Tag Archive for: Australia

Don’t write off the Alliance

I was privileged to be in the audience last month for an address by former Prime Minister Paul Keating. I have long been an admirer of Mr Keating for his vision and courage while in office, and, of course, his famed rhetorical flair. He didn’t fail to deliver on this occasion. He spoke with eloquence: on his defence of the Alliance during the Cold War; and on his predictions for both America’s decline on the global stage and the inevitable rise of China—as he argued are ordained by history.

It was fascinating. It was articulate. It was wrong.

His primary error is in assuming an inevitability to the rise and fall of nations. At the end of the 19th century, Argentina was expected to be a superpower. In 1979, there were very few who expected the Soviet Union to fall in 1989. And by 1989 there were even fewer who anticipated where China would be today. As the great American philosopher Yogi Berra taught us: ‘It’s tough to make predictions. Especially about the future.’

Presumably because of this inevitability thesis, there’s an insistent murmuring in certain sectors of this country that Australia must make a choice: America? Or China? I frankly find this a bewildering notion—not least because neither China, nor the US, are actually asking this question of Australia.

Now, a nation’s foreign policy is derived from its interests and principles. With every country there’s a Venn diagram of where these overlap. The goal is to maximise the benefit derived from the overlap and minimise the friction in areas that don’t overlap. Regardless of who sits in the White House, US foreign policy always has these three underlying touchstones.

  1. The defence of a political philosophy of basic civil freedoms, the rule of law, and government by the consent of the governed. Our own peace and security are enhanced when these rights are enhanced.
  2. A global trade system that is not zero sum and is underpinned by internationally agreed rules.
  3. To better secure the foregoing, we enter into treaties and alliances.

I believe Australian foreign policy has a very similar basis.

The US–Australian alliance has been mutually beneficial. When we have worked together, it’s because Australia determined it was in Australia’s interest for us to work together. This is not some perverse finger trap—broken only by severing the bonds of allegiance. Nor is it fuelled by misty nostalgia without regard to current realities. This has always been a working and effective partnership—one in which we sometimes speak bluntly to each other; but then go and grab a beer together afterwards. This is ‘independent Australian foreign policy’ at work.

Peter Varghese recently commented on what he called the ‘phony debate’ on whether there’s an independent Australian foreign policy. He said those people: ‘should pay more attention to the historical drivers of Australia’s Asia policy. If they did, they’d recognise a fairly consistent pattern of seeing Asia through the prism of Australian national interests. And where Australian policy coincided with first British and then American policy in the post war period it was not imitation or dependence, but shared interests that shaped the coincidence.’

You may say that was in the past. Now, the US is withdrawing from global leadership. But just where is this withdrawal? Not in the Middle East, where we continue to support the pushback against ISIS and the development of Iraq. Certainly not in Afghanistan—the President has just released his strategy for Afghanistan and South Asia. And not in Asia where, you may have heard, we are committed to working with our allies in resolving the many grave threats posed by North Korea.

We don’t need to look beyond our own region to see the new administration, at the highest levels, pursuing bilateral, trilateral and multilateral partnerships to solve the world’s most pressing issues, old and new.

In the first nine months of the Trump administration, our countries have had leaders’ meetings, attended high-level strategic dialogues, enjoyed Vice-Presidential visits and had the President’s commitment to attend regional meetings later this year. These are not the actions of a country fleeing from multilateralism. They are the actions of a country working closely with the world at large. Check out the number of conversations between Trump and Xi, Abe, Moon, Modi, and Turnbull.

However—and this is the crux of the matter—we are engaging on our own terms. I draw upon President Trump’s remarks to Prime Minister Abe earlier this year in seeking a ‘trading relationship that is free, fair and reciprocal, benefitting both of our countries’. This is no different to how Australia or China or any previous US president has operated on the world stage. We all want the best outcomes for our people.

And peace, prosperity, and security in the Indo-Asia–Pacific—indeed, the world—is in the best interests of the US. Secretary Mattis affirmed last month that ‘each nation gains security in concert with other nations’. And, as Vice President Pence has repeatedly said, ‘America first’ does not mean America only. Let’s not forget, even before the Obama administration announced its Asia Pivot in 2011, we were deeply involved in Asia.

Our goal remains to reduce barriers to, and raise standards for, trade and investment, regionally and globally, while upholding the rules-based order to ensure the continued safety and prosperity of our people. The difference is that our modus operandi is now written in bold. And underlined a few times. And then tweeted for good measure. That’s democracy for you. But you are all well-versed in how to peer beyond the rhetoric, to see through the daily media fodder and focus on tangible actions and outcomes.

Mr Keating noted in his address last month that China has provided 60% of global economic growth since the GFC in 2008. This is true. China is currently the world’s number one trading partner—indeed, it’s America’s number one trading partner.

But the US is a pretty handy partner too. We offer reliability, market access, capital, technology, work opportunities, and joint ventures that are not government mandated. Your companies trust our courts as avenues for unbiased dispute resolution. That’s why the US is, by far, the largest destination for Australian outbound investment. We can each pursue our economic interests knowing we’re working in an environment of predictable standards and practices. That’s why Australian companies operating in the US made more than $60 billion in sales last year. That’s why American firms have created 335,000 highly-paid jobs in Australia. And that’s why we are Australia’s most significant economic partner. That’s the economic value of shared interests and principles.

We have a history of investment in this country that has weathered wars, withstood economic crises and witnessed world leaders come and go. The veins of this partnership run deep—not just at the government level, but between individuals, companies and institutions. They run deep because our nations—and our people—operate on the common principles of individual liberties, equal rights and, to steal that wonderful Aussie phrase, the principle of ‘a fair go’.

One commentator, debating the so-called US/China choice last month, argued that China is Australia’s most important economic partner because ‘we could replace one but not the other’. Who would ever posit that greater reliance on a single customer is a good idea? This perspective discounts the sheer impact of US investment in Australia—which is worth more than the 2nd and 3rd largest investors combined. And it completely ignores the consequences for Australia’s next largest export markets—Japan and Korea; not to mention the huge potential of India. We need only to look at the official tightening of Chinese foreign investment to conclude: it may not be entirely up to you.

