{"id":80508,"date":"2023-06-16T06:00:51","date_gmt":"2023-06-15T20:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=80508"},"modified":"2023-06-29T15:56:55","modified_gmt":"2023-06-29T05:56:55","slug":"three-prime-ministers-map-australias-strategic-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/three-prime-ministers-map-australias-strategic-journey\/","title":{"rendered":"Three prime ministers map Australia\u2019s strategic journey"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

Australia\u2019s strategic journey since 2009 has shifted from the optimism of regional community, to a plea for rules, and now to a heartfelt call for dialogue.<\/p>\n

Running through the evolution of Australian thinking is a hardening understanding of China. To China\u2019s chagrin, the established construct of the Asia\u2013Pacific was overtaken by the Indo-Pacific. The Canberra constants are the US alliance and ASEAN centrality.<\/p>\n

Trace the journey through three major foreign policy speeches by prime ministers: Kevin Rudd in 2009<\/a>, Malcolm Turnbull in 2017<\/a> and Anthony Albanese in 2023<\/a>. Each was the keynote address to the premier Asian security summit, Singapore\u2019s Shangri-La Dialogue.<\/p>\n

Rudd, in 2009, was speaking when the global economy was about to contract for the first time since World War II, as a financial crisis became an economic crisis. Despite the economic gloom, this was the most optimistic perspective on the region offered by the three PMs.<\/p>\n

Rudd described his ambition for an Asia\u2013Pacific community that would:<\/p>\n

help to nurture a culture of cooperation and collaboration on security\u2014including a culture of military transparency, helping to build confidence- and security-building measures by providing information that reassures neighbours rather than alarms them. An Asia\u2013Pacific community could also provide a vehicle for discussion and cooperation across the range of challenges with transnational reach, such as climate change, resource and food security, biosecurity and terrorism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While Rudd claimed a \u2018deeply realist approach to security\u2019, the more realist speech was from Turnbull, who began by quoting a maxim of one of Asia\u2019s supreme hardheads, Singapore\u2019s Lee Kuan Yew: \u2018Big fish eat small fish and small fish eat shrimps.\u2019<\/p>\n

Turnbull went on to reflect:<\/p>\n

For the shrimp, the little fish and even the middle- to large-sized fish of all dimensions represented here today, we face more than a Manichean choice between life and death, war and peace. The more salient question\u2014even when the risk of war remains remote\u2014is what kind of peace can we maintain?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Turnbull\u2019s answer was to keep the \u2018US-anchored rules-based order\u2019. But that \u2018remarkable system\u2019, where big and small fish agreed to play by the rules and respect each other\u2019s sovereignty, \u2018could not be taken for granted here in the Indo-Pacific.\u2019<\/p>\n

Albanese, too, made several references to the need for rules, a familiar drumbeat at Shangri-La. But his great plea was a simple call for the US and China to start to talk, to build strategic \u2018guardrails\u2019: \u2018This is a matter of simple, practical structures to prevent a worst-case scenario. The essential precondition for this is dialogue.\u2019<\/p>\n

The region that the three speeches described has changed from Rudd\u2019s Asia\u2013Pacific to the Indo-Pacific of Turnbull and Albanese. Australia was one of the first to shift to \u2018Indo-Pacific\u2019, in the 2013 defence white paper<\/a>.<\/p>\n

China hates the Indo-Pacific concept. In \u2018Asia\u2013Pacific\u2019, Beijing imagines itself defining the half that\u2019s taking over, while \u2018Indo-Pacific\u2019 is seen as trying to squeeze China between two oceans. At the Shangri-La Dialogue this year, China\u2019s defence minister, General Li Shangfu, made 17 references to the Asia\u2013Pacific. His one Indo-Pacific usage was Beijing\u2019s standard kick at the US\u2019s \u2018so-called Indo-Pacific\u2019 strategy which was \u2018based on ideological grounds\u2019 and aimed \u2018to build exclusive military alliances against imagined threats\u2019.<\/p>\n

The Asia\u2013Pacific versus Indo-Pacific difference is an introduction to the clashing perspectives of Australia\u2019s relationship with China. Rudd and Albanese were careful not to poke the dragon at Shangri-La, while Turnbull offered dangerous truths that set the scene for a five-year icy period between Canberra and Beijing.<\/p>\n

