Sydney Morning Herald political and international editor Peter Hartcher has told us that a historic friendship meeting between Japan, the US, Australia and India – the Quad, has begun. However, it’s not particularly friendly, or historic.
But it is an unlikely friendship, held together by the dangerous ambitions and distorted views that its respective members have over China.
Nor is it very historic. This Quad was preceded by four or more other attempts to have everyone gang up on China.
First came the ANZUS treaty of 1952. That was supposed to bind us against Japan but somehow morphed into an anti-China alliance. Then came SEATO – the abortive eight-state Southeast Asia Treaty Organization set up in the sixties to counter China’s alleged expansionism, over Vietnam especially.
In 1964 our foreign minister, Paul Hasluck, made a secret visit to Moscow to persuade the Soviet leadership to join us in Vietnam to stop alleged Chinese aggression. The fate of that idea was too short even to record. But I know it exists. I was there. Since then we have had two more Quads, the first in 2007-08 and now Quad Two. Do the SMH editors and its international affairs editor, Peter Hartcher, quite realize the machinations that led to the present Quad?
Mr Hartcher seems to have made a name for himself as an expert on China’s alleged machinations in Australia. He has no direct experience of China. Nor does he seem to know the language. His main claim to fame is six years in Tokyo, first as a correspondent for the SMH and later for the Australian Financial Review. It also seems that before his emergence in SMH as a resident China expert, he had never studied China or written about it.
There too he did not seem to know much about the language.
Promoting the Quad idea has long been on the security service agenda. It began with a strange 1967 ANU publication promoting a Japan, India, Australia alliance to meet China’s alleged aggression in Vietnam and elsewhere in Asia, and calling for an international conference.
Whether a university should be so political can be argued. But at the time the hysteria over China/Vietnam was at peak levels. And the ANU international relations department was cooperating closely with ASIO, as were many other universities.
That ANU move laid the seeds for Quad One. But by 2007 the Vietnam War was over and its partners – Australia under the Rudd government especially – were more concerned about their trade and diplomatic relations with China rather than confrontation.
Quad Two is a much more belligerent affair. We already know what the US is about – preventing the rise of any threat to its global ambitions, by force if necessary. Australia’s pugnacity and slavish pro-US attitudes have already invited Chinese retaliation.
India, with its emotional border disputes and complexes towards China, is a loose cannon. As a China desk officer in Canberra during the first 1962 border dispute, I saw close hand how China’s very justified reactions to India’s border infractions would be displayed as proof of unprovoked Chinese aggression.
There will be more disputes in the future and they will not necessarily be provoked by China.
But the joker in the pack is Japan. Its dangerous territorial disputes with China and its close connections with Taiwan mean an inevitable military confrontation as Beijing increasingly realises it has to rely on force to avenge the territorial and other injustices it believes it has suffered over the years.
Tokyo’s frantic enthusiasm for its military alliance with the US, and now for Quad Two, is borne from the realization that Japan cannot take on China alone. It wants the rest of us to come along and help.
Ready?
Gregory Clark was the first postwar Australian diplomat trained in Chinese, with postings to Hong Kong, Moscow and the UN before retiring in protest against the Vietnam War. After PhD studies at the ANU he became Japan correspondent for The Australian. A spell in Canberra’s Prime Ministers department led to professorships at Tokyo’s Sophia University and emeritus president of Tama University, Tokyo, before becoming co-founder of the very successful English language Akita Kokusai Daigaku. He has now retired to Latin America (Peru) and Kiwi fruit growing in Boso peninsular south of Tokyo.
His works include ‘In Fear of China’ (1969) and several books in Japan on education and foreign policy.
He used to speak Chinese and Russian with fluency. He now speaks Japanese and Spanish.
Comments
17 responses to “The Quad: an unlikely friendship with unfriendly motives”
Japan still has ‘its’ Plutonium.
Why?
More clear-sighted understanding from Gregory Clark. And such an ugly description of this little coterie. I am reminded that QUAD-bikes have a dangerous propensity for toppling over and maiming or killing the rider. This will surely be the result of thios politically-charged little group. One can only hope that a change of Australian Government will see immediate withdrawal from this nonsense!
Great insight that can only be brought to the table by somebody on the ground, with cultural and linguistic appreciation. Thank you, Gregory. China seems determined to push Japan out of the Diaoyu islands (renamed Senkaku after they were handed to Japan by the US after WWII).