China is and will continue to be a critical counterpart in the region and the world, as it should be. Our bilateral relationship is deep and we cooperate across a broad range of global issues, including non-proliferation, counter-terrorism and climate change. And Chinese investors continue to flock to the US market for those very same benefits as Australians. Anybody who thinks the US is a replaceable economic power clearly has not told the Chinese.

Beyond the alarmist headlines, China and the US enjoy and work to strengthen a very productive relationship even as we have strong disagreements on certain matters. The Chinese economic miracle could not have happened without the rules-based order the US, Australia and Japan have long supported. But to reiterate a recent sentiment expressed by Secretary Tillerson: with economic power comes security responsibilities. China has a huge stake in maintaining the system that got them to where they are today.

I hark back to July 1973 when Gough Whitlam told the National Press Club in Washington: ‘… in our efforts to redress the imbalance of a generation of unthinking hostility towards China, we do not propose to introduce a new imbalance by discarding or downgrading older relationships’.

Earlier this year, Dennis Richardson noted that Australia has two friends; one Alliance. Two strong economic partnerships; one firm, historic friendship. There is no either/or. The trite phrase ‘more Asia, less America’ might as well be ‘more walking, less gum-chewing’. I think you can do both.

Australia continues to reap the rewards of significant economic and irreplaceable strategic relationships across the Pacific. You have achieved security and a record run of economic growth by following your interests and principles. So it really begs the question: if you’re sitting on a royal flush—why so eager to discard the ace?

Cambodian Prince to Oz: ditch the Queen to join ASEAN

An Australia seeking to join ASEAN is going to face tough questions about its interests and identity.

Some in Southeast Asia think an Australian republic would be a more natural fit for ASEAN than an Australia still pledged to the British monarch. A surprising proponent of that view is a leading member of Cambodia’s royal family, the former deputy prime minister and foreign minister, Prince Norodom Sirivudh.

In my conversation with the Prince, I found myself laughing as I exclaimed, ‘Your Highness, for Australia, you’re a republican!’

The equally cheerful response from Prince Norodom Sirivudh was that he’d have to apologise to his fellow royal, Queen Elizabeth. But, as Sirivudh said, there’s a lot involved in a discussion about whether the ‘white guys’ (Australia and New Zealand) can join the club of the ‘Asian guys’.

On Oz’s mindset and place in Asia, Sirivudh turned unprompted to the republic issue, pointing to Australia’s failed republic referendum in 1999:

I followed this very closely. The republican referendum is an ideal example—I’m sorry for Her Majesty the Queen—to distance [Australia] from the United Kingdom. You must pass somewhere through a referendum. It’s so important, it’s so fundamental. That one day Australia says it’s nothing to do with Her Majesty based in London, but we are a nation. It’s mindset again. Politically, nothing changes. But mindset grows from things like that. And in ASEAN, too, we think about this kind of mindset. I think a referendum must be an obligation of passage. It’s so important that you bring this to the Asian guys.

Cop that, John Howard! An Asian prince says Australia should drop the royals. Talk about a challenge to the Howard mantra that Australia doesn’t have to choose between its history and geography in making its future in Asia. The Howard no-need-to-choose line is good politics and a wonderful debating point. Yet diplomacy and strategy are always about choices. And the bigger the issue, the tougher the choices. Australia joining ASEAN might have to be added to the list of things that Canberra doesn’t want to think about until after Queen Elizabeth II departs the throne.

As I’ve previously argued, the ASEAN–Australia summit in Sydney in March will be the ideal moment to launch the long conversation about Australia joining ASEAN. On interests, it’s easy to list a host of reasons why Australia and ASEAN would be good for each other. Australia could bring much to the development of ASEAN’s community in its political-security, economic and socio-cultural dimensions.

Prince Norodom Sirivudh agrees this is a conversation worth having, while offering caveats and cautions. On the positive side, he says, the geographic veto—that Australia isn’t part of Southeast Asia—is no longer the end of the argument. Sirivudh says ASEAN has emphatically broadened its geographic reach through the creation of the East Asia Summit.

From interests, though, the Prince turns to culture and how Australia thinks of itself in Asia:

If I’m an Australian—do I feel more Asian, or do I stick with my Western identities, cultures, organisation system? It is a big debate. It is a long debate. It seems to us that you feel more and more Asian in terms of economics, in terms of political-security. Perhaps the feeling has grown. Perhaps the closer link is with Asia, with the Asia continent, with Asian states. But in terms of culture, in terms of the Australian consciousness, how they think of themselves as the white guys.

Sirivudh says that Australia identifies itself as a ‘US cousin’ and has a strong focus on the US alliance. The Australia–US alliance could be a barrier in ways that don’t apply to Thailand and the Philippines as formal US allies, and Singapore as an informal but committed US ally.

The Prince muses that China’s opposition would be important in preventing any ASEAN consensus on Australia. Sirivudh says China would say to friends such as Cambodia and Malaysia: ‘You must think twice. One more American ally in your family?’ He says Australia would face the suspicion that it was acting for the US, not for itself. ‘We work on consensus’, Sirivudh says of ASEAN. ‘Only one disagrees, everything stuck. So the chance is very, very thin—based on consensus.’

Would Australia have to change the way it does foreign policy as well as ditch the Queen?

‘You have to show that you are first, Australian’, Sirivudh replies. ‘You are friends with the US. And you are friends with China. You are not the US proxy.’

Sirivudh thinks a slow process in which Australia took the half step to become an ASEAN observer is an interesting idea. When, as Cambodia’s foreign minister, he launched Cambodia’s effort to enter ASEAN, the status of ASEAN observer was the useful intermediate step. Or, as others suggest, ASEAN could create a new category of partner/member for Australia and New Zealand.

Before such mechanics, however, comes the mindset. Australia will have to convince itself. And ASEAN. And China.

ANZUS for the 21st century

Defence Department Secretary Dennis Richardson retired today, after 48 years in the public service. In that time he also headed ASIO and DFAT, and served a term as Australia’s ambassador to Washington. This is an edited version of his farewell speech at the National Press Club in Canberra on the complex three-way relationship of Australia, the US and China.

