The spectre of declining US Primacy in Asia and Australia-China relations
Policy predicaments in the face of regional multipolarity
This essay was written in the lead-up to China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s visit to New Zealand and Australia in March 2024. A Chinese version has been published by Guancha.cn. There may be some differences due to stylistic considerations.
A bilateral relationship that is founded on economic complementarities should have few issues. But then again, China-Australia is no ‘ordinary’ bilateral relationship. That’s because it’s haunted by the spectre of the U.S. It’s less bilateral and more trilateral.
So, as China’s State Councillor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi visits Australia, the expectation is that trade relations will be fully returned to an even keel. Trade in wine, and lobsters and lifting the suspension on a final tranche of abattoirs to resume beef exports, are all expected to ‘normalise’ in the near future. There are containers of Australian wine in warehouses in Hong Kong, waiting for the signal.
Normalisation with limits
There is little reason for trade relations to be anything but open and stable. Australia’s national economic interests are well served by open trade; and China has been for many years Australia’s largest trading partner. Australia has plenty of resources that satisfy China’s needs; so much so that Australia runs a trade surplus with China. Indeed, despite the diplomatic tensions of late, trade in aggregate value terms has not fundamentally been impeded with bilateral trade in 2023 growing to new heights.
The rhetoric from a couple of years ago of friend-shoring and supply chain decoupling has been tempered, not least due - in part - to the findings of a Productivity Commission inquiry conducted in 2021 and 2022 on Australian supply chain vulnerabilities and risks of disruption. The Productivity Commission analysis concluded that Australia’s economic interests would not be well served by moves away from an open trading regime, towards one that has preferential arrangements dictated by geopolitical considerations. Australia has few vulnerabilities in terms of its supply chains in relation to China. Australia benefits from an open trading regime. This is the ‘right policy lesson’, according to academics James Laurenceson and Shiro Armstrong.
For domestic audiences the political and policy establishment need to emphasise how they will speak up for so-called Australian values and vocalise differences and disagreements. So-called ‘human rights’ are worn as a badge of honour as if talk of them is tantamount to actually occupying the ‘values' high ground. And so while there will no doubt be the obligatory references to this or that ‘human rights matter’, we can also be sure that Wang Yi and his party will be sufficiently diplomatic to not raise Australian conduct in relation to Gaza (the supply of military parts to Israel to enable its genocidal campaign against Palestinians and the suspension of funding to the UNRWA) or, heaven forbid, express concerns about the appalling conditions of Australia’s indigenous peoples.
So much then for the obligatory airing of differences and ‘standing up for our values’ and associated atmospherics.
Subimperial reflexes on a pathway to vassalage?
Normalising trade cannot, however, obviate the wider strategic dilemma that Australia finds itself in: that is, whether its overall foreign policy posture and concrete regional defence and security decisions are (a) to be taken as a sub-imperial power, or (b) alternatively, as part of a reinvigorated effort to exercise greater independence.
As a subimperial power, as Clinton Fernandes has argued, Australia will frame its interests in terms of contributing to the preservation or recovery of American Primacy in Asia. The AUKUS arrangements, epitomised by a $368 billion commitment to purchasing a fleet of nuclear submarines, are largely about US force requirements in the western Pacific. What contributions such a fleet would make to the defence of Australia is a secondary, and hotly contested, proposition. The contrarian voices of Hugh White and Sam Roggeveen are cases in point, even if their critiques largely operate within a narrowly defined mainstream conceptual terrain.
Australia’s relationship with China isn’t so much a bilateral transactional issue, though atmospherics and the spectacles of diplomatic detente aren’t to be totally disregarded. Rather, it’s fundamentally about the ways in which Australia comes to terms with its cultural heritage as a white settler nation with its geographic realities; and how it comes to grips with the dynamics of the Asia Pacific region, and the status of the United States within this shifting environment.
In this context, to what extent is maintaining a subimperial policy posture good sense and sustainable? What are the material conditions that will ultimately impact this posture and its medium- to long-run viability? Can Australia’s policy establishment create or find the room for a substantially more independent policy stance, even if this falls short of the grander aspirations of some, for a genuine ‘middle power’ capability?
American foreign policy doctrine has consistently asserted that the US’ security interests and obligations are global in nature. There isn’t a hemisphere in which the US does not have legitimate interests, remains the formal view from Washington. American Primacy in Asia, arguably the principal feature of the regional landscape for the last 30 years, is now, however, in doubt. This omnipresent aspiration is now coming under strain. American resources are stretched, with demands in Ukraine and Gaza consuming both reputational capital and military materiel. The American military industrial system does not have the wherewithal to sustain the requirements in these theatres, and stockpiles are now being depleted. Unquestioned American military preponderance in west Asia is also a thing of the past, even if we accept that the US is still a major military force. This has led some - such as former Trump advisor Elbridge Colby - to question whether global omnipresence is viable, arguing instead that the US needs to prioritise Asia over Ukraine.
A subimperial Australia has been the beneficiary of American Primacy in Asia. However, few dispute that this Primacy is now either being watered down or is actually a thing of the past. Australia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Penny Wong, spoke about the likelihood of strengthening regional multipolarity in Asia prior to the 2022 election, and since the election speaks of ‘strategic equilibrium’. At the same time, the country’s defence planning remains rooted to the objectives of retaining or reclaiming American Primacy. For how long this inconsistency can be sustained is a question posed by eminent Australian defence analyst Hugh White who asks: “How then can Wong’s advocacy of a multipolar regional order be reconciled with her government’s unconditional support for US policy in Asia?” For White, the answer is simple. It cannot.
