{"id":32752,"date":"2017-07-10T06:00:19","date_gmt":"2017-07-09T20:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=32752"},"modified":"2017-07-07T15:22:38","modified_gmt":"2017-07-07T05:22:38","slug":"extraordinary-triangle-australia-png-indonesia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/extraordinary-triangle-australia-png-indonesia\/","title":{"rendered":"Extraordinary triangle: Australia, PNG and Indonesia"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Q: Which neighbour is more different to Australia\u2014Indonesia or Papua New Guinea?<\/p>\n

A: Impossible to say.<\/p>\n

As neighbours forever, Australia, PNG and Indonesia constitute an extraordinary triangle. The contrasts and clashes abound. Each neighbour is so unique, defining degrees of difference is impossible. That impossibility informs much of importance.<\/p>\n

For Australia, Indonesia and PNG are the two key regional relationships. Indonesia sets the tone<\/a> and temperature<\/a> of what Australia can do in Southeast Asia. PNG is the most important country in the South Pacific<\/a> for Australia (along with New Zealand), and it frames our thinking about the South Pacific.<\/p>\n

Oz defenceniks\/diplomats enter the triangle hesitantly. The bulging bilateral baskets dominate. When Australia speaks of Indonesia, it rarely links to PNG. And when Canberra cogitates on PNG\u2014less than it should\u2014it doesn\u2019t travel on to the Indonesian dimension. The two bilateral relationships are so big, it\u2019s tempting not to complicate things further with the triangle.<\/p>\n

For vexed Oz policymakers throughout most of the 20th century, a wonderful element of today\u2019s triangle would astonish\u2014all three are democracies. Even sharing such a basic value, though, can be another point of difference; the vibrant, muscular election going on in PNG is proof anew that democracy has many colours.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been contemplating the triangle because of a marvellous new book by a former Australian diplomat, Bruce Hunt: Australia\u2019s northern shield? PNG and the defence of Australia since 1880<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hunt offers the best sort of history\u2014digging across familiar ground but turning up lots of new nuggets. The familiar bit is the way Australia\u2019s leaders have consistently seen PNG as a shield (the question mark in the book title is swept away by lots of evidence).<\/p>\n

Hunt starts with an 1883 quote from Queensland\u2019s Premier, T.J. McIlwraith: \u2018The establishment of a foreign power in the neighbourhood of Australia would be injurious to … Australia\u2019s interests.\u2019 Then a matching sentence from the 2016 Defence White Paper<\/a>: \u2018Australia cannot be secure if our immediate neighbourhood, including PNG, became the source of threat to Australia.\u2019<\/p>\n

Across the 130 years between those twin statements, Hunt traces Australia\u2019s PNG obsession. In 1901, Billy Hughes set the northern shield template for PNG, stating: \u2018We must take it.\u2019<\/p>\n

Hughes\u2019 argument that Australia must have PNG to deny a hostile power a base for invading the continent set a bipartisan template embraced by later leaders as diverse as Evatt and Menzies.<\/p>\n

\u2018Fear of Australia\u2019s Asian neighbours,\u2019 Hunt writes, \u2018dominated Australia\u2019s consideration of the value of PNG.\u2019 At the start of the 20th century, the newly minted White Australia wanted PNG for its territory, not its people.<\/p>\n

Hunt hits narrative gold with Indonesia\u2019s independence after World War II, as the triangle took shape. He devotes six chapters to \u2018the spectre of Indonesia\u2019 haunting the PNG policy of Australia\u2019s Coalition governments in the 1950s and \u201960s.<\/p>\n

The story is told through the two great differences\u2014over Dutch West New Guinea and Sukarno\u2019s Confrontation. Those two \u2018critical episodes\u2019 were \u2018considered by the Menzies and Holt Cabinets on over 60 occasions in specific detail or in the context of analysing Australia\u2019s strategic environment. On nearly each occasion ministers linked Indonesian actions to possible threats to PNG\u2019.<\/p>\n

In the early stages, the Menzies government was determined Indonesia must never take West New Guinea from the Dutch, and equally resolved to go to war if Indonesia attempted to unsettle PNG by infiltration, subversion or attack.<\/p>\n

The Dutch, however, got little backing from the US or Britain; Australia\u2019s determination withered and belligerence softened. One of Cabinet\u2019s key hawks, the Country Party leader, Jack McEwen, saw the broader danger of military conflict with Indonesia over West New Guinea, warning \u2018a fracas over this is a fracas with Asia\u2019.<\/p>\n

By the time Gough Whitlam\u2019s whirlwind arrived in 1972, Australia was less worried about threats from Suharto\u2019s Indonesia; the new fear was what would become of independent PNG, rushed to birth in 1975.<\/p>\n

Australia could no longer own its northern shield. Uncertainties about PNG\u2019S future coloured the terms of the security guarantee. In stepping back from its colonial role, Hunt writes, the Whitlam government didn\u2019t want to make \u2018an open-ended commitment to defend an independent PNG\u2019. By 1986, Australia\u2019s Defence Minister, Kim Beazley, told Indonesia\u2019s military chief, Benny Murdani, that Australia would certainly go to war for PNG<\/a>, \u2018but we wouldn\u2019t tell them that!\u2019<\/p>\n

Hunt concludes that PNG \u2018is no longer seen as a shield or a bulwark to protect Australia from invasion\u2019. Modern defenceniks might demur\u2014old, deep habits die hard. Yet Hunt reflects the reality that if there\u2019s to be any shield, it\u2019ll be based on the triangle\u2014with, not against, Indonesia.<\/p>\n

In telling that story, Hunt makes masterful use of the notebooks detailing Cabinet debates<\/a>, released to the public after 50 years. Cabinet is the black box at Canberra\u2019s heart: facts leak but the secret shroud prevails. Hunt\u2019s account of the triangular defence and security debates, stretching over decades, is proof that Cabinet delivers Australia a flexible whole-of-government system, as able to act swiftly as to chew away at big challenges for years.<\/p>\n

The triangle now has a twin. Australia gives Timor-Leste a de facto defence guarantee\u2014we signed that in 1999 and have been acting on it since. A second guarantee to a second country with a land border with Indonesia. Like the PNG triangle, the Timor triangle carries much history as well as plenty of hope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Q: Which neighbour is more different to Australia\u2014Indonesia or Papua New Guinea? A: Impossible to say. As neighbours forever, Australia, PNG and Indonesia constitute an extraordinary triangle. The contrasts and clashes abound. Each neighbour is …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":32759,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1114,8,357,99,230],"class_list":["post-32752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-defence","tag-indonesia","tag-papua-new-guinea","tag-south-pacific","tag-timor-leste"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nExtraordinary triangle: Australia, PNG and Indonesia | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/extraordinary-triangle-australia-png-indonesia\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Extraordinary triangle: Australia, PNG and Indonesia | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Q: Which neighbour is more different to Australia\u2014Indonesia or Papua New Guinea? 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