 

[When I] joined the public service in 1969, the Cold War was 22 years old, and had another 23 years to run. Then the US economy accounted for 37.9% of the global economy while China, then in the midst of the Cultural Revolution, accounted for just under 3%. Today, China’s share of the global economy is 15.5%, with the US at 24.4%, demonstrating both China’s remarkable rise and American resilience.

The events of 9/11 and the subsequent operations in Iraq led to us being militarily engaged in the Middle East alongside the US for most of the past 16 years. The global financial crisis of 2008-9 gave rise to populist and economic nationalism in many Liberal Democracies, contributing to politico-strategic uncertainty and anxiety. That populism, in part, also saw the election of Donald Trump.

All of that, especially the rise of China and the arrival of President Trump, have raised questions about the continued relevance and value of our Alliance with the US and the question of ‘independence’ in Australian policy. But any reassessment of the Alliance should flow from clear-eyed analysis and judgement, not the emotional reaction to one person.

Australian governments generally have a strong and consistent record of charting their own course, with the Alliance part of the overall strategy, not the driver. Indonesia is perhaps the best example of where Australian and US approaches have often diverged. And Australia’s approach to New Zealand after its effective withdrawal from ANZUS in the early 1980’s is another.

At decisive points, Australian governments have very much done their own thing or have pressed the US hard to take a particular course to serve our own interests.

The Howard Government’s decision in 2005 to seek membership of the East Asia Summit and the decision by the Bush Administration to call a G20 Leaders Meeting in 2008, as opposed to a G13 or G14 which would have omitted Australia, are but two examples.

Including the Korean War, Australia has been involved in ten major military operations since 1951, excluding operations such as Cambodia, Rwanda and the Solomon Islands. The US was not involved militarily in the Malayan Emergency or Konfrontasi, and was in a supportive role in East Timor. The Korean War and the 1991 Iraq War were backed by Chapter 7 UN resolutions. Somalia, East Timor and Afghanistan were also supported and framed by UN resolutions.

Without US leadership and involvement, we would not have been in most of the conflicts since 1951. But the Alliance has not always been the sole driver of decision making, with our presence in Iraq/Syria and Afghanistan today serving strong national interests independent of the Alliance. In some instances, without the US we would not have been able to give full effect to our own national interests through the use of force. And sometimes the use of force is necessary.

The Alliance was the dominant reason for our involvement in Vietnam and in the invasion of Iraq. It’s also arguable that, given the world as seen from Canberra in the 1960s, there was a respectable case for Vietnam, independent of the Alliance. And, in the case of Iraq in 2003, the government was very careful about the extent and nature of its on-ground commitment, in contrast to the UK. Australian governments have generally been pragmatic and hard headed in weighing Alliance considerations on matters of war and peace. Understanding that is critical at a time when it is all too easy to opportunistically suggest that Australia lacks policy independence.

We need to ensure that military operations don’t drive policy. Beyond operations, military-to-military activity needs to be conducted within a deliberate policy framework. A decision to embed an Australian naval vessel within a US carrier strike group should always be considered a matter of policy, not a routine navy to navy activity.

The preparedness of the US to share sensitive military technologies and capabilities is now more essential to our defence and broader strategic interests than ever.

Intelligence sharing arrangements, have expanded enormously, but are well understood and appreciated by the Australian community because of enhanced transparency and accountability, and the immediacy of terrorism.

China’s relationship with Australia is beyond the imagining of 50 years ago, including: our largest merchandise trading partner by far, a growing investment relationship, people-to-people ties encompassing tourism, education and migration, and developing defence ties. Australia and China are in the 20th year of annual Defence Strategic Dialogues. The range and scope of joint military exercises has slowly increased, albeit from a very low base.

But it is no secret that China is very active in intelligence activities directed at us. It is more than Cyber. That is no reason to engage in knee jerk anti-China decision making or to avoid seeking to build a stronger relationship with China. It’s simply the world in which we live.

Foreign investment proposals from China are weighed carefully, but it doesn’t follow that because one electricity grid can go to a Chinese entity, another must.  Those who argue for so called consistency across a single sector of the economy should be careful of what they seek. We should have open and frank discussions with China about this. Certainly, they are not bashful in denying foreign investment opportunities in their own country.

Likewise, China’s government keeps a watchful eye inside Australian-Chinese communities and effectively controls some Chinese language media in Australia. We have substantive concerns about China’s activities in the South China Sea, and look to China to do much more on North Korea.

I’ve always thought that we in Australia do not always see the full dimension of the US/China relationship, in both its depth and complexity. The US and China are strategic rivals. There are, and will continue to be, points of real tension. The dynamic will play out for many decades. Misunderstandings could lead to miscalculation. But both seek to manage the relationship reasonably sensibly and work hard to avoid military conflicts.

I think Australia’s relationship with China and the US will continue to be ‘friends with both, allies with one’, and any notion that the growth in our relationship with China requires a recalibration of our relationship with the US is inconsistent with the facts, and lacks logic or purpose.

Some, including former decision makers, suggest that we should retain the Alliance, but with the US in more of a stand-off arrangement in the region, engaging when needed, especially if China overreaches. But do we expect an inalienable right to a US response if things get difficult while we put in less and talk the Alliance down?

It’s essential for those who believe the Alliance is important to our national interests to engage in the public discourse. It’s perfectly reasonable for millennials to question and query its contemporary relevance. That relevance should be articulated in terms of today’s world: its strategic dynamics, the vibrancy and depth of the contemporary Australia-US relationship, and a bit of history to connect past and present.

A matter of dignity

Three months ago, the American President insulted the Australian Prime Minister.

In the now infamous telephone call, the Prime Minister might’ve managed the asylum seekers issue more nimbly. But he didn’t deserve what was dished up to him. President Trump did not just have a ‘frank’ or ‘robust’ conversation with Mr Turnbull. He was talking as President to Prime Minister, not as one man to another in a bar. In such circumstances, his behavior publicly impugned Australian national dignity.

While Anzac Day can sometimes take on a flavour of mawkish sentimentality, the degree to which we honour it indicates that Australians take national dignity more seriously than our sardonic humour might suggest.

