Post Trump, our Plan B needs to focus on China, India, Japan

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in California this week. Picture: AFP

Donald Trump’s recent acts of political arson have left most in the international policy world reeling. They also may be sharpening Australia’s focus on how to deal with global and regional change.

When Trump was elected, the government and opposition realised we would be dealing with a different US president. Most did not like what they saw.

Nonetheless, neither main party was prepared to express doubt over US international commitments or to suggest it was no longer business as usual.

The official position was and still is that Australia believes in the unequivocal centrality to our security policy of the ANZUS commitment. The main public message to come through from this week’s talks between our Foreign Affairs and Defence ministers with their US counterparts is that the alliance remains “rock solid”.

In one sense, this is fair comment. There are differences in Australia on whether it is in our interest, to quote Malcolm Turnbull, to be “joined at the hip” with the US. Many question our military commitments in the Middle East. However, there is no serious disagreement about the importance of US regional engagement or of ANZUS per se.

But thinking about the region has changed. Since the turn of the century, Australia has realised we will have to adapt to the rise of China and India and the relative economic decline of the US. These changes, and questions about America’s appetite for overseas military engagement in the wake of Iraq, prompted questioning of the centrality of ANZUS in our strategic perspective.

Since Trump’s election, concerns about the alliance have hardened. One concern is that US values as reflected by Trump are not akin to ours. Another is about American reliability given, among other things, the President’s reputation for mendacity.

Most comment from government sources has been cautious, understandably, including in the foreign affairs and trade white paper of November last year. The paper’s analysis of global changes was strong and it was skilfully drafted. But its thrust suggested a confidence in the continuity of US policies in the region on which the conduct of the President has thrown doubt.

However, more is being said outside government as old certainties are dissipating.

Peter Varghese — a realist with one of the best international policy minds as a former head of the Office of National Assessments and Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade — made a noteworthy intervention last September. He asked what Australia would do in a world where US strategic predominance was no longer the linchpin of regional security. He argued for a balance of power in the region in which the US had to remain a key player, along with China. He suggested Australia contribute to this balance via strengthened strategic engagement with other regional powers, notably Japan and India.

Former foreign minister Gareth Evans has argued for some time that while maintaining strong ties with the US, Australia needs to put more emphasis on major Asian partners. Evans also accepts that Australia needs to get used to spending more on defence.

The debate has shifted in recent weeks. The strongest proponents of the US security relationship are questioning aspects of American policy.

Most notably, former prime minister Tony Abbott said in a July 12 speech to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington: “A new age is coming. The (American) legions are going home. American values can be relied upon but American help less so … more will be required of the world’s other free countries. Will they step up? That’s the test.”

Abbott’s speech was more in praise of Trump keeping his election promises and a call for US allies to do more, than a reflection on America’s diminishing overseas commitment. Nonetheless, he said what he said and presumably meant it.

Even Turnbull and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop are prepared to criticise Trump on his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin this month. While they had much American and global company, such criticism of a US president by Australian ministers is unusual.

Peter Jennings, whose Australian Strategic Policy Institute is an unabashed alliance supporter, argued in these pages last Saturday that given Trump’s recent behaviour, Australia needed to think beyond the alliance about a plan B. Jennings is right although, as he acknowledges, this is not an easy task unless one is prepared openly to question plan A.

Much of Jennings’s argument is about increasing defence spending, including on ­nuclear-­powered submarines. Other aspects focus on putting more heft into the South Pacific, on alli­ances with Japan, Britain and France, and on stronger strategic regional engagement, particularly with India and Indonesia.

Trade issues are also affecting our perceptions of the international environment. The government’s response to Trump’s actions on trade has been flaccid, partly because Australia was let off the hook on steel tariffs.

Nonetheless, Australians generally have received these actions badly because we traditionally have put store by international trade rules and because of a recognition that international economic dislocation can rapidly affect international security.

In looking, then, at the arguments in play in Australia, we can draw a few conclusions.

First, there continues to be broad agreement on the importance of US regional engagement. While the US disposition to expend blood and treasure may have diminished, it has yet to draw down overseas military assets. Its significant economic interests militate against early withdrawal. But increasingly Trump’s conduct is eroding confidence in that commitment.

