AUKUS ‘pivotal’ against China, says Scott Morrison

Scott Morrison says Australia’s AUKUS security pact with the US and Britain and the advancement of the Quad had delivered a most profound shift in the strategic balance in the Indo-Pacific.

Former PM Scott Morrison with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

Scott Morrison says Australia’s AUKUS security pact with the US and Britain and the advancement of the Quad had delivered the most profound shift in the strategic balance in the Indo-Pacific since China started “turning atolls into airports in the South China Sea”.

The former prime minister, in a speech to the Global Opinion Leaders Summit in Tokyo on Thursday, said Beijing had spent the past decade trying to reshape the region under the yoke of autocracy, but Australia’s nuclear submarine deal and its lead role in elevating the Quad – the regional partnership between Australia, the US, Japan and India – had been pivotal events that could shift the balance back towards liberal democracies becoming the prevailing force for stability and sovereignty in the region.

The Quad, he said, had the ability to achieve “peace through strength” and become the dominant driving force for not only regional security but ensuring the rules-based order prevailed, while also addressing economic and energy security and problems such as climate change.

AUKUS and the Quad are the two things that have angered Beijing the most, with their potential to undermine the PRC’s longer term strategic ambitions.

Underlying Mr Morrison’s premise is that the West had failed to address China’s advancement; it had been allowed to assert itself in the region amid a vacuum of previous US engagement.

The revival of the Quad and the AUKUS pact had been the fulcrum in the strategic balance that had checked China’s ambitions. And Australia, under his government, had been pivotal to this shift.

In a speech likely to provoke a sharp response from Beijing, Mr Morrison shaped the strategic contest as a broader battle for ­supremacy between the “arc of ­autocracy” – China and Russia – and liberal democracies, saying the region needed to resist the “path of acquiescence in the face of coercion”.

He took aim at Beijing over its of 14 points of grievance issued against Australia at the height of the trade war in 2020, saying no self-respecting nation should ­tolerate such coercive tactics.

Arguing that nations should rightly engage with China but such engagement needed to respect a set of rules-based on respect and sovereignty, he said: “(The Quad) is an initiative, combined with AUKUS, that has had the most profound impact on the strategic balance within the Indo-Pacific since the PRC started turning atolls into airports in the South China Sea.

“Over the last decade, the PRC has increasingly attempted to reshape our region, and the world, in a way more conducive to autocracies than liberal democracies.

“As prime minister, I referred to China, with Russia, as a new arc of autocracy of which the world must be wary. This was recognised by NATO at their recent summit, declaring China a security challenge, calling out their assertive behaviour as presenting ‘ systemic challenges to the rules-based inter­national order and to areas relevant to alliance security.

“We have always recognised the economic achievements of the PRC and indeed played a significant role in (its) economic success, especially through our resources sector.

“However, the tone of PRC engagement during the past five to seven years within our region has changed. Of course nations will wish to engage with the PRC … but it is the nature and terms of this engagement with China that matter. This must mean engagement that respects, reinforces and is bound by our rules-based order, not one that seeks to or allows China to redefine these rules to suit the relativist agenda of autocracies.

“Our region must not embrace the path of acquiescence in the face of coercion. Rather we must practically insist on engagement within the clear and established rules, with accountability and transparency.

“For our rules-based order to prevail in the Indo-Pacific, we must continue to work together to shape our region in a way that supports such an outcome.

“This is where the Quad and Australia’s relationship with Japan and other allies and partners is designed to make a positive contribution.”

Mr Morrison missed parliament this week, having accepted an invitation by Japan to speak at the summit before the parliamentary calendar had been set.