So, doesn’t it seem a bit odd that Mr Turnbull should this week be standing alongside President Trump celebrating past glories and a spirit of mateship as if nothing had happened?

There’s a story of a small boy who, having been humiliated by a bully in front of other boys, asked his father what to do about it. The parent advised his son to avoid the bully, but if pushed, to stand up to him. He also told the boy not to worry about his popularity with the other boys. That would come with respect.

Mr Turnbull should ponder that. You don’t run after bullies. They smell obsequiousness. At worst they bully again. At best they respond with benevolent condescension. They have you where they want you. And for a country which claims to pride itself on its independence, that isn’t the place for Australia to be.

And even if Mr Trump were a nice fellow, we should still reflect on the nature of our relationship with the United States. America’s a great and inspiring country and the people who rise to the top of it are generally capable and farsighted. Americans tend to like us because of a partially accurate perception that our national qualities are similar to their own. But in the end, as they should, they put their own interests first. Single minded loyalty by an ally to the US doesn’t necessarily engender reciprocity.

Allies can differ from Americans and remain allies. Neither Britain nor Canada were in Vietnam. Canada, France and others in NATO were not American partners in the first Iraq war. We must keep those two factors at the front of our minds in the testing months ahead.

For all that the new king in Washington might’ve assembled good men around him, he remains an untested and untrusted king. So it’s more incumbent than ever on the Australian leadership to use its own judgment about our international posture. We can’t adopt the posture of a deputy sheriff, to use the term falsely but damagingly attributed to John Howard.

We’re already doing much with the US in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. Even if the argument’s accepted that such contributions are in Australia’s national interest, it’s hard to argue that we need to do more, given that we already exceed the contributions of most NATO countries closer to those theatres.

And as storm clouds gather over Northeast Asia, we should eschew any precipitate enthusiasm for military options. It’s perhaps a sign of the times, and a harbinger of things to come, that we’re looking to China’s influence as the primary lever in an effort to dismantle the North Korean stalemate.

Australian leaders of stature have expressed concern about Australia’s increased tilt towards surrogate status since 9/11. These include the late Malcolm Fraser, Gareth Evans and Bob Carr. Only last week Paul Keating opined that: ‘one thing not to do with the Americans is keep bowing down.’

While other Australians might disagree with these men politically, few would suggest that they were other than Australian nationalists who think deeply about our role in the world.

And surrogacy doesn’t impact only on Australian self-respect. It affects how we’re regarded elsewhere in the region.

In the wake of that telephone call, it would’ve been better to have the next leaders’ exchange at an international meeting at what’s euphemistically termed ‘a mutually convenient time’.  In the meantime, we could’ve worked with Pence, Mattis and the rest.

Instead, we’ve waited for the summons we encouraged. Let’s hope we can still rescue a modicum of self-esteem.

In 2011, in the wake of President Obama’s announcement about the use of Darwin by US marines, Malcolm Turnbull, then in opposition, questioned  ‘extravagant professions of loyalty in relation to the United States’ and ‘dewy eyed fascination with the leader of the free world’.

In terms of the intertwined concepts of national interest and national dignity, Mr Turnbull got it right in 2011. Let’s hope he still has the courage of those convictions when caught up in the hype of celebration of our alliance on an American warship in New York.

You don’t run after bullies.

India takes an unsentimental view on Trump—and Australia should too

Since last November, many of Washington’s closest allies and partners have been in a virtual state of panic over the impetuous and unpredictable President Trump. But on a recent trip to India we found that the view in New Delhi was rather different. Indian policymakers and analysts are a lot kinder to Trump than those in European or Asian capitals.

India’s been on the receiving end of US power more than once, not least through Washington’s long military support for Pakistan, which India sees as the world’s greatest source of terrorism. That’s led Delhi to take an unsentimental view of the United States as a power that’s hugely important, but also one that needs to be approached with a clear understanding of one’s own national interests.

India realises that it needs to work productively with the US in balancing against China. And India’s leadership is also keenly aware of how much the United States needs them as a balance against China—and it’s prepared to milk that fact for all it’s worth. India and the US are pressing ahead with greater defence cooperation, which largely seems to involve the United States making special deals to transfer defence technology to India.

New Delhi may dream of a multipolar Indo-Pacific, but there’s a clear understanding that there’ll be no substitute for US military power for a long time. But even as New Delhi understands the importance of a strong US presence in the region, Indians seem remarkably un-phased by Trump and what he may mean for the US–India relationship.

Like Trump, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a ‘strong man’ from outside India’s political traditions. Surely strong men will be better at doing deals with each other than with ‘ordinary’ politicians?

New Delhi isn’t unhappy with Trump’s overtures towards Russia: India’s had a time-tested relationship with Russia, which it considers an important partner and a strategic counterweight to China.

Nor is Trump’s apparently unconstrained support for Israel a cause of concern. Israel has sold India considerable amounts of military equipment. There’s been serious cooperation between the military industries and the intelligence services of the two states. Modi is expected to visit Israel later this year.

Indians also feel less moral outrage than others at Trump’s tough border protection stance: Indian border guards long had a shoot-to-kill policy with immigrants trying to cross India’s border with Bangladesh and it’s in the process of building even more border walls to ‘seal the border.’

Trump’s tough anti-Islamic terrorism stance goes down well in a country that has been on the receiving end of terrorism. President Trump has made it clear that a central focus of his tenure will be, in his own words, to ‘eradicate radical Islamic terrorism from the face of the earth.’ Although India is home to some 170 million Muslims, largely living in peace, it’s also a prime target of regular cross-border terrorist attacks from Pakistan.

Trump’s apparent tough-on-China stance (the South China Sea and trade) also plays well with many Indians who have come to regard China as India’s biggest long-term threat. Over the last few years, Indian strategists have become increasingly concerned that the US hasn’t been doing enough to stand up to China’s expanding military footprint in the Indian Ocean and Asia. They saw President Obama’s prevarication on Chinese island-building in the South China Sea as essentially giving China the green light for salami-slicing assertiveness elsewhere in the region, including on India’s disputed border with China.

