Transcription
And you know the old saying, you know, the going gets tough, the tough get going. That's what we should be doing. Instead of that, we've got this sort of what I call the wimp policy. Oh, please the United States. Oh, please don't let our hand go. Uh, please don't leave us. Please hang on.
Well, the country is unled. You know, we still have the Queen of Great Britain as our head of state, for Christ's sake. You know, I mean, it's an affront to everything we've created here that our head of state isn't one of us, you know, but we still have the queen as our head of state. But here we have Tony Abbott a couple of years ago, you know, bringing back knighthoods, you know. I mean, you gave poor old Prince Philip a knighthood, you know. You can you can imagine what he said when he found out, really. I mean, you'd have to have a low sense of self-regard and low sense of confidence to think that somehow you would lose the Americans. We would never lose the Americans. I mean, who else around this part of the world has a continent, you know, English language culture, common jurist students? I mean, we couldn't shake the Americans off if we tried. We've always in a sense been internationalist, but as Alan said, the rules have been written by our friends. Now, the rules have been written by a whole lot of people.
And you know the old saying, you know, when the going gets tough, the tough get going. That's what we should be doing. Instead of that, we've got this sort of what I call the wimp policy. Oh, please the United States. Oh, please don't let our hand go. Uh, please don't leave us. Please hang on. You know, this is the Julie Bishop line, you know. Uh, and and uh and the Kim Beasley line. A whole lot of people have this line. Oh, please don't let us go. You know, and meanwhile, this massive state has risen in the East China, which will have huge influences on East Asia, and the United States will remain important. Uh, but yeah, people go on about the American alliance. We've been with them since 1914. We went into battle with them, I think, in 1918. That's 100 years ago next year. I mean, do you really need to get the marriage certificate out every week? You know, and no, no, no, no. But they they are, you know, all those good little Americans in the government, uh, and in the opposition, they got the marriage certificate out, the alliance, you know, I mean, it's pathetic, you know.
Now, I want to, before we, I want to dig into the alliance in a little while, but before we get to that, something you mentioned, Paul, that I think has been crucial to to the world we're in now, which is globalization and the way in which it's fueled opportunities. I mean, the the the the integration of China to the global economy has been the greatest story in human development history. More people left it out of poverty more quickly than at any point in in our past. Yet, is there there is a sense that possibly the mood around globalization has soured? That's to say the wave has crested with, you know, globalization was made possible by decisions that countries, particularly the United States, but others made to be open, to be open to capital, to be open to people, to be open to ideas, and yet wherever you look, certainly in the OECD world, but not only, whether it's Trump, whether it's Brexit, whether it's Le Pen, whether it's people like Modi, Abe, there's a sense that a there's a kind of nationalism is resurgent and a sense of mercantilism. I mean, only this morning, um, you know, Vice President Pence has just finished another reassurance tour around Asia, including here, and yet this morning, Donald Trump saying he's going to rip up the free trade agreement with Korea and charge them a billion dollars for the theater high altitude air defense system. Um, mercantilism seems to be difficult to, it's going to be difficult for Trump to shove back in the bottle. What's your sense of that balance between openness of globalization and and nationalism that's out there?
There's a difference between globalization and globalism. What we're seeing now is a rejection of globalism, not globalization. And globalism is not a is not a long-dated concept. It really started after the end of the Cold War. It started in '92 and it really finished in 2008 with the American financial crisis. Right? So it went for sort of, you know, less than 20 years, around 20 years. This is when the Americans talked about, uh, in the great celebration at the end of the Cold War, in the rise of the American stock markets, in the dot-com boom, they talked about, um, uh, you know, this was the end of history, you know, we're all going, it's all over, said Frank Fukuyama. It's all over. The Jeffersonians have won. We're going to have a world which reflects this sort of democracy. We're going to have a consensus about the way economies work. Uh, we're going to have a consensus about the world power order with the US at the top. And so they went. And of course, it, this all collapsed after Iraq and after 2008 in the financial crisis. So if you take Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, he made a speech in Davos recently in favor of globalization, but he's absolutely opposed to globalism, which is lining up in a proprietary structure behind the United States in at an Atlantic dominated world with Atlantic institutions. So, you know, China's now ripping, as Alan said, you know, they're no longer interested in the IMF and the World Bank. You know, they're setting up their own investment banks, uh, the AIIB, the, uh, the Silk Road Fund. Um, they have the, the Chinese financial reserves abroad are larger than the IMF's free reserves, so it doesn't need the IMF, right? So, so what we're seeing, whenever you hear that Xi Jinping speak, he always talks about a new system of global governance, which is code for saying, not an American one, right? So, and they want a UN-based one, you know, and so, so therefore, this is not a rejection of globalization. That is the ubiquity of the money and the technology. It's not a rejection of that or the trade. It's a rejection of the one-size-fits-all strategic policy.
