How did Multicultural Australia Misread the Multipolar World?

reflections on a puzzle and a tragedy

The future leaders and historians of Australia may ask: how did multicultural Australia so catastrophically misread the reemergence of the multipolar world?

Why did Australia’s leaders fail to adapt to a changing world, marked by the crumbling of a world order unified under American Primacy? Many world leaders, historians, commentators, and citizens observed this historical turning point in the flows of power, resources, people, and ideas around the world. Xi Jinping said these changes are the greatest in 100 years. Many said it was the end of a 500-year period of Euro-Atlantic dominance, with a tragic history of empire, colonization and violence, which Australians ought to know well. Yet despite all the evidence, Australia kept thinking strategically like it was 1991.

The observers may not agree how to interpret these changes, but at least they see them. ‘Multipolar world’ is an awkward concept, but it does, at least, as Indian External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar has recently said, point to the “reassertion of the natural diversity of the world.” So, why did multicultural Australia, which in its daily life knows this diversity so well, blind itself to the multipolar world?

It is a puzzle and a tragedy. Australia is a great trading nation, located close to the demographic heart of the world. In 2022, 29.5 per cent of its people were born overseas. There were similar levels of overseas born before Federation, but the make-up today is different. 5.2 per cent of the population were born in two of the great new super-powers of the multipolar world, China and India. A mere 0.4 per cent were born in the USA, despite the domination of our minds by the American screen. With limits and faults, Australia has accomplished the rare achievement of a pluralist, multicultural society. This asset ought to be the engine to make Australia, as Sam Roggeveen suggests in The Echidna Strategy, a “diplomatic powerhouse.” It could strengthen the capacity of our governments to detect, to understand, to connect and to adapt to the historical changes of a new period of globalization in a multipolar world.

I discussed the failure of Australia to develop into a diplomatic powerhouse with Sam Roggeveen himself in this interview on my YouTube channel.

In ways, this potential was realized in generations of Asian studies and new diplomatic initiatives towards India, Indonesia and even China. Tragically, however, Australia’s leaders devoted themselves, with increasing desperation since 2008, to the illusion that America must lead to make the world safe for its democracy. The foreign policy record since that time has been a diplomatic disgrace that drove the China Scare talk, a moral tragedy that culminated in the responses to events in Gaza, and an intellectual fizzle that caused the reckless AUKUS deal and the spendthrift dud subs that may never reach our waters.

Former Prime Minister has recently highlighted the catastrophic failure of the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal, with a similar assessment that I shared with Sam Roggeveen.

“At the time Aukus was announced I was concerned the nuclear-powered submarines, using weapons-grade uranium provided by the US or the UK, would not be able to be operated without foreign supervision and support. This was not, to my way of thinking, a sovereign submarine capability. We now have to face the real prospect, for much of the next decade and beyond, of not having any Australian submarine capability at all.”

It may be tempting to blame individual political leaders or parties, depending on your biases. It may be comforting to imagine, somewhere between 1985 and 2010, there was a golden Australian moment of middle power diplomacy, or the lost opportunity to join an ‘Asian Century’. But failure of this magnitude demands deeper explanations. Such tragedy surely is produced by flawed institutions and culture, not only by fickle leaders.

I discussed the complex package of the failure of Australia to engage Asia with Warwick Powell in this interview on my YouTube channel.

Moreover, Australia is not alone in the failure to adapt to the multipolar world over the last 30 years. Joe Biden still repeats his lines that America can do anything. American allies in Europe have surrendered their sovereignty too. Emmanuel Todd in The Defeat of the West argues that all Western allies have surrendered sovereignty to an empty, demoralized, post-imperial American elite.

Australia is not alone in its clinging to American guns and manifest destiny. But it is uniquely tragic for Australia that its leaders have chosen this path because its peoples, cultures and institutions had so much more potential.

Of course, some might argue the Australian public are to blame because they have a racist heart, or because we are an anxious, insecure nation. Distinguished voices have articulated this well-founded view. But is it right to blame primarily the Australian public for the decisions made exclusively by its American loyalist leaders?

Attitudes to the Gaza response and the China Threat highlight a gulf between elite Atlanticist opinion and multipolar public sentiment.  In the recent Guardian poll, only 20 per cent said the China relationship was a “threat to be confronted”, despite all the China Scare rhetoric from political, security and media figures in recent years.

Indeed, just one in five said Australia should be “primarily an ally of the US”. Multicultural Australia may be adapting to a new kind of world. But official Australian foreign policy, which is deeply committed to US primacy and the ‘unbreakable alliance’, is out-of-step with community opinion.

So why did the intelligence of multicultural Australia not translate to our leadership’s understanding of the new multipolar world? Let me suggest four explanations that future historians and current leaders might investigate.

But I will do it in my next Wednesday essay that you can read in full by upgrading to a paid subscription.

Thanks for reading and happy Easter for those who are celebrating this ancient custom.