Both countries are also concerned that China’s One Belt, One Road initiative and the China Pakistan Economic Corridor aren’t just about infrastructure, but are aimed at expanding China’s geo-strategic interests.

Of course, India’s equanimity towards Trump mightn’t last: any cut-off of US work visas to Indian IT specialists could, for example, do significant damage to India’s economy (and America’s as well). Ramping up US support for Pakistan, or doing a deal with China, could upset the equation. Nevertheless, India is probably well placed to continue to benefit from the US security relationship.

In Australia we tend to think that we understand our American partners well, after an alliance lasting more than 66 years. But maybe there are a few things we can learn from India’s approach. That includes not being too sentimental about the relationship and finding how one can best leverage your advantages.

Canberra will need to play its cards carefully over the next four years of the Trump administration to maximise Australia’s position.  This includes diversifying our regional security relationships. More than ever, we’ll need to build up a regional network of strategic relationships, especially with partners such as India and Japan, as a partial hedge to the possibility of US retrenchment from the region.

We should also think about how to better leverage our relationship with the US and adopt a much more unsentimental approach towards the alliance. We need a much clearer understanding of where our and American interests begin and end and we’ll need to be less afraid of making explicit deals, just as India will be when it comes to pressing its interests with the US.

Compared to other countries, we’re probably well placed to benefit from Trump’s transactional approach to US allies. There’ll be a greater emphasis on making deals than on relying on warm and fuzzy shared values, and that may be a good thing.

As New Delhi well appreciates, change brings opportunities. Australia needs to move past our hand-wringing about Trump and think about those opportunities.

Japan and Oz do the trilateral on Trump

Since the 1960s, Australia and Japan have built one of Asia’s closest partnerships. I was going to say one of Asia’s most unusual, but lots of relationships in this region are strange.

When times get tough in Asia, Tokyo and Canberra are always talking and trying to plan. Once a peculiar partnership, constant tending has rubbed away the strangeness. The habit of closeness is based on huge trade interests, constant meeting of minds, common needs, agreement on means—and twin alliances with the US.

As an Asian pairing, Japan and Oz have become a comfortable, status quo marriage–their only argument in public is about whaling. Please don’t mention that spectacular upset about submarines; best forgotten, if not forgiven.

While not overdoing the national psyche interpretation, part of the relationship glue is Japan’s conception of itself as a unique nation in Asia and Australia’s status as an Asian outsider. Here are two nations that feel different. And then there’s the shared obsession with the US.

In the last quarter of the 20th Century, the constant Canberra-Tokyo focus was framed by trade and economics, reflecting the way Japan saw the world. In the first quarter of the 21st Century, the flavour has turned strategic as Japan’s views have broadened.

Having bedded down the bilateral trade relationship in the 1960s, Japan and Australia mounted a joint effort to build Asian architecture; Asia Pacific governments would create systems to secure the trade sinews created by business.

The institutional construction of a Pacific economic community evolved through a series of Oz-Japan proposals from the 1960s to the 1990s. As a journalist, I covered a key moment: the Pacific Community Seminar held at Canberra’s Shine Dome in September, 1980. Called by the Prime Ministers of Japan and Oz, the conference was chaired by Sir John Crawford, giving birth to the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council, and leading to another Canberra creation moment in 1989, the formation of APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation).

Crawford is credited with the seminal term ‘open regionalism’, although he attributed it to the Japanese. In the same way, Australia gets creation rights for APEC yet this was another partnership production with Tokyo. Indeed, Asia’s hardheads saw Oz more as Japan’s front man.

I thought of that 1980 conference last week as I passed the Shine Dome and went a couple of hundred metres further along to the J.G. Crawford building. The Crawford link was only part of the echo. Australia’s National Security College was hosting a major conference with Japan doing plenty of the lifting on the topic of prospects and challenges for strategic cooperation between Australia, Japan and the US.

The tone was set by the College’s new paper on the coming of Donald Trump: ‘Don’t panic, don’t relax.’ Outside the Crawford building, signs warned about the danger of snakes in the grass. Inside, the fear was about the new Washington elephant trampling the grass.

Japan is ever on guard against the chance of another Nixon shock/Kissinger surprise of the magnitude of Washington’s 1972 rapprochement with China.

Japan’s former Defence Minister, Satoshi Morimoto, summoned up that dread with his description of a Trump tete-a-tete in a small room with China’s leaders, doing a deal ‘with no notification to US allies’.

‘My personal concern on the unpredictability and uncertainty of Donald Trump and the trend of the Trump administration is the future prospect of US-China relations. Especially, I worry President Trump may make a deal and a compromise with China.’

From Keio University, Professor Yuichi Hosoya, listed four changes in the regional order that confront Japan and Australia:

  1. China’s rise has ‘radically changed strategic relations in the region’.
  2. The Trump administration promises ‘more shocks and anxiety’. The new President will ‘betray his own words’ and ‘not respect his own words’.
  3. The spread of nationalism and populism in Asia will ‘make diplomatic solutions based on rational compromises more difficult than before’.
  4. The decline of the Liberal International Order: Donald Trump shows no respect for norms, order or justice—only ‘interests are important’.

China plus Trump. No wonder the Japanese Embassy estimates that Shinzo Abe and Malcolm Turnbull spent a total of eight hours together during Abe’s flying visit to Sydney. After that, Japan’s PM flew off to repeat the urgent business in Southeast Asia.

No front man needed. In rounding up Asia, Abe is doing it from the front. The shift from geo-economics to geopolitics has seen Japan discard its modesty. In his separate meetings with President Trump and the new US Defence Secretary, James Mattis, Abe can speak for many in the region as well as Japan. Much is changing in Asia when Japan reaches naturally for strategic leadership.

When the US-Japan-Australia trilateral was being created early in the previous decade, the push was from Australia and the US (the Bush and Howard governments). Japan was the small steps, slowly-slowly recruit.

Today Japan is the partner putting the push into the trilateral. Abe wants to repurpose it as an instrument of influence directed at Trump. Australia seconds the idea.

