Australia, in the crossfire between China and the U.S.: By Jorge Trevino
Located in the south of the South Pacific region, Australia has all to become one of the first victims of the increasing tensions between its major trade partner, China, and its guardian and political ally beyond the Pacific, the U.S.
For historical reasons, Australia shares with the West its values (whatever that means), vision and mission in the South Pacific region, serving as an American geopolitical enclave from where the U.S. launches its geopolitical hegemonic agenda in Asia. On the other hand, Australia is a major raw materials exporter that feeds the Chinese economy, from where Australia has benefited enormously. Suffice to say that it was Australia the first Western country in getting out of the 2008 world financial crises. The dichotomy comes precisely from this dual partnership between two rival great powers. For many decades this in-between dual partnership was far from being problematic enabling Australia to feel safe geopolitically while profiting generously from the impressive growth of the Chinese economy.
Everything looked under control for Australia until ten years ago, when after two decades of globalisation and industrialisation providing China with billions of dollars from Western corporations looking for mass production at lower pay rates. Soon, Chinese economic leverage in the world arena put China in a path of confrontation with the U.S. in the South Pacific. It was then that President Obama launched his ‘Pivot to Asia’ in 2011 - a sort of desperate mean to counter China politically and economically in the South China Sea while deploying marines in Darwin, Australia, as an American military outpost in the Timor Sea, the closest Australian port to the region in conflict.
By trying to make a geopolitical gain from the historical territorial disputes between China and its six neighbours (Brunei, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam), Obama convinced the Philippines to launch a claim in the frame of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (an arm of the UN where the U.S. is not, as ridicule as it sounds, a signatory) on the legality of China over the “nine-dotted line”.
It was obvious from the start that the claim would not have a chance to succeed. In 2013, China established that it would not participate in the arbitration denying it from any legal validity. Obama’s attempt to create a wedge between China and its neighbours in the region was simply crushed and ignored by the Chinese who deployed its military on Japan’s disputed Senkaku/Diayu islands and seized the Scarborough Shoal from the Philippines in 2012 after the harmless glance of Obama who refused Philippine’s President Rodrigo Duterte call to help him push the Chinese out. The ‘Pivot to Asia’ also intended to counter China on trade through the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the defunct trade agreement that intended to create a Pacific bloc of countries without China.
For understanding the importance of the South China Sea it is essential to acknowledge that that sea represents a vital artery to China's trading unique routes to Europe and its energy supplies from the Middle East through the Malacca Strait in Singapore and Malaysia on their way to the Indian Ocean. An eventual but always possible American shutting down of that route to the Chinese has the potential to strangle China’s vital supply of energy and exports. The stakes can’t be higher, the volume of trade navigating that sea rounds the $5 trillion dollars per year.
It is not clear China is interested in interfering with the freedom of navigation rights of the six South China Sea states they have issues with, as China is a major trade partner of all of them, with the only exception of Taiwan, and is in its own interest the success of those states.
In these terms it is more logic that the military ‘freedom of navigation’ transit of American, Australian, British and French vessels in the area are far more provocative than those of China. It is as is Chinese military vessels would navigate the Gulf of Mexico claiming "free of navigation" rights near Miami or New Orleans. For China the South China Sea is an existential artery while for the U.S. is just a containment for not letting China growing stronger and challenge its world hegemony, no matter what the biased Western media can argue about it.
Enough is to say that should a serious crises between China and the U.S. arises, the U.S. can strangle China by blocking her from the sea. It is in that house of cards that Australia has fully aligned to the U.S. taking part in those "freedom of navigation" missions.
It is becoming now certain that the Trump administration will be considerably tougher in containing China’s than what Obama was. Trump’s implementation of severe economic sanctions on China has to be seen as a counter mean to limit and reverse Chinese political, economic and military growth and stopping them from their ‘Revisionist’vision challenging American leadership in the South Pacific. The American all-high ties with Taiwan since 1972, when the Americans agreed on the One-China-Policy acknowledging China and Taiwan being one single country has been challenged for the first time by the Trump administration since his inauguration day when Trump had a telephone chat with his Taiwan’s counterpart. Ever since the Trump’s administration started a series of provocative actions setting up “freedom of navigation” missions through the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea in general.
Within this context of tough American diplomacy, revisioning 45 years of stable relations with China, is that Australia will need to calibrate how far is willing to go bullying China with its American ally. Sabotaging our own major trade partner and foundation of our economic success, doesn’t look savvy, on the contrary, should we don't change course, consequence, eventually we will have to pay the consequences.
If we let tensions escalate further Australia can risk being sanctioned by China and that will create hiccups in Canberra. The fact that last week a former American general said that it is likely the U.S. will be at war with China in 15 years followed by China’s President Xi Jinping recently calling his Arm Forces for war preparedness, are symptoms that things are escalating quickly, and, with an unstable character in the White House, it is highly possible that frictions will grow even harder.
The time for Australia to re-calibrate its national security stance and geopolitics in the South Pacific has come. In a time when China is catapulting its soon-to-be leadership in the whole Asian landmass through its ambitious Road and Belt Initiative (RBI) that will interconnect the whole Asian continent through ports, railways, pipelines, industrial zones, and water dams, linking the Chinese manufacture areas to the European markets, backed-up by the multi-billion dollar funded Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the Shanghai International Energy Exchange which started this year trading oil futures in gold-backed petro-yuans bypassing the petro-dollar, its Made in China 2025 industrial policy aimed to overtake the American know-how on state-of-the-art high technology, including Artificial Intelligence, and the implementation of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation as a soon-to-be Asian security task force challenging NATO, are facts that call China as the indisputable competitor in Asia in moments when the U.S. is not able to compete with China in Asia anymore, unless they are willing to confront China militarily, which without doubt would create chaos in the whole region.
Thus, Australia has to avoid such a situation and being trapped in the crossfire of two great powers. A military conflict, even if it is not nuclear, between the U.S. and China will deprive Australia from her main economic partner and we have to be certain that if that occurs the U.S. won’t come up on Australia’s help. As former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said once: “Great powers don’t commit suicide for their allies.”
For Australia playing the American puppet is certain to become tragic in a time when the U.S. is on decay and China on the rise, at least in the South Pacific.
Indeed, Australia requires its own strong military and a strong political ally in a region that, for cultural, historical and ethnic reasons, lacks similar countries to us.
However, to know how far to go in a context that is proving to be more Chinese than American, is now paramount. Australia urgently needs an adjust in its international relations. Facts are showing that we are alligning to the power in decay, instead of setting up our own sovereign interests and policy. Not filling that vacuum in our foreign policy looks too risky, and letting Australia go united with the U.S. into a collision course against China, doesn’t look the right choice.
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