SIX weeks ago, an Australian warship sailed into some of the most contested waters on the planet and, off China, opened fire. The ship was the frigate Warramunga and it wasn't the first Australian vessel with that name to fire its guns across the Yellow Sea.
Sixty years ago, Warramunga's namesake was in the same waters, firing to kill Chinese and North Korean troops during the Korean War.
There was no warlike intent in the more recent incident: the latest Warramunga was taking part in an exercise, sailing on calm seas under blue skies alongside a Chinese warship. It was the first such exercise by any Western nation with the Chinese navy - a navy that Royal Australian Navy chief Vice-Admiral Russ Crane praised for its ''constructive contribution'' to regional security.
Advertisement: Story continues below
Six days ago, in Melbourne, the United States and Australia reaffirmed their commitment to an alliance that was formalised around the time the first Warramunga saw action in the Yellow Sea. With warm words about a fundamental commitment to an enduring partnership based on common interests and shared democratic values, they agreed to increase co-operation on defence, cyber and space security. Who they were defending these spheres from was left unstated. ''We're not in the business of naming threats,'' Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd said after the talks. Not publicly, at least.
Yet China was the dragon outside the room when Rudd and Defence Minister Stephen Smith met US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defence Secretary Bob Gates in Government House last Monday.
China is mentioned just once in the 2433-word communique issued after their annual AUSMIN meeting - a reference to a shared goal of ''seeking a positive, co-operative relationship''.
Yet the talks, and the agreement to expand defence co-operation, were clearly aimed at bolstering American dominance of the Pacific in the face of China's dramatic rise.
The talks may also be another sign of a new cold war, according to Hugh White, one of Australia's leading strategic thinkers.
(In case you missed it, the first Cold War between the US-led West and the Soviet Union lasted for 40 years. The world lived in fear of possible nuclear Armageddon, the reality of proxy wars like Korea, and constant tension between the superpowers.)
This new cold war is already taking shape, says White, professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University and a former deputy secretary in the Defence Department.
The front lines of emerging conflict could be seen in a new Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea, the Yellow Sea, and in territorial disputes with Japan in the East China Sea, which reveal ''worrying things about the way policy is being made in Beijing''.
The AUSMIN communique refers to these pressure points and calls for respect for international law of the sea and the peaceful resolution of maritime territorial disputes, suggesting the fear that China might not respect the law or settle its claims peacefully.
Equally worrying, says White, are American efforts to retain its dominance as China rises, fuelled by its rapidly growing economic power. ''Unless the US can articulate what it's trying to do, China will conclude it's trying to preserve the old order, in which China plays a subordinate, not an equal, role,'' he says.
''If that's what the US is attempting to do, then it is running a very high risk of conflict, or at least of escalating strategic competition, with all the risks of conflict flowing from that.
''What does that look like? It looks like the beginnings of a cold war, and we know how dangerous that can be.''
Australia is caught in the middle of this new Pacific tussle.
Our biggest fear is having to make a choice between American primacy, which has brought four decades of regional security and stability, and our economic future, which depends on China and its hunger for our mineral exports.
The trouble is, White argues, we can't have both.
''I just don't think it's going to be possible, because the very thing which is keeping us afloat economically is undermining the structure which keeps us safe strategically. This falls into the 'shit happens' school of international affairs.''
White's argument, first spelt out in the Quarterly Essay in September, is based on the premise that China's challenge to American power in Asia is a reality, not a future possibility. China could overtake the US as the world's richest economy by 2030, would no longer accept American leadership in Asia, and would look to lead in its own right.
This left the US with three options: withdraw from Asia; compete with China, which would create ''a real and growing risk of major war''; or agree to share regional power in an equal partnership with China and the other regional powers, India and Japan.
White says the best option for Australia - shared leadership - is also the hardest to achieve.
