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From now on we have to concentrate on where we can be effective and where we can make the greatest difference. I believe that is fundamentally in Southeast Asia.
Southeast Asia occupies the fulcrum between South West Asia and North East Asia; the fortunes of the Indian Ocean and the sub-continent vis-a-vis those of continental Asia, China and the western Pacific.
In a geopolitical sense, this region is a place of amity, a zone of peace and cooperation, perched between the two most populous neighborhoods on earth: broadly, Pakistan and India and their ocean, and China and Japan and their ocean.
Northern Australia is adjacent the fulcrum point. It is completely natural therefore, that Australia be engaged there; certainly, with Indonesia but preferably, with the wider ASEAN. This grouping represents the security architecture
of Southeast Asia, the one with which we can have real dialogue and add substance.
In the longer run we should be a member of it — formalizing the many trade, commercial and political interests we already share. This is the natural place for Australia to belong; indeed, the one to which we should attribute primacy.
The utility of such a foreign policy would be to distil the essence of our primary national interests, such that the naturalness of it gave it a self-reinforcing consistency. And on that note, I was pleased to see recently the Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr, articulate a policy of closer engagement with ASEAN.
We have made some important movements in our dialogue with ASEAN and its member states, among them our inclusion in the East Asia Summit from its inaugural meeting in 2005.
The latter development came about relatively late in the term of the Howard government, when it came to the realization that closer integration with Asia was an imperative for Australia, rather than being a Keating obsession — a contrary view which had formerly driven its policy. Alexander Downer negotiated our membership of the East Asia Summit, while Kevin Rudd effectively lobbied ASEAN and China to include the United States and Russia.
Good and significant as these changes were, they were of their essence, of a foreign policy kind. What they were not, were policies designed to make our general community more relevant to the nations of ASEAN — to set our broader relationships on firmer foundations.
In recent years, our relations with countries like Indonesia and Malaysia have been focused on transactional issues of marginal long term significance; refugee management and live cattle exports come to mind.
In the meantime, policy toward our nearest, largest neighbor, Indonesia, has languished, lacking framework, judgments of magnitude and coherence.
It is as if Indonesia remains as it was before the Asian financial crisis — before its remarkable transition to democracy and before the re-firing of its wealth machinery.
How things go in the Indonesian archipelago, in many respects, so go we. Indonesia remains the place where Australia’s strategic bread is buttered. No country is more important to us — and it is a country which has shown enormous tolerance and goodwill toward us. Focus on this country should be a major imperative driving our foreign policy.
The fourth largest country in the world, a secular democracy, the largest Muslim state, Indonesia’s vast archipelago straddles the air and sea approaches to our country. No major power in or beyond the wider region could hope to have the capacity to project forces toward Australia, certainly to our north and west, without needing to transit Indonesia.
I have always thought Indonesia will become our most important strategic partner. The need of this will become more apparent as its economy gets stronger.
Already, on a purchasing power parity basis, the Indonesian economy is larger than our own. Because population is the principal driver of gross domestic product (GDP), particularly with the ubiquity of technology and capital, Indonesia’s economy is likely to be at least twice as large as Australia’s and in time, even larger.
Indeed, a recent study by McKinsey and Company, forecast that by 2030, Indonesia’s economy would be larger than either Britain’s or Germany’s.
How might we feel with a massive economy to our immediate north, in an archipelago approaching 300 million people? And a country, which by then, would probably have naval and air forces commensurate with its economic wealth.
The fact is, Indonesia is building the weight to stand on its own feet, both economically and militarily, against anything that might come its way — either from the South China Sea or the Indian Ocean.
The question is what will that weight mean for us? An adversary with whom we failed to come to terms in good and propitious times or a partner to share common cause in our own view of the region and the wider world?
The answer to that question will best be settled by Australia positively discriminating in its attitude and in its efforts toward Indonesia, removing the ambivalence which has traditionally informed our approach. In this way, there is every likelihood that Indonesia would respond in kind, diminishing its own ambivalence toward us.
Whichever way we cut it, Australia must lay a bigger bet on its relationship with Indonesia. And this has to be cultural and commercial as well as political. The Australian people are unlikely to beat a path to Java or to Sumatra without public policy in this country divining the way.
Now that Australia is front and center in the fastest growing part of the world as never before, our future has to amount to more than simply managing alliances. Effective at that as we have been in the past, we are now compelled to be more relevant to the dynamic region around us.
This must mean that our opportunities to exercise independence and independence of action will be greater than they have ever been.
Not to measure up to this challenge would be to run the risk of being seen as a derivative power, perpetually in search of a strategic guarantor, a Western outpost, seemingly unable to confidently make its own way in the world.
Surely we have reached the point where we have to turn away from that scenario, recognize the realities of our geography and strike out on our own.
The writer was prime minister of Australia, 1991-1996. This article is based on his address “The Keith Murdoch Oration” with the theme “Asia in the New Order: Australia’s Diminishing Sphere of Influence” delivered at the State Library of Victoria on Nov. 14.
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