I think I think you can take it back a bit further than that. Uh, um, uh, tunic, the war aims of the allies at the end of the Second World War were globalizing, normatively globalizing. They saw a world in which a United Nations organization would, uh, uh, would, uh, run things. There would be international institutions. Trade was, uh, was, uh, uh, uh, was, uh, was to be, uh, to be, uh, open and, uh, and global. Even, even the, uh, Cold War was a global conflict between, uh, between two, uh, two great, uh, powers. But I think that that sort of, uh, normative sense that what we're after is a, you know, great cosmopolitan, uh, world. I think that's temporarily, perhaps, but, uh, but certainly fading at the moment.
Let's let's turn to China because it is, you know, that's the, the sort of the big game changer. Paul, you, you've spoken several times about the need for China to be given space and for China to be accommodated. Um, what do you think an the region looks like? What does an Asia look like in which the PRC is given its space? And how comfortable are we as a liberal democratic society with a China-centric Asia with the Chinese Communist Party at the center of it?
Well, whether we are comfortable or not, Nick, it's happening, right? It's happening. I mean, I mean, what what's happening in China knows no precedent in world economic history. There's nothing ever been like this before and nothing will ever be like it again because we won't ever ever have 1 and a quarter billion people so competently directed by a single authority state as we now have. I mean, even if India, at roughly the same population, kicks on, the chances of them doing what the Chinese done is low, you know, or even a bunch of African states. Um, it's wealth on a scale we've never seen. You know, Beijing has already 100 billionaires. You see that figure the other day, 100 billionaires just in Beijing, you know. Uh, and and at the moment, US, uh, um, Chinese incomes per capita are 20% of US incomes per capita. Right? Uh, Japan, which is of course the mother of all developing countries, got in 1989, at the at its peak, got to 70% of US incomes, sorry, 90% of US incomes per capita, and after the long, if you like, recession in Japan, it's now down to 70. Now, it's it's not likely that one and a quarter billion Chinese are going to get to 70% of US incomes per capita, but at over 20 now, it's likely that they'll get to 50%. They could get to 50, the great bulk of them. 50% of US incomes, but four times as many of them. So, half of four is two. They end up an economy twice as large as the US. So if they get to 50% of US incomes per capita, the Chinese GDP is twice as large as America's. So the idea that that this great massive economy is going to be a strategic client of the United States, that they are kept in line by the US 7th Fleet, that the US 7th Fleet patrols its coasts six miles off the side of the territorial sea, um, is of course a nonsense. But this is what the pivot was all about. This is what Hillary Clinton and and Barack Obama's pivot was all about. Was about the reestablishment of US power and the maintenance of US hegemony in Asia. You know, it's simply unreal. And if we try and become remain party to that piece of nonsense, you know, that's not to say we don't need the US strategically in Asia as a balancing and conciliating power. We do. But if we are party to the nonsense that we will line up with the United States to maintain its strategic hegemony in Asia over China, we must have troubles. You know, that we must have great, great troubles. So I'm just hoping that that this new relationship between Trump and Xi Jinping is one where the US starts to sort of wake up to the whole thing about scale. Yeah. And power, and and economic military power comes with economic power. And even though those Chinese won't have the same income as those Americans, as a nation, they'll have the wherewithal to to have the the kind of external reflection, including in their military and their navy, as any great power has. So, as you said at the outset, this may be uncomfortable for us. Before the industrial revolution, China was number one and it had a tributary system of states which all bowed and genuflected to them. Let's hope we're not going to be bowing and genuflecting. But the reality of that power is there and we would be, you know, well advised to to start accommodating it and to adjust ourselves to it instead of trying to hide behind the American flag like a bunch of good little Americans saying, "Oh no, what we need is more Uncle Sam." You know.
You know, you know, but how does I I guess the the I mean there there's sort of two parts of to to the questions. One is like how does a country like Australia influence a country like China given the disparity of scale and and?
By being a bit clever.
