OPINION: The best way to counter China’s plan to become the region’s hegemon is for Australia to have our own.
Australian foreign policy has renewed direction and purpose only weeks into the life of the Labor government.
The Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Penny Wong have criss-crossed the Indo-Pacific and beyond with admirable energy.Albanese and Wong are setting out a vision for the broader Indo-Pacific that reflects both new intent and contains a large measure of continuity. Not yet clear is whether the government will codify these objectives in a confidential, or public, Indo-Pacific strategy document. Albanese’s team might not be in a hurry to do so. The main approaches of foreign policy are settled. The government wants to get things done rather than admire the problem.
These Indo-Pacific strategies vary in scope and ambition and especially in the extent to which they identify China as the primary challenge to stable regional order.But all recognise the fundamental shift in power that is reshaping the Indo-Pacific. They share a broadly similar vision for regional order – one that is “open”, secure, “sovereign” and guided by the rule of law.
The government’s intent to invest more in Australia’s most important regional relationships for their own sake is good foreign policy. But for all the evident necessity of an approachof Southeast Asia and the Pacific, the contest in the Indo-Pacific is at its core a brutal struggle for power. A strategic equilibrium can’t be achieved without the United States, Japan, India and middle powers like South Korea.
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