Julie Bishop’s recent speech in Singapore was out of date and stale. Her remarks exhibited two major and ongoing flaws in the government’s foreign policy thinking. The first is the persistent lack of substance in the Turnbull government’s response to both China’s challenge to the status quo and uncertainty over US engagement the region, as illustrated by the Foreign Minister’s ‘strategic holding pattern’ metaphor. The second is the lack of understanding of the mixed reception some ‘liberal’ values and norms receive in the region, and why their invocation can be more divisive than unifying when used carelessly.
Bishop clearly believes US engagement is a necessary condition for the current order’s survival, that the existing order best matches Australia’s interests, and that the regional order is under challenge. Yet Australia, under this and previous governments, has done little more than talk about the merits of the current order and the overarching importance of the US in maintaining it. Australia needs to become much more proactive in demonstrating its commitment; in encouraging continued US support for the regional ‘rules based’ order by more actively cross-bracing US alliances in the region and building security cooperation with other status quo states.
The ‘holding pattern’ metaphor describes the behavior of Australia and many, though not all, ASEAN members to date. Bishop’s speech overlooked the fact that at least one of the US’s major allies in East Asia, Japan, has become increasingly proactive in its responses to both Beijing’s territorial ambitions and to the uncertainty over the extent and nature of US-extended deterrence. Concerns about the future character of US support in the Asia-Pacific, moreover, did not arrive with Donald Trump; domestic pressures in the US, both fiscal and political, alongside numerous Democrat and Republican grumbling about allies free riding on alliance commitments have caused concern in Tokyo and Canberra for some time, if not several decades.
Read the full “Defending the liberal order takes more than rhetoric” article in the Lowy Intepreter by Griffith Asia Institute Associate Professor Michael Heazle.