By being a bit clever. I mean, I talked the Chinese into the APEC leaders meeting. Kevin Rudd encouraged them into the East Asian summit. We were doing clever things. But if you insist upon being dumb, you get treated as though you're dumb. The the second part's the slightly more challenging one, which is the democratic values question and the human rights question, which is, you know, it's not, I mean, I think often when you talk about China and we sort of people in my line and business sort of think about great power relations and material issues of balance of power, all this sort of stuff, but there's the the more, I think in some respect, more important issues of of values. And that's where certainly at the moment, we've had this period, this international period where our values are being neatly aligned and defended by a global order that's broadly in line with those. We're now entering a world in which our values are going to be just one of a series of values that are in competition, if you like. How do we advocate for and defend those values in the face of, you know, an extraordinarily powerful political institution that, you know, is at best suspicious of, if downright hostile to those values?
Well, I think we believe in those values, but we should be careful what we attempt to propagate. The Americans have been, they're saying they are the exceptional country with these values, that it is their mission to propagate these values. And we've seen the propagation in Iraq. We've seen the propagation in the Arab Spring. We've seen the propagation in Libya. You know, we've seen the propagation in all of these states. And so therefore, the idea that the Chinese state with its Communist Party which brought it together and its sort of general confusion, simple sense of sense of itself should in some way, you know, accommodate a set of broadly East Coast American values which is shared by states like us is is simply, you know, a naive, a naive view of how the world really works. You know, uh, that and that's not to say that we would endorse abuses of human rights in China. We don't, and we've we've spoken about them often. But in the end, the China is a patchwork quilt of prosperities. And to hold it together and to achieve what they've done, taking 600 million people out of poverty, requires some measure of central government and and and and authority. And no OECD country could have done what the Chinese have done. Not one. So what is the, what human right do we establish, establish or attach to taking someone out of abject poverty, to taking 600 million of them out of abject poverty to live good lives in decent accommodation with proper clothes, medicines, etcetera, you know, or are we just hung up about the fact that some detainees don't get proper legal representation, you know, what I mean? I mean, where is in in our mind? Where's the, where's the, the weight of judgment about the Chinese about the Chinese, uh, uh, uh, the about the Chinese, what what they've actually produced, what they've actually done? So, so human values go more than just human rights, I think, of the kind that we normally associate ourselves with.
It's the sort of sense of the the sort of collective advancement of the Chinese people weighed against the rights of individuals, and clearly we know where the the party falls down on that one.
I mean, nation-building is a tough caper. Nation-building is a tough caper.
And and therefore the Communist Party pulled the country together after the Euro, after European imperialism had ripped it apart and the Japanese had ripped it apart, and and and that government of theirs has been the best government in the world in the last 30 years. Full stop. In the most, the most successful government in the world in the last 30 years.
This is probably a useful segue to turn to President Trump. Um,
Do you think President Trump and his administration present a risk of one form or another to Asia or to Australia?
Sorry, I just word.
Do you think or to what extent possibly even do you think President Trump presents a risk to Asia or to Australia in its policies and its outlook?
Well, he, well, as American presidents go, he's obviously the wild joker in the pack, right? We we don't know really what what how how he will conduct himself, right? Um, but he's he's had a couple of reasonable ideas. One is that the US should have a better relationship with China, you know, and we'd all applaud that because the sort of lives we live in this country depends upon the US and China finding common cause in the Pacific, right? So if if there's peace in the Pacific, our lives are going to be that much better. And the other idea he had was to have a better relationship with Russia, that great state that was that has essentially borne the brunt of West European militarism with Bonaparte, with Hitler. Um, and now a sort of standoff with the EU. Um, and so the great challenge for the Americans is to find a place for Russia in Europe. Not that they'll ever be part of the EU system, but to find a point of of some sort of harmony and accommodation, which the Americans decided not to do by extending NATO in 1997 by by biting off bits of the old Soviet Union, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, the Baltic states, all put into NATO. Uh, and of course, this produced amongst Russian nationalists a great reaction. In a sense, the Americans produced Putin, you know. Um, so he's he's got that idea. So you certainly would not have got that idea out of the State Department, right? And I don't think you get the same idea about China out of the State Department. So maybe he may he may be the wild card, but maybe maybe that we make progress on these two big fronts.
