Last Saturday, Australians booted one of the world’s strongest national leaders and awarded a landslide electoral victory to an untested man with questionable ideas.

Prime Minister John Howard recognized an important reality: that, given Australia’s location at the rump of Asia, the nation’s most valuable alliances lie with other nations—though geographically distant—rooted in the same history, culture, religion, language, democratic traditions and national character as its own, particularly Britain and America. His successor, Kevin Rudd, is far more enamored with the prospect of anchoring his nation to its oriental neighbors. This single difference between these two men has enormous implications.

We’re about to witness a dangerous shift in Australian politics.

Severing Ties With the Crown

One of Rudd’s campaign promises was to hold a vote on severing Australia’s link with the British monarchy. “We’re going to consult the people again,” he said, alluding to a failed attempt to do this in 1999. “I think the time will come before too much longer when we do have an Australian as our head of state.”

Rudd was speaking of the fact that, right now, Elizabeth ii serves not only as the queen of the United Kingdom, but also as Queen of Australia. Rudd’s victory was viewed as a public endorsement of his desire for Australia to rid itself of its ties to the crown and to become an independent republic. “The Queen faces the chop,” ran a post-election headline in the UK’s Sunday Mirror.

It’s important to understand what is at stake in this long-running debate.

Throughout its century of existence as a constitutional monarchy, Australia has enjoyed remarkable political stability, and the monarchy has been no small part of the reason for that. “The queen may be a purely formal figurehead,” explained Kenneth Minogue in the National Review some years ago, “but she constitutes the formal unity of Australia. To be an Australian citizen is to be a subject of the queen” (Dec. 31, 1995). With remarkable grace, Elizabeth ii’s presence has drawn together Australia’s diverse political—and, increasingly, ethnic—groups into a single, cohesive nation.

Many have lauded the benefits of Australia’s present form of governance for taking the best that democracy has to offer and melding it with the safeguards against political corruption inherent in the monarchial system. Prime Minister Howard was one. An avowed supporter of the queen’s sovereignty over Australia, he appears to be the last of his kind with such influence in the government.

The push to separate from the Crown has come mostly from white intellectuals who hate Britain. Arguments center on an apparent need to gain respect among other nations (particularly those in Asia); they rely upon manufactured grievances the monarchy has supposedly caused Australians. As of a few years ago, however, a slim majority of the public weren’t buying it. Regarding the failed 1999 referendum, Andrew Roberts wrote, “For all that Australia’s republicans had long argued that it was offensive to compel newly immigrated Australians to swear allegiance ‘to an elderly Englishwoman, for the most part resident in Berkshire,’ in fact many Greek, Italian and Vietnamese-born Australians were not only perfectly happy to do so, but voted in large numbers to retain the queen as their head of state, rightly seeing her sovereignty as a guarantee of the political stability that they badly wanted in their new home” (A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900).

But eight years have passed. A poll conducted by the Australian in January of this year found that 45 percent of Australians would favor decoupling from Britain, compared to only 36 percent who want to keep the monarch (19 percent are uncommitted). These numbers reflect the increasing degree to which Australians are addled by political correctness, ignorant about their nation’s history, and indifferent about anything so apparently outmoded as the throne of Britain.

An organization called Australians for Constitutional Monarchy correctly asserts that becoming a republic would gain nothing in the way of independence—the queen is already very hands-off in the political affairs of the nation—and lose much in the way of national unity, identity and heritage. The organization’s charter calls the drive for governmental change “unnecessary, irrelevant, divisive and distracting.”

To take one example, relations with Australia’s Aboriginal population are a festering problem involving thorny issues of sovereignty and land ownership. In the event that Australia becomes a republic and ultimate power shifts away from within a far-off palace and into a politician’s office in Canberra, it is not difficult to imagine how the erosion of Australia’s formal unity could turn an already ugly situation into a nightmare.