The trilateral designed to help Japan emerge is suddenly all about stopping the US from reneging. The Australia-Japan partnership exhibits new urgency in securing the established relationship with the US. Tokyo and Canberra look to Washington for an embrace not a choke hold, a firm grip not a shove-off.

Asia 2017: strategic transformation accelerates

8502151556_b276fea761_z

In a recent podcast for Foreign Policy, editor David Rothkopf interviewed Thomas Friedman about his latest book—essentially an argument for why, in 2017, we should feel optimistic about the future. Friedman’s core argument is that we’re living in an age of ‘three non-linear accelerations’, which include: Moore’s law (growth in IT capabilities), the market (growth in digital globalisation) and Mother Nature (dramatic changes in biodiversity, climate and population). I have to say that I find Friedman’s argument suggestive but not compelling. Indeed, it’s reminiscent of an argument I recall from the early 1990s—namely that Chinese authoritarianism couldn’t endure because Madonna and the internet were on our side.

But Rothkopf and Friedman have made me think more specifically about what the Asian strategic environment looks like in 2017 and, in particular, to confront the question of whether that environment is more worrying now than it was in earlier years. Depressingly, the answer is ‘yes’. Long-running trends (like the growth of Asian economies and militaries, power diffusion, and—because of technological change—increasing uncertainties about comparative power balances) are being exacerbated by a geographical and positional competition between Asian great powers, doubts over the future US role in the region, and a heightened risk profile at the key flash-points (Korean peninsula, Taiwan and South Asia). Those flash-points aren’t new, but regional strategists have long understood that if major conflict broke out at any of them the casualties would number in the millions.

On the other side of the ledger, forces driving cohesion, cooperation and liberalism—we might think of them in terms of the Kantian tripod of economic interdependence, international institutions and democracy—seem to be weakening, as opposition to globalisation rises, the TPP collapses, nationalism surges, China’s economic growth slows, and regional democracies struggle. Both President Rodrigo Duterte’s policies in the Philippines, and political life in Bangkok after the military coup and the death of the king suggest a higher regional tolerance for authoritarianism, even if sometimes of a populist hue. Meanwhile, the political scandal in Seoul (over influence-peddling) is complicating US relations with a third Asian ally.

True, none of those factors constitutes an automatic pathway to war. But, put together, they’re valid reasons for at least some degree of unease about what the forthcoming year might hold. At a minimum, they suggest a need for a heightened vigilance in relation to small crises which could spiral quickly in Asia this year. But I’d venture to say they actually signal something more ominous—namely, a long-term shift in regional geopolitics. The tempo of strategic transformation in Asia may be quickening.

It probably doesn’t need to be spelt out, but the likely shifts won’t play to Australia’s strategic advantage. For Australia to feel comfortable within those shifting geopolitical relationships, it has to source new inputs in favour of a liberal, stable, prosperous regional order. And the problem, of course, isn’t that no such inputs are available—there are, after all, regular and supportive contacts between Australia, Japan, India and Indonesia, for example. But the inputs available so far are too thin to assure regional policy-makers that the order can survive. The latest bout of tension between Australia and Indonesia—like the coolness in the Australia–Japan strategic relationship in the wake of the submarine tender decision—is a reminder of the brittleness of those contacts. Putting it in the language of the current ‘hub-and-spokes’ order, ‘spoke-to-spoke’ and ‘spoke-to-nonspoke’ bridges, while promising, can’t bear much traffic at the moment.

And that’s not merely going to be Australia’s conclusion. Other regional states who sit down to do the assessment are likely to arrive at the same answer. That leaves us with three options, none a perfect solution for a more difficult region.

First, we work to nurture a closer relationship with the US even while its relative strategic position slips and its priorities shift towards an agenda of ‘America First’—because even a superpower in relative decline makes a good ally, and because Washington has a proven record of being a liberal order-builder in Asia. Problem? How many eggs can we put in one basket?

Second, we work harder at building bridges in Asia—both to other US allies (Japan and South Korea) and to other key players (India, Indonesia and Singapore). Problem? The bridges need heavy-duty engineering in terms of shared commitments—not merely in terms of others’ commitment to us, but vice versa.

Third, we push the notion of defence self-reliance more seriously than we have in the past. Problem? We’re currently building capacity too slowly—the multi-decade timetable for the Collins replacement a case in point—and, perhaps, too conservatively. In a changing Asia, we should be looking for gamechangers—not least because others will be.

Alliance legends and lacuna (2)—ANZUS

Australian questions about what Donald Trump will do to the alliance recall Robert Menzies’ fear that ANZUS would be ‘a superstructure on a foundation of jelly’. If Trump has the Oz alliance assumptions quivering, that dread of a shaky base has been around since the moment of conception.

As with Curtin’s turn to the US in WW2, Australia’s feat in achieving the ANZUS treaty was driven by circumstance and happenstance and a lot of pushing. That perspiration and inspiration didn’t come from Prime Minister Robert Menzies. The intellectual creativity and diplomatic wheeling-dealing came from the External Affairs Minister, Percy Spender, who described his leader as sceptical verging on negative about the Pacific pact quest.

Spender seized the moment to get ANZUS in 1950–51 when the Korean War meant the US desperately needed Oz (and Kiwi) agreement on what Menzies called a ‘soft’ peace treaty with Japan.

Though pessimistic about Spender’s chances, Menzies was present at the creation and exploited the deal with a master politician’s gusto. Retiring in 1966, Menzies told his farewell press conference:

‘If I were asked which was the best single step that had been taken in the time of my Government I think I would say the ANZUS Treaty because the ANZUS Treaty has made the United States of America not perhaps technically, but in substance our ally. In other words, we have a species of alliance. Don’t hold me to it as a technical expression—we have a species of alliance with the United States. And placed as we are in the world, that is tremendously important.’

The duality is striking: from jelly to the best single step. Yet the way Menzies phrased that farewell thought—‘species of alliance’—hints that some jelly reservations lingered.

Donald Trump stirs at old tensions between the desire for firm alliance commitments and enduring doubts.

Spender laid out the quest for a Pacific pact in his first foreign policy statement to Parliament on 9 March 1950 (Menzies led the Coalition to power in December 1949). Spender’s speech is a foundational document of Oz foreign policy (here in Hansard).