These inconsistencies at the heart of Australian national policy formulation reflect a world that is materially changing, pitted against an institutionalised policy reflex that remains mired in a world of a different time. Australia’s predicaments are unlikely to get any easier in the near term. The AUKUS nuclear submarine imbroglio is the proverbial ‘canary in the coal mine’.
The Australian foreign and defence policy establishment has committed to AUKUS as the central feature of Australian security policy for the next few decades. This commitment has been controversial, and as the months passed since the ‘deal’ was revealed to the world, the strategic and operational sense of the policy is beginning to unravel. Strategic and operational doubts and risks are intertwined because a plan that is operationally problematic, or even, extremely risky, invariably renders doubtful the original strategic intent. Put plainly, if a plan can’t be implemented without significant risks and opportunity costs, then the strategic merit is itself questionable.
At a strategic level, doubts have been raised about the extent to which Australian sovereignty will be diluted. Jonathan Caverley, a researcher at the US Naval War College, recently observed that “Australia, and any other country entering AUKUS in the future, will pay in autonomy as much as in dollars”. He goes on to say that:
“Whatever is actually produced by the AUKUS deal, the only concrete outcome to date has been Australia spending over half a billion US dollars - the epitome of setting money on fire - to signal its total reliance on the US for security …”.
Debates in the US Congress about whether the AUKUS deal is viable, and whether it depletes America’s own submarine requirements into the future, reinforce these observations. Doubts exist as to whether the US has the manufacturing capacity to meet its own needs, let alone provide for those submarines that form the centrepiece of the AUKUS deal. The saving grace, so some have argued, is that in the final moment of need, the US will effectively take charge of the submarines and direct them in any theatre of combat deployment.
Recent budget cuts in the US for next year’s submarine program has catalysed a flurry of handwringing amongst AUKUS proponents as they seek to allay any public concerns about either US commitment or program viability. But the nagging question of implementation risks refuses to go away. Research academics Brendan O’Connor, Lloyd Cox and Danny Cooper have discussed at length the entire range of strategic uncertainties including the ‘bet’ on American stability and commitment over the long haul. Former Australian submariner and federal senator, Rex Patrick, has recently delivered an excoriating assessment of the project risks associated with the proposed submarines program. He didn’t need to question strategic merit to demonstrate that there’s a big dose of ‘pie in the sky’ thinking behind the plan.
This ‘pie in the sky thinking’ is not without material consequences, and these will condition Australia’s ‘room to move’ when it comes to the bilateral relations with China. The AUKUS deal is part of a wider plan to reform the Australian Defence Force that was found in a 2023 review to be “not fully fit for purpose”. This realisation comes on the back of two decades of accumulated policy failure that has progressively seen the dilution of Australian sovereign capacity as part of the nation’s overall defence capabilities.
In the 2000 Defence White Paper, the highest priority was stated as being “able to defend Australia without relying on the combat forces of other countries”. By 2023, the concession was made that Australia could not meet its defence requirements without dependence on the US. Between now and 2040 Australia will be reliant on America for its defence. Delays in the delivery of the AUKUS submarines increases this risk even further, leading former senior Australian defence executive Mike Scrafton to recently observe that:
“If the used Virginia class purchase falls through or is delayed by two or three years Australia will not have an effective capability for defending the strategic approaches to Australia, or an effective submarine force, for the next twenty years. There is no alternative plan for Australia’s independent defence.”
Under these circumstances, in narrow defence policy terms, Australia’s capacity to act autonomously is severely constrained. It is, in effect, becoming dependent on someone else, over whom the capacity to influence is limited.
These materials conditions have the propensity to transform Australia from being a subimperial power to being a dependent vassal.
America’s limited manufacturing capacity will, intentionally or otherwise, limit the scope of Australia’s capacity to act autonomously within the Asia region unless Australia is again willing to address the contradiction at the heart of its foreign and defence policies.
Courage and imagination: new spaces needed
The question is, then, what are the conditions necessary for such a rethink to take place? In part, these conditions are historical and go to the heart of Australia’s experiences as a colonial settlement with longstanding episodes of Sinophobia. David Walker has spoken of the “anxious nation”, in analysing Australia’s attitudes towards Asia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. More recently, foreign policy doyen, the late Allan Gyngell, spoke of Australia’s “fear of abandonment”. These bookends presently constrain the room in which Australia’s policy establishment can rethink not just the question of China, but also the question of Australia in Asia.
Can Australia overcome its anxieties in relation to its geography? Does it have the courage and imagination to forge a role and place in the regional architecture that overcomes the fear of being abandoned by a ‘great protector’? Can China play a role in creating a ‘third space’ in which Australia can explore these possibilities, which is grounded more in whole-of-regional perspectives, rather than be limited to formalities of bilateral relations?
So, as Wang Yi visits Australia, and as trade relations are normalised and diplomatic exchanges stabilised, the unspoken issues that continue to shape Australia’s position towards Asia and China will continue to simmer away under the surface. New spaces are needed for Australian engagement in the region; China has the capacity to enable the opening of these new spaces - of shifting the frame for Australia away from the constraints of the two historic bookends - and this can best be done from a multilateral point of view.
Normalised diplomatic exchanges is a helpful step.