ANZUS allies in lock-step against Beijing’s aggression

The Trump administration, Cameron Stewart reported on Wednesday, was “thrilled” by the success of the AUSMIN meeting for which Foreign Minister Marise Payne and Defence Minister Linda Reynolds travelled to Washington. Australia should be, too. Amid deepening global uncertainty, especially due to China’s unrelenting bad behaviour, the 30th iteration of the Australian-US Ministerial Consultation confirms the strength of the strategic alliance. As Scott Morrison said on Monday, it remains the bedrock of our defence strategy at a critical time. The agreements reached by Senator Payne and Senator Reynolds with their US counterparts Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defence Secretary Mark Esper, showed Australia is regarded as the “model ally” the US needs in confronting a rising and increasingly belligerent China. Mr Pompeo’s reassurance that Australia will never stand alone in promoting its values in the Indo-Pacific was welcome.

The agreements involve substantially expanded, though yet to be fully disclosed, joint military efforts in Darwin. They include the positioning there of a major fuel reserve. They also involve intensified co-operation on missile and hypersonic defence technologies and measures to counter China’s malign “grey zone” warfare, such as cyber intrusions. Australia and the US are also devel­oping closer supply chain links, with Australian rare-earth miner Lynas to receive Pentagon funding to establish a processing plant in Texas, reducing US dependence on China for materials critical to defence manufacture.

The meeting also showed the need for other US allies to do far more to help confront Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific. The focus of the Washington meeting was on the growing threat posed by China to the right of freedom of navigation through the South China Sea and the sovereignty of nations in the region. But with a third of the world’s shipping and $US3 trillion ($4.1 trillion) of trade passing through the South China Sea each year, nations such as Japan, India and South Korea, as well as European nations including Britain, France and Germany, need to confront Beijing’s hegemonic designs and disregard for international law. The trade and economic welfare of those nations is no less threatened by China’s contempt for a rules-based world order than Australia’s interests. It would be a mistake if they ignored Mr Pompeo’s pleas for democratic allies to follow our example and stand up to Beijing, even if doing so hurts them economically. Decisions taken at the meeting show the importance of the South Pacific within the world order.

For good reasons, Senator Payne and Senator Reynolds were cautious about meeting Washington’s request for Australia to take part in freedom of navigation operations within disputed territorial waters claimed by China in the South China Sea. For the time being there will be no change in the status quo, which has seen Australia working closely with US naval deployments across the region, with our warships playing a major role in the Rim of the Pacific Exercise and other naval exercises. Less than 100 days from the US election, it would have been unwise to rush into doing otherwise. As Greg Sheridan wrote on Tuesday, our warships in the South China Sea would be secure only if we conducted FONOPS in the company of the US navy: “But if we are the only nation in the region to do so, we certainly do set ourselves up for exemplary punishment by the Chinese.” FONOPS would have far more force if they also involved other countries such as Japan or India or South Korea.

As Senator Payne noted, while the US and Australia are the closest of allies, “we don’t agree on everything, though — and that’s part of a respectful relationship … we make our own decisions”. Australia’s relationship with China, she said, “is important to us and we do not want to injure it”. The strength of our ties with the US has been evident in recent weeks, with both Washington and Canberra, to Beijing’s fury, declaring China’s claims in the South China Sea to be “totally unlawful”. Both nations also have condemned China’s imposition of a repressive new security law in Hong Kong and its oppression of China’s Uighur minority. We also have worked closely over the threat posed by Huawei, helping persuade Britain and France to think again about Huawei’s involvement in their 5G networks.

Before Donald Trump, Barack Obama’s administration, as Sheridan noted, “let the South China Sea slip away, without ever exerting itself in any meaningful way, even diplomatically. It was one of the many colossal failures of the Obama presidency.” Tough policy statements by Mr Pompeo on China’s aggression have created a new urgency. They have done much to overcome the Trump administration’s uncertainty over a trade deal with Beijing. Whoever wins in the US in November, be it Mr Trump or Joe Biden, must be resolute in dealing with the communist regime. Rarely has the vitality of the US-Australian alliance been more crucial.