As 2020 becomes 2021, one thing remains certain. The Australia-US alliance will continue to threaten the peace of the region and Australia’s economic security. Australia seems prepared to gamble on the US maintaining its supremacy.
If anything even remotely like a real threat existed, then the alliance might be a good idea. But since 1951 and ANZUS, Australia has been sending troops and spending billions of dollars in support of a range of aggressive US military adventures. Any objective analysis will show that no threat has ever been evident.
China is the latest confected threat but as a Chinese embassy statement of November 16 said, ‘if you make China the enemy, China will be the enemy.’ Can the world afford to create such an enemy? Trade has been and will continue to be the front line of this growing conflict. As Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of The Global Times bluntly put it, ‘China-Australia relations will hardly pick up, and Australia will continue to pay for its unreasonable China policy.’
Australia’s behaviour has been extraordinary, but it is foolish to think our leaders have acted alone. The government’s belligerent attitude is threatening billions of dollars in trade. Some 30 per cent of our trade is with China. One in every 13 Australian jobs is reliant on our relationship with China. If things continue as they are then the Australian economy will be a smouldering ruin. China will simply trade elsewhere. There are alternative marketplaces for goods currently provided by Australia. There are other primary producers in the world but few markets that need the primary produce that the Australian economy relies upon for survival. It appears to be a suicidal policy, that both sides of politics are happy to accept, but we need to remember the alliance with the USA and the ties that bind.
Capitalist economies rely on trade and on foreign investment. Chinese investment in Australia, even before the new legislation that tightened things even more, is just two per cent. Even if we add Hong Kong to the mix, the total is just 5.7 per cent. The US, on the other hand, accounts for 25.6 per cent of foreign direct investment into Australia. The Americans have never been coy about reminding Australian leaders of this fact.
US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, let it be known in May how the US regarded engagement, on Australia’s part, with China. He suggested that the US might ‘disconnect’ Australia from its telecommunications, military and intelligence networks if Australia made any arrangements with China deemed not in accord with America’s ‘national security interests.’ In other words, play by our rules or else.
Pompeo was speaking to Sky News when he also commented that ‘every nation has its own sovereign right to make decisions for itself, and I suppose Victoria has some rights … but every citizen of Australia should know that every one of those Belt and Road projects needs to be looked at incredibly closely.’ This, of course, is not ‘bullying’ behaviour. Bullying is what China does. The US engages in ‘robust diplomacy’.
US ambassador Arthur Culvahouse saw the need to further clarify things. ‘We have every confidence that Australia, as a close ally and Five Eyes partner, would take every measure necessary to ensure the security of its telecommunications networks.’ The Australian government got the message.
The incoming US president has been equally unambiguous when he let the world and the Asia-Pacific region know that America is ‘back’ and would be leading the world.
Against such a background of hostility and threat, Australia becomes a virtual captive of its relationship with the USA. This alliance has been effectively set in concrete by successive Australian governments since the signing of the ANZUS Treaty. It is most usually considered first and foremost in military terms. It is often used to describe joint defence in times of trouble. Hugh White in his How to Defend Australia makes the point that ‘America has remained our ally for so long because the alliance has cost it very little, and it has helped support America’s leadership in Asia.’
It is a point well worth remembering. America is not about to relinquish its ‘leadership in Asia’ and Australia is being none too subtly reminded of this fact. This by no means suggests that Australian political leaders, be they Coalition or Labor, consider themselves captives to American policy objectives. On the contrary, they are more than willing partners in this one-sided arrangement. However, it remains a fact that to be anything else is to risk the ire of an enormously powerful and not terribly subtle ally.
The seemingly suicidal policy stance of Australia appears to have been carefully weighed up. Whichever way Australia jumps will cause hardship. To appear to be anti-American is to risk investment dollars; nearly 26 per cent of all investment. It also means making an enemy of the most powerful nation on earth. At the same time, it quite possibly means losing billions of dollars in trade with the rising power in the region. While all this plays out, our political leaders talk of acting in our ‘national interest’. It is an absurd claim, but then the notion of states and ‘national’ interest is an absurdity.
Australia seems to have made its decision. It seems prepared to gamble on the US maintaining its supremacy and that it will continue to ‘lead the world’ as Biden put it. The editor-in-chief of The Global Times correctly described Australia’s policy towards China as unreasonable. Tensions between Washington and Beijing will continue to sharpen. US power is threatened, and history shows that a fading power is dangerous. Australia’s commitment to its alliance with the US is ill-chosen but 2021 will see no change in this dangerous alliance.
Dr William Briggs is a political economist. His special areas of interest lie in political theory and international political economy. He has been, variously, a teacher, journalist and political activist.
Comments
9 responses to “China ‘bullies’; US engages in ‘robust diplomacy’”
Australia’s leaders seem to have no idea how deeply the USA’s problems are and how the society as a whole is teetering on the verge of collapse.
