G7 SUMMIT: Scott Morison, Joe Biden focus on deepening military ties
Scott Morrison and Joe Biden will look to strengthen Australia and America’s military relationship at their first face-to-face meeting at the G7 Summit.
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Scott Morrison and Joe Biden will focus on deepening military ties and ensuring the US-Australia defence and security partnership remains fit-for-purpose in a more challenging Indo-Pacific strategic environment at their first face-to-face meeting on the sidelines of the G7 leaders’ summit in Britain.
The Prime Minister told The Australian his key message going into the summit in Cornwall was that “no country in our region should have to compromise their values or interests in order to live peacefully together”.
With the US signalling it will use the G7 to encourage other nations to take a harder line against Chinese economic coercion, Mr Morrison provided a reassurance that growing strategic competition between the US and China did “not have to lead to conflict”.
He also called for a new era of co-operation between nation states to uphold international order, which he warned was under threat from a range of complex new challenges that had created a sense of uncertainty “not seen outside of wartime since the 1930s”.
Touching down at the RAF Brize Norton base in Oxfordshire after his flight was diverted four hours northeast of Cornwall due to heavy fog, Mr Morrison announced that Australia would commit 20 million doses to assist the British effort to vaccinate the world by the end of 2022.
“These 20 million doses will go to support doses in our region, to ensure that we continue to exercise our responsibility,” he said.
“I’ve had discussions in recent weeks with Pacific leaders and leaders in South-East Asia and I know that’s greatly appreciated that Australia will be doing its bit in our region, but also as part of a global effort.”
Mr Morrison and Mr Biden are expected to use their meeting to discuss climate change, new energy technologies and how the US and Australia could best respond to new cyber and technological threats posed by nations including China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.
Both leaders are pushing for Australia and the US to ramp up land force co-operation and the joint development of critical technologies. Defence Minister Peter Dutton on Thursday proposed an expansion of the US marine presence in the Northern Territory and a stronger American naval presence in Australia.
Mr Morrison said he welcomed the “great friendship and support we have from our allies” and that he was looking forward to “pursuing our relationship when it comes to our defence co-operation, our technology co-operation, the work we’re doing on energy technology and critical supply chains around the world”.
The bilateral meeting with Mr Biden comes ahead of an AUSMIN meeting involving Mr Dutton, Foreign Minister Marise Payne and US counterparts Lloyd Austin and Antony Blinken.
Mr Morrison and Mr Biden, who met online in March for the inaugural Quadrilateral Security Dialogue leaders’ meeting, are also likely to discuss the potential to expand partnerships around air and space.
The Australian understands that, contingent on Covid-19 restrictions and outbreaks, the pair will also discuss a potential leaders’ visit, with plans afoot to hold an in-person Quad meeting in Washington DC later this year.
Mr Morrison, who met Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on Thursday night on the way to Cornwall, is aiming to hold bilateral meetings with key Indo-Pacific leaders, Japan’s Yoshihide Suga and South Korea’s Moon Jae-in, at the G7. He will also meet German chancellor and powerful European Union leader Angela Merkel, who will step down later this year, as well as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The Queen, who will make a rare appearance outside the royal bubble to appear at the G7 summit, will meet Mr Morrison at Windsor Castle next week. The 95-year-old monarch was due to travel to Cornwall on Friday as part of an official reception for arriving G7 leaders.
As world leaders assembled in the Cornish seaside resort village of Carbis Bay, hopes of finalising an in-principle agreement on the UK-Australia free trade deal ahead of the Prime Minister’s meeting with Boris Johnson in London next week were waning.
British and Australian trade negotiators have spent the week holding rolling meetings but were still no closer to ironing out differences, with the Morrison government not inclined to accept a deal that fell below the national interest.
In an opinion piece published in the UK Telegraph on Friday, Mr Morrison said it was vital to ensure a “strategic balance” in the Indo-Pacific that “favours freedom and allows us to be who we are – a vibrant liberal democracy, an outward-looking open economy (and) a free people determined to shape our own destiny in accordance with national sovereignty”.
He said managing the strategic competition between China and the US was critical and did not have to result in conflict, although it did not justify coercion.
“We need all nations to participate in the global system in ways that foster development and co-operation,” Mr Morrison said.
“Australia stands ready to engage in this dialogue with all countries, including China, with whom we have a comprehensive strategic partnership and free trade agreement.”
Mr Morrison, attending as a G7-plus member, argued that the summit was taking place within a “liberal, rules-based order … under renewed strain” with the global pandemic, the recession and international recovery representing the most serious international set of challenges since the 1930s.
He said a new era of co-operation “not seen for 30 years” was needed to face the challenge and that the G7 was “not about drawing a closed circle around a particular club”. Rather it was about ensuring a rules-based system that supported “peace, prosperity and the aspirations for all sovereign nations”.