Paul Dibb, who preceded White as deputy secretary of defence, also sees worrying signs of Chinese assertiveness, highlighted by a recent outburst by Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi that ''China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that's just a fact''.
But Dibb advocates a radically different response to White's.
Citing China's claims over the South China Sea, its ''bullying'' of Japan over disputed waters in the East China Sea, and its obstruction of US naval exercises in the Yellow Sea, he warned last week of a growing challenge to regional security. The US and its allies, including Australia, had to decide how it would deal with China's rising naval power, he said. ''That may mean one day that China will have to be taught a military lesson at sea.''
The problem with this argument, says White, is that China is now too big to be slapped down: ''The trouble with international politics is that the Chinese can teach us a lesson, too.''
For his part, Kevin Rudd reckons White has got it wrong. He insists we can manage our different interests with ''skilful, careful diplomacy''.
''The idea of some zero-sum game, head to Washington or head to Beijing, is frankly nonsense,'' he said last week. Instead, he propounds ''a rational third way'' for Australia, between rowing with China and kowtowing.
Rudd says this can be done through a ''comprehensive political and economic relationship where we agree on our common interests, both in the region, at a world stage and bilaterally as well, but also not walking away from those areas in which we disagree''.
The Foreign Minister had more soothing words ahead of the weekend's APEC summit in Japan, where Prime Minister Julia Gillard had her first formal talks with President Barack Obama. Japan is the last stop of an Asian tour by Obama that he had used to reassert American interest in Asia.
In an interview with Japan's Asahi Shimbun newspaper before APEC, Rudd said he was confident China wanted to resolve its row with Japan over disputed islands through diplomacy.
He also spoke of the need to create a firm regional framework that addresses ''the need for us to have in east Asia the evolution of confidence and security building measures between everybody''.
If Rudd prefers the language of diplomacy in public, a secret strategic briefing given to Defence Minister Stephen Smith after the federal election is more forthcoming about the government's views, even if the public version is heavily censored. It talks of a more confident China, boosted by its strong economic performance, while US and European defence budgets are under pressure.
The briefing cited last year's defence white paper, which predicted US primacy in the Pacific would be ''increasingly tested''. (The white paper, by the way, called for the biggest expansion of defence spending since the Second World War. It was heavily influence by Rudd and didn't name threats, either.)
China had emerged well from the global economic crisis, with its growing defence budget ''shifting the balance of military power in Asia'', the briefing said.
Its navy now patrols disputed waters ''with increased frequency and in greater strength'', it said, while a new navy base on Hainan Island, with underground docks for submarines, enhanced China's ability to deploy forces into the South China Sea.
Australia is not the only uneasy spectator as the region changes.
Beijing's closer neighbours, concerned by China's leadership ambitions and territorial claims, are looking for a renewed US commitment. Among them is Vietnam, America's old enemy.
Paul Monk, an author, consultant and former defence intelligence analyst, says hoping China's neighbours will fit in with Beijing's expectations is an invitation for disaster.
''China, as a new power on the block, suddenly getting a rush of blood to the head, is not well placed to make cautious decisions that take the interests of others into account,'' Monk says. ''The signs are it's not doing that very well. It's getting ahead of itself a bit.''
Instead, China needs to fit into an agreed security framework with its neighbours and the US.
''If a new set of rules emerges that we can all be comfortable with, then we can be OK, however wealthy China becomes.
''But if China says 'no, butt out, we're going to set the rules, the South China Sea is ours, the Yellow Sea is ours, the East China Sea is ours, and you will kowtow, there's going to be trouble, there's no two ways about it.
''The question is, how much trouble?''
As for Australia, Monk says we need to be part of a coalition of states, that says to China:
''Not that we want to keep you weak, but you need to work with us on terms everyone can live with, otherwise we will have to contain you. Make no mistake, we will.
''That's what you can see with Japan and Vietnam and others, saying to the United States, 'Hey, don't go away any time soon'.''
No comments:
Post a Comment