Rudd\u2019s government had been monstered by Beijing for its 2009 defence white paper<\/a>, because of its discussion of the strategic implications of China\u2019s rise and the questions China\u2019s power projection capabilities raised for the region.<\/p>\n

So at Shangri-La, Rudd took refuge in the uncontroversially unarguable: \u2018Managing major-power relations\u2014particularly in the context of the rise of China and India\u2014will be crucial for our collective future. This will place a premium on wise statecraft, particularly the effective management of relations between the United States, Japan, China and India.\u2019<\/p>\n

Turnbull warned against taking \u2018unilateral actions to seize or create territory or militarise disputed areas\u2019 (talking to you, Beijing) and seeking international influence through \u2018corruption, interference or coercion\u2019 (ditto). Turnbull accepted China\u2019s larger role in shaping the region but said:<\/p>\n

Some fear that China will seek to impose a latter-day Monroe Doctrine on this hemisphere in order to dominate the region, marginalising the role and contribution of other nations, in particular the United States. Such a dark view of our future would see China isolating those who stand in opposition to or are not aligned with its interests, while using its economic largesse to reward those toeing the line \u2026 A coercive China would find its neighbours resenting demands they cede their autonomy and strategic space, and look to counterweight Beijing\u2019s power by bolstering alliances and partnerships, between themselves and especially with the United States.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Turnbull\u2019s description of a \u2018coercive\u2019 China seeking to \u2018dominate\u2019 predicted the iciness that followed.<\/p>\n

One year into his warming project with Beijing, Albanese described putting \u2018dialogue at the heart of our efforts to stabilise our relationship with China\u2019:<\/p>\n

We\u2019re not naive about this process, or its limitations. We recognise there are fundamental differences in our two nations\u2019 systems of government, our values and our worldviews. But we begin from the principle that whatever the issue, whether we agree or disagree, it is always better and always more effective if we deal direct.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The centrality of the US alliance to Australia is so, well, central that each of the PMs needed to bless the alliance with only a few words. For Rudd: \u2018Australia\u2019s close alliance with the United States will remain the bedrock on which Australia\u2019s national security is built.\u2019 For Turnbull: \u2018a deep alignment of interests and values but it has never been a straightjacket for Australian policy-making.\u2019 For Albanese: \u2018a bond of shared values and it remains a partnership of shared strategic interest\u2019.<\/p>\n

ASEAN centrality is newer and got more attention in the three speeches.<\/p>\n

Rudd embraced ASEAN as he tacitly conceded that the grouping had defeated his campaign for the creation of a new Asia\u2013Pacific Community. Rudd\u2019s call for a new big-C Community had been kicked to death by ASEAN in 2008 as a threat to its centrality. Thus, at Shangri-La in 2009 Rudd buried the big \u2018C\u2019 Community and pivoted to a small \u2018c\u2019 community with ASEAN at its heart, arguing: \u2018An Asia\u2013Pacific community could be seen as a natural broadening of the processes of confidence-, security- and community-building in Southeast Asia led by ASEAN, while ASEAN itself would of course remain central to the region and would also be an important part of any future Asia\u2013Pacific community.\u2019<\/p>\n

The bruises ASEAN inflicted on Rudd\u2019s unsuccessful effort at new regional architecture taught a vivid lesson. Canberra got the power message and regularly gushes praise of ASEAN\u2019s central role.<\/p>\n

For Albanese, the \u2018emphasis on both agreement and action, cooperation and capacity\u2019 is \u2018at the heart of ASEAN\u2019. Or, in Turnbull\u2019s words: \u2018ASEAN embodies opportunity in our region. It is the region\u2019s strategic convenor.\u2019<\/p>\n

Australia just wants more of the same with added juice, as Turnbull observed: \u2018As our strategic spaces become more crowded, the challenge for ASEAN is to show that the impressive statecraft of the past can be sustained in a more complex future; to remain nimble enough in a more testing time.\u2019<\/p>\n

Tracking through the three speeches shows a troubled trajectory.<\/p>\n

The Australian journey has been from Rudd\u2019s community, to Turnbull\u2019s call for rules in the face of coercion, to Albanese\u2019s fear of the worst case.<\/p>\n

What was once grand vision now focuses on the need for guardrails.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Australia\u2019s strategic journey since 2009 has shifted from the optimism of regional community, to a plea for rules, and now to a heartfelt call for dialogue. 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