What about the forces that that propelled Trump to the White House? Because I think there's often a fixation on Trump and his personality and his exuberance, shall we say? Uh, but under behind him, that sense of electoral fragmentation between, you know, and disenchantment with existing parties, not only in the US, it's it's across, um, liberal democracies, that sense of a hollowed-out middle class that used to have a a kind of pathway, um, and certainly it's a constituency that this university believes is is core to to the well-being of a of a liberal society. Um, do you think that sense of an America that is being sort of left behind presents a profound challenge for the world? That's to say, an America that that an America feel an America that feels like America First of the kind that Trump has articulated is a force that weakens Australia or weakens the liberal international order, or is it just, as you said, is it something that that's just happening and we're just going to have to come to terms with it?
Well, I, there's no doubt that globalization hollowed America out. It hollowed Britain out. Uh, in some respects, it's in our manufacturing, it's hollowed out us out, too. You know, um, in in international, in the international, uh, division of labor, the great states in Asia with with big populations, with globalization and the abolition of tariffs, have been able to displace big sections of manufacturing industries in the in the developed countries. You know, this is true. Um, but there's also been great employment in the service sectors of these economies, like there has in this country, you know, I mean, the people who are on the assembly line in the car plants are now working in the financial industries, or they're working in hospitality, or they're working in health, you know. Uh, so what Trump did in the election was say, globalization's hollowed us out. That Hillary Clinton, she believes in globalization. She believes in free trade. I don't, you know. I I'll stick up for you. You know, and and you've got to remember, he won the three states, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Iowa, I think it was.
Ohio.
Ohio by less than 1%. Less than 1%. Hillary Clinton didn't even visit Wisconsin. The Democrats took their constituency cheaply. And Hillary said, "I'm pretty good. I've been here a long time, and it's my turn." You know, and and he said, "For to all that, you've been robbed. I'll protect you. I'll make America great again."
You were, um, much earlier than anyone else I knew. I know you were, uh, talking about Trump as a possible victor from, I don't know, July, August, uh, last year. So I was surprised when Hillary Clinton lost. You weren't. Um, what was it that you saw in Trump himself?
Well, the, the enormous inner confidence. He was a, the enormous inner confidence. He's a momentum player. Uh, uh, uh, uh, basically probably a narcissist, you know. Uh, there's a bit of that in all of us. Um, uh, uh, but I haven't been gazing in any pools lately. But, but nevertheless, nevertheless, you know, I thought he's going to scatter, scatter those Dem, those Republican candidates. He threw him in the corner like rag dolls, you know, and I thought that's what he's going to do with you, Hillary. He's going to throw you in the corner. Now, it turns out Hillary got the majority of the votes in the United States. But because of the electoral college, a bit like our Senate, where we give 12 Senate seats to Victoria, but 12 also to Tasmania. I mean, almost everyone, every corner down there's got a public job, you know. Um, um, that that distortion, that distortion in our Senate is similarly reflected in the electoral college. Now, if you're a Democrat and you, you know this, and you've been doing it for years, and Bill Clinton did it for years, and everything else, then what you do is you shore up your your base. But they did, they didn't. Hillary Clinton's problem is she didn't have a story, and Trump had a story. Now, I was telling someone the other day, they said, you know, the, the displacement, the displacement of people in factories in America, it's happened 30 years ago. You know, Billy Joel wrote that song, Allentown, you know, we're living here in Allentown, you know, and they're closing all the factories down out in Bethlehem. They're standing in line, filling out, filling out forms and standing in line. That was written in 1983. It was on then, and Trump, Trump's saying he's got the remedy now. Of course, there is no remedy. I mean, it's these policy is a con fundamentally. It's not going to work, you know, and the people in Iowa and Ohio will wake up at some point to the fact. But, but the point is, he might just induce a shift in growth and wealth of a kind they get some part of, and if if he can kick that economy of his along by half a percent or 1% of GDP, you know, he'll get a second term. That's the point of it.
Why don't we turn now to to Australia and something you've said recently, um, is that in fact, I think you said at the Keith Murdoch a few years ago that Australia is a derivative power as a western power. Do you think that still pertains or is it worse? Um, is Australia as a western outpost still the way we operate and sort of as a, as a, you know, sec, as a second question, at the same time, Australia is changing fundamentally, the culture of Australia as a society. It is a, it's a deep, it's a different place from when I grew up, and it's a profoundly different place from when my parents grew up here. To what extent do you see that as beginning to play out into how Australia thinks about itself in the world and the way it identifies with, um, its foreign policy and its and its shapes its foreign policy orientation?
Yeah. Well, the country is unled, you know. We still have the Queen of Great Britain as our head of state, for Christ's sake, