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Canberra.au: Chinese policy will test PM

Dave Peebles
03 December 2007 - 8:35AM

Managing US-China relations will be one of the key tests of the prime ministership in the next decade. Kevin Rudd is arguably the politician best placed to meet this challenge, and he has an able partner in Stephen Smith as Foreign Minister. Rudd was a diplomat in Beijing in the 1980s and is our first Mandarin-speaking Prime Minister. He has also been a lifelong supporter of the Australia-US alliance, and as part of his victory speech on Saturday mentioned "our great friend and ally, the United States" before other countries. But since the Middle East has been the main focus of the Australian electorate over the past year, we have not heard concrete proposals for how Australia can contribute to the management of US-China relations.

Rudd enjoyed the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders' summit while sidestepping difficult questions about the possibility of US-China conflict. Perhaps this was fair enough. It was possible to conclude at the APEC summit that Australia could successfully manage its relations with the US and China, and that APEC had lived up to its founders' vision of bringing the US and East Asia together. Further, the ever-growing web of free trade agreements and regional initiatives suggest that the Asia-Pacific is well placed to continue on the prosperous path it has been on in recent decades.

Yet it is possible to consider a different set of events from recent years and conclude that a darker, more dangerous future is still possible, with all the invidious choices that this would involve for Australia and the region. No one can definitively predict that the US and China will successfully negotiate China's rise, particularly since both are committed to armed conflict over Taiwan in certain circumstances.

US analyst Nancy Bernkopf Tucker says, "Today the most dangerous place on earth is arguably the Taiwan Strait, where a war between the United States and China could erupt out of miscalculation, misunderstanding, or accident." She believes that the Taiwan Strait is "the only place in the world today where two major nuclear powers are threatening to engage in a colossally destructive war which would not just disrupt their economic, political and security relations but also have a profound impact on the Asian region and the world".

It is easy to see how a crisis could develop. In 1996, China launched missiles into the sea around Taiwan to coincide with the first democratic presidential elections in Taiwan. The US deployed its Seventh Fleet, including two aircraft carriers, to the Taiwan Strait in response. The two countries negotiated that crisis, but fighting a war in the Taiwan Strait continues to occupy defence planners in both countries.

In the early years of the Bush Administration, China was characterised as a strategic competitor, and US President George W. Bush promised to do "whatever it takes" to defend Taiwan from Chinese attack. Were it not for September 11, and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is likely that there would have been far greater confrontation between the US and China under the Bush Administration.

Both the US as the existing hegemon, and China, as the rising hegemon, have clear expectations about how Australia should act to support their interests and the costs of a wrong decision.

During the 1996 Taiwan Strait crisis, the Howard Government encouraged China to exercise "restraint" and supported the deployment of the US Seventh Fleet. China responded by effectively freezing relations for a year. A senior aide to Chinese President Zemin warned that Australia faced "very serious consequences" if it sided with the US in a Taiwan conflict. In 2001, China was angered by Australia's support for the US when China forced a US spy plane down. In response, China harassed an Australian naval patrol in the Taiwan Strait.

On the US side, in 1999, Richard Armitage, later to become deputy secretary of state in the first Bush Administration, made clear his expectations about Australia's level of commitment in the event of a US-China conflict. He said, "We would expect you Australians to bleed for us in the event of such a war", and that Australia would be expected to provide meaningful military support to carry out "dirty, hard, and dangerous work". Later, Armitage said, "If Washington found itself in conflict in China over Taiwan, it would expect Australia's support. If it didn't get that support, it would mean the end of the US-Australia alliance."

In 2004, during a visit to China, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer suggested that ANZUS only applied if an attack occurred on the Australian or US mainland, and so not to any conflict in the Taiwan Strait. The US State Department immediately corrected Downer's somewhat interesting legal interpretation, saying Australia would be obliged to act if there was an attack on US ships in the Pacific.

The Rudd government will obviously make its own judgments about Australia's interests in such circumstances. But avoiding conflict in the first place is why the successful management of US-China relations is Australia's key foreign policy challenge for the foreseeable future. We can be encouraged by events such as the APEC summit, but we cannot yet take a peaceful and prosperous regional future for granted. Working to realise such a future is one of the great tasks for our new Prime Minister.

Dave Peebles is the author of Pacific Regional Order (Asia-Pacific Press).

http://canberra.yourguide.com.au/news/opinion/opinion/chinese-policy-will-test-pm/1097097.html