Albanese, unlike Keating, believes NATO ties serve Australia’s interests
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Paul Keating thinks that the Europeans and the Americans should mind their territorial manners and stay out of the Indo-Pacific. Anthony Albanese’s view is the direct opposite.
For the former Labor prime minister, zones and regions should define a nation’s interests. For the current Labor prime minister, Australia has a powerful national interest in something that transcends geography.
Illustration by Andrew DysonCredit:
Albanese travelled to the other side of the planet last week to a meeting in Lithuania, a country which most Australians would struggle to find on a map, for a summit of the NATO nations plus four countries of the Indo-Pacific – Australia, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand.
“It is essentially the meeting globally of the world’s democratic leaders,” says Albanese, and that marks it out as unique. For him and his government, democracy is the shared interest, a value, not a region.
At the NATO summit, Albanese tells me, “whilst the focus is obviously on the north Atlantic and Europe, many of the principles are applicable globally. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a reminder that something that happens in one part of the world affects everywhere in the world. Russia is not alone in challenging the rules that underpin global security and prosperity.”
This, of course, is a hit at the Chinese Communist Party. And it was China, not Russia, that dominated Albanese’s message to the other leaders at last week’s summit.
In his private remarks to the 31 NATO leaders plus the three other Indo-Pacific leaders in the room, Albanese drove home the point that the defining struggle between democracy and autocracy is being waged in the Indo-Pacific.
His address to the summit has not been published, but it’s understood that he described the Indo-Pacific as the centre of intensifying strategic competition; not only a military or economic competition but competing visions for the global order.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese meets NATO secretary-general Jen Stoltenberg.Credit: Reuters/Kacper Pempel
China, the prime minister is understood to have pointed out, continues to modernise its military at a pace and scale not seen for nearly a century. And it does so without transparency or assurance about its strategic intent.
Albanese told the leaders that Australia was under pressure from China, and that his government’s response was principled and level-headed. He employed his policy catchphrase for Beijing – Australia, he said, will co-operate with China where we can, disagree where we must and always act in our national interest.
Albanese was pushing on an open door. Although NATO in general and Europe in particular have been years behind Australia in grasping the seriousness of the Chinese Communist Party’s plans to dominate the regional and global order, they are rapidly catching up.
The NATO secretary-general, former Norwegian prime minister Jens Stoltenberg, wrote in the journal Foreign Affairs recently: “The Chinese government’s increasingly coercive behaviour abroad and repressive policies at home challenge NATO’s security, values, and interests. Beijing is threatening its neighbours and bullying other countries. It is trying to take control of critical supply chains and infrastructure in NATO states. We must be clear-eyed about these challenges and not trade security interests for economic gains.”
So China may be central to NATO’s concerns, but is NATO relevant to Australia’s immediate concerns in the Indo-Pacific?
“We’re bolstering our position in the region by engagement internationally in global forums,” Albanese tells me. “At the same time, the week before the NATO summit I hosted Indonesia’s President Widodo in Australia and the week after, Penny Wong was attending the ASEAN foreign ministers meeting in Indonesia.”
The global and regional are inseparable, he argues, and Australian governments need to work at both levels simultaneously.
“We are deeply engaged in our region,” he says. “Indeed, one of the things we did there [in Vilnius] was a separate meeting of the Indo-Pacific four of Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Korea before we attended the NATO summit so it was an opportunity to engage with our region’s leaders.
“But anyone who thinks that what happens in Europe doesn’t affect what happens here is ignoring the direct impact of inflation on our economy and our supply chains of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It’s had a very direct effect on our economy and our cost of living.”
Warming to his theme of a global democratic domain, Albanese told the NATO summit that Australia was doubling down on the partnerships that promote stability.
In the Indo-Pacific, that meant groupings like the Quad and relationships in South-East Asia, which the prime minister described as a crucial region in terms of strategic competition, as well as the South Pacific and the Pacific Islands Forum.
More sweepingly, he said, Australia wanted to continue co-operating with NATO and every nation around the table on their shared challenges. The stability of the world depended, he said, on a broad co-operative group of democracies devoted to a rules-based order.
And surely this is one of the defining reasons for Ukraine’s success in surviving Russia’s onslaught – the decisive contributions of money, weapons and political support from democracies across the world, well beyond Europe.
But while deepening democratic alliances, Albanese has no intention of withdrawing from engagement with China. The world needs strategic guide rails, he told the NATO gathering, to manage incidents and avert war.
In essence, this means dialogue. Xi Jinping has invited Albanese to Beijing and the prime minister plans to take him up it. Despite speculation to the contrary, Albanese is expected to make the trip before the end of the year.
This is in spite of further provocation from China in the form of bounties announced for the arrest of an Australian citizen. And the fact that China is slow-walking the withdrawal of political trade bans on Australian products. And the continued detention in Beijing jails of Australian citizens on trumped-up charges, Cheng Lei and Yang Hengjun, effectively political hostages
But Albanese sees dialogue as the opportunity to press for progress rather than to stomp his foot in pique. “Officials are in discussions about timing, and I’ve said very clearly that we need to engage, it’s in our interests to engage with China,” Albanese tells me.
“I’ve said it’s good to engage. I’m not a dummy spitter.” In the interests of constructive dialogue, that is an Australianism that might need careful translation.
Peter Hartcher is international editor.
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