Author: Hugh White, ANU

President Obama’s visit to Australia is a bit of a puzzle. The superficial politics are obvious enough, at least for Rudd. The deeper dynamics are not. That is because we do not yet know what Kevin Rudd thinks of the US alliance. Of course he supports it; every Australian leader does. But he has not so far defined what he wants to do with it.

In this he differs from his predecessors. Bob Hawke and John Howard, in very different ways, each re-conceived the alliance, to suit their own policy aims and political purposes. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Hugh White, ANU

No relationship in the world is more important than the US-China relationship. None is changing faster. And none is less clear in its long-term trajectory.

So it’s a strange and telling fact that Barack Obama has so far said nothing substantive about it, either as candidate or President. That makes this weekend’s visit to China an important event Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Hugh White

When the Berlin Wall fell it seemed to many that the end of the Cold War marked not just the end of a particular geostrategic episode, but the end of geostrategy as such. Now geostrategy is back. We are again exploring how the international order – the set of understandings and expectations that shape relationships between states – is formed by the perceptions and realties of power, and especially how changes in relative power affect the workings of the international order. Moreover, after a period during the Cold War in which geostrategic calculations were based more on military than on economic factors, we are rediscovering the centrality of economic power as the key driver of geostrategic relationships.

There is a simple reason for this: we are living through and period of remarkable economic transformation, which is driving shifts in relative economic weight of a scale and speed that we have not seen for many decades, if ever. And China is the key.

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Author: Hugh White

At the heart of Australia’s new Defence White paper is a deep ambivalence about the future of American power. In some places it foreshadows that China could overtake the US on some measures to become the largest economy in the world as early as 2020, and it clearly explains that such a momentous shift in economic power would mean a decisive shift in strategic power too.

But in other places the White Paper expresses confidence that the US will remain the primary strategic power in Asia until 2030 or beyond.

Where between these conflicting messages does the Government believe the truth lies? The answer matters a lot for Australian defence policy and for our broader place in Asia. The United States has maintained uncontested primacy in Asia for almost 40 years. Since Nixon went to China, no Asian major power has sought to challenge or displace it as the region’s dominant power. This has been fundamental to the stability and prosperity East Asia has enjoyed ever since.

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Author: Hugh White

The launch of Kevin Rudd’s Asia Pacific Community was marred by failures of preparation and presentation. But we should look past these to consider the proposal on its merits, and we should do that in severely practical terms. What purposes is it intended to serve, and how well does it serve them?

It is important to approach these questions with an open mind. The region already has lots of regional multilateral forums, but as circumstances change, the region’s needs for international dialogue and cooperation change too, and so should its institutions. We should not for a moment assume that the forums that have served us well in the past will do so in future.

When Kevin Rudd first launched his APC proposal, the purpose he suggested it would serve would be to manage the transformation of Asia’s international system to accommodate the growing power of China and India. This is undoubtedly a major and urgent priority. It might be worth reminding ourselves exactly why that is so important, and why it might prove to be quite hard.

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Author: Hugh White, ANU and Lowy institute

Jane Golley is absolutely right to identify how important the US-China relationship is to Australia’s future, how seriously the future health and stability of that relationship is under pressure from both sides, and therefore how important it is for Australia to find ways to help improve it.  Moreover she is right to think that Australia can make a difference here: the US-China relationship is probably the most important in the world today, but arguably no country is better able than Australia to help shape it in a positive direction.  This is not because Kevin Rudd speaks Mandarin, though that helps.  It is because Australia is uniquely placed to speak to America about its role in Asia.  Japan is America’s most important ally in Asia, but Japan’s view of future US-China relations is shaped by its fear of China and dependence on the US, which together incline it to prefer Washington and Beijing to remain at odds.  Australia is not nearly as important as Japan, but we are America’s oldest and closest friend on this side of the Pacific, and if we choose to use it we should have more influence in Washington to encourage closer US-China relations than any other third party.

But there is a catch. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Hugh White

Peter Drysdale knows more than anyone about how to get things moving in the Asia-Pacific, so I pay a lot of attention to his views on the Rudd’s Asia-Pacific Community idea, and especially his critique of the sceptical views I have expressed about it. However I do not think we are as far apart as he suggests on the question of the right starting point for institution-building. Our differences are over how close we are to having reached those starting points, and over whether Rudd’s initiative brings us any closer.

First, I agree with Peter that the place to start building new institutions in Asia is not with a complex set of agreements on values, but with a much more austere set of rules – “the simplest rules of engagement for dialogue”, as Peter says in his post. Peter reads my call for a common set of principles as referring to a common set of values, but on the contrary I mean just the opposite. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Hugh White

Changes in the structure of power in Asia and the Pacific require the construction of a new Concert of Asian powers and that however difficult to set up, it has the best prospect of ensuring Asian security. Union, a la Europe is remote; American primacy is unlikely to remain; a balance of power system is unstable; but shared leadership in a concert among America and the Asian powers provides an alternative.

But it is a long-shot. To see just how hard it would be to build a concert of Asia in the Asian century, it helps to look at what the US, China and Japan would each have to accept to do it. Read the rest of this entry »