finally!

The Australian media is starting to focus on the single, most significant factor that will shape the lives of all Australians in the coming decades.

From today's AFR:

"This century belongs to Asia, not America, but try telling the Coalition."


"Once upon a time Australia could afford the luxury of an “all the way” foreign policy centred on Washington. That was back in the days when China, too, willingly accepted American leadership in Asia. Back then China was not strong enough to challenge the United States, and not important enough for Australia to worry if it did. But that has all changed as a result of the rise of China.

This is the biggest, fastest shift in the distribution of wealth and power in history, and it fundamentally changes the Asian strategic landscape and Australia’s foreign-policy environment.

China today is directly contesting America’s leadership in Asia. That means the interests of these two countries pull Australia in different directions. That is why it is wrong to say, as so many of our politicians do, that Australia does not have to make any choices between America and China.

The reality is we are now a pawn in the power play between Washington and Beijing, and the stakes are very high for both of them, as well as for us. We have to make choices, because they want us to choose between them.

America wants Australia’s support against China’s growing challenge. China wants Australia’s benevolent neutrality. This is the harsh certainty of diplomacy in the Asian Century.

Tony Abbott and Julie Bishop are not the first Australian leaders to face this reality. John Howard and Julia Gillard did too. They both started by assuming they could ignore Beijing’s wishes, and both felt the rough edge of Beijing’s tongue as a result. Both quickly and quietly learned their lesson and found a way to placate Chinese demands and keep the relationship on track.

That is why the relationship grew so well under them.

Abbott and Bishop are proving to be slower learners and they are in a harder school. Since they took office last September, the strategic rivalry between America and China has escalated sharply in the East China Sea, where Beijing is using the Senkaku-Diaoyu dispute very deliberately to undermine the US-Japan alliance as a way to weaken the US position in Asia. The risk of war between China and Japan is now very real, as Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has made clear by likening the situation to 1914.

Whispers to China


As all this has been emerging, Abbott and Bishop have taken every opportunity to draw Australia closer to Japan and the US. No surprise, Beijing is angry. No doubt Canberra is now quietly telling the Chinese that we do not really mean what we’ve have been saying, and we promise not to say such things again.

Some kind of repositioning like this will be essential if the relationship is to flourish. For example, Abbott’s trip to China is very unlikely to go ahead as scheduled in April unless Chinese concerns from last year have been addressed. And yet, Bishop risks undermining the rapprochement by going to Washington and reaffirming the Abbott government’s conviction that the United States is the only country that really matters to them. Back to square one in Beijing, I would guess.

China is arguably already more important to Australia – economically, strategically, demographically – than any country in our history except our two great and powerful Anglo-Saxon friends, Britain and America. And over the next few decades China will probably become more central still as it grows richer and stronger. It is only prudent to recognise that, within a decade or two, China could well be more important to Australia than the US.

Whether we can realise these opportunities will depend on the nature of our political and strategic relations with Beijing. That would be true of any country, but it is especially so in China, where the government plays such a central role in the economy. So what China thinks about Australia matters a great deal to our economic future, whether we like it or not. And of course its strategic and political importance to us will also grow as its wealth and power grows.

Why do our politicians find it so hard to respond to the new geopolitical realities? One reason is domestic politics: they think this is what voters want to hear. Another is ideology: Abbott’s conviction that the world is, and should always be, run by the English-speaking countries seems to be very deeply embedded in his political personality. Most importantly, they simply seem disinclined to confront the reality that Australia’s strategic and political environment is being fundamentally transformed, and that the old, easy solutions don’t work any more. In the new Asia, Australia needs a new foreign policy, but the government seems too lazy and too timid to create it."

Hugh White is professor of strategic studies at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at Australian National University.

http://www.afr.com/p/national/this_century_belongs_coalition_asia_L2076FTsueELnvQYw1T5XJ