Asia's competitive "strategic geometries": the Australian perspective (1).

• Author: Tow, William T.
• Position: Report

World politics is ultimately determined by landmark changes in state-centric power configurations and the contemporary international security environment is proving to be no exception. (2) Europe, the Middle East and Asia collectively form the vortex of geopolitical rivalry in our time and the United States, the "hyper-power", whose strategic commitments dominate and whose resource needs bestride all three regions, is increasingly strained to project effective control over how these regions will shape the evolution of international security. This is particularly true as the forces of globalization become more complex and as the scope of security policy concerns broadens. In such an environment post-war US allies like Australia are challenged with how to determine whether their own national security interests and policies correspond with or diverge from American expectations and demands.

In this context, Australia stands at a historical crossroads. For nearly eighty years after Federation in 1901, that country pursued an unmitigated strategy of alliance politics, relying initially upon its erstwhile colonial power, Great Britain, and since 1942 upon the United States for protection and, ultimately, for survival against real or potential regional predators. Over the last twenty to thirty years, however, Australia has pursued a more complex, dual track, strategy to guarantee its security and prosperity. The two main elements comprising this strategy are: (1) a comprehensive regional engagement with its Asian neighbours, designed to pursue community-building and avoid security dilemmas, complemented by (2) a continuation and, most recently, an intensification of its alliance with the United States? This approach was perhaps most graphically characterized by then Prime Minister John Howard in a wide-ranging speech delivered in August 2001 when he insisted that: "...it (is) not necessary [for Australia] to choose between our relationships with Asian countries, and those in Europe and North America--to choose between our history and our geography". (4)

In retrospect, the formula of pursuing politico-strategic equilibrium --"build(ing) and maintain(lug) links with all the major centres of global power and influence, while ensuring that [Australia's] key regional relationships were kept vibrant and strong" can be viewed as successful? Over the past decade, Australia's economy grew steadily through its cultivation of an insatiable China market and preservation of viable trading and investment relationships with more traditional Asian economic partners (particularly Japan and South Korea). It simultaneously entered into a comprehensive free trade agreement with the United States, strengthened its access to US defence intelligence and weapons technology and intensified its diplomatic profile with US officials. (6) While Australia's military involvement in Iraq has been undoubtedly controversial, its casualties among defence personnel serving in that war-torn land have been remarkably light to date. The newly elected Rudd government pledged throughout the late 2007 federal election campaign that it would remove all Australian combat forces from that theatre. He was careful, however, to qualify this declaration with the caveat that the US would be "fully consulted" prior to withdrawing what is, in fact, a very modest number (around 550) of Australian combat forces. Nearly 1,000 Australian military personnel would remain stationed in Iraq, however, to carry out naval missions, help train the Iraqi army and to provide other forms of logistical support for remaining coalition (mostly US) forces deployed there. (7) Adopting a fundamentally balanced or "symmetrical" approach to geopolitics has therefore served Australia very well during the twenty-first century's first decade.

Given the success it has had in adopting geopolitical symmetry as a core part of its overall security posture, it is puzzling that a countervailing policy trend emerged during the Howard government's last three to four years of office that signalled a return to Australia's unqualified strategic reliance on its "great and powerful American friend". The Australian-American alliance, of course, was formalized in late 1951 as part of the Tripartite Security Treaty (more commonly known as Australia-New Zealand-United States or ANZUS) binding the three countries into an arrangement primarily intended to preserve the West's favourable strategic balance of power against communist forces (the Korean War was raging in Northeast Asia at the time) or against the unlikely prospect of a rearmed Japan emerging to threaten Asia-Pacific stability. The termination of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union appeared to override the premise of superpower competition that previously underscored the strategic rationale for sustaining an American-led security network in Asia--the so-called "hub and spokes" system of bilateral alliances the United States maintained with Japan, South Korea, Thailand, the Philippines and Australia. (8) However, multilateral regional "security architectures" have recently emerged in the Asia-Pacific as a potential successor to that network, although they have yet to prove viable alternatives to the region's security order-building. (9)

Why Australia has returned to promoting variants of the competitive geometry that was so dominant during the Cold War as a means to pursue contemporary regional security strategy will be analysed here. Australia's inability to steer a consistent middle path in its strategic relations between the People's Republic of China (PRC) and Japan (as opposed to its spectacular success in achieving just such an equilibrium in the economic sector), appears to have swayed the Howard government to modify Australia's previously successful strategy of pursuing cooperative regional security politics in the region while maintaining alliance relations with the United States. It did so assuming that Australia's remarkable economic and trade relations with China and throughout Asia would be unaffected. The second part of the article will explore both the perceived advantages and drawbacks of this strategic policy shift. It will be argued, as well, that the newly elected Australian Government led by Kevin Rudd and the Japanese Government under Yusuo Fukuda are both likely to downplay competitive strategic geometry--viewing it as too destabilizing to serve Australia's evolving diplomatic interests in Asia and as unnecessarily provocative towards China and the countries belonging to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). A caveat to this argument, however, is that democratic security coalitions in the region may yet "prevail by default" if China shifts from projecting its currently viewed mostly benign regional security posture to one that is more aggressive due to its frustration over Taiwan or to the intensification of other regional flashpoints. A final section will consider what policy options the Rudd and Fukuda governments can best pursue to preserve and strengthen a preferred dual strategy of regional engagement and alliance affiliation.

The New Strategic Geometry

John Howard's government ascended to power in early 1996 believing that its predecessor had created an imbalance between Australia's relations with Asia and its alliance with the United States that advantaged the former at the latter's expense. While insisting that the Asia-Pacific remained Australia's "highest priority", the Howard government's 1997 foreign policy white paper, In the National Interest, argued that bilateral relationships were the basic "building block" for effective regional and global strategy, that Australia's multilateral agenda must be inherently "selective" and that maintaining and strengthening alliance ties with the United States buttressed whatever influence Australia had established with its Asian neighbours, (10) Howard moved quickly to consolidate what he felt were previously neglected alliance ties with Washington by issuing the 1996 "Sydney Declaration" that reaffirmed ANZUS as the bedrock of Australian defence policy, by upgrading the intensity and extent of Australia-US bilateral military relations and by accepting the Clinton administration's mandate for Australia to become the guardian of Western security interests in an increasingly volatile South Pacific and in various parts of maritime Southeast Asia that together formed the so-called "arc of instability"."

Several developments interceded over the following decade, however, that led to the Howard government adopting a more balanced geopolitical position between Asia and the United States. The extent to which Australia's booming trade with China grew after a brief setback in Sino-Australian relations occurred over the March 1996 Taiwan Straits crisis and over the cancellation of an Australian Development Import Finance Facility (DIFF) programme in China was unanticipated. The Clinton administration's hard line response to the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997-98 and its initial reluctance to provide combat support to Australian Defence Forces spearheading the International Force for East Timor (INTERFET) military intervention in late 1999 combined with trade tensions between the two allies to temper Howard's initial aspirations for pursuing closer strategic ties with Washington. Until a change in American leadership transpired in early 2001 to a more "Australia-friendly" George W. Bush administration, the Howard government shared resentment with Japan and other traditional US allies in Asia that the Eurocentric Clintonites had viewed, and had interacted with, China as the only significant actor in the Asia Pacific. Richard Armitage, soon to be the Bush Administration's Deputy Secretary of State, led an influential study group that authored a widely discussed report in late 2000. It pointed to the need for the United States to pay more attention to Japan...