In his memoirs, Spender wrote that Menzies was ‘unenthusiastic’ and ‘poured cold water’ on the efforts to create a Pacific pact. The Menzies view was that Australia didn’t need a formal alliance because the US was ‘already overwhelmingly friendly to us and Australia could rely on her’. In both London and Ottawa, Spender said, Menzies used the ‘superstructure on a foundation of jelly’ description.

The jelly perspective from the Washington at the time is given by the Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, who signed the ANZUS treaty in 1951 and gave President Truman this account of the first ANZUS council with Australia and New Zealand in 1952:

‘It seemed to me that both countries suffered from a paucity of knowledge of what was going on and faulty appreciation of current situations. They felt remote, uninformed and worried by the unknown.’

Menzies’ jelly scepticism was based on experience with American diplomatic reluctance and outright resistance from the US military. From 1936 to 1950, all Australian political parties ‘advocated negotiation of some form of Pacific security pact as an essential element in Australian foreign policy’. Menzies’ scepticism also went to the core of his personality and beliefs—his Britishness.

Menzies was uncomfortable with the shift from a family relationship with Britain to a contract with the US. And the eventual Menzies’ passion for ANZUS was tinged with disappointment at the decline of Britain’s role in Asia.

Coral Bell commented that Australia’s ‘over-long national adolescence as part of the British Raj’ produced the model of a family commitment which was comprehensive and automatic, not needing to be defined in writing. ANZUS marked the move to the world of contract:

‘It was not comprehensive, never covering economic relationships, nor even all security problems (though at one stage Australian policy-makers tried hard to interpret it as doing so). It wasn’t automatic, but required an act of political will—a choice—at a specific time by both parties.’

Menzies used that ANZUS-as-contract language in a Parliamentary debate on the meaning of the alliance in April, 1964: ‘There is a contract between Australia and America. It is a contract based on the utmost goodwill, the utmost good faith and unqualified friendship. Each of us will stand by it.’

Those were Menzies’ final words in a speech dancing eloquently around Washington’s decree that ANZUS wouldn’t cover Australian troops sent to Malaysia during Confrontation. Malaysia is certainly in ‘the Pacific area’ covered by ANZUS; but the US wasn’t going to read the contract as creating any obligation to help Australia (and Britain) fight Indonesia.

Menzies, the great lawyer, had to invoke the spirit of the pact rather than the letter of the treaty. What ultimately mattered, he said, was the ‘high-level acceptance of responsibility’ by America in embracing ANZUS: ‘It is not for us to assume that any great ally of ours will avoid that [responsibility] any more than we will avoid it. It is a great mistake to talk dogmatically of what the United States of America will do.’

Donald Trump is the personification of Menzies’ thought about never being dogmatic about what the US will do. How will Trump read the terms of the contract?

Menzies proved right about the shifting foundations of the alliance: the treaty wording is unchanged yet the nature of the pact has evolved and grown and shifted extraordinarily (and shed the Kiwis).

As President Trump nears, Canberra suffers another Dean Acheson moment—feeling ‘remote, uninformed and worried by the unknown’.

Alliance legends and lacuna (1)—Curtin turns to the US

postcard-australians_welcome_americans

To see what Donald Trump will do to the future of the Oz-US alliance, ponder the lessons of the foundation legends.

Start with the Labor Party’s creation saga: John Curtin’s turn to the US. The Coalition government has fallen on the floor of Parliament and Curtin becomes Prime Minister in October, 1941. Two months later, Japan attacks Pearl Harbour and invades Southeast Asia. Australia faces its greatest existential threat.

Early on Saturday, 27 November, 1941, come to Melbourne’s Flinders Street, where Cecil Edwards is news editor of Australia’s great afternoon paper, The Herald.

The editor brings Edwards the proof of an article that’s to be published in the magazine pages—a new year’s message from John Curtin—and suggests a Page One pointer. Edwards reads the article and announces: ‘This ought to be the lead of the paper.’

Curtin’s key sentence enters history: ‘Without any inhibition of any kind, I make it clear that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links and kinship with the United Kingdom.’

Edwards, also a Reuters stringer, cables several hundred words to London, ‘and within hours we were receiving agitated reaction. It was the first time in my experience that a magazine page article in an Australian newspaper became front-page news in England, and stirred breasts in Whitehall and Downing Street’.

As Edwards later wrote, Curtin’s article had been in the office for days, and no-one had grasped its significance. If the editor hadn’t noticed it in proof, ‘the most outspoken public declaration ever made by an Australian Prime Minister, would have remained buried in the magazine pages.’ Some rare days in journalism, you nearly scoop yourself.

The Brits are outraged. Churchill threatens to combat Curtin by broadcasting direct to the Australian people. In Washington, Roosevelt smells funk. The President calls in Australia’s Ambassador, Richard Casey, for a private talk, not to be reported to Canberra.

We have two versions of this meeting. First, from the memoirs of Casey’s wife, Maie Casey: ‘President Roosevelt sent for Dick and told him if it was thought that this statement would ingratiate Australia with the US he assured him it would have the opposite effect. It tasted of panic and disloyalty.’

In a biography of Casey, W.J. Hudson wrote of Casey’s belief that Washington viewed Curtin’s appeal ‘as almost treason against the major ally, Britain, as an unpleasant ditching of that ally in time of stress, as an unbecoming attempt to change horses’.

Casey’s record of the FDR conversation was on a paper found in his safe eight years after his death. Casey recorded:

‘In an interview with President Roosevelt shortly afterwards, he expressed the greatest distaste about this [Curtin] statement . . . making it clear that he was speaking to me privately and not officially. He put me under a seal of secrecy … He said that if it was thought that such a statement as Mr Curtin had made would help Australia with the United States, he assured me it would not.’

