March 16, 2007
A comment on this post on the China Japanese agreement---the Japan-Australia Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation:
Leahy
It's a crude security containment strategy whose main target is China and it aims to constrain China's rising power.The United States has made it clear that it wants a more assertive Japan to keep China in check and the neo-cons in Washington have been pursuing for some time an approach to containing China.Washington wants to make it a neat quadrilateral by bringing in India.
Let's hope that India is reluctant to join the Australia-Japan-US Trilateral Strategic Dialogue or be seen as too close to the United States for fear of undermining its relations with China.
|
We lost an opportunity there. We knew America wanted this form of geopolitical arrangement but we didnt have the imagination to make it in our terms or in a way that increases our clout/reach.
If we structured it in a way to make two circles it would make China claustrophobic and would enable them to grow into completing the circle in the North Pacific.
The Howard Government is exceptionally poor and unimaginative in foreign and defence policy.