Morrison posturing/marketing for the cameras is one thing. But does Australia want to go all the way to fight for Japan? Australia had better be sure!
Why would Japan have to fight? If I’m to believe you lot, China is a magnificent, benign force for good and scorns belligerent posturing. It would never harm an Uighur or a Christian or a Hong Kong democrat; it wishes to win them over with beneficence and love and showing them how superior China is to the repellent US.
Are you now backtracking? Is China in fact a bully, quite prepared to use force to get its way in the Diaoyu islands? Should we actually believe it when it says it will take back Taiwan by force, of course with the utmost rectitude and kindness? I think you’ve given the game away, Man Lee.
Since you likely have not bothered to read about Adrian Zenz, I need you to read this first:
https://thegrayzone.com/2021/02/18/us-media-reports-chinese-genocide-relied-on-fraudulent-far-right-researcher/
Certainly I’ve read about Adrian Zenz, not least on this website, where he is an arch-villain. And his motives may well be questionable. But he is not the only source, and not everything he says is wrong.
Just a couple of days ago, Amnesty International produced this, without – so far as I can ascertain – Zenz.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2021/03/china-parents-of-missing-uyghur-children-describe-horror-of-family-separation/?campaign_id=3&emc=edit_mbau_20210323&instance_id=28341&nl=morning-briefing%3A-australia-edition®i_id=73389782&segment_id=53950&te=1&user_id=ea1afc0cbef9059a8304785ccf8b5982
Nor is he behind Uighurs telling their story in Australia.To be frank, Man Lee, I’d have much more respect for the pro-China posters on P&I if they didn’t pretend everything is wonderful in Xinjiang – nothing to see here, move along – or, if there are some internment camps, they are justified by Uighur terrorism. I’ve never forgotten the appalling Godfree asserting that the Uighurs are the best-off Muslims in the world. Better off than the Saudis or Gulf state Muslims? Sorry, but that level of debate is too common here.
Amnesty International? One of many NGO’s which has been infiltrated by the CIA (or maybe it was always part of the CIA). I think George Wendell also sent a link to you to Aussie writer who is very knowledgeable on Xinjiang.
40 years ago my wife used to work for Amnesty. She certainly didn’t get her orders from Langley. I can see that it’s comfortable to dismiss every source on Xinjiang except the Chinese government. But I can’t help feeling it’s going to leave you feeling betrayed eventually, exactly like all the Stalinists in the 1950s who thought Uncle Joe was perfect.
QUAD Mark 2.0 is a dangerous and sick joke as is Peter Hartcher (who I quite admired until 2 years ago). To rail on about human rights abuses in China and ignore those in the members of QUAD is pathetic and devoid of scholarship in any shape or form.
India shares a long border with China. When the blow-torch is applied who do you believe that odious Modi will support?
India. That was an easy one.
Nope. Hindu nationalists.
Gandhi supported India. Modious’ mob shot him.
Yes, but all the Indian parties, nevertheless, including the BJP, are going to support India over China. They may differ about what support best looks like, but the loyalty is undoubted.
Thank you for a most enlightening (and frankly alarming) article by someone who was at the coal face, so to speak. That is quite a revelation about Hasluck’s trip to Moscow in 1964; what on earth could he and his minders have been thinking? I know it was about he time of the “Khrushchev thaw”, but still…
I do not share the confidence that Japan and India are real allies in the Quad for these reasons: (1) India & Japan are neighbours with a common border (2) they are Asians with thousands of years history of living together (3) They are trading well with China and (4) if a nuclear war breaks out, Japan will be wiped off the map in minutes with India/China/US/Australia just surviving. India is emotional about her border problems with China and can be sorted like Vietnam/China whereas Japan has not really forgotten about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. India and Japan have hidden agenda and happy to join in the QUAD temporarily but Australia will be left holding the can when US-China relations improves. Peace and prosperity should the real interests of these nations except US who believes in hegemony.
I don’t understand what you mean Anthony: (1) India & Japan are neighbours with a common border. (India and Japan are NOT neighbours)…
Sorry Jim. I meant India and Japan are neihbours with China.
I reckon Japan’s stuck, Anthony, and like you think their involvement in the QUAD has much to do with not wanting to be isolated.
The compounding concern for Japan is Russia, and the Japanese are well aware of the growing strategic alignment between China and Russia.