Ahead of the three-day G7 summit, held under tight Covid-19 restrictions, Mr Biden met Mr Johnson and signed a new Atlantic Charter modelled on the historic joint statement by Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941 setting out their goals for the post-war world.
In the 48-hours leading up to Mr Morrison’s arrival, Covid-19 infections across Britain surged to more than 14,000, forcing world leaders into a Cornish bubble. A St Ives hotel in Cornwall, which had been preparing to accommodate media and security officials during the summit, was forced to shut its doors following a Covid outbreak among staff.
PM: US CHINA RIVALRY DOESN’T MEAN WAR
Earlier, Mr Morrison said the growing strategic competition between the US and China “does not have to lead to conflict” and has called for a new era of co-operation between nation states to uphold the international order.
The Prime Minister warned that growing strategic tensions in the Indo-Pacific were threatening stability across the globe and reaffirmed his view that the world was “living in a time of great uncertainty not seen outside of wartime since the 1930s.”
Ahead of the G7 leaders’ summit in the UK and his first bilateral meeting with US President Joe Biden, Mr Morrison argued the growing strategic competition between Washington and China did not have to lead to conflict but nor did it serve as justification for coercion.
He said it was vital to ensure a “strategic balance” in the Indo-Pacific that “favours freedom and allows us to be who we are – a vibrant liberal democracy, an outward-looking open economy (and) a free people determined to shape our own destiny in accordance with national sovereignty.”
The comments made in an opinion piece published in the UK Telegraph on Friday, come amid a period of historic tensions fuelled by a more assertive China under the leadership of Xi Jinping with Beijing slapping trade tariffs and bans on more than $20 billion worth of Australian exports.
But Mr Morrison said it was important to “look to the years immediately following the Second World War” when US President Harry Truman called for the creation of new conditions “in which (the US) and other nations will be able to work out a way of life free of coercion”.
“Even before then it was Churchill in his appeal to the US as Great Britain stared down the Blitz who said ‘we seek no territorial gains, only the right to be free and live life in our own way, free from persecution’”.
Mr Morrison said that Australia was aiming to achieve greater alignment with international partners across five key areas out of the G7 meeting in Cornwall.
Firstly, to better support open societies and economies and strengthen the rules based order. “Whether it is upholding international maritime law or mending the processes of the World Trade Organisation, both are essential for a world that seeks to operate on genuine exchange rather than coercion,” he said.
Secondly, Mr Morrison said it was important to strengthen sovereign capabilities and resilience through the development of trusted supply chains with like-minded nations, expanded defence and security partnerships and the development of critical technologies.
Thirdly, closer international engagement and co-operation was necessary on the key international challenges facing the world including on climate change and Covid.
Fourthly, Mr Morrison said the recovery from the global pandemic needed to be led by the private sector and should be based on “business-led growth” rather than “government and state centric models.”
“Finally, we must show together that liberal democracies work for all and serve the common good,” he said.
Mr Morrison warned that the global pandemic, the recession, the international recovery and the need to improve lives and livelihoods represented the most serious international set of challenges since the 1930s.
He argued this was compounded by a global trading system and rules based order that was under growing strain, a world transitioning to a new energy economy as it tackled climate change and the threat of growing instability in the Indo-Pacific.
“This is evidenced through rapid military modernisation, tension over territorial claims, heightened economic coercion, undermining of international law, including the law of the sea, as well as enhanced disinformation, foreign interference and cyber threats,” he said.
“As we meet in Cornwall, our patterns of co-operation within a liberal, rules-based order are under renewed strain. As leaders of some of the world’s largest liberal democracies and advanced economies we must tend to the gardening of our liberal world order that favours freedom with renewed clarity, unity and purpose.”
He argued a new era of co-operation “not seen for 30 years” was needed to face the challenge.
Mr Morrison also said the G7 was “not about drawing a closed circle around a particular club” but was about ensuring a rules-based system that supported “peace, prosperity and the aspirations for all sovereign nations.”
He argued that managing the strategic competition between China and the US was critical and did not have to result in conflict, although it also did not “justify coercion”.
“We need all nations to participate in the global system in ways that foster development and co-operation. Australia stands ready to engage in this dialogue with all countries, including China, with whom we have a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership and Free Trade Agreement,” he said.
“Our belief is that open, pluralistic societies provide the fundamental freedoms and rich opportunities our citizens need to reach their full potential. That democratic elections, the rule of law, freedom of thought and expression, independent judiciaries and accountable governments deserve our allegiance based on their intrinsic merit and on their capacity to deliver better lives for our people.”
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Originally published as G7 SUMMIT: Scott Morison, Joe Biden focus on deepening military ties
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