Asia-Pacific Security: Policy Challenges

4 Australia’s strategic options in the US-China relationship

4 Australia’s strategic options in the US-China relationship Allan Behm As with most papers written by former public servants, this one begins with two disclaimers. First, the views expressed here are those of the author alone, and in no way intended to reflect the policies or the views of the Australian Department of Defence. Second, this is not an academic contribution. Rather, it is a practitioner’s view. It details ideas that are the result of nearly two decades devoted to the implementation and practice of strategic policy. It does not pretend to comment on the theories of academic writers on the subject of US-China relations. Hence it does not cite authorities for the opinions offered, and reference to other commentators does not assume their endorsement. The ideas advanced in this chapter are a distillation from personal participation in high-level discussions conducted in China, the United States and Australia. The author was a member of Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser’s delegation that visited Beijing for discussions with Premier Zhao Ze-yang in 1982, and accompanied Defence Minister John Moore on his visit to China in 1999, when he met Premier Zhu Rong-ji. In the intervening years, the author participated in official talks between the Australian Department of Defence and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), and was a member of several ‘one-and-a-half-track’ delegations. The author was also the first senior Defence official to hold discussions with the PLA following the PLA’s suppression of the Tienanmen Square demonstrations in 1989. The author also participated in and led official talks and discussions with US counterparts over many years, and has discussed US-China relations with senior members of the Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations, as well as leading US academics and commentators. The author also visited numerous US universities and research institutions, and participated in various seminars and discussions on strategic issues affecting the US-China relationship. But, in the end, impressions are no more than that: they are offered as a contribution to the broader understanding of the strategic complexities attaching to the China-US relationship. And, finally, a word on strategy: in this chapter, the term is used in the specific sense of high policy surrounding the use of armed force. As Clausewitz (1984, 48 Asia-Pacific Security 177) says, ‘strategy is the use of engagement [i.e. armed force] for the purpose of the war’. In other words, ‘strategy’ deals with the grounds upon which the government of China or the United States might consider the deployment and employment of its military power against the other. This is not, of course, an insignificant matter. Consideration of the use of armed force, particularly against a major power, assumes that every diplomatic avenue has been tried, and exhausted. Hence, armed conflict is an unlikely outcome in the proper management of the bilateral political relationship between China and the US. What this chapter attempts is to examine a fundamental antinomy that might lie at the centre of a future major deterioration in the strategic relationship between these two great powers. The basic dilemma At the Australian American Leadership Dialogue held in Sydney in August 1999, Richard Armitage proffered some telling advice on the choices Australia would have to make should the United States and China resort to armed conflict over Taiwan. Armitage said that the United States would expect Australia to provide meaningful military support to the United States in order to carry out ‘dirty, hard and dangerous’ work. He noted that not only were Australia’s interests directly engaged in the outcome of such a confrontation, but that its alliance with the US would indicate such support. Armitage was, at the time, an influential and wellplaced member of the Republican team-in-waiting. Currently, Armitage is the Deputy Secretary for State in the Bush Administration. His ideas have currency. Armitage may have been intending to be helpful to Australian policy makers. He was certainly right in identifying the dilemma facing them: how would Australia seek to balance the economic advantages deriving from its relationship with China with the strategic benefits it derives from its relationship with the United States? At the time, Canberra policy advisers ran for cover, concerned as much with avoiding admitting an unpleasant truth to China as with facing up to a US expectation deriving from alliance arrangements. A day or two later, Alan Jones, a presenter at radio station 2UE in Sydney, put the issue to Alexander...