Ideas@TheCentre
Placating China does us all a disservice
With China’s military budget ballooning and the United States’ defence spending being slashed, Asia’s balance of power is slowly shifting.
According to Hugh White, Australian National University professor of strategic studies, this shift is not happening quickly enough. He recently argued that Australia should urge the United States to draw down its security presence in the Asia-Pacific.
Like former prime ministers Malcolm Fraser and Paul Keating, White thinks that unless the curtain falls on the era of US hegemony in Asia, the United States and China will be locked into a dangerous geo-political standoff.
White has even suggested that heightened Sino-US strategic competition could precipitate a devastating war in the Western Pacific.
As real as the risks of souring Sino-US relations might be, this vision of US-provoked conflict infantilises China.
Underlying White’s logic is the assumption that China must get what it wants because otherwise it will bloody-mindedly clash with the US and its allies—even at the risk of war with the world’s sole superpower.
This is an unfairly dim view of China’s appreciation of the subtleties of foreign policy.
Instead of presuming that China only understands belligerent power politics, we should offer the Middle Kingdom a more nuanced picture of Asian international relations.
We should highlight that we recognise that as China’s military might grows, it will seek to shape international relations to suit its interests.
However, we should also stress that like many other Asian nations, we do not want rising Chinese influence to come at the expense of the United States’ role as a security guarantor for the region.
And we should expect China to have the wisdom to recognise that foreign policy in Canberra, Manila, Seoul, Tokyo and other Asian capitals will not be recalibrated just because China is uneasy with the closeness of our relations with the United States.
Ensuring that China rises peacefully is admittedly one of this century’s top foreign policy priorities.
Nevertheless, a resurgent China should not be accommodated through knee-jerk foreign policy that sees Australia and other US allies in Asia call for the United States to vacate the field every time Chinese officials voice concern.
Rather than placating China, Australia and its Asian partners should consistently and carefully explain the rationale for a continuation of the US security presence in the Asia-Pacific.
Benjamin Herscovitch is a Policy Analyst at The Centre for Independent Studies.
