Rudd operates as ‘foreign minister’ in DC: Top Biden adviser

US President Joe Biden’s top adviser on Asia has issued a ringing endorsement of Kevin Rudd, declaring the Australian ambassador operates like a foreign minister in Washington while Penny Wong focuses on matters closer to home.

Kurt Campbell, Biden’s deputy secretary of state, said Trump should sideline Republican Party hawks who want to overthrow the communist regime in Beijing because such a push would damage relations between the superpowers.

Australia’s ambassador to the US, Kevin Rudd, and US President-elect Donald Trump.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen; Bloomberg

Campbell said the world was entering “an acute moment of strategic competition” as Trump returned to the White House, predicting that Chinese President Xi Jinping would feel nostalgic for the days of Biden’s more “rational” presidency.

Campbell’s remarks to a forum in Sydney came after Rudd insisted he and his fellow diplomats in Washington were ready to deal with the incoming Trump administration after a top adviser to the president-elect suggested Rudd’s days in the US capital were numbered.

Former Australian Defence Force chief Angus Houston called for Australia to dramatically lift its spending on defence to 3 per cent of gross domestic product, up from the current 2 per cent, at the same conference.

Trump will expect allies like Australia to do more heavy lifting on defence, said Houston, who led the government’s defence strategic review.

Campbell, who will depart the White House along with Biden in January, praised Wong as a “fine foreign minister”, but said she was often busy with her duties in Asia and the Pacific.

Giving Rudd “great credit” for advancing Australia’s interests in Washington, Campbell said that Australia’s US ambassador operates almost like a “foreign minister in his or her own realm here in Washington”, speaking via videolink at a forum organised by the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre.

Kurt Campbell is the senior co-ordinator for Asia in Joe Biden’s White House.

In a striking remark, Campbell said that “no country is better at strategic capture than Australia”, adding: “Most Australians don’t realise how much agency Australia has in Washington.”

Campbell urged Trump to continue deepening ties with the Pacific, describing it as “the place where we can expect some strategic surprise”.

“China is relentless,” he said. “They want to build bases, they want to extend their power there.

“We’re going to have to do more, and we have to do more with Australia and New Zealand.”

Alluding to a much-discussed Foreign Affairs essay by former Trump adviser Matt Pottinger and former Republican congressman Mike Gallagher, in which they argued American competition with China must be “won, not managed”, Campbell said: “We have to work with the China we’ve got.”

He said Beijing was “clearly worried” about Trump’s threats to impose 60 per cent tariffs on Chinese goods, given they would have an “upending” effect on the global economy.

In a video message to the same forum, Rudd said: “Here at the embassy, we’ve been working hard through the course of the last year to ensure that we were well prepared for this moment.

“And the bottom line is: we’re ready.

“The team here at the embassy and the government of Australia are ready to work closely with the new Trump administration to continue to realise the benefits of what is a very strong economic and security partnership.”

After Trump’s election victory, Rudd scrubbed critical comments about Trump from his online record, including posts in which he called him “the most destructive president in history” and a “traitor to the West”.

Senior Trump adviser Dan Scavino subsequently posted an image on X showing sand trickling through an hourglass in response to a post by Rudd, an apparent message that he would not remain long as ambassador.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has declared that Rudd will remain in place as Australia’s top diplomat in the US, and he has been backed by predecessors Joe Hockey, Arthur Sinodinos and Dennis Richardson, as well as former prime ministers Scott Morrison and Tony Abbott.

Rudd suggested that the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine pact would survive a change in administration because it “strengthens all three countries’ ability to deter threats, and it grows the defence industrial base and creates jobs in all three countries”.

Sinodinos told the forum that Trump would expect Australia to spend more on defence even though the country is regarded as “a strong ally”.

“I don’t expect that necessarily offsets the pressure to do more,” he said.

“It’s in our interest to do more for our own sake and as a member of the alliance.”

Sinodinos said that Australia, the US and the United Kingdom should put Telsa founder and Trump ally Elon Musk in charge of AUKUS if that was what was required to secure the future of the pact.

“If Musk can deliver AUKUS, we should put Musk in charge of AUKUS, and I’m not joking, if new thinking is needed to get this done,” Sinodinos said.

In a farewell speech at the National Press Club this week, departing US ambassador Caroline Kennedy made a full-throated defence of the AUKUS pact, describing it as an “existential investment in Australia’s sovereignty and way of life”.

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