Australia has made headlines around the world, for all the wrong reasons, with its AUKUS deal. The Australian Government agreed to pay $368B for some hand-me-down American submarines in the 2030’s, and for joint operation with the British of more nuclear submarines in the late 2040’s. All of this money sent to Anglo-American military contractors is to protect our trade routes with China…. from China. And America gets to station nuclear submarines in Perth in time for its planned war with Taiwan in 2025 or 2027. What?
On 15 March 2023, former Prime Minister, Paul Keating assessed this decision so:
The Albanese Government’s complicity in joining with Britain and the United States in a tripartite build of a nuclear submarine for Australia under the AUKUS arrangements represents the worst international decision by an Australian Labor government since the former Labor leader, Billy Hughes, sought to introduce conscription to augment Australian forces in World War One.
Keating’s rhetorical equation of this acquiescence to American plans to contain China with the surrender to British imperial interests during World War I reflected his view that foreign policy in Australia is now controlled by a group of ‘Austral-Americans’ whose loyalty is not to this nation, but to the imperial masters who award them status, contracts and influence.
I share Mr Keating’s view that Australian foreign policy has reached a low point that it has not seen for 100 years. Fresh thinking is needed on vital questions. How can Australian foreign and security policy deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be? What are the most essential changes in the international system, which China says have not been seen for 100 years? How are they changing dynamics for middle-powers and commodity-based economies like Australia? What could be Australia’s role in the emerging multipolar world? What alternatives does Australia have to the long-held strategy of acting as a sub-imperial power, first to Britain, then to the USA?
In a video earlier this year on India’s soft power, I suggested, off-the cuff, that Australia might entertain a pivot from Washington to Delhi. The suggestion sparked some interest, so I decided to sketch how such a pivot might be undertaken, and how Australia might raise itself from the deep hole it has dug for itself, if under American direction. Here are my thoughts. Perhaps we can improve this 10 point plan together?
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