Donald Trump must not turn his back on Australia while China rises: Kurt Campbell

US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell warns China is ‘relentless’ in its bid to build military bases and extend its power and urges Australia to be proactive in relations with Washington.

Kurt Campbell has warned against a ‘relentless’ China. Picture: AFP.

US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell has urged the incoming Trump administration not to turn its back on Australia and the Indo Pacific, warning that China is “relentless” in its bid to build military bases and extend its power in the region.

In a strongly worded warning to the Albanese Government, Mr Campbell also urged it to be proactive in trying to persuade Donald Trump that ongoing engagement with allies like Australia was a better strategic choice than a more isolationist America.

“This is a time right now to be innovative, to be optimistic, to work, to make the argument about why common purpose is in our best interests, and why the United States should not withdraw from the world, from partnerships to work more closely than ever with Indo Pacific partners. Nowhere is that more important than Australia,” Mr Campbell told a United States Studies Centre International Strategic Forum in Sydney via video from Washington.

“The hope will be that the next administration will resist the temptation to go inward and to put its interests uniquely first, and to recognise that we are stronger working with allies and partners,” said Mr Campbell who will leave the job when Mr Trump becomes president on January 20.

Anthony Albanese jokes with US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell on the sidelines of the 53rd Pacific Islands Forum.

Mr Campbell said America’s ongoing engagement in the Indo-Pacific had never been more important given China’s increasingly hegemonic behaviour in the region.

“I think it’s the place where we can expect some strategic surprise. China is relentless. 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,” Mr Campbell said.

He said that while much had been achieved so far in the AUKUS nuclear submarine pact, the “hard yards lie ahead.”

“I would very much like to see AUKUS continue to thrive. There are a few voices that have raised questions about AUKUS (in the US), but I think most of that, frankly, is contrarian,’ he said.

But he said he was an optimist because there was “deep bipartisan support for engagement” in the Indo-Pacific within the Republican Party which will control both houses of Congress.

“I’m confident that these powerful, purposeful senators and leaders in the House (who) have made a career of advocating for American engagement in the Indo-Pacific, my hope is their arguments, their persuasiveness and their perspective will have a big impact on how the (Trump) administration adjudicates its way forward,” he said.

Mr Campbell said he was concerned that proposed budget cuts to the State Department would limit America’s ability to increase or even maintain its current diplomatic focus on the Indo Pacific and he hoped that incoming secretary of state Marco Rubio would seek to rectify this recognising it is a “moment of acute strategic competition in the region.”

In order to better support Australia and the common strategic goals of the two countries, Mr Campbell said there needed to be “more diplomatic engagements, more US aid, more peace corps” because “all those things are going to be important.”

Mr Campbell said the US and Australia needed to deal with the “China we have” rather than the China we might want.

He believed it was wrong for some opinion-makers in the US to take extreme or unrealistic positions on China, for example to talk about the desire to ultimately topple the Chinese Communist Party.

He said such views make the ability to find “common purpose” with China more difficult.

“I think ultimately we have to deal with the China that we have and construct a diplomacy accordingly,” he said.

Mr Campbell, who sat in on the meeting between Joe Biden and Chinese president Xi Jinping in Peru last week, believes China is worried about the threat of large tariffs which Mr Trump has promised to levy against Chinese imports.

“Clearly the Chinese are worried about the possibility of massive sanctions, which could have a real effect, not just on the global economy, but their economy,” Mr Campbell said.