The prospect of republicanism has several such easily foreseeable problems. It is a movement ostensibly intended to increase national pride and patriotism—yet is built on a foundation of contempt for Australia’s heritage. To think that a stronger, more united nation can emerge after trashing the very thing that has united Aussies for over a century is to profoundly misunderstand human nature.

That Australia’s new prime minister is eager to turn his back on Britain’s monarchy exposes a deep lack of understanding of the importance of this institution to Australia’s past, present and future. (If you are interested, you can gain an excellent start at understanding it by reading the Trumpet’s April cover story, “The Inspiring Story of Britain’s Royals.”)

Eroding the Alliance With America

As shallow as Prime Minister Rudd’s regard for Britain is, his appreciation for Asia is deep. He once served as a diplomat to China and speaks fluent Mandarin. cnn reported that he “would seek a broader engagement with China that goes beyond the booming energy and resources trade at the heart of current Australia-China relations” (November 22). In fact, Rudd has stated his goal to “transform Australia into the most China-literate and Asia-literate economy in the Western community of nations.”

Australia’s economy has always been based on raw materials. Lately, however, withering drought has rendered much of its agriculture inactive—a huge blow to the economy. But this comes at the tail of another, larger trend: Asia, undergoing an unprecedented economic expansion, is gobbling up Australian resources. Today we see a longstanding trade relationship with Japan being challenged by one with China, a nation bursting with economic energy. China’s demand for Australian raw materials, its iron and steel, its uranium and natural gas, grows every year. On top of that, Russia has also entered the competition, particularly for Australia’s iron ore and uranium. Russia’s entry as a customer for Australia’s yellowcake gives the Aussies three booming Eastern economies—China, India and Russia—seeking their uranium deposits. The rise in commodity prices resulting from this heavy demand has substantially greased the gears of Australia’s economy.

Yet there is a danger here. Australia is becoming hugely dependent on raw materials contracts. If a major hiccup were to halt the growth of its Eastern trading partners (like the great East Asian meltdown that happened in the 1990s), much of the economic gains that Australia has experienced over the past decade could be wiped away overnight. In the event of a commodity slump, Australia lacks a fall-back position.

Given the thirst for its raw materials from the masses to its north, the question of Australia’s national security is one that any responsible government should place at the top of its agenda. Australia simply doesn’t have adequate means—in population or military might—to defend its vast territory, alone, against incursion from the north.

A policy of increased engagement with Asia is apparently meant to head off this potential problem. Of course, the success of this strategy—quite unlike the one John Howard pursued—rests upon faith in the long-term goodwill of nations possessing histories, cultures, religions, languages, governing traditions and national characters that are entirely different from those of Australia.

But the new government proposes to do more than strengthen ties with Asia as it turns its back on Britain and knocks out a pillar of national unity in the process. Another campaign promise the new prime minister will begin working to fulfill is that of withdrawing Australia’s highly efficient combat troops from Iraq. Thus, where Prime Minister Howard became arguably President Bush’s staunchest ally in the “war on terror,” placing his nation in a strong position to receive help from the U.S. in the event of any foreign threat of aggression, the new prime minister has committed himself to doing the opposite.

The simple fact is, without the military strength of the U.S. in the Pacific, Australia could be up for grabs by any alliance of powers to its north. Any erosion of American influence in the Pacific region could prove extremely dangerous to Australia.

These are enormous issues to remain attuned to in the time ahead.

The stands that John Howard took on these matters—foremost among them his alliances with Britain and America, manifested in his commitment to retaining the monarchy and supporting the “war on terror”—became more and more unpopular, and in the end surely contributed in part to his political downfall.

We would do well to remember that. Because I suspect that the time will come, sooner rather than later, when Australia’s departure from those positions will become great enough to start having a noticeably adverse affect on Australia’s fortunes. As is often the case in politics, what are advertised as the cures for the nation’s ills are guaranteed to make them many times worse.