Tgk1946's Blog

From China Panic (David Brophy, 2021) pp 90-3

In the short term, therefore, opportunistic local politicians and corporations stand to benefit from competition with China, but it carries serious risks for Pacific island nations as a whole. Many of these nations are loose federations, with domestic conflicts that could easily be exacerbated by geopolitics – I’ve already discussed the Solomon Islands as a case in point. In Contest for the Indo-Pacific, Rory Medcalf embraces the trope of the ‘Great Game’ to describe today’s rivalries in the Indo-Pacific – invoking the contest that played out between the Russian and British empires in Central Asia during the nineteenth century.*® We would do well to remember, then, the outcome of the Great Game for its primary playing field, Afghanistan. Long conditioned to jump at Russian shadows, Britain’s colonial impulse led it to twice invade Afghanistan to install its preferred candidate for the Kabul throne in the nineteenth century. Imperial rivalries continued to lay waste to the country in the twentieth century and have contributed to drawing out the two-decade long US-led occupation in the twenty-first.

The imperial instincts that drove the first Great Game are no thing of the past. Australia and America warn of China’s desire to militarise the Pacific, but they are in the process of militarising it themselves via the refurbished Manus Island naval base, a strategic window onto the western Pacific. In the name of defending small Pacific nations from China, Australia’s foreign-policy establishment is debating blatantly neocolonial proposals to assume control of their affairs. In 2017, the Lowy Institute’s Greg Colton aired a proposal for compacts of ‘free association’ with Tuvalu, Kiribati and Nauru, offering their citizens the right to work in Australia in return for exclusive military use of their territory and ‘consultation’ on foreign policy. The move, he said, would ‘extend and deepen the second island chain formed by the US Free Compact States [such as Palau] and enhance Australia’s alliance with the US? In 2019, Kevin Rudd voiced his support for just such a ‘constitutional condominium’ as a response to climate change. Rudd was rebuked by Tuvalu’s prime minister, Enele Sopoaga, for his ‘imperial thinking, but ANU’s John Blaxland picked up the baton, dismissing Sopoaga’s criticisms as ‘superficial’ Insisting that ‘Australia is not an imperialist nation, in a 2020 senate hearing he touted the ‘benefits of peace, security and stability that would accrue from having these states integrally connected with Australia. Ina piece of imperial logic straight from the Great Game playbook, Blaxland claimed that this diminution of sovereignty would in fact ‘guarantee sovereignty for Pacific nations. At the same senate hearing, DFAT officials confirmed that they were studying the proposal.

**

There’s nothing specifically Australian about all this. It’s the logic of interstate competition that drives it to behave this way. The same logic may eventually induce China to respond in kind, with policies to push Australia out of parts of the Pacific, or to establish a military presence of its own. None of these developments is out of the question. Recognising this dynamic, some circle back to the question of regime type: it’s preferable, they argue, for a democracy like Australia to play the role of hegemon than for China to. But if we’re worried about someone ‘exporting authoritarianism to the Pacific, we’re better off looking in the mirror. This is what we’ve literally done, in Papua New Guinea and Nauru, by exporting to these countries harsh detention facilities for people claiming their right to asylum. Particularly in Nauru, the country’s role as a subcontractor for Australia’s punitive refugee policy has been a catalyst for increasing corruption and authoritarianism in local politics.*!

Standing up for the interests of small, impoverished nations bullied by their large neighbours is a worthy cause. So too is defending international institutions against the notion that might makes right, and fostering democratic governance and the rule of law. But upholding such principles in Australia has to begin at home, with a critique of Australia’s role in the world. We certainly won’t uphold them by escalating a rivalry with China, the purpose of which is to maintain Australia’s ability to flout these principles when it suits its interests.

Yet with little public debate, Australia’s support for the United States is locking us firmly into that rivalry. Since Obama announced the ‘Pivot’ in 2011, the US Marine Corps rotation in Darwin has risen to 2500. To Darwin’s east, millions of dollars are being spent to upgrade port facilities that can accommodate American warships — with some advertising these facilities as a possible base for the US Navy’s revived First Fleet. Three hundred kilometres to the south, at the Royal Australian Air Force base at Tindal, Morrison plans to spend A$1.1 billion to extend runways and enhance support capacity for US B-52s, transforming it into what commentator Paul Dibb excitedly calls ‘the most potent military base south of Guam’** Roughly $1 billion will also go towards purchasing Lockheed Martin anti-ship missiles, and defence hawks are lobbying for Australia to either acquire, or permit America to install, intermediate-range ballistic missiles in the Northern Territory. With a range of 3000-5500 kilometres, such missiles would be capable of hitting the southern provinces of China.

Beyond the tit-for-tat diplomatic exchanges that drive the news cycle, these are the hard realities of Australia’s positioning today. Amid a deep post-COVID recession, Australia will direct $270 billion into military spending in the coming decade, shedding all pretence that this is not aimed at China. The 2020 meeting of the Australia—United States Ministerial Consultations (a forum known as AUSMIN) is said to have resulted in a ‘secret defence plan’ to counter China, but the basic plan is hardly a secret. By doubling down on Australia’s historical role as an imperial sidekick in Asia, politicians of both major parties are pursuing policies designed to keep military options against China on the table and preserve Americas role in the region. Guided by the expansive notion of ‘security’ that the architects of Australia’s regional dominance operate within, these policies increase the likelihood of confrontation with the PRC and make ordinary Australians less safe. American military hardware and intelligence facilities on Australian soil, along with Australian ships and fighter jets embedded in US command structures across the Pacific, all but take the question that is most basic to any society – whether or not to go to war — out of Australian hands.

Currently there seems to be no appetite in the Australian parliament for considering the wisdom of the path the country is on, or what it might take to change course. That’s not to say, though, that politicians will have no hesitations here. Only America can do the heavy lifting required to preserve the status quo, and not everyone is convinced that it will. Ongoing lobbying will be required to keep America’s priorities aligned with Australia’s, outside parliament, elite voices warn of the folly of a pro-US alignment, or of the economic damage it will cause, These qualms and misgivings have yet to translate into significant public disquiet, but its conceivable that they could, While polls show strong support for ANZUS, only one third of Australians endorse the idea of military action in Asia ‘in accordance with our security alliance with the United States’. A majority of adults below thirty see relations with China as more important than relations with the United States.

In any situation like this, there’s a gap to be bridged between the ordinary, commonsense perceptions of security that inform the outlook of most Australians and the anxieties of defence strategists, which are liable to be triggered by geopolitical tectonic shifts far from the Australian continent. It’s not as easy to do this as it once was. The old domino theory of communist expansion is gone, and none but the most imaginative security hawks can conceive of China ever invading Australia. The proposition that Beijing might choke off Australia’s trade routes to its north is hardly persuasive either, since almost all of that trade is going to China. Why would China shut off trade with itself?

Still, a convincing rationale for confrontation with China has had to be found. In 2017, a curious phrase made its way into the introduction that Malcolm Turnbull penned to his foreign policy white paper. Australia’s foreign policy, Turnbull wrote, was about ‘resolutely resisting threats to our way of life’** The choice of words in official texts like these is an exercise in precision: this wasn’t a throwaway line. A single-minded focus on China in Australia’s military thinking was now to be accompanied by claims that our very way of life was endangered by its rise. The enemy, we were being told, was already at the door.