Part 2: Perhaps Australia is acting to a script agreed in Washington — seeking to increase China’s uncertainty about how the US will respond.
China, in making its calculations over Taiwan, is not much focused on Australian military might, or aggressive spirit. It is much more preoccupied with the nature of reaction from the US, and if to a lesser extent Japan. But Australian Defence Minister Peter Dutton’s interjections do have a place — in seeming to assume that American might well be committed if there is any invasion.
Dutton’s comments must make China consider whether he, or Australia knows something that has not been disclosed to China. Japan, if more careful, less gratuitous and less belligerent than Australia has also indicated that armed conflict over Taiwan would be an “emergency” for the US-Japan alliance.
“People in Beijing, President Xi Jinping in particular, should never have a misunderstanding in recognising this,” former prime minister Shinzo Abe has said.
But even if Dutton’s comments have another purpose — of deliberately trying to increase Xi’s uncertainty about America’s will to get involved — can Australians feel confident that Dutton has calculated how his words will be received? He’s hardly the experienced statesman, nor one with any reputation for carefully considering advice. He has demonstrated no feel for Chinese politics or the personalities of its leadership, its policies and its checks and balances. He is of authoritarian temperament in the Chinese mould — and seemingly yearns for something similar in the way of a surveillance state.
His record on human rights, on national security legislation and approach to law and order does not equip him to pose as a champion of freedom. Even assuming that he is taking advice, from the hard-line national security professionals who currently dominate official Australian thinking, he has injected so much of his personality, partisan politics, and opportunism into the debate that his motives are bound to be suspected.
There’s a long record of pliant Australian foreign ministers, prime ministers and defence ministers playing a hard line in an attempt to curry favour with decision-makers in the US. Alexander Downer and John Howard seemed far more enthusiastic about Western intervention in Iraq (and the irresistible conclusion that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction) than George W. Bush initially seemed to be. The fact that Australia (and Britain) were so gung-ho helped Bush manage the domestic US politics of going to war without much idea of what could be achieved.
But those, and other exercises were examples of what is sometimes described as playing “pig in the minefield” — by which expendable figures (such as Downer) are sent forward ahead of the main body to see whether they set off explosions. In this case, however, Dutton is not helpfully pushing a tougher approach on the US — an approach they secretly want but cannot initiate except under pressure. Instead Dutton seems to be acting so as to put pressure on the US for a strong military response when such an intervention may not be either what the US wants, or in its best interests.
It need hardly be added that a conflict of the sort he is sooling for is not in Australia’s best interests
It ought to be unthinkable that Australia would want to get involved in such a mad adventure. Only in the most indirect sense is our national interest involved. Our participation would be unlikely to make any sort of difference to the outcome. It would certainly cause severe Chinese retaliation — the more stringent because Australia, unlike the US, is easily bullied — and invite questions in the neighbourhood about the judgment of our leaders. Confronted, for the first time in generations by an enemy able to shoot back, our navy and our air force would probably be obliterated, without even the glory of futile sacrifice as at Gallipoli or Greece.
Perhaps Dutton is acting to a script agreed in Washington — seeking, at their request, to increase China’s uncertainty about how America will respond. Or maybe he is acting of his own initiative — or in an Australian initiative — on the theory that the more he spells out horrible consequences, the less likely that China will invade. A game of sorts, or a big bluff, by a player who sees through the bricks in the wall and has a good feel for what the “enemy” is thinking.
It’s hard to imagine that he is out-thinking the other players. Last time his head was above the parapet, he could not even estimate properly the number of his friends.
In games like this, there’s ample room for misunderstanding, misinterpretation of the significance of words or actions. The consequences of such mistakes, particularly when there is a vast cultural chasm between the two political systems, could be severe. Until recently, however, the US has calculated that being ambiguous — keeping China uncertain of the nature of an American response — is more likely to make it cautious than being perfectly clear about the consequences of an invasion. That, after all, has the capacity to make the response a given, able to be calculated and maybe countered.
The risk of a Chinese miscalculation and the odds of a conflict have grown
The American magazine Foreign Affairs now thinks that America should now be delivering blunt messages, rather than leaving room for doubt.
“Biden has more than once seemed to articulate a version of strategic clarity, suggesting that the US would help defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack,” Richard Haass and David Sacks say. “In each case, however, administration officials have later walked back Biden’s statements, in the process signalling a lack of will to China and unsettling allies and partners that are looking to the US for clear guidance so they can adjust their positions accordingly.
“Adding to the confusion is the fact that despite the official insistence that nothing has changed, the administration has made visible moves to upgrade US ties with Taiwan: its actions have often been more in line with Biden’s informal comments than with its official position. The net result is that the risk of a Chinese miscalculation and the odds of a conflict have grown.”
There’s another possibility. Which is that China is not actually contemplating a breach of the peace, even if it continues to feel it necessary, as it has since 1949, to issue dire threats to the rebels. Most of the case that China has recently become aggressive and expansionist depends on deductions from not much evidence by analysts with a good many preconceived ideas.
It is, of course, quite true that Australia has taken a bit of a hammering from China in recent times, but one could make a fairly good case that this owes more to conscious provocations from the Australian government, particularly Marise Payne, than to well-judged responses to Chinese beastliness. Thank heavens we will have subs to point at them generations from now, if only they hold off until we are ready.
Fifty years ago, Australia, under the most inept and reactionary government we had known until recently, was pretending that the government in Taiwan was the legitimate government of all of China. In mid-1971, Gough Whitlam, leader of the opposition, travelled to the real China and was denounced here as a traitor — until it was announced that US President Richard Nixon was planning a similar visit. How the hell did we get from there to here?
John Waterford AM, better known as Jack Waterford, is an Australian journalist and commentator.
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