The Parliament’s applause, and the simultaneous announcement that Australia would host more US forces, seemed to show that Australians had made up their minds to back Obama’s forthright policy to the hilt.
That impression would be wrong. In fact, Obama’s speech was a wakeup call to Australians, signalling that a debate needs to be had on these issues, because some very big decisions need to be made.
Until recently, most Australians have been content to assume that Asia’s economic transformation, so central to Australia’s prosperity, had no implications whatsoever for the region’s strategic order or Australia’s strategic policy. They imagined that even as China’s economy overtakes America’s, China will either be happy to accept American leadership, or too weak to challenge it. They assumed therefore that American primacy would remain forever unchallenged and unchallengeable, and that Australia faced very few, if any, pressing decisions about this.
President Obama’s speech punctured this blithe optimism, confronting Australian leaders with the uncomfortable reality that Americans really do see China as their major strategic rival, and that rivalry between them is escalating fast. Suddenly it became much clearer that Australia will have to make some choices after all.
But there were some in Parliament listening to Obama that day who had already begun to understand the way that Asia’s economic transformation is forcing Australia to reconsider its strategic position. Earlier last year, several Opposition front-benchers discussed how China’s rise would affect the Asian order and Australia’s choices throughout a number of speeches, and Malcolm Turnbull offered a very substantial analysis and critique of the prevailing orthodoxy.
Most strikingly of all, Prime Minister Julia Gillard gave a major speech just a few weeks before Obama’s arrival in which she, too, acknowledged that the historic shift in economic weight to Asia has strategic consequences. Gillard conceded that Australia has choices to make about what kind of new strategic order would suit Australia best, and spoke of what the country’s leaders could do to help bring it about. Moreover, she announced the preparation of a white paper, Australia in the Asian Century, to explore these issues.
Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd has also been exploring these questions. Since Obama’s visit he has retuned to the issue in a series of speeches, making a cogent and forceful case for a comprehensive re-thinking of Asia’s future order, away from the Pax Americana of the past and toward a ‘Pax Pacifica’. He did not say much about what the Pax Pacifica should look like, but clearly he believes it should accommodate China’s ‘legitimate aspirations’.
All this is a long way from President Obama’s clarion call to perpetuate the Pax Americana at any cost. So it seems that, notwithstanding the rapturous reception Obama received, Australians have started to rethink their strategic future, and ask searching questions about the choices they face.
The scene is now set for a debate in Australia about Asia’s strategic future and Australia’s place in it, which may prove to be as momentous as any before in the country’s history. If that debate is to be productive, it should start from a clear understanding of what exactly is happening, what kinds of choices Australia has to make and the options it has to choose between.
First, Australia needs to acknowledge that the economic shift to Asia does indeed have profound implications for the balance of strategic power as well. China is now strong enough to contest America’s leadership in Asia, and is plainly doing so. That means the old days of uncontested American primacy, and the Asian order that has been built on this foundation, are already history. Australia’s choices are about what kind of order it would like to see replace this.
Second, Australia needs to recognise that there are several possibilities for the kind of new order that could emerge. One is a contested order framed by strategic rivalry between the US and China. Everyone can see that this option is risky and undesirable, but whether it might anyway be the best available option depends on the alternatives. If the only alternative is Chinese domination, then rivalry might be preferable, because no one wants to live under Chinese hegemony.
But there is another option: one in which the US stays engaged in Asia to balance China’s power, but does not try to dominate Asia itself. This is surely a better outcome than either of the others, if it can be achieved. That would not be easy, because the US and China would both have to agree to accommodate one another’s interests and share power.
Indeed the trends at present, typified by Obama’s tough talk in Canberra, all point the other way. So if Australia would like to see this outcome, it will need to find ways to encourage both the US and China in this direction, and have others in Asia do the same. This seems to be what both Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd are suggesting.
Third, Australia needs to recognise that urging America to work with China to build what Rudd calls a Pax Pacifica is not tantamount to abandoning the American alliance. America’s role in Asia and its alliance with Australia will change, but the enduring foundation of the alliance could and should remain.
These will never be easy issues for Australia to debate. In the Asian century, its Asian neighbours will for the first time be richer and stronger than its great and powerful friends. Australia will perhaps never again enjoy the familiar reassurance of being a very close ally of the world’s dominant power. But it can prosper in a stable, peaceful Asia if a new Pax Pacifica can be built that both accommodates Asia’s new power and keeps America engaged. How would that work? How can it be built? How can Australia help? These are the questions we really need to debate now.
Hugh White is Professor of Strategic Studies at the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University, and Visiting Fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy. He is also an EAF Distinguished Fellow for 2012.
This post is part of the series on the Asian Century which feeds into the Australian government White Paper on Australia in the Asian Century.
“A picture says a thousand words” goes the old saying. In my opinion, the photo in this article where Xi and Obama are sitting at the White House exchanging ideas clearly shows that the U.S. is very willing and open to resolving any issues with China. The cultivation of a relationship between China and the U.S. has historically dated back to Nixon and Kissinger period, and it has continued to present day.
The U.S. intends to develop a solid relationship with China. For this reason, the U.S. has as its Ambassador to China, Honorable Gary Locke, a Chinese American, so that cultural issue would not be the factor. Also in moving away from the Cold War era, Obama has put what he calls “senior and deep seated” new Secretary of Defense Panetta and Vice President Biden to assist him in relations with China.
