Abstract
In 2016, in the annual wide-ranging poll of national opinion conducted by the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney, the number identifying India as Australia’s ‘best friend in Asia’ was just 6 per cent, compared with the top four—30 per cent for China, 25 per cent for Japan, 15 per cent for Indonesia and 12 per cent for Singapore. In our schools, if the teaching of East and Southeast Asian studies and languages falls far short of national need, Indian studies and languages are an absolute rarity.
In the popular imagination and, more importantly, for those who would like to change this perception, in the imagination and actual priorities of the Australian political class, the idea of India—as India, not cricketing India—has failed to fire. The politicians give no sustained public narrative on India’s importance to Australia, no big picture of a deep relationship into the future. And we have never had from them the kind of euphoric embrace of India that we have had at various times for Japan, China or Indonesia. It is not uncommon for Australian politicians talking about our relations with Asia to make scant reference to India, or none.
It is not a one-way street of course, and colleagues in India have suggested similar issues on the Indian side. And on the Australian side, there is a certain logic to our priorities: first is Southeast Asia, because it is our immediate and geostrategic habitat; second is Northeast Asia, earlier through war and Cold War and later and continuing today as the hands that feed us; and third is any such part of the world as subservience to the US foreign policy interests takes us, for example, Iraq, Afghanistan and now Iraq/Syria. It is no coincidence that our more recent increased interest in strategic relations with India follows Obama’s pivot to Asia and the US desire to contain China and deny it the regional primacy it seeks. Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia and the US foreign policy interests compel our attention in a way India mostly does not.
India, of course, has its own compelling preoccupations closer to home, but on the Australian side you cannot escape the impression that there is a lack of gusto for India among leaders and generally in the political class.
But I see a possibility for Australia and India to work together in a strategic regional context that could bring the two closer together. The USA, and many in Canberra, would like to see such closeness but in a context of the US alliance system and the US contest with China. By contrast, I would like to see it in a context of collaboration with China.
As we know, China is intent on challenging or changing at least some of the rules of the international order, if not for the whole world, certainly for the Asian region. The setting up of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) was one example. But it is the One Belt One Road concept that foreshadows different rules more broadly, a prospect inherent also in China’s idea of ‘communities of shared destiny’. President Obama, conceding that the world is changing and the rules are changing with it, has said the USA not China should write the rules. I do not accept that, and I do not believe Australia or others in this region should either. And in any event, China will go on doing what it has begun, and it has the political and economic and strategic power to do so. It is a process in train and neither the USA nor any collection of states will stop it. We must recognise that, but this does not mean we should not try to influence it or head off any change that is unacceptable. As China extends its influence into its neighbouring countries, each one has been endeavouring to manage in its own way this new projection of power and influence and the rules China would like to bring with it. Why not embark on this endeavour, to manage and even shape China’s actions, together?
Rather than resisting China’s bid to change the rules, or just standing by and leaving it to China, why should not China’s friends and neighbours across the region—those embraced by what China calls its ‘peripheral country diplomacy’, which of course includes India but also Australia—try to work together with China on these matters? This would entail proposing to China that regionally we need the stability and security of what China might call a ‘community of shared destiny’ but we might call something else, but a community nevertheless, not in an EU sense, rather a loose connection of countries with mutually agreed rules, and work our way towards mutually acceptable positions and even an agreed document, a kind of charter for a new Asia. This would mean not just rules for initiatives like the China-sponsored Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) or the AIIB, but more broadly applicable rules, and also principles, like those of the Non-aligned Movement for example. Mutual non-interference in each other’s domestic affairs, for starters, one China could hardly object to.
This is not to suggest surrender to Chinese suzerainty but rather the reverse, but in collaboration with China not in confrontation, a welcoming regional response to China’s renewed power and influence rather than the more negative response proposed by the USA. And recognition of the great change and volatility in the world—and for Asia what the Australian international relations scholar Coral Bell in 2007 called ‘The End of the Vasco da Gama Era’—is surely cause for revisiting the rules of the international order.
This is a project that would require consultation and consensus among Asian countries. But it is one on which Australia and India, with very different relations with China, East Asia and the USA, but both with very good reason for wanting to influence any reshaping of the rules, might collaborate. India, of course, has long had an interest in changing some of the rules, and its overwhelming claim to, but long exclusion from, permanent membership of the UN Security Council exemplifies just how prejudicially skewed these rules are.
How ready is Australia for a new initiative in Asian regionalism?
From the early 1970s to the mid to late 1990s, Australian politicians, particularly but not only on the Labor side, were seized with the question ‘Is Australia a part of Asia?’ And if, as many concluded, it was or should be, then what were the implications for us and what should we do about it. The politicians both led and joined a wide-ranging debate, with academics, NGOs, and people in the media and business and the arts and many other walks of life, in what was one of the most vigorous public discussions of foreign policy in a non-war context in Australia’s history. Out of this came many new possibilities for Australia, like substantial Asian immigration, or Prime Minister Bob Hawke’s idea of Australian ‘enmeshment’ with Asia, or the proposal that through an Asia infusion in the education system, Australia should become ‘Asia-literate’. Importantly, these politicians and others also put much intellectual and diplomatic and quasi-diplomatic effort into the question of intra-regional connections, and they joined up with ideas then being promoted in various Asian countries, for Asian regionalism and new regional organisations. Out of this came, for example, the Australian initiative for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), former Foreign Minister Gareth Evans’ unfortunately now-extinct concept for an ‘East Asian Hemisphere’, and the attempt, vetoed by Malaysia’s Dr Mahathir, for Australia to be part of the Asian delegation at the Asia–Europe Meeting (ASEM).
