|
March 9, 2012
I've been on the road to Tasmania and experiencing poor connection from Telstra's mobile broadband on the journey. So I haven't had much chance to read the newspapers online or to post. I'm currently in Tunbridge, the service is barely okay (it's limited) and I'm able just able to post.
I'm just catching up with what has been happening since last Friday--eg., Gillard's cabinet reshuffle and Bob Carr becoming Foreign Minister. I see that Hugh White in The Age has nailed the core international relations issue for Australia:
White says:
The issue is how Australia positions itself between the United States and China as the strategic rivalry between them grows. Our biggest trading partner and Asia's leading power faces our traditional ally across a widening gulf of mutual antagonism....The orthodox view is that we have no choice but to support Washington in whatever policy it decides to adopt towards China. As an ally it is unthinkable for us to do anything else. We just hope that America gets it right, and that China either doesn't notice, or doesn't mind.
I've always suspected that to be the case: the little Americans rule Australia's foreign policy and Gillard was firmly in their camp. They advocated a policy of containment against China to ensure that the US remained the dominant power in the Asia-Pacific.
White comments that Carr rejects this view. He believes:
that America should turn away from Obama's containment policy and explore ways to accommodate China's ambitions where possible while constraining them where necessary. On this view, America should continue to play a central role in Asia, but not necessarily the dominant role. It should be willing to share power with China.
Does this imply that the Gillard Labor Government is going to shift to a more independent foreign policy? One that is critical of the old Pax Americana doctrine defended by the little Americans in Australia.
We can but hope.
|
I wonder if this should connect with some very quiet news indeed abroad concerning something upcoming called the TPPA, something following along the lines of the dreaded AUSFTA of a few years ago?
Christine Milne's site has stuff up on it, looks another Silesian annexation treaty, 1938, on the way, the way it's all shrouded in secrecy.