Pity the French diplomats travelling with their President, Emmanuel Macron, in China last week. Flying between Beijing and Guangzhou on COTAM Unite, the French Air Force One, Macron delivered the opinion that Europe must avoid being “caught up in crises that are not ours, which prevents it from building its strategic autonomy”.
On Taiwan he said: “The question Europeans need to answer … is it in our interest to accelerate (a crisis) on Taiwan? No. The worse thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic and take our cue from the US agenda and a Chinese over-reaction.
“Europeans cannot resolve the crisis in Ukraine; how can we credibly say on Taiwan, ‘watch out, if you do something wrong we will be there’?”
In just a couple of sentences Macron undermined the efforts of the world’s leading democracies to support Ukraine against Russia’s brutal invasion and to deter Beijing from its increasingly aggressive threats against Taiwan.
Macron’s personal diplomacy is becoming idiosyncratic. His efforts with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping to broker peace in Ukraine have come nothing while weakening democratic unity against the authoritarian regimes.
Macron’s focus is to pursue his idea of European strategic autonomy, not surprisingly with France in the lead.
Speaking in The Hague on Tuesday, Macron outlined the case for “accelerating” European sovereignty and calling for Europe to develop more self-sufficiency to avoid becoming reliant on other powerful trading partners.
The risk of such an approach is that it puts the US and China in the same category as countries encroaching on his sovereign ambitions for Europe. But the differences are profound. Values matter and so do shared democratic instincts. Nothing has changed the reality that the US is the crucial deterrent against Russian aggression in Europe.
European NATO countries have indeed become more focused on defence spending and the Russian threat, but there is no adequate sovereign European response to Moscow without America’s continuing military presence.
On China, Macron is increasingly at odds with NATO and EU positions, which are hardening on Beijing. Xi’s “no limits” alliance with Putin, signed just days before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24 last year, has decisively reshaped European thinking on China.
Travelling with Macron for part of his China visit was European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen. The EU’s position on Taiwan as put to Xi in Beijing last week was much more pointed: “The threat (of) the use of force to change the status quo is unacceptable.”
Macron’s allies in Paris have been in damage control. French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire commented: “We are obviously allies of the United States. We share the same values and many of the same economic interests. But it is not because we are allied with the US that we must be against China.”
The French debate, if that’s what it can be called, weighing the merits of sovereignty versus alliances, has its echoes in Australia. Here, critics of AUKUS argue that acquiring American nuclear-powered submarines undermines Australian sovereignty.
The argument runs that Washington would not trust Australia with such powerful military technology were it not confident that Australia would support an American effort to defend Taiwan under attack from China.
The argument is badly flawed. No one could claim with any certainty what a future US administration might do if Taiwan were attacked. Much would depend on the political circumstances, including Taiwan’s behaviour.
Second, how exactly does an Australian defence equipment plan today pre-commit a future government in Canberra to a future military operation? Why would nuclear-powered submarines ensure our involvement any more than our intelligence links, common equipment and shared exercises?
This week, for example, the US and The Philippines are undertaking one of the largest military activities, Exercise Balikatan, between the two armed forces in decades. Biden administration Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin were in Manila on Tuesday, reaffirming “the United States’ unwavering commitment to standing with The Philippines against any intimidation or coercion, including in the South China Sea”.
It was mostly unnoticed that Australia sent what Defence Minister Richard Marles called “one of the largest contingents” of Australian Defence Force personnel to The Philippines to the same exercise.
Proponents of Australian sovereignty might argue that such exercises should cease because they could compromise future government decision-making about military operations.
If some Australians are worried about the US coming to the defence of Taiwan, those individuals should ponder the opposite risk – which is that the US, with its own Macron-like “sovereignty” advocates, might prefer to let China have its way.
Consider Australia’s defence position in a world where the US and the Europeans concluded that Taiwan was too remote from their strategic concerns. That is a world where Beijing realises an ambition to militarily dominate the Indo-Pacific.
Anthony Albanese should reflect on Macron’s China visit as he contemplates his own hoped-for invitation to Beijing. The temptation for leaders visiting China seems always to hope that their global leadership qualities will allow them to create a special understanding with Xi.
That is the risk inherent in our so-called stabilised relationship with Beijing. Canberra is already compromising a core interest in promoting global free trade, by agreeing to “temporarily suspend” the case brought to the World Trade Organisation against China blocking our barley exports.
Australia can cut a pragmatic deal with Beijing in the interests of resuming exports that China needs and wants, but this allows Xi to get away with flagrant coercive behaviour under the fictional guise of a Chinese “agreement to undertake an expedited review”.
Meantime, Beijing continues to pursue aggressive military behaviour against Taiwan designed to throttle the island and threaten any individual or country that objects to this behaviour. Macron may claim this is not a concern for France but, given our geography, Australia cannot afford to be neutral over Taiwan’s position.
It seems there is some uncertainty in the government about whether Albanese should attend the next NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania. It would be a major strategic mistake not to attend.
Albanese must reinforce the NATO and EU perspective that security for democracies is strengthened by working together. He needs to refute the Macron thesis that national sovereignty means it is possible to cut deals with China and ignore Beijing’s authoritarian challenge.
If Albanese skips the summit, it will also look as if Australia is losing interest in supporting Ukraine. The state of the war is finely balanced. More help now will strengthen Kyiv.
Australia’s fundamental interest is to build tighter defence partnerships with like-minded democracies. Staying at home means we risk fighting alone.
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