Six months later (1 June, 1942), Curtin’s war cabinet convenes in Melbourne for talks with the new Commander-in-Chief, Douglas MacArthur. The General tells Curtin that America sees Australians as a bunch of bronzed Brits, tied to Britain by blood and sentiment, and America has no particular commitment to Oz. The minutes quote MacArthur:

‘The US was an ally whose aim was to win the war, and it had no sovereign interest in the integrity of Australia. Its interest in Australia was from the strategical aspect of the utility of Australia as a base from which to attack and defeat the Japanese…The Commander-in-Chief added that, though the American people were animated by a warm friendship for Australia, their purpose in building up forces in the Commonwealth was not so much from an interest in Australia but rather from its utility as a base from which to hit Japan. In view of the strategical importance of Australia in a war with Japan, this course of military action would probably be followed irrespective of the American relationship to the people who might be occupying Australia.’

This archival gem was unearthed by Peter Edwards who unveiled it in the 2001 John Curtin lecture marking the 60th anniversary of Curtin becoming PM.

Edwards commented that MacArthur was throwing back in Curtin’s face his proclamation about turning away from traditional links and kinship:

‘From what MacArthur said, it would not have mattered whether Australians had brown or black or purple skins; whether they were Muslim or pagan or Zoroastrian by religion; or whether they spoke thirty-eight different languages, all incomprehensible to American ears. The Australian landmass offered a geographically convenient base for American forces, and that was all that mattered to American policy-makers.’

Australia and the US have done a lot together in the seven decades since Curtin gave Australia a realpolitik reading and MacArthur returned the favour. The alliance endures and evolves. Australia has gone to every war with the US. Instead of MacArthur’s tough talk, both sides lay it on with a trowel. And yet…

Some creation story lessons:

  • Panic softly, so as not to alarm friends.
  • Traditional links (alliance and past wars) help but may not be decisive.
  • The only nation with its own continent offers much of strategic worth.

Leaders’ beliefs matter but they are driven by the forces they confront.

FDR’s distaste for Curtin’s ‘panic and disloyalty’ didn’t weigh against the much larger demands of war against Japan and alliance with Oz; Curtin’s description of what was needed was accurate. The Donald may be more interested in transactions than traditions; that’s OK, because Australia brings a lot to the transaction table. And Curtin showed Australia’s supremely pragmatic ability to ditch ‘traditional links’ to do the vital deal.

The Indo-Pacific: talking about it doesn’t make it real

It’s easy to see why the Indo-Pacific concept is so popular in both Canberra and Washington. Managing China’s rise would be much easier if East Asia and South Asia really do coalesce to form a single integrated strategic system, because in that system India and China would almost certainly be primary strategic rivals. India would therefore hopefully function as a counterweight to China, balancing and limiting its growing power, helping America to persuade or compel China to drop its challenge to the US-led regional order and restoring Pax Americana.

But just because strategic rivalry between China and India might suit us doesn’t mean it’s going to happen, and just talking about an Indo-Pacific strategic system doesn’t make it real. We need to look more closely at whether a single Indo-Pacific system really will emerge across the Indian and Western Pacific oceans.

Andrew Phillips offers some key reasons to doubt that the Indo-Pacific can or will function as a single system, but I think there’s another one that deserves attention. It concerns the choices that India and China each have to make about their future relations with one another.

Why the focus on choices? Because our concept of ‘strategic system’ is something of an abstraction. A strategic system is simply the product of the aggregate of choices that each country makes about the countries it focuses on strategically. Countries don’t become strategic rivals because they’re part of the same system: they’re part of the same system because they choose to be strategic rivals. There will be an Indo-Pacific strategic system if India and China choose to be primary rivals, and there won’t be if they don’t.

Sometimes those choices are forced on countries by geography, but not always. Japan and China can hardly avoid primary engagement with one another strategically. But geography doesn’t compel India and China to engage strategically the same way. They have a wider range of choices.

That might seem surprising, because India and China share a long and contested land border. But it’s perhaps the most militarily impermeable land border in the world. It’s impossible for either country to project land forces over the Himalayas on the scale that would be needed to have any strategic impact on the other. It stands as a barrier between them, not unlike a major ocean. As a result, India and China relate to one another strategically mostly as maritime powers—as the expression ‘Indo-Pacific’ tacitly implies.

That means they do have choices about how directly they challenge one another’s core strategic interests. Of course two such powerful states are going to be rivals to some degree and on some issues. But their rivalry won’t create a single Indo-Pacific strategic system—and help us manage China’s rise—unless it engages their core strategic interests.

My hunch is that they won’t contest one another’s core interests, become primary strategic rivals and create an Indo-Pacific strategic system unless one or both seek to contest the other’s primary position in their respective ocean approaches. In other words, India would have to seek a major strategic position in the Western Pacific, or China would have to do so in the Indian Ocean, or both.

I think it’s quite unlikely that either will seek to do that. First, because each would find it very hard to project and sustain strategically significant maritime power into waters dominated by the land-based sea-denial capabilities of the other. They’d each face the kind of A2AD challenges that America faces today in the Western Pacific.

And second, because it’s not clear why they would want to try in the first place. Neither side needs to dominate the other’s sea-space into order to achieve their key objectives. Each will recognise the other as a formidable adversary. Why would either take on such a country as a primary rival if they don’t have to?

Some will argue that China at least has no choice but to become a major meantime power in the Indian Ocean to protect its sea lines of communication there. I don’t see the vulnerability. Since the Napoleonic Wars, no major power has sought to interdict the trade of another major power except in a World War. That’s globalisation and interdependence at work. China’s sea-borne trade, like everyone else’s, is protected by the mutual dependence that we all have on trade. It doesn’t need to challenge India in the Indian Ocean to defend it.

Of course it’s possible that one or both countries might mistakenly launch a costly strategic contest that they could and should avoid. But we can’t bet on that. It’s more likely that they’ll tacitly agree to stay out of one another’s regions. In that case, and judging, as I do, that the US-led order in Asia doesn’t endure, we’re likely to see separate Indian Ocean and Western Pacific strategic systems dominated by India and China, and separated by the line running from Myanmar through Malaysia and Indonesia down to Australia.

If that happens, Australia will be in an interesting position on the boundary between the spheres of influence of two great powers. That will offer up both risks and opportunities. Our policymakers and analysts should spend their time better exploring those risks and opportunities and what we can do about them, rather than assuming that India will allow itself to be played as a card in America’s contest with China.