Around 1,200 Australian military personnel will remain in Iraq from an invasion force of 2,000. This commitment of resources by Canberra, a junior imperialist power, is one of its largest ever non-war military deployments. The Australian forces that will remain in Iraq include a task force of 250 commandos, an engineering company, and troops with light armored vehicles for security and logistical support. Two C-130 Hercules transport planes and two P-3C Orion surveillance aircraft will stay too. A team of 50 military air traffic controllers and the frigate HMAS Sydney have also been dispatched. Fifteen civilian and military experts will join the US-led search for "weapons of mass destruction," part of the original cover for the imperialist assault.

Howard said his government had an eye on the stability of the region, "but also to our own national interest in terms... of commercial interests." Since World War II, Canberra has consistently gone to war alongside Washington, seeking to protect the profitable place of Australian big business in the world.

Now, despite being part of what U.S. president George Bush termed the "coalition of the willing," in the war on Iraq, Canberra is scrambling to get a foothold in the trade rivalries that have become fiercer in the aftermath of the war.

An article by Peter Shabolt in the April 25 edition of The Australian, a national daily, was candidly titled "And Now for a Share in the Spoils of War." The article said that because Canberra joined the US-led war, "Australian businesses... are better placed than ever to take advantage of the Iraqi carve up," including the "gold rush" to rebuild Iraq’s bombed infrastructure.

The author admitted, however, that Australian corporations had "so far gained just one subcontract." Despite trips to Washington by a procession of Australian government and business figures lobbying for a larger share of the loot, lucrative reconstruction contracts were being "stitched up," he wrote, "by a select group of U.S. construction companies with White House connections."

The article in the big-business paper pointed to "the real spoils of war" as being "a favorable outcome to the Free Trade Agreement [FTA]" currently being negotiated between Canberra and Washington. "With Iraq another notch on Australia’s rifle butt," there is "breathless optimism" among Canberra’s pro-FTA politicians, according to Shadbolt.

The author warned, however, that "the US does not have a long history of generosity when it comes to open agricultural markets." Canberra also has a long list of protected agricultural and other markets, despite waving the "free trade" banner.

U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, interviewed April 30 on the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s current affairs program Lateline, predicted "tough negotiations" over the FTA.

An Australian wheat shipment waiting off Iraq during the war became part of this competitive play for inside running on trade deals. It was diverted to Kuwait as the war ended for milling under the reactivated UN "oil-for-food program." Australian officials were jubilant that their wheat beat out a U.S. "aid" shipment loaded with much fanfare in Texas, April 3, which arrived weeks later.

Iraq is Australian capitalism’s third largest trading partner in the Middle East, and part of its fastest growing regional export market there in everything from wheat to cars. The Iraqi wheat market alone has been worth almost a billion Australian dollars annually (U.S. $630 million).

Now, despite marching in step to war, Canberra and Washington have growing trade frictions, especially over agricultural commodity markets.

US Wheat Associates, which lobbies for markets for the U.S. grain giants, has complained on its website about the Australian Wheat Board (AWB), a government-backed unified trading body. The U.S. group scored the AWB’s "wheat contract... with Saddam’s regime," adding that "folks at the AWB [have] mercantilism on their minds during this most dangerous time."

Australia’s foreign minister Alexander Downer said in Washington at the end of March he hoped to ensure that Australian wheat sales to Iraq would not be undercut by subsidized U.S. wheat. After talks at the end of April with U.S. secretary for agriculture Ann Veneman, Australia’s trade minister Mark Vaile said the respective governments had agreed that their grain industries and traders would "operate and compete transparently in markets across the world without intervention or support."

Shortly before Vaile’s trade mission arrived in the United States, Alan Tracy, head of US Wheat Associates, attacked the AWB over its hold on the Iraqi market. Referring to significant U.S. wheat exports to Iraq before the Gulf War of 1990–91, Tracy said "we hope to pick up where we left off."

Speaking about these sharpening trade conflicts, Canberra’s industry minister Ian Macfarlane bluntly expressed the contradictions for Australian rulers in a recent TV interview. "When we went with the Americans into Vietnam... they stole our wheat markets," he said. "They did exactly the same thing in the Middle East when we went into conflicts with them there."

Ron Poulsen is a member of the Maritime Union of Australia.  
 
 
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