Don’t throw Indo-Pacific economic co-operation out with the bathwater
In a region divided geopolitically, there is an increased risk that nations will erect new barriers to trade and investment in the mistaken belief this will protect sovereignty and self-reliance.
Promoting regional co-operation and regional institutions have been pillars of this country’s diplomacy from the earliest days of an independent Australian foreign policy. But today, that agenda is stalled, frozen by an increasingly bifurcated region geopolitically and the ebbing of regional economic integration. We are at risk of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
The foundational ideas behind past regional co-operation were a sense that we shared a common destiny even if our national systems and histories were very different.
Loading...
Peter Varghese is the chancellor of the University of Queensland and a former secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
