Correspondence
Hugh White’s proposition that Australia is inevitably torn between its US alliance and the opportunity of true engagement with Asia has much in common with the claim that Australia has turned its back on Paul Keating’s idea of “security in Asia.” The problem with both arguments is that their proponents appear unwilling to look with fresh eyes at the state of Australia’s current relationships in Asia. The assumption is always that we are doing badly compared to the good old days of the 1980s and 1990s. In fact, there’s a strong case that Australia’s relationships with the important countries of our region (China aside) are at an all-time high.
Consider the relationship with India – historically marked by Cold War divergence and mutual suspicion. Today, the relationship – since 2020, a comprehensive strategic partnership – is characterised by much closer strategic dialogue, including an annual leaders’ meeting (one of just two such regular meetings for the Indian side) and a 2+2 meeting of foreign and defence ministers. While White dismisses the Quad as toothless, India, Japan, Australia and the United States participate in Exercise Malabar; behind the scenes, cooperation in tracking Chinese naval activity in the Indian Ocean has grown steadily. And consider this: in 2013 there were no direct flights between Australia and India. Today there are around thirty a week.
Earlier this year, India’s forthright foreign minister, S. Jaishankar, put it this way: “A decade ago, if I had stood here and told you all that Australia would actually be amongst our closest political friends, our strongest security partners, a country with whom we would have a Free Trade Agreement, whose University would be among the first to actually set up an establishment in India – in fact, if I told you that we would have many more things to discuss other than cricket – I don’t think any of you would have believed me.”
Australia’s strategic alignment with Japan is also at a high point. The two countries now have a reciprocal access agreement, allowing new cooperation, and in 2022 they signed an ambitious joint declaration on security. While there are numerous examples of new combined activities between the two countries’ defence forces (including reciprocal deployments of F-35A joint strike fighters and Japan’s regular participation in US force posture initiatives in Australia), discussion continues on the scope, objectives and forms of enhanced operational cooperation. Japan’s defence minister, Nakatani Gen, has described Australia as a “quasi-ally,” a reflection of Japan’s view that Australia is its most important security partner after the United States.
In Southeast Asia, too, Australia is as well placed as it has ever been. The relationship with Indonesia was for many years described as a roller-coaster, with lows caused by disputes over agriculture, people-smuggling and spying. Today, the relationship is stable – the last major disruption to ties was in 2015, when Indonesia executed two Australian citizens. In the decade since, ups and downs have continued. It’s no secret that Indonesia was unhappy when Australia announced the AUKUS partnership in 2021. And of course, White is right to point out that the defence cooperation agreement is far short of a security alliance. But at the practical level, defence cooperation has grown, with Australia deploying tanks and fighter aircraft to Indonesia to join multilateral and bilateral exercises. It’s noteworthy also that an agreed outcome of Anthony Albanese’s recent visit to Indonesia was the establishment of a new maritime dialogue and cooperation.
Elsewhere in Southeast Asia, Australia continues to have close, though quiet, defence cooperation with Malaysia, including using Malaysian Airforce Base Butterworth to fly P-8A surveillance flights over the South China Sea. The Singapore Armed Forces deploys approximately 6000 personnel each year to Australia to training ranges in Queensland and Western Australia, part of a quid pro quo granting Australia access to defence facilities in Singapore. In 2024 Vietnam – which sees Australia in the top tier of its partners – deployed a naval vessel to a multilateral exercise in Australia, the first time it has done so to any Western country.
White is right that diverging approaches to the United States and China place a ceiling on how closely Canberra can align with some Southeast Asian countries, such as Indonesia and Malaysia. Clearly, we will not be signing a security alliance with either country in the foreseeable future.
Yet the information I have provided on the state of Australia’s current ties with the region, including on defence and security, suggests that the “ceiling” is much higher than White says. He claims that Australia’s “primary aim has been to urge our neighbours to side with America against China” and that Australia “will not build the relationships we need in the decades ahead by conceiving our relationships entirely as a zero-sum contest between America and China for regional primacy.” There is simply no evidence for this (is the same claim ever made of staunch US ally Japan?). Instead, Australia’s approach, especially under the current foreign minister, Penny Wong, has been focused on investing in the relationships on their own terms and insulating them to the extent possible from the impact of US–China competition.
And finally, to White’s claim that Australia is making life harder for Pacific Islands countries by forcing them to adopt our binary approach to China. Australia’s engagement with the Pacific Islands countries is far from perfect and will always be characterised by power asymmetry. But would the region really be better off if Australia returned to its pre-2016 approach of benign neglect? And if, instead of giving alternatives to China’s economic and security offerings, Canberra simply allowed the Pacific Islands region to become a Chinese lake? If the leaders of Fiji, Papua New Guinea or Tuvalu agreed that Australia was making their lives harder, they would not have agreed to security deals with Australia. Do the nearly one-third of all Tuvaluans who applied to migrate to Australia under the pathway offered through the Falepili Union agree that Australia is making their lives harder?
Lest my comment appear overly complacent or too congratulatory of the current government, let me say that I don’t believe the above achievements have arisen simply because of clever diplomacy on Australia’s part. If anything, Australian diplomacy outside the Pacific is rather less creative and ambitious today than in the past. Instead, the positive trends in these relationships are structural. While the level of strategic alignment varies greatly (from Japan at one end of the spectrum to the countries of mainland Southeast Asia at the other), all are given impetus by shared concerns: about China’s growing regional influence, the reliability of the United States, and the need for a diversity of partnerships.
I’m also not claiming that these relationships amount to a concerted effort to balance against China that will have a material effect on the balance of power in Asia. But if White is right and we are heading for a multipolar Asia, then Australia is not nearly so isolated and preoccupied by its alliance with the United States as he claims. In fact, our relationships and the focus of successive governments on Australia’s immediate regional neighbours will work in our favour, whatever is to come. Most importantly, there is no evidence that we must pre-emptively distance ourselves from America to advance our position in Asia.