The USA has been revealed to be a culture that lies to itself about its supremacy and exceptionalism while its:
* civil infrastructure is collapsing at an ever greater rate
* domestic poverty and industrial level enslavement through racially biased incarceration is mushrooming
* civil liberties are being consigned to the trash can with militarised policing, now overt censorship and increasing authoritarian rule
* supposedly superior military has been made irrelevant by endemic corruption and 20th century technologies eclipsed by advanced hypersonic technologies
* last vestiges of moral authority has been destroyed by illegal invasions, use of torture, sponsorship of terrorists, resource theft and illegal regime change activities
* leaders have bullied nations around the world to comply using illegal sanctions to impoverish entire populations and destroy civil societies that won’t submit to its dictates
* military and security agencies have extrajudicially murdered innocent people around the world through invasions, drone assassinations and special ops
* so called “democratic” political system has been revealed to be a corrupted corporate oligarchy fronted by fake democratic institutions and a collection of self invested hand puppets masquerading as leaders
* currency is being debased by massive money printing, ballooning national debt and totally divorced from reality equities markets
Looks like a bad case of Australia’s leaders being on the wrong horse when history is changing before our eyes.
The majority of Australian punters wagered more money on Trump in the last US election. No other country in the world did that. The bookies cleaned up on the Australian Trump mugs. We have a government that is wagering our countrys economic future on the worst bet in history. Morrison has made us a nation of mugs.
Well, taking an objective view of the evidence, if the US election had not been so corrupted by the biased mass media, rigged voting machines, fake mail in ballots and big tech censorship, the Australian punters might have been correct. But as I said above, the entire US system now has no integrity or credibility. Even the democratic primary elections have now been shown to be a charade – even worse this has been confirmed by the SCOTUS that this is ok. The outcomes are rigged, the leaders are sock puppets, the institutions are corrupt. It is a sham from start to end.
Sir,
I really hope that what you are saying reaches more Australian ears. We deserve to be told the truth.
Our present leaders’ constant accusations of bullying by China remind me of a book I am currently reading by James Kirchick titled “The End of Europe”. It is a personal observation which tends to see things through a US lens. Nevertheless, he points out that during WWII, Hungary, as part of the Axis Powers, undertook on their own volition to send 500,000 of their own Jews to Auschwitz. Now, under Victor Orban, in order to sanitise themselves from the ugly truth, they portray themselves as a victim of Nazism. I am sure many who have visited the country and enjoyed the hospitality of its nice people are also aware of a monument put up in Freedom Square – the eagle representing the Nazis and the angel Gabriel representing Hungarians” – which portrays Hungarians as victims and the Nazis as bullies.
This is what our elected representatives in parliament appear to be doing. First vilify China (that have been our partner to a mutually beneficial complementary trade arrangement) by putting ourselves out as member of the ANZUS Alliance, or Quad, or any number of Eyes. Then, when we find ourselves on the back foot because of Chinas’s reaction through trade reduction, cry out that China is the bully and we are the victims of that bullying. Hungary is now member of the EU and its members seem to be trying to rein in the excesses of Victor Orban in their latest financial aid program to help members recover from the Covid19 economic destruction. Who is there to prevent our present leaders from getting us into a bigger mess – perhaps into a hot conflict that nobody wins? After Trump and now Biden, can we expect the US to be sensible and moderate?
Sincerely,
Teow Loon Ti
“After Trump and now Biden, can we expect the US to be sensible and moderate?”
Why would US be moderate when it comes to foreign policy when it is used as a tool to deflect from domestic issues. I do not understand this expectation.
The typical Anglo playbook is to solve domestic issues internationally. Always have been, always will be.
US is having serious issues with its social fabric but its just a lot more convenient to blame the boogieman than to actually solve it (which will involve political reform) and upset the applecart. The existing vested interest could not care less about the plebs.
Dear Meeple,
If you read carefully, I was asking a question, not stating an expectation. If it were, it was a negative expectation that I am posing.
Sincerely
Teow Loon Ti
Well it can be taken 2 ways. A genuine question or a rhetorical question. I just took the position that it was a rhetorical question but in any case, expect more of the same. with a bit more finesse.
Dear Meeple,
I don’t bicker. I take this as the end of the exchange between us.
Sincerely,
Teow Loon Ti
The article says: ‘Against such a background of hostility and threat, Australia becomes a virtual captive of its relationship with the USA. This alliance has been effectively set in concrete by successive Australian governments since the signing of the ANZUS Treaty.’
In fact ANZUS was imposed on the US as a condition for Australia signing the 1951 San Francisco peace treaty, which Canberra regarded as not sufficiently restraining against a revival of Japanese militarism. The treaty was aimed against Japan, not China.