Clive Hamilton, is a Professor of Public Ethics at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE) and the Vice-Chancellor’s Chair in Public Ethics at Charles Sturt University. He is the author of the 2018 book, ‘Silent Invasion: China’s Influence in Australia.
Hamilton is a former Green Party Senate candidate. The Greens do not see China as a threat to Australia and have expressed no reservations over its security pact with the Solomon Islands. But Hamilton sees China as both an enemy to Australia and a security threat. He believes the Cold War never ended for the Chinese Communist party which is ideologically committed to world domination of its creed. Its methods include using the international diaspora of Chinese people, “dark money” to buy influence, so-called China institutes, leveraging trade and investment, exploiting university linkages, controlling overseas Chinese students and old and new types of spying.
Hamilton claims the Australian establishment has set the economy above everything, and we need to take a very different stand, accepting some costs will arise from protecting our freedoms from China’s incursions.
John J Mearsheimer, professor of political science, at the University of Chicago is one of the world’s leading proponents of realist foreign policy. He is a critic of the promotion of liberal democratic hegemony through regime change which he says dominated US foreign policy since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Prior to this, US foreign policy was based on balance of power politics and containment of the Soviet Union which is the appropriate approach to China.
As part of its pursuit of international liberal democracy, successive US administrations supported economic engagement with China fallaciously believing that economic liberalisation would inevitably result in political liberalisation. In this way the US “fed the best”, playing a pivotal role in helping China develop into the potential great power peer rival it is to the USA today.
Mearsheimer says that the international political system is not based on any rule of law. Rather it is anarchic. The great powers invariably attempt to gain hegemonic influence which they equate with their national security. Based upon this political theory Mearsheimer concludes it is unlikely that China will continue to rise peacefully. He thinks conflict with the USA, which he believes will also continue to seek hegemonic influence in East Asia, is inevitable. He says it follows that Australia will eventually have to choose between favouring its best customer (China) and its closest ally (the US) in the inevitable confrontation. He says that Australia will choose its ally. Australia will have no other realistic choice because the US will force it to choose. Australia is also subject to US hegemonic power.
Mearsheimer believes the USA crossed a red line for Russia when in 2008 NATO released a communique that encouraged Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO. This was a strategic mistake because it has pushed Russia closer to China at a time when the US’s main strategic goal should be the containment of China.
Hugh White shares Mearsheimer’s theory on the nature of the international political system. But he believes that the US will not pursue sufficient resistance to the growth of Chinese hegemonic influence in the region. He sees US domestic politics as likely proving to be a major constraint on any conflict with China. Australia will therefore have to learn to live with China being the dominant power in the region.
Keating says China’s economy is already larger than the US economy and will continue to substantially outgrow it. But China is the world’s leading proponent of globalisation, is integrated into world economic institutions such as the World Trade Organisation and is not interested in subverting it. It will seek to expand its influence but will do so economically rather than militarily (unless provoked). It will largely look Westwards, not Eastwards, expanding its Belt and Road infrastructure initiatives through the ‘Stan’ countries all the way to Europe.
Keating says Australia has been an economic beneficiary of China’s growth and should accept that it will continue to grow. The US should not seek to contain China. It should retain a presence in East Asia as a balancing and mediating power. Australia should concentrate its foreign policy efforts “in Asia not from Asia”, focussing on ASEAN, and especially Indonesia, which will also likely increase its economic influence.
Australia should not be involved in AUKUS, or the Quad and our submarine fleet should focus on the defence of Australia’s borders, instead of looking to enable long-distance travel to augment US naval power against China in the South China Sea.
Keating says that Taiwan is not a vital Australian interest.
He thinks that if Australia clearly respects China’s growth in power and influence in the region, China’s list of 14 grievances with Australia will “fall off the table”.
Keating acknowledges the growth of authoritarianism in China and says that Australia should continue to raise human rights concerns with it. But human rights should not constitute the entirety of the Australia/China conversation.
Kevin Rudd has written a book entitled ‘The Avoidable War’. He refers to three important historical examples relevant to avoiding war.
WWI is an example of a war that was totally avoidable, largely accidental and resulted from a failure of diplomacy. WWII resulted not from a failure of diplomacy but from appeasement and the failure to recognise that Nazi Germany was a force that could not be stopped through diplomacy. And the Cuban missile crisis the aftermath of which led to the relatively successful policies of deterrence, detente and disarmament.
Rudd advocates a model of ‘managed strategic competition’ between China and the USA to avoid accidental war. This would involve three elements.
First, recognise both sides’ strategic redlines and create protocols to navigate these redlines. This would involve private, non-declaratory, diplomacy.
Second, allow for non-lethal strategic competition- both sides would be free to grow militarily, compete economically and promote their values or world views.
Third encourage strategic cooperation in the areas where it really matters: combatting climate changes, preventing pandemics and ensuring stability in the international financial system.
Rudd concludes:
“We are dealing with profoundly complex questions. Indeed, it is historically unprecedented to be in the midst of a debate about whether the world’s largest economy and oldest continuing democracy can happily coexist with the world’s second-largest economy and oldest continuing civilization, given that the latter has never exhibited in its history any attraction to liberal democratic norms. But grapple with the debate we must. And resolve it we must as well. One way or the other.”