Information Related to "Australia's Identity Crisis: A Foretaste of What's to Come?"
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It was the Australians who first realized the enormity of the geopolitical seismic shift.
Less than three weeks after the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Australia's Prime Minister John Curtin proclaimed, "Without any inhibitions of any kind I make it quite clear that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom."
After more than 150 years of being closely associated with the British Empire, the world's primary superpower prior to the two world wars, Australians realized that the Empire could no longer defend them and that a closer relationship with the United States was called for. The Japanese were advancing quickly down through Southeast Asia and posed a major threat to Australia. In the immediate years ahead Australia, together with the United States and Britain, would be fighting for survival against the Axis powers. In late 1941 the end result was far from a foregone conclusion.
Following World War II, Australia remained a committed and loyal friend of the United States, sending troops to Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan to fight alongside Americans.
But today Australians sense another seismic shift in the global power structure. Just as Britain was economically drained at the end of two world wars, so is the United States from fighting a long and expensive war on terror centered on Iraq and Afghanistan. American power in the Pacific is diminished and its future looks decidedly uncertain. A harbinger of the military change has been the massive shift in global trade and finance that has already impacted Australia greatly.
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