Second, there might be less opposition in Australia to increased defence spending than many would predict, particularly on ­nuclear-powered submarines.

Third, we have been neglectful of the South Pacific and few would quarrel with the proposition that we need to put more shoulder into it. Multipolarity in that region makes sense. The French presence in Polynesia is a strategic advantage and an increased British diplomatic presence a marginal plus, but how would treaties with these powers further our interests? We would also need to ponder what might be expected reciprocally of us, say, in Europe or the Middle East.

Fourth, there is agreement on the need for greater strategic engagement with major Asian powers, and this is happening. But we have to think about what we mean and what is attainable.

All the regional powers have complex relations with China and some are seeking to put these into a better state of repair.

Japan is unlikely to enthuse about a treaty with Australia. It is already doing much with Canberra in a security context. And apart from the avoidance of extra complications in its dealings with China, it would muse about the added value of such an alliance.

There would also be constitutional complications. For one, Japan’s recent reinterpretation of its alliance obligations to the US — let alone to anyone else — allows for its intervention on behalf of an ally only if the circumstances also threaten Japan.

In April, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping held an informal summit that did little to improve a troubled relationship but that arguably stabilised it.

Our strategic congruence with India has grown in the past decade. However, India’s caution about greater strategic proximity to us has been manifest in its reservations about the Quadrilateral Dialogue between India, Australia, the US and Japan, and about Australia’s inclusion in the Malabar naval exercise with the US and Japan. India is unsure about our reliability given our withdrawal from the dialogue under the Rudd government.

A stronger strategic relationship with Indonesia has been addressed by several commentators. But the history of Indonesia’s dealings with Australia and its own complex relationship with China do not suggest that greater strategic congruence will be attained easily.

These observations do not preclude enhanced Australian regional military engagement. But they do suggest our friends will scrutinise proposals to this end.

There also would be merit in a greater degree of commonality in regional political and diplomatic responses to Chinese muscularity. Chinese diplomacy tends to be responsive to the dictum that one should never take on the whole room at the same time.

These lines of argument bring us squarely back to our own China relationship.

Bilateral diplomacy is about each country furthering its own interests and accommodating those of the other. This process can be affected by how each deals with third countries. Most major relationships bring positive benefits but also have negative aspects. When the negative aspects are such as seriously to damage the positive, the relationship falls into disequilibrium. Most prominently, this has occurred in Russia’s relationships with Britain and the US and in the past between China and Japan. But it also happened in the Australian-Indonesia relationship for about a year after the Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono bugging affair. It describes the state of our current dealings with China.

It usually takes both sides to attain or regain equilibrium. The Chinese have to recognise our security concerns, which are manifest in our alliance loyalties, in investment decisions and in attitudes to foreign interference in our political processes. We must recognise that China has contributed greatly to our own and to regional prosperity, that it is a great power and will act as such, and that it is entitled to respect. We have to be clear about what we expect from China.

The need to regain equilibrium was implicit in a strongly reasoned paper last month by former ambassador to China Stephen FitzGerald and Linda Jak­obson, head of think tank China Matters. The paper accepted that Australia should maintain robust domestic and international security policies. It also suggested that the government needed to develop a clear narrative on China that explained Beijing’s objectives, including the positives and negatives for us.

The government is conscious of the disequilibrium and in the past six months has been cautious in its criticism of China, possibly having in mind that with tough decisions to come — on issues such as the Huawei bid in the 5G wireless network and the proposed takeover by Cheung Kong of gas pipeline company APA — we need to keep complications to a minimum. These considerations may have been behind the clarity with which Bishop this week renounced any Australian intention to undertake freedom-of- navigation operations in the South China Sea. While such operations might have made policy sense a few years ago, in the present climate they would introduce yet another negative factor into our relationship with China, adding to the disequilibrium.

John McCarthy has served as ambassador to the US, Japan, Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam, and as high commissioner to India. He also has held diplomatic posts in Damascus, Baghdad and Vientiane.