Pearls and Irritations

Almost certainly not, but someone really ought to try while it’s still possible.

Geography isn’t everything in international relations, but it does explain a lot. You can’t choose the neighbours. Having a border with Russia understandably leads to well-founded paranoia or shameless, self-serving attempts at ingratiation these days. The leaders of Canada and Mexico are probably weighing up something similar as they contemplate the return of America’s ‘very stable genius’.

Australia, by contrast, arguably has the most benign geographic and geostrategic circumstances in the world. True, generations of policymakers would probably have preferred it if Australia was just off the coast of England or the United States, but having Indonesia as your nearest neighbour has its advantages: it’s not a security threat and in the extremely unlikely event that anyone thought of invading us, Indonesia might serve as a useful tripwire. But as Sam Roggeveen has pointed out, it could be much more.

Having a positive diplomatic and strategic relationship with the people next door ought not to be controversial, but for many commentators it is, especially if it is seen as undermining the primacy of the alliance with the United States. But what if closer strategic ties were the beginning rather than the end of an enhanced bilateral relationship with Indonesia? Could Australia and Indonesia give a masterclass in creative middle power diplomacy  – even leadership – at a time when some of the more obvious candidates like the US and China are seemingly unable or unwilling?

Almost certainly not, but it’s worth thinking about why and what the cost of an absence of effective global leadership, especially on climate change, is likely to be. The short answer is a potentially civilisation ending catastrophe of a sort climate scientists have been warning us about for decades. Australia and Indonesia are not just potentially influential middle powers, but they are both among the biggest contributors to the global environmental crisis; as well as being its most likely victims, of course.

Indonesia’s newly installed president Prabowo Subianto is not the most obvious figure to be leading the charge on progressive public policy that would inevitably incur significant domestic costs and undermine valuable networks of patronage and influence. But before we start making patronising and stereotypical remarks about corruption in Indonesia, we need to acknowledge that Australia is really no better. Not only has the Albanese government failed to significantly advance the environmental agenda, but it remains in thrall to the all-powerful fossil fuel lobby.

In doesn’t have to be this way. As two of the biggest emitters and exporters of CO2, Australia and Indonesia could model responsible international behaviour by moving to close down their most polluting industries as quickly as possible. Not only would this make a direct and immediate contribution to reducing global greenhouse gases, but it might encourage or shame other countries into doing something similar.

Yes, it does sound a bit unlikely, but what’s the alternative? We might not know the exact date when even the ‘developed’ economies will succumb to the rapidly accelerating impact of climate change, but we do know it’s coming in the absence of effective action. Both countries have powerful domestic incentives to do something as they are already feeling the effects of climate change, and this will undoubtedly reshape domestic politics if left unaddressed.

Australia and Indonesia are unlikely partners, to be sure, but that’s part of their potential appeal. Culturally and historically different, they might not give as much offence as an Anglosphere club like AUKUS. Likewise, focused bilateral cooperation could also be a lot more effective than ASEAN, which despite, or because of, its celebrated cultural consensus, is notoriously ineffective and incapable of problem solving or developing collective policy positions.

At some stage, difficult choices about how to behave in the context of an unravelling, unpredictable and increasingly chaotic natural environment will have to be made. It’s much better to avoid having to decide what to do with climate refugees from the ‘Pacific family’, for example. We won’t be able to send them to Nauru, as that’s likely to be underwater, too.

By an accident of history, the fates of Australia and Indonesia will remain intertwined as long as nation states remain the default operating system of international politics. Unfortunately, narrow, short-term, self-interested conceptions of the ‘national interest’ are also likely to remain the principal influences on both domestic and foreign policy. Given that climate change cannot be addressed seriously without unprecedented levels of real international cooperation and coordination, our collective prospects are no good.

The so-called ‘realists’ who dominate policy debates in Canberra, and everywhere else, for that matter, assume that the world is an unrelenting struggle for survival in which, as Thucydides suggested more than two thousand years ago, the ‘the strong do what they will, and the weak suffer what they must’. They could be right. But if there’s no room for alternative visions and cooperation, even with unlikely partners, it’s not hard to guess what the future looks like.

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