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containing China « Previous | |Next »
March 16, 2007

A comment on this post on the China Japanese agreement---the Japan-Australia Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation:

ChinaAuVH.jpg
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.

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:06 AM | | Comments (2)
Comments

Comments

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.

Cam,
in your post over in the Club Troppo you write:

Australia has not helped itself in this area; its politicians in particular, but others also, have used Australian geopolitical and economic isolation as an excuse. However this political cringe ignores the facts of modern trade and globalisation.The old nineteenth century view of the world was occident and orient, but globalisation has merged that distinction such that is meaningless. South-East Asia and North Asia are integrated economies that compete effortlessly with North America and Europe.

I'm inclined to agree. Blainey's 19th century spatial idea of 'tyranny of distance' continues to haunt the way that Australians understand themselves in the world of nations.

I would think tha the brute facts of geography are lessened by information flows in a global world. So what is crucial is Canberra's failure to broadband the nation in an effective and efficient way.