In my opinion, in the era of hegemonic challenge while the distribution of power is moving away from unipolarity, the photo of Xi and Obama is reassuring for a positive direction of U.S. foreign policy and the contour of world politics.
many thanks for this, a riveting commentary on perhaps one of the most crucial strategic security issues of the day. In my studies of the evolution of Sino-US relations since 1949, a theme examined in my four-part series (listed here: http://www.allbookstores.com/author/S_Mahmud_Ali.html), I found Prof. White’s analyses of regional and systemic developments to be based on an unsentimental, empirical-rational, assessment – one that is, sadly, increasingly unusual in much Western discourse on the subject. This present commentary reinforces that view.
While I agree with Prof. White’s observations, especially relating to the difficult choices facing Australia, I would wish to note that former PM Kevin Rudd did, in fact, pose some of these questions while in that office. I take the liberty of quoting from my most recent study ( a copy of which is attached for reference; p.178) as evidence:
“Rudd identified systemic fluidity as a defining feature:
‘A core challenge for Australia is, how do we best prepare ourselves for the Asia-Pacific century – to maximise the opportunities, to minimise the threats and to make our own active contribution to making this Asia-Pacific century peaceful, prosperous and sustainable for us all.’140 The Australian–US alliance remained pivotal in Canberra’s calculus. With America an ‘overwhelming force for good in the world’, Rudd described the alliance as the ‘key strategic partnership and the central pillar of Australian
national security policy’,141 but Australia would pursue ‘middle power diplomacy’ to actively shape the regional future. Rudd sought to reconcile liberal internationalism and realism: ‘Interdependence is not the expression of sentimental idealism … Interdependence is the new realism of the 21st century’.142 This explained his ‘three pillars’ of diplomacy – alliance with America, engagement with Asia, and active membership of the UN.143 Initially, Rudd’s perceived proximity to Beijing caused some unease,144 but his action suggested a sophisticated grasp of the Chinese reality and its systemic impact:
‘The rise of China represents the great unfolding drama of this new century. Will China democratise? How will China deal with climate change? How will China deal with crises in the global economic and financial systems? How will China respond domestically to the global information revolution? And how will Chinese culture adjust to the array of global influences now washing across its shores?’145
Despite his nuanced approach, Rudd proved tougher than his predecessors in facing Beijing. He boosted the security-diplomatic edifice Howard had erected with Australia’s allies. The Trilateral Strategic Dialogue (TSD) among America, Japan and Australia exemplified their shared stance toward China….”
We know that the Australian establishment debated Canberra’s options with Prof. White making a significant contribution to these exchanges. We also know from the Australian DOD’s 2009 White Paper that Rudd’s eventual decision was to respond to the systemic transitional uncertainties with his proposed “Force 2030” option which, apparently, gave Canberra confidence that even if its primary source of extended security – its alliance with Washington – was fated to relative decline given the uncertain consequences of China’s rise, Australia could count on its own enhanced and diverse deterrent and war-fighting capabilities with which to retain its autonomous space within the regional subsystem.
Prof. White appears to disagree with Rudd’s choice and offers a different perspective which, incidentally, I personally endorse with warm enthusiasm (please note the concluding chapter of my attached work), but I also feel it would perhaps be unfair, and inaccurate, to suggest that Canberra under Rudd’s leadership did not grapple with the strategic turbulence following in the wake of the asymmetric trajectories being traced by the USA and China. Rudd’s ‘Asia-Pacific Community’ idea – while sold as a regional framework for a stabilising and collaborative set of power-relations in a dynamic milieu – may have, in fact, sought to buy Australia and its allies time and space in which to address the grave challenges systemic shifts were inflicting on the wider region.
While I do not believe I have sufficient evidence to feel confident that “Force 2030” offered the most cost-effective, or just effective and meaningful, response to Australia’s strategic challenges – and I would appreciate Prof. White’s view on this – I would merely propose to give the devil his due, if you will.
Thanks and kind regards,
mahmud
When exactly were the “old days of uncontested American primacy”? Not in the early postwar era, when it took three years for a cold peace to be imposed on the Korean Peninsula with great loss of life. Clearly not before the Nixon visit to China in 1972. Until then, China had certainly contested US primacy, and the Indochinese communists continued to do so, ultimately successfully, for three more years. And, in South and Southwest Asia, has there been US primacy at all? Probably not during the era of the Indian-Soviet alliance, when it was India’s much weaker neighbour, Pakistan, that was the US ally. It was the Soviet Union that was the peacemaker after the 1965 Indian-Pakistani war, and American ’tilting’ towards Pakistan in 1971, when India intervened to ensure the independence of East Pakistan as Bangladesh, was unavailing. Later,the US was unable to prevent either India or Pakistan from becoming nuclear powers. With this background, adjusting to the absence of US primacy in the future may not be such a dramatic change for Asia.
If the ‘Asian Century'(why not just call it the ‘Asian half-century’, and leave it to our grandchildren to decide whether it will last a full hundred years?) is meant to encompass India and other Asian countries, not just China,why restrict strategic options to a choice between America’s resisting China or its accommodating China? Is it likely that Asia as a monolithic bloc including, say, India and Vietnam, will go along with whatever modus vivendi the US and China come to, that allows those two powers “to accommodate one another’s interests and share power”.