{"id":11111,"date":"2013-12-02T06:00:04","date_gmt":"2013-12-01T19:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=11111"},"modified":"2013-12-03T09:54:12","modified_gmt":"2013-12-02T22:54:12","slug":"inserting-iron-in-the-idiom-on-the-east-china-sea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/inserting-iron-in-the-idiom-on-the-east-china-sea\/","title":{"rendered":"Inserting iron in the idiom on the East China Sea"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Australian<\/a>When you change the government, you change the country, a previous Prime Minister once said. And one of the many things that changes is the way a new government thinks about international relations and the foreign policy language it uses or is prepared to adopt.<\/p>\n

A new aspect of this rule is that when Australia changes the governing party\u2014first under Howard, then Rudd and now Abbott\u2014the new government immediately has a serious argument with China.<\/p>\n

The previous column<\/a> noted one Abbott change in language that involves a significant shift in talking to China. The first version of this hardening of Australian-endorsed wordage was in the October communiqu\u00e9 from the Trilateral Strategic Dialogue between Australian, Japan and the US<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Ministers opposed any coercive or unilateral actions that could change the status quo in the East China Sea. They underlined the importance of efforts to reduce tensions and to avoid miscalculations or accidents in the East China Sea, including by improving marine communications.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

With that as the language benchmark, the November 20AUSMIN communiqu\u00e9<\/a> went to the same place, with a whole section devoted to \u2018Global and regional maritime security\u2019, in which the US and Australia \u2018reaffirmed their commitment to oppose any coercive or unilateral actions to change the status quo in the East China Sea\u2019.<\/p>\n

If you were a defence analyst in a Japanese think tank, you might be wondering (as one of ASPI\u2019s correspondents did):<\/p>\n

What has prompted the Australian government to express such new language as \u2018oppose any coercive and unilateral actions to change the status quo\u2019, which was never heard before the 2013 Trilateral Strategic Dialogue. Is the change of government in any way a factor here? Or, more simply, has the changing strategic situation encouraged Australia to take a firmer stance?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My short answer is that the change of government has had a lot to do with Australia\u2019s willingness to sign up to \u2018coercive and unilateral\u2019. Indeed, I\u2019d argue that if Labor had won the federal election in September, Australia wouldn\u2019t have gone along with Tokyo and Washington in injecting such iron into the idiom issuing from the Trilateral and AUSMIN.<\/p>\n

If you accept that judgement, then it points to an important realignment of the Australian position on the change of government. To support this analysis, consider the much milder language the Gillard government preferred in recent joint statements with the US and Japan.<\/p>\n

Go back to June to the Trilateral between the Defence Ministers of the US, Japan and Australia on the sidelines of the ShangriLa dialogue in Singapore<\/a>. At that meeting,\u00a0Labor\u2019s Defence Minister Stephen Smith, signed up to a set of \u2018strategic goals for trilateral cooperation\u2019 that lent heavily on such laudable communiqu\u00e9 standbys as peace, confidence and cooperation:<\/p>\n