In this Australian discussion, the question of India in Asian regionalism was often raised but always left hanging, largely because attitudes in Association of Southeast Asian Nation (ASEAN) countries particularly, but also in India, were ambiguous.
But the point is, you do not get this kind of conceptual thinking or discussion in Australia in 2016. Today’s Australian politicians don’t think—I mean really think—about Asia, and that applies to both government and opposition. It began with John Howard who in the year he was elected, 1996, went to Indonesia and declared 16 times in three speeches that Australia was not a part of Asia, and who moved on to withdraw government from the debate about Australia and Asia’s future, effectively closing it down. He put in place instead an instrumentalist Asia policy, which counted achievement in dollars earned and limited goals met, like key performance indicators (KPIs). This has been followed by all successor governments, and is currently on exhibit in the Tweedledum-Tweedledee foreign policies of the Liberal/National coalition government and the Labor Opposition. There may be differences in emphasis, priority and even sentiment, but the characteristics are the same.
The ones most germane to the question of how Australia might respond to ideas for new connections and possibilities in the region are as follows:
• There is no foreign policy narrative or strategy for the long term (although a foreign policy white paper has been foreshadowed), and little or no political contemplation of disruptive possibilities, like a Trump presidency in the USA, or a massive debt crisis in China, or a Philippines/Malaysia-led pivot away from the USA as guarantor of security and stability in Asia.
• Policy development at the political level eschews new ways of looking at regional association, new forms of regionalism, or big ideas. The last time there was a big idea was an abortive initiative emerging from a thought bubble by Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in 2009, for a new regional organisation. It was to be like the EU, it was thought, although no one knew, because Rudd never offered any public explication. In 2012, Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard with much fanfare released an Asian Century White Paper (prepared by a task force that included not one Asian or Asian Australian—suggesting an exercise facing backwards not forwards). This contained nothing new, and formalised the instrumentalist approach to Asia: ‘it’s about winning in the Asian Century’, Gillard said. The coalition government that replaced Gillard cremated the White Paper but its ashes lie visible in its own approach to Asia policy.
• The Australian approach to Asia now is about relationship management, within a relatively static policy and institutional framework. This allows for initiatives which have dollar and/or domestic publicity value, like free trade agreements (FTAs) (which the government’s own Productivity Commission has critiqued and found to be of negligible value). But by its nature, this approach to foreign relations is more status quo and reactive than path-making or risk-taking.
• The politicians’ strategic view of Asia is dominated by US thinking and Washington’s view of China and resistance to China’s push for primacy on the western side of the Pacific. But without a long-term strategy or big thinking, this can find Australia wrong-footed. China’s AIIB initiative was a case in point. Australia first said it would join, then after a phone call from Washington said it would not, then said it would if it could be sure the regulatory arrangements were acceptable, then decided to join anyway without any such surety. Confused, the government had not known which colour to take on, like a chameleon on a tartan.
All this would suggest Australia is unlikely to initiate any new regionalist proposition, or perhaps even respond to one from elsewhere. But outside politics, there are many Australian foreign policy thinkers and analysts—academics and think tank leaders and researchers, former senior diplomats and former politicians including ex-ministers, and serving officials—who are concerned at this state of Australian foreign policy. It would be an exaggeration to say they are all of a mind on what our policy ought to be, but my assessment is that the weight of opinion favours development of a long-term view of the future of Asia and a long-term strategy to match it, with:
• Much greater independence from the USA, albeit within the framework of the alliance, but meaning no longer reflexively accepting the US strategic assessments and policies, particularly in Asia, and importantly, no longer getting involved in America’s wars. And also being a well-intentioned critic of the US policies, and responding plainly and if necessary publicly to the periodic attempts of Washington officials to browbeat Australian politicians and officials.
• Getting out of the Middle East and refocusing our policy and diplomacy on Asia, the region of greatest importance to Australia.
• Reigniting the developing closeness we had with ASEAN countries up until 1996, described at the time by Prime Minister Paul Keating and Gareth Evans as Australia being ‘the odd man in’ in Asia.
• At the same time, giving greatly more attention to Indonesia.
• Pulling away from America’s disputes with China and putting substance into an Australian strategic partnership agreed with China in 2013, but also being a well-intentioned critic, and pushing back against browbeating and non-transparent attempts to influence Australia’s domestic affairs.
In discussion among these policy thinkers, there is one view that Australia, in company with Asian countries, needs to revive the kind of search for new forms of regional association that drove government until a couple of decades ago, a need more pressing now because of the rapid and dramatic changes in the regional landscape. It is a view that says we need to harness the gains that have been made towards a closely associated, prosperous and secure region while trying to ensure that disruption brings positive and not negative results.
From the Australian perspective, therefore, to realise the idea suggested in this article, we need something akin to the activist role of the ASEAN think tanks—variously titled institutes of strategic and international studies known in their collective mode as ASEAN-ISIS—in the 1980s and 1990s. Working as a collaborative network, together they brainstormed issues of concern to, or for strengthening, ASEAN cooperation and took back to their respective governments policy recommendations, many of which became ASEAN policy. The continuing utility and durability of ASEAN is testament in part to their contribution. On such a model and for such a regional good, I would like to see a brainstorming of a revised rules-based order in Asia that suits us all and is dictated neither by China nor by the USA. For Australia, this would have to begin with our closer neighbours. But I would also like to see this as an opportunity for a new and closer connection between Australia and India. We should begin now to discuss that proposition together.
