In the latest of our Foreign Policy Rethink series, Peter Varghese outlines how alliance, region and multilateralism must be recalibrated for a more contested and uncertain global order.
Australian foreign policy for the last eight decades has rested on three pillars: alliance, region and multilateralism. Each of those pillars now requires substantial renovation but not their demolition.
The Alliance
We need to recalibrate our expectations of what the alliance delivers. We need a more transactional and a less sacramental view of its benefits. Ditching the alliance would be an act of self harm. It gives us access to technology and intelligence and it still acts as a deterrent which any would-be aggressor would at the very least need to factor into its calculations.
First, we must abandon the fiction that it is a guarantee of our security. It never was and it is an Australian delusion which has never been shared by the US on the few occasions we have tested it. ANZUS is not a substitute for defence self reliance. Australia cannot be self sufficient on defence but we can and should invest in the capability to defend our continent without relying on the combat assistance of the US or anyone else. Without that capability our sovereignty is academic.
Second, we should reverse the drift to forward defence which has been a feature of the last three decades, and of which AUKUS is an unarticulated example. We must overcome the view, deeply ingrained in the psyche of Australians, that we are incapable of defending ourselves. The alliance can help with self defence but that does not mean we should double down on it.
Third, we must abandon the judgement that the maintenance of US primacy, for all the benefits it has brought us, is a vital Australian interest. It is not and to think otherwise is to handcuff ourselves to policies that might make sense in Washington but which may not serve our distinctive interests.
The region
In the region shifting geoeconomics means a deeper relationship with key partners. We are moving into a world which will become more bipolar before it becomes multipolar. So we must find ways to build a balance of power in the Indo-Pacific which can constrain China’s ambition to become the predominant power while we also engage with a China whose influence will only grow.
That balance requires the United States because without its strategic heft, there can be no effective balancing of China. It also requires a United States which remains a liberal democracy because the fundamental reason we are uncomfortable with the prospect of a Chinese hegemony is its political character. More than most countries, Australia must operate at the intersection of interests and values. A US that morphs into an illiberal democracy would present a first order strategic challenge for Australia.
Our key regional relationships are with Japan, Indonesia, India and Korea but Southeast Asia more broadly is crucial because it is our strategic hinterland, as is the Pacific, but in a different way.
The only significant regional country with which we can realistically forge an alliance-like relationship is Japan. The others can be stronger strategic partners but not allies. Japan and Australia share similar and congruent strategic positions. We share many values. We are both close US allies but also recognise that we need to move towards a more self-reliant defence posture.
India is committed to strategic autonomy which leaves no room for alliance relationships, and is also moving towards an illiberal democracy.
Multi-alignment, the new version of non-alignment, is also at the heart of Indonesia’s foreign policy, and Korea is likely to move down a more independent path, more likely than not with nuclear weapons, irrespective of reunification.
What we are seeing now in the region is a quiet exploration of alternatives; of what Plan Bs may be necessary to survive in a very different world. This will likely take decades to play out.
Part of this will be a quest for more strategic autonomy by countries, including US allies, which up to now have been content to rely on the strategic weight of the US. It is likely to be built on an increased investment in defence and deterrence, an expansion of so-called limited liability partnerships rather than exclusive strategic relationships, and an instinct to keep as many options open as possible.
How much we can achieve in the region will be partly determined by where US-China relations end up under Trump whose thinking on China is quite different to all his predecessors.
China must wake up every morning and thank Marx for the work Trump is doing for them. After all, it has been a long-standing objective of Chinese policy to weaken US alliances and US global leadership.
But China would be wise not to believe its own rhetoric about US decline because the pace of that decline is likely to be slow, even though Trump is doing a good job of eroding many of the things that made America great in the first place. The US may well be overly confident in its ability to outperform China on the technologies of the future, but there is no question that the US will remain the strongest military power for some time to come.
Multilateralism
This has implications for whether a new multilateral system can be built to replace the international system which the US constructed and led for the last 80 years, but which it is now intent on dismantling.
Rebuilding the multilateral system will be a slow process. It is not dead. It still survives in the UN and international and regional organisations. But global multilateralism is for now in suspended animation and cannot be revived for as long as the US stands outside it.
Constructing a global system without the US is a fool’s errand and nor is it in our interests for China to position itself as the successor to US multilateral leadership even if China were prepared to play that role.
What made the US-crafted multilateral order so appealing to Australia, which can neither buy nor bully its way in the world, was that it reflected the liberal democratic character of the US. A China-led international order would reflect China’s authoritarian political character.
The idea that middle powers can come together to compensate for the US abandonment of a rules-based order strikes me as largely wishful thinking. There will indeed be opportunities on some specific issues for coalitions of the willing (what Mark Carney called variable geometry), and we will likely see more of them.
But an effective international order must broadly reflect rather than ignore the international power gradient. It can only be built with the active support of the great powers and in a bipolar world that is very unlikely. We will have to settle for something less than a new global order.
Our focus should therefore be on building up regional plus arrangements such as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), securing the broadest possible membership without dropping standards. This way we might achieve something bigger than regional but short of global.
We should drop geopolitical vetoes on membership of trade arrangements. Geopolitical vetoes in trade agreement ultimately work against both trade and security interests.
Australia will not be a lonely country but more than ever before in our history we are going to have to rely on ourselves and sharpen the skills we will need to make our own way in a very different and much tougher world
Peter Varghese is the chancellor of the University of Queensland and a former secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.