Just think about this: is China willing to deal with the US alone or is that willing to deal with the US and its two military allies and deputies in the East Asia together? Alternatively, is Rudd prepared to give up the US – Australia alliance? Is Japan willing to do so?

I have no doubt that Rudd is good intentioned in his APC proposal. But if Ron Huisken is correct that Rudd’s key objective is to see the United States cemented into a body within which there are some members that are militarily aligned with the US while the other rising power is not, it is unlikely to get off the ground.

That should not be a too subtle point for people to see. In that context, there is also the Australian white paper on defence. It does not appear to sit well with Rudd’s APC concept. At the least they have been poorly timed together.

Assuming that my interpretation of the APC proposal is at least roughly correct, I think that Rudd was on the right track. Indeed, his proposal is flatteringly close to an assessment of multilateral processes in East Asia that I published some years ago ['Civilising the Anarchical Society": Contemporary Southeast Asia, August 2002 ]. Sadly, however, there is no shred of evidence of any connection. At that time, I concluded that the interdependence of the security interests and concerns of East Asian states was strong and growing stronger but that the available management tools were not up to the task and that the machininations of the anarchical society appeared to be getting the upper hand. My prescription, characterised as a piece of strategic preventive diplomacy, was for the major powers, including the US, to take collective responsibility for the region’s strategic future and invest an appropriate process with the authority to deal with the core sources of stress and instability.
Seven years on, this remains a valid assessment

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25573720-601,00.html
http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Rudds-secret-spiked-essay-for-Foreign-Affairs-magazine/

Presumably, Rudd in that essay would have elaborated on the idea more fully. But since it is not published yet, I don’t know what his main arguments are. Anyone interested has to wait for its publication, if it ever has that day.

One should notice that Rudd was Labor’s shadow foreign minister before he became its leader and Australian PM. He may be better at foreign affairs than national leadership. But that needs to be proven. His APC concept will be a test of his ability to manage much broader affairs based on a middle power. I hope it will not be proven as another fanciful spin, like the 2020 Australian summit episode. What has happened after that? It was reported that 9 out of the 1000 ideas were selected and acted upon. Those 9 may have their individual merits, but one doubts whether they are the greatest among the 1000 ideas from that summit.

I am not an ideologist. Neither am I personally opposed to Rudd, or Swan. But I am a realist and like to analyse things based on available information. Sorry that I may seem to have lost confidence on the Rudd government. I sincerely hope that I will be proven to be wrong, because if I am, then that means Australians will not be too badly managed by the Rudd government.

I was fortunate to attend the Shangri-la Dialogue and PM Rudd’s speech on Friday evening. I thought that he spoke too long with too many issues, but afterall it was carefully crafted good speech. Although there was little concrete view on APC, the way he presented was more accomodative to existing initiatives and leaderships in the region. He praised the role of ASEAN and other overapping regional frameworks. I think that the tone of his consideration was well received by the audience.

PM Rudd also impressed the audience during the Q&A session. Many questions were raised including recent Australian Defense Whitepaper, North Korea, US-China relations and somewhat blunt question like “what worries you?”. He was well informed along these issues and eloquent enough to convince the audience about his political commitments. I am glad to see Australian ‘middle power’ leadership that encourage, once again, the architecture debate in this region.