Some people are born with so great a talent for brazen effrontery that they have no choice but to become politicians. One such person is Australia’s prime minister, John Howard, who recently intervened in the US presidential race to warn Americans not to vote for the Democrats in general, and Barack Obama in particular.

Obama, declaring his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination, said that US troops should be out of Iraq by March, 2008. Howard, who faces an election campaign himself later this year, seized on Obama’s remarks to restate his own fervent support for the Bush administration strategy that created the Iraq quagmire in the first place.

He said that Obama’s Iraq policy “will just encourage those who want to completely destabilise and destroy Iraq, and create chaos and a victory for the terrorists in Iraq to hang on and hope for an Obama victory.” (Even in his mangled syntax, he sounds much like George W. Bush.)

But then Howard continued: “If I were running al-Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008 and be praying as many times as possible for a victory not only for Obama but also for the Democrats.”Never mind the usual guff about “al-Qaeda in Iraq,” as if “terrorists in Iraq” were a cause rather than a consequence of the US-UK-Australian invasion. The point is that Howard was telling Americans how to vote, and foreign leaders are not supposed to do that.

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What is truly interesting is Obama’s response to Howard’s rant. “I think it’s flattering that one of George Bush’s allies on the other side of the world started attacking me the day after I announced,” Obama said. “I would also note that we have close to 140,000 troops on the ground now, and my understanding is that Mr Howard has deployed 1,400, so if he is to fight the good fight in Iraq, I would suggest that he calls up another 20,000 Australians and sends them to Iraq....”

Howard replied that the Australian deployment was a “very significant and appropriate contribution,” given the country’s small population. Really? The US has about 300 million people; Australia has about 20 million, or one-fifteenth as many. So a “very significant and appropriate contribution” by Australia would be one-fifteenth of 140,000 troops (or 160,000, actually, since the US is now sending another 20,000 troops into Iraq). One-fifteenth of 160,000 American troops would be around 10,600 Australian troops, not 1,400. It’s all political posturing — but then, so is Australian defence policy in general. The key turning point in Australian foreign policy was the realization that the British empire could no longer defend the country, and that the only big country that might be willing to assume that role was the US. So the question became, and has remained, how to guarantee that the US will come to Australia’s aid in an emergency, even if America’s own vital interests are not directly involved.

There is no good answer to this question, but it would obviously help if Australian troops show up to help whenever the US gets involved in a war anywhere in Asia — including the Middle East. However, this policy is too demeaning to be explained clearly to Australians, so the various Australian military ventures abroad have to be explained in other terms — such as the “Communist threat” in Vietnam or the “terrorist threat” in Iraq. Actual troop commitment is kept as small as possible, in order not to rouse public opinion.

Australians have fortunately never had the occasion to find out whether volunteering to be America’s “deputy sheriff” would produce the desired US response if Australia’s own interests were threatened, but this notion remains at the heart of Australian defence policy. If the US invaded Mars, Australia would send a battalion along to guard the supply depot.