Australia assumed control of its foreign and defence policy from Britain only in 1942. Shortly after, the United States replaced Britain as the country’s protective umbrella — as has persisted to the present. An anxiety to preserve that protective umbrella has become entrenched in the country’s strategic thinking, leading to Australian involvement alongside the United States in wars from Korea to Iraq. With the exception of the Second World War, Australian has never truly had to think of external policy as an existential issue.
Now we do. The Trump administration has acted to the detriment of the international structure of alliances and institutions the United States was instrumental in creating. Coinciding with that, China’s pursuit of regional supremacy in Asia and global equivalence with the United States has accelerated and assumed a much sharper edge. This has hardened a US determination to thwart Chinese ambitions.
Australians now have to consider the possibility of how to deal with a confrontation between the country’s top security partner and its largest trading partner.
Australians are unused to thinking in these terms about external policy and are just beginning to enter into a serious national discussion on a set of decisions arguably more important to us than any since the Second World War, including those on immigration in the generation after that war and the economic reforms undertaken by former prime ministers Hawke, Keating and Howard in the 1980s and 90s.
The external policies which the country will need to adopt will not be simplistic choices between security and economic interests. They will involve a process of navigation. Australia might have to develop a new strategic personality. In confronting future challenges, the government will have to be prepared to forthrightly and honestly engage the country as a whole — its institutions and its people. Australia might have to develop a new strategic personality.
No attempt to deal with the external challenges that lie ahead will succeed unless we again look at the country’s relationships with the Asia and the Pacific region. For Australia, at least as important as its relationships with Western democracies are those with countries with totally different historical and ethnic backgrounds. This means the cultural dimension of Australia’s external outlook is proportionately more significant (or should be) compared to its closest peers in Europe and North America.
While the work done by successive Australian governments in bilateral and regional economic and security arrangements has been thorough and forward looking, the country has been less successful in reducing its cultural divide with much of the region. This shortcoming adversely impacts Australia’s overall dealings with its region.
Australia invests more in New Zealand than in the ASEAN countries combined. The study in Australia of Asia, including Asian languages, has actually declined in the past 30 years. Former prime minister Julia Gillard’s ‘Asian Century’ White Paper provided no funds to implement its sensible and far sighted recommendations and when the coalition came to power it removed the White Paper from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade website.
The importance of Asia to Australia will increase, not decrease. The rise of China, and India and Indonesia’s increasing economic prominence are now facts of life. Moreover, the competition for pre-eminence in the region is a kaleidoscopic pattern of relationships involving the United States, China and all the states in the wider region. When a kaleidoscope is shaken, the shapes change.
This means that the diplomatic task involved in the region is daunting. It can be undertaken properly only with adequate diplomatic resources. These have been lacking for a generation. As former US secretary of defense James Mattis argued, money spent on diplomacy saves money on bullets. Australia has to make available real resources to implement the sorts of recommendations that appeared in the Asian Century White Paper involving education of the community as a whole.
A third theme that requires community consideration is national reputation. It is generally accepted that Australians are agreeable enough, relatively wealthy, good at sport and in certain sectors very competent. But there are several blots on our reputation: We often are seen as putting domestic politics above serious international interests; as being unnecessarily hard charging and of blowing hot and cold; as changing prime ministers too often to maintain good governance; and as not independent from the United States on security issues.
Another blot has been the country’s policy on asylum seekers. This has damaged Australia’s reputation with other liberal democracies and its regional neighbours. The country has lost its reputation as a leader in international refugee policy. Australia needs to aim for results that are both workable and humane.
The point here is not whether other countries in the Asia Pacific have major problems with Australian policy. Most do not. Rather, there is doubt about the country’s ability to come to its own foreign policy positions.
A country will be more credible internationally if its own system works. If its policy statements are true, if it does things well and if it does what it says it will do, then this will enable it to further its economic and security interests.
The final theme is the future of the rules-based order. Middle and small powers need rules more than big ones. The often-derided United Nations is important to Australia’s security policy. Australia has played the major role in three regional security endeavours: the Cambodian peace settlement, East Timor and the Solomons. The UN was integral to all stages of the first two of these and was a necessary element in the third.
Australia has been able to further our interests in areas as important to us as immigration, trade and climate change by being skilled at working within the international machinery. But more yet can be done.
As Australia confronts an array of international and domestic challenges, it will need to effect a change of mindset: foreign policy will need to be seen as a core national interest. The political class — government and opposition — must jointly recognise this and engage the people on it. The next government must devote effective resources to it. If it does, Australia can ride the waves of change. If it fails, so too could our promise as a nation.
John McCarthy AO served as Australian ambassador to the United States, Indonesia, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam and Mexico and as high commissioner to India. He is a former president of the Australian Institute of International Affairs.
This article was adapted from the annual Sugden Oration, ‘Winds of Change? Australian Foreign Policy after the Election’, Queen’s College, University of Melbourne, 6 May 2019.