true for the Chinese regime. We therefore must do the heavy lifting to make it work. That is why we have invested USD 2 billion to boost US submarine production capability. I am not aware of any other US defence partner that is investing in the capability of the US defense industrial base. AUKUS is not a one way street.
This is what I meant when I stood on the south lawn of the White House with President Trump back in 2019 and said that Australia may look to the US, but we do not leave it to the US. This is why I believe Australia's alliance with the US strikes the right balance and serves as a model for other such relationships.
Long may this continue.
