Grand alliance of like minds is our best defence against China

Donald Trump enjoys a light-hearted exchange with Shinzo Abe and Narendra Modi, the most important figures in the Indo-Pacific, during the G20 summit in Osaka in 2019. Picture: Getty Images

In international relations, we live in the age of like-minded alliances. We are no longer living in the age of globalisation, much less multilateralism. The challenges of our time are COVID-19 and the hegemonic ambitions of China. Of the two, Beijing is by far the more dangerous and difficult (notwithstanding the desperate virus mess that has been created in Victoria).

Canberra’s new operating system is to seek and enliven like-minded alliances. This is the central national security and international systems insight of the Morrison government. Other governments, friends on one hand and strategic competitors on the other, follow the same pattern.

Our strategic adversaries increasingly gather in like-minded alignment. The British just published the parliamentary intelligence committee report on Rus­sian meddling in British elections and referendums. This report and all the information coming out of congress on the Robert Mueller report on Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election have four clear lessons about today’s international system.

One: In Britain, Boris Johnson and the Brexit campaign, and in the US Donald Trump and his campaign, are completely innocent of any improper collusion with the Russians. Attempts to discredit their victories by Russian associations are absurd, confected by the losers because they couldn’t believe they lost.

Two: Moscow, on the other hand, is guilty of using covert, dishonest and illegal means to try to interfere with democratic elections to hurt Western interests and advance its own. Even being called out publicly has not altered its behaviour.

Three: As the British report makes clear, and this is true in the US, democratic governments have been slow to understand, respond to, confront and halt foreign interference of this kind. It’s difficult to do this, both technically difficult and because any candidate or cause the Russians may momentarily support tactically is not guilty of anything unless it seeks that support. So you have to do it without undermining domestic freedom of speech or the impartiality of state institutions. But you do have to do it.

Four: Both Russia and China have mastered the art of grey-zone conflict. This is offensive actions, sometimes paramilitary, sometimes espionage or cyber, that are aimed at hurting another nation, are in clear breach of national sovereignty, but seek to fall below the threshold that triggers a serious response. One important element of responding to grey-zone conflict is for democratic nations to work together.

Historically, Beijing and Moscow have no love for each other. Their present co-operation is tactical, transactional and limited. But they do share a fundamental world view — that democracy is no good, the US is the adversary, human rights are a waste of time and strongman authoritarian leadership is the way of the future.

The Morrison government understands all this very well. And if you apply the interpretative template of building like-minded alliances and associations, the whole pattern of its efforts becomes clearer.

Thus five Australian navy ships are now participating in trilateral military exercises with the US and Japan in the Philippine Sea.

The Indian media is reporting that New Delhi is about to invite Australia to participate in this year’s Malabar exercises — trilateral naval exercises involving India, the US and Japan. They were initially just India and the US but Japan has joined as a permanent participant in recent years.

Australia has wanted to join for a long time. We participated once. New Delhi developed doubts about our seriousness after the Rudd government announced it would not participate in any further quadrilateral activities and made it clear it was taking this action to please Beijing. The quad came back to life a couple of years ago and Canberra is an enthusiastic participant. The Malabar exercises, while not remotely threat­ening to anybody, will certainly take the quad to a new level.

Since the COVID-19 outbreak the Morrison government has worked to extend the purposes and scope of our Five Eyes intelligence alliance, which involves Australia, the US, Britain, Canada and New Zealand. Josh Frydenberg now regularly convenes Five Eyes finance ministers’ meetings. They work on responding to the pandemic but they also operationalise a high degree of broader strategic and political trust.

Similarly, through the Pacific step-up, Canberra has worked very hard to coalesce the South Pacific island states as a group of like-minded nations with Australia as their natural and most intimate and helpful partner.

As well, the Morrison government is putting maximum effort into its dialogue with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations as an institution, and with key ASEAN members individually.

Singapore shares our strategic outlook most closely. Vietnam is the toughest minded of the ASEANS when it comes to China and has centuries of standing up to Beijing behind it. While Indonesia, because of its size and its distinctive religious, political and cultural make-up, is never likely to be subservient to Beijing.

Malcolm Turnbull made the point recently that the Indo-Pacific region, because of the size and capabilities of its members, is not an easy place for any nation, especially China, to exercise hegemony over.

However, the Morrison government is not going to rely on some natural structural balance in the Indo-Pacific to provide for Australia’s security.

The most important figures in the Indo-Pacific are Japan’s Shinzo Abe and India’s Narendra Modi. India and Japan are the two most important states in any hedging and balancing strategy regarding China.

That is, of course, apart from the US. Most of the Europeans find the Trump administration extremely challenging. And the Europeans generally have been a long way behind the curve in understanding the nature of the strategic challenge posed by Beijing. But the Europeans are well and truly getting the idea now. The Morrison government is keen to get a European contribution, however limited, to Indo-Pacific security. That Britain plans to deploy an aircraft carrier to the region is a good sign.

In all of this, traditional UN-centred multilateralism has a role. But it is a minor role. Canberra wants to stop these agencies doing harm to our national interest and help them do good where that’s possible. To consider that another nation is like-minded has nothing to do with ethnicity. South Korea and Israel are two critically important like-minded nations.

The overriding operating system is to build broadbased like-minded associations. Multilat­eral­ism is no solution, nor yet global­isation. Broadbased like-minded alignment is the best bet for answering the hegemonic threat that is coming to define our times.