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locked in a state of permanent contest.....

 

Framing the Pacific as a permanent contest with China overstates the symmetry between the two powers, underestimates Pacific agency and risks producing the very outcome Australia fears.

In June 2024 Foreign Minister Penny Wong told the ABC that Australia had lost the chance to be the Pacific’s “only partner of choice”. According to Wong, Australia was therefore locked in a “state of permanent contest” in the region.

 

Joanne Wallis

Australia’s ‘permanent contest’ with China is the wrong way to see the Pacific

 

At first blush, Wong’s framing is understandable. China has become more active in the Pacific Islands region over the last decade, which has triggered Australia’s longstanding anxiety about powers with potentially inimical interests establishing a foothold in the region from which to threaten Australia.

That anxiety had escalated after Solomon Islands signed a security agreement with China in April 2022, which Wong described as Australia’s “worst Australian foreign policy blunder in the Pacific” since the Second World War. Wong’s framing also does valuable political work in Canberra, as it justifies Australia’s increased spending on the region and, latterly, the new treaties and security agreements Australia has signed with several Pacific Island countries to embed its role as their primary partner of choice.

But Australia should step back from this framing. A contest implies two or more comparable partner countries offering equivalent assistance to Pacific Island country ‘prizes’. That is both inaccurate and unhelpful.

The contest framing treats Australia and China as interchangeable partners. They are not.

Australia remains – by far – the region’s largest development partner. Australia disbursed US$1.5 billion in ODF to the Pacific in 2024, which was 37 per cent of all development flows to the region and more than three times as much as the next largest partner, the Asian Development Bank. China disbursed only 6 per cent of regional ODF. Australia has also overtaken China as the region’s largest lender, behind the multilateral banks.

China has built several infrastructure projects in the region. Chinese migrants are highly visible in the small business sector, and most Pacific capitals have a ‘Chinatown’. But Australian officials and consultants are embedded across many Pacific governments, as well as all major regional bodies, including the Pacific Islands Forum.

For example, Australia offers extensive maritime security assistance, including patrol boats (with accompanying maritime security and technical advisers) and aerial surveillance, with Australians working at the Forum Fisheries Agency. Australia also engages in wide-ranging defence cooperation, policing assistance and disaster response. And Australia offers labour mobility and permanent migration opportunities. Importantly, Australia cooperates closely with the other major regional partners, including New Zealand, the US, the UK, France and Japan.

China has neither the inclination nor – arguably – the capacity to replicate what Australia delivers.

The contest framing also implies moral equivalence between Australia and China. But they are different kinds of states.

Australia’s long history in the Pacific is far from blameless, but we know a lot about it because Australia is a democracy. The government’s Pacific policies are debated in Parliament, scrutinised in Senate Estimates, reported by a free press, tested in the courts (when necessary), and held to account at the ballot box. Pacific leaders can therefore be confident that policies that negatively affect their region will be scrutinised and that broken promises will be noticed.

Because China is further away from the region it has been less involved, which may make it seem like a more benign partner. But China is a single-party state, which Freedom House describes as “a repressive authoritarian regime” that “maintains tight control over all aspects of life and governance, including the state bureaucracy, the media, online speech, religious practice, universities, and businesses”. China is ranked 178 out of 180 countries on the World Press Freedom Index. China’s citizens therefore cannot hold their government to account. Nor can Pacific citizens: the 2022 security agreement with Solomon Islands has never been published.

No country is a perfect partner, but Australia is a more accountable one. If China begins to coerce Pacific Island countries as it has done the Philippines, there will be little they or Chinese citizens can do to hold it to account.

Contests are intended to be won. But Pacific Island countries are not ‘prizes’.

Pacific Island countries make their own foreign and strategic policy decisions for their own reasons. The contest framing implies that engagements between Pacific Island countries and China are ’losses’ for Australia, which underestimates the ability of Pacific Island countries to distinguish between partners and their offerings. This framing also risks provoking the outcome that it fears: Pacific Island countries may calculate that the best way to resist perceived Australian pressure to “choose” a ‘side’ and to demonstrate their sovereignty is to seek greater engagement with China.

Australia’s interests are best served by being a good neighbour and giving Pacific Island countries space to reach their own conclusions. Australia should be confident that Pacific Island countries can evaluate the risks of normalising China’s presence in their region. Australia can assist their decision-making by sharing information candidly and by continuing to support the independent media, parliaments, ombudsmen and civil society organisations that let Pacific communities scrutinise all partners, including China and Australia.

None of this means that Australia does not have legitimate strategic concerns about China’s interest in the Pacific, particularly about the risk of a Chinese military presence. But Australia’s best protection against that outcome is to be the partner that Pacific Island countries engage with because of what its policies offer for their people, rather than because Australia is involved in a cycle of reacting to Chinese initiatives. This is also the most sustainable approach, because a ‘permanent’ contest has no obvious end point – escalation is often the most likely outcome.

https://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/australianoutlook/australia-should-stop-competing-with-china-in-the-pacific/ 

 

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         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

         RABID ATHEIST.

