20120906 Australia’s PRC policy on the fence

Australia’s PRC policy on the fence

By Sushil Seth

Given its historical beginnings as a British colony, Australia did not need to make hard choices on the international stage — it simply followed the lead of Britain, the mother country.

During World War II when Japan was over-running one Asian country after the other and forcing Britain out of the region, Australia feared for its security and drew to the US as a result. After World War II, it joined the US-led ANZUS alliance.

Now, however, with the rise of China and the resultant strategic competition between it and the US, Australia is in a serious predicament. China is now its biggest trading partner, with much of its export income coming from trade with China.

The predicament is, therefore, centered on how best to balance its relationship with both the US and China to Australia’s maximum advantage.

This is where it becomes tricky, because Australia not only wants to keep its strategic alliance with the US, but is also seeking to further strengthen it amid China’s rise and the perceived security threat that accompanies that rise.

To this end, it is providing new bases for the US military as part of an energized Asia-Pacific policy, as announced by US President Barack Obama in an address to the Australian parliament when he last visited the country.

Predictably, China is not happy, as it fears that this new development is directed against it and Beijing has let this be known in no uncertain terms. Australia, of course, denies this. It regards its ties with the US as part of its long-standing strategic relationship with the US with no anti-China connotations.

The problem though is that even within Australia, there are some important voices that counsel against aligning too much with the US in the US-China strategic rivalry.

These voices are not politically important enough to make any difference so far because Australia’s political establishment, by and large, favors a US strategic connection.

This is for two reasons. First is that Canberra’s US alliance is perceived to be insurance against any security threat to Australia and China is seen as a potential threat as outlined in its 2009 defense white paper.

Second, by welcoming the US presence and engagement in the Asia-Pacific region, Canberra hopes that the US will not one day simply walk away from the region, leaving Australia to its own devices, and defenses.

However, those in Australia who seek a more nuanced relationship with the US argue that Canberra should play a role in persuading the US to share power with a rising China.

In this way, the US-China relationship would be managed peacefully, thus avoiding a potential military conflict sometime in the future as happened in the past between a nascent Germany and the established European powers in World War I, and then to Adolf Hitler’s rise and World War II.

A key proponent of this broad argument is Hugh White at the Australian National University, formerly a senior defense department official. He has argued his line in his book The China Choice: Why America Should Share Power.

It is believed that China will become the world’s biggest economy in a decade or so, thus leaving the US in its wake. Its military power is also growing, though the US is set to remain the world’s strongest military power for many years to come.

Even at this stage China has amassed a strong military deterrent with a capability to make the US cautious about exercising or using its superior military power against China.

Therefore, to avoid any mischance of a US-China strategic rivalry deteriorating into conflict, it is considered necessary that the US should accommodate China in a power-sharing arrangement.

Paul Keating, a former Australian prime minister, is another who cautions the country against drifting toward confrontation with China as a US ally. He recently said that peace in the region lay in accommodating China as a “great power.”

“The presumption has been that the foreign policy of Australia is somehow synonymous with the foreign policy of the US,” he said, adding “[this] could never have been broadly true, notwithstanding the points of coincidence from time to time in our respective national interests.”

He, therefore, advocates a more independent approach for Canberra in its relations with the US. Incidentally, Keating chairs an international advisory council of the China Development Bank.

There are problems with this thesis, not with the idea of sharing power, but its feasibility. First, it assumes power sharing as if it is there for the US to give and for China to partake.

International relations do not operate like that. The US might be the dominant power in the region, but there are other regional actors that might not go along with a regional duopoly between the US and China.

A solution to this might lie in the creation of a concert of powers — as seen in 19th-century Europe — to create a balance of power. Though, even that did not stop military conflict eventually breaking out and then to World War I.

In its supposed Asian reincarnation, this might involve other regional heavyweights like Japan and India, but China might regard this with suspicion as Japan and — probably — India too is tilted toward the US. Therefore, Beijing is unlikely to relish a balance of power that is tilted against it.

China might also find the idea of being assigned a power-sharing role as condescending and hearkening back to the days when the European powers, including the US, decided what was good for China.

The humiliation of 200 years of European domination of China is too fresh in Chinese minds and the acceptance of an enhanced power-sharing role would be perceived as demeaning.

Besides, who decides what sort of power sharing is involved? For instance, China basically wants the US out of the Asia-Pacific region, an area that it has regarded as its own political and strategic realm of influence since the 14th century. European colonial meddling, in the Chinese view, was a historical aberration.

Now that China is powerful, it wants to restore what it sees as its historical destiny. It, therefore, wants the US — as Beijing sees it — to stop interfering and/or encouraging some countries in the region to put forward their rival sovereignty claims over islands in the South China Sea. However, the US is not willing to abandon its regional allies simply to appease China.

In other words, it might be difficult for both China and the US to even get beyond first base in the regional sovereignty issue.

It would, therefore, seem that strategists like White and former politicians like Keating are barking up the wrong tree. In international relations, where national interests are involved, there are no neat solutions.

Sushil Seth is a commentator in Australia.