China was the big disruptor in our region. Now the US is determined to take that title

Australia Broadcast Center

a day ago

Australia and China, the prime minister told the secretary of the CCP's Shanghai Municipal Committee on Sunday, "deal with each other in a calm and consistent manner".
"And we want to continue to pursue our national interests, and it is in our interest to have good relations with China".
It's the sort of polite diplomatic language that can often sound eye glazing at bilateral meetings on official trips. But it had a particularly pointed resonance this time, given there is little that feels 'calm and consistent' emanating from our other major international partner: the United States of America.
There is the ongoing and escalating trade war that President Trump has unleashed upon the globe, and notably on countries that have close economic relationships with China.
And there has also been his continuing pressure on allies to increase their defence spending, facing the prospect of a US withdrawal of its forces — and military spending — around the world.
Over the weekend, the US president has made more declarations about tariffs he plans to impose on the European Union and Mexico.
To date, Australia hasn't been subjected to talk of any further punitive tariffs.
But on the strategic front, an intervention by his Under Secretary of Defence for Strategy, Elbridge Colby, signalled that pressure that has, to date, been most notably seen on NATO countries in Europe to increase their defence spending, is now turning to the Asia Pacific.
The Financial Times reported that the Pentagon is pressing Japan and Australia to make clear what role they would play if the US and China went to war over Taiwan.
Apart from being the latest attempt by the US administration to pressure all its allies on spending, the issue raises a whole set of separate issues for Australia, because of the AUKUS agreement.
The AUKUS agreement — which includes, in the shorter term, the purchases by Australia of US nuclear-powered submarines — is built on a so-called 'forward defence' strategy — one that envisages a conflict fought out in the South China Sea, rather than in the maritime approaches to Australia closer to home.
AUKUS sceptics have long argued that the increasing intermeshing of Australia's defence capability with that of the US (even before AUKUS), tied us intrinsically into whatever military operations the United States might undertake in the future.
The AUKUS deal escalated that possibility, raising the question of whether the submarine deal would link us into a conflict between our biggest trading partner and our biggest ally over Taiwan.
The leaking of news about Secretary Colby's pressure on Australia and Japan makes that question over our position on a war over Taiwan — which has tended to be fobbed off as hypothetical until now — a much sharper one.
The irony of course is that the United States has always maintained a position of 'strategic ambiguity' about what it would do in the case of China invading Taiwan.
Yet now it is pressuring Australia and Japan to say what they would do.
What's more the story appeared just as the Australian prime minister touched down in Shanghai: timing that few believe was coincidental and possibly designed to disrupt any improvement in relations between the two countries, and to dominate the coverage of the visit.
Prime Minister Albanese and his foreign minister Penny Wong have been significantly changing their language about Australia's strategic approach to both the US and China in the past couple of weeks, and China hawks in Australia have been warning that the change in tone in the way the PM has reflected on, and defined the ANZUS alliance, would not be welcomed in Washington.
In a major speech, Mr Albanese spoke of the decision of his predecessor John Curtin to turn the United States during World War II involved "an Australian foreign policy anchored in strategic reality, not bound by tradition".
It was "dealing with the world as it is, not as we would like it to be", he said, a statement with clear resonances in the present.
While Australia's position between the two superpowers is often seen as a binary choice of one or the other, the times compel a different, more nuanced and independent approach.
After a decade of discussion in Australia about China seen largely through a national security lens, understandably provoked by China's increasing defence position, the PM's message ahead of this trip to China has been a nod to our huge trade relationship and to people-to-people contacts.
Chinese tourism to Australia, for one thing, was worth $9 billion alone last year.
But Mr Albanese's foreign minister, Penny Wong, has been taking the role of 'bad cop', putting on record with her counterpart on the sidelines of an ASEAN meeting in Kuala Lumpur that Australia was not happy about China's live fire exercises off our coast, or a range of other issues.
For the always carefully spoken, the language was stronger than it has been in the past, and came on the back of a speech in which she expressed Australia's concern about China's military build up, including nuclear weaponry.
It seemed to signal a balanced approach to the good and bad of the Australia-China relationship, just as the government was also sending a clear signal that it would take a more independent approach, less frightened of offending the Americans, than has been the case in recent years.
But just as Australia is asserting that its national interests are different from those of both China and the US, it seems the United States may force us into a choice we don't want to make.
Mr Albanese was careful in his response to the Elbridge story, agreeing that there was some irony in the US expecting Australia to outline its position on an issue which the Americans have not done. And also insisting that Australia's preference is for the status quo over Taiwan to continue.
Five years ago it seemed China was the big disruptor in our region. Now the United States appears determined to take that title for itself.
Laura Tingle is the ABC's Global Affairs Editor.