         WELCOME TO THIS INSANE WORLD….

 

 

 

sniffles....

 

Op-Ed: Obama and Abbott: The U.S. and Australia make common cause in the Pacific

By Barack Obama and Tony Abbott — June 12, 2014

 

Last week, at the 70th anniversary of the D-day landings at Normandy, we remembered how Australian airmen flew overhead as Americans and Allied forces surged ashore with extraordinary bravery and at great cost. Overlooking those sacred shores, we paid tribute to all those who gave their lives, and to the veterans still among us whose service allows us to live free today.

On Thursday, we met at the White House to discuss not only how our countries have stood together in defense of peace and freedom during every major conflict of the past century, but also how we will work together going forward on a range of economic and security issues.

Australia and the United States have consistently stood together, not just for our own security but for the well-being of people far beyond our borders. Today, we are standing shoulder to shoulder against terrorism, and we continue to work together training and supporting Afghan forces as they prepare to assume responsibility for their own future.

Thursday’s meeting examined new challenges. As Pacific nations, both of our countries have benefited from the explosion of economic growth and development in Asia over the last half-century. Tens of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty, and a burgeoning middle class of hundreds of millions is creating new markets for consumer goods and advanced services. Even as the region faces great challenges, we see the Asia Pacific as a place of opportunities to be realized and a source of greater security and prosperity for both of our peoples.

Australia welcomes and fully supports the U.S. effort to rebalance its foreign relations with a greater focus on Asia and the Pacific, a shift that recognizes that America’s future is inextricably linked to the people and nations of the world’s fastest-growing region.

Under an initiative our nations agreed to in 2011, U.S. Marines and aircraft are now training with their Australian counterparts in northern Australia. This will also give our forces more opportunities to exercise with other regional partners, so that we are better placed to respond to natural disasters, such as the recent Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines.

Thanks to the new and broader Force Posture Agreement that we just concluded, our two nations have the opportunity for even deeper defense collaboration in Asia. The agreement recognizes that we must adapt to new strategic circumstances — and that we will do more together to support the stability and security of an open, rules-based region on which the future prosperity of all countries depends.

The Asian economic miracle could not have occurred without regional stability and security. And today, both Australia and the United States are concerned that increasingly provocative behavior in advancing maritime territoriality claims in Asia poses an increasing risk of miscalculation and, in the worst case, of conflict. This would be a tragedy, all the more so for being an avoidable one. Neither the United States nor Australia takes a position on sovereignty in these territorial disputes. But we both strongly oppose the use of intimidation, coercion or aggression to advance any country’s claims.

If we want to live in a prosperous region, international disputes must be resolved peacefully and in accordance with international law, and all options for serious efforts at dispute resolution — including arbitration — should be available. Freedom of lawful sea and air navigation must be sustained, so that the movement of goods and people on which we all depend continues uninterrupted.

Both of our nations are also committed to working harder to remove the barriers to trade and to economic growth and the jobs they create. We are strongly committed to concluding the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which will deepen integration among economies that account for almost 40% of global GDP, 11% of the world’s population and more than one-quarter of global trade. The TPP will enhance trade and investment opportunities, reduce costs for business and create jobs for both our peoples.

Finally, and more broadly, as this year’s chair of the G-20, Australia is working closely with the United States to focus the world’s largest economies on boosting economic growth and creating jobs. All G-20 members need to show leadership by meeting their commitments to pursue strong, sustainable and balanced growth. The Brisbane summit in November will be an opportunity to put in place strong measures to strengthen infrastructure investment, promote energy efficiency, fight tax avoidance and evasion, and complete the financial regulatory reform agenda outlined by the G-20 in response to the global financial crisis.

The challenges our nations face in the world today are numerous and complex. The partnerships we need among nations for common approaches to shared problems are not easily forged. But standing with our D-day veterans in Normandy and reflecting on all they achieved seven decades ago, we were reminded of a simple truth: When our countries stand together, our nations and the world are more secure, more prosperous and more just. Bound by our shared history and values, that is the cause to which we rededicate ourselves today.

Barack Obama is president of the United States. Tony Abbott is prime minister of Australia.

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-obama-australia-pacific-20140613-story.html

 

OBAMA WAS A TWO-FACED WEASEL PRESIDENT AND TONY ABBOTT WAS A TWO-FACED CANE-TOAD PM... BOTH SAID MANY THINGS BUT DIDDLED THE WORLD NONETHELESS. FOR EXAMPLE, TONY ABBOTT CUT AID TO THE PACIFIC NATIONS, INCLUDING DESTROY THE RADIO AUSTRALIA NETWORK FOR THE REGION AND OBAMA DESTROYED LIBYA AND SYRIA — ALL FOR NO GOOD REASON, INCLUDING US HEGEMONY...

 

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PLEASE VISIT:

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

         RABID ATHEIST.

         WELCOME TO THIS INSANE WORLD….