Australian policy does need more Asia—more Southeast Asia
The international challenge confronting Australia today is unparalleled, at least since the 1940s. It requires what the late Brendan Sargeant, a defence analyst, called strategic imagination. We need more than shrewd economic manoeuvring and a tough assessment of defence capacity. Despite immediate election concerns, this is a time to question long-established assumptions about how Australia is positioned in the world. The Trump chaos, for all the damage it is bringing, could help Australia develop a fresh international identity.
Eight decades ago, between the fall of Singapore and the 1951 ANZUS Treaty, Australians could no longer put trust in the British Empire. Also, despite America’s large contribution to the Pacific War, there was no certainty of a United States security guarantee for the future. Analysts on both sides of politics increasingly began to think about a regional identity for a more independent—potentially more lonely—Australia.
The American alliance then allowed Australians to postpone such an accommodation with Asia. Now, in the words of Heather Smith, speaking at a 1 April security forum convened by Malcolm Turnbull, the post-Cold War order has collapsed ‘along with the norms and values that have underpinned the US-Australia relationship’.
How to imagine today a more autonomous Australia? Escalating British, European and Canadian engagement has obvious advantages—but this can reinforce Australia’s otherness in our region. Gareth Evans is right to insist we have ‘more Asia’—but what does that really entail? What is the roadmap for a deeper Asian engagement? Japan will continue to be important—but an explicit tightening of security relations with Japan delivers to China an unnecessarily provocative message. Australia’s Indian engagement will grow, but may present a similar problem.
The obvious strategy for achieving ‘more Asia’ is to capitalise on the relationship in which both sides of Australian politics have invested most heavily: Southeast Asia.
This is not to say that individual Southeast Asian countries or their regional organisation, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), offer Australia the type of economic or military advantage once gained from the United States, although ASEAN as a grouping is our second-largest trading partner and has a GDP larger than India.
Nor can we be confident we share values with Southeast Asians—or that we will not sometimes have tension with one ASEAN country or another. There has also been frustration with ASEAN institutions when it comes to getting things done.
Our ASEAN priority, however, should not just focus on practical endeavours. In identifying ASEAN as the framework for achieving more Asia, what matters is that their institutions are inclusive—embracing all major players in the region. In an increasingly fluid environment, they offer an established arena for engaging not just with Southeast Asian countries but also with Japan, India and South Korea—as well as China. In these institutions—sometimes on the sidelines of meetings—Australia can build bilateral or mini-lateral endeavours without provoking one major power or another.
There are no serious downsides to this ASEAN emphasis. Washington, Beijing, Tokyo and others recognise Australia’s long commitment to this part of Asia. Our early support for Southeast Asian nationalist movements, our status as ASEAN’s first Dialogue Partner, our founding membership of ASEAN-led institutions (the ASEAN Regional Forum, the East Asia Summit, the ambitious Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership trade agreement, our vigorous practical cooperation across the region and our government’s declarations supporting ‘ASEAN centrality’—this record also gives Australia a claim to ASEAN’s continuing attention.
What we must avoid is claiming a leadership role. Australia’s long-term closeness to the United States sometimes enhanced our regional authority—and added to the prestige of our liberal democratic values. We need not back away from such values—and can expect they will still attract respect in parts of Asia. There is also reason for pride in the part Australia has played—certainly from the period of the founding of the United Nations—in developing an international rules system. The new era, however, will demand patient negotiation with non-liberal perspectives.
Although the liberal rules-based order faces resistance in Asia, there is nevertheless a strong commitment to rules and principles that facilitate international interaction. In a genuinely multipolar world, ASEAN’s consensus-seeking institutions provide an ideal forum for the type of give-and-take deliberation—negotiating across different normative frameworks—that will be a feature of rules development.
Inter-state relations more generally will require openness to ‘Asian values’. For instance, we tend to see Southeast Asians and others as hedging when they are unwilling to align with one power or another—and ignore the claim to a ‘principled pragmatism’ (as Malaysia often states). When Southeast Asian countries refuse to join an alliance, or to promote one ideological position rather than another—or when they accept the need to operate in a China-centred regional hierarchy—they are influenced by a heritage of foreign relations principles often different from Western traditions.
Working alongside our Asian neighbours—putting our point of view, of course, and acting where possible as a bridge to the United States and European states—Australians may also learn from Asian experience in handling major power ambitions.
Trump’s chaotic tariff policies provide an immediate opportunity. The whole region faces a common threat. With ASEAN leaders meeting to discuss a coordinated response, Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong speaks of strengthening ‘our network of partnership with like-minded countries’. ASEAN will reach out to China, Japan and South Korea—already indicating some willingness to set aside bitter rivalries between them. As a middle power with strong experience in trade negotiations (including through the Cairns Group)—and seven decades of intimate familiarity with America—Australia has much to contribute to Wong’s networking.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney recently called Canada ‘the most European of non-European countries’. Using the ASEAN framework to engage in tariffs, rules and other deliberations, could help build Australia’s post-America identity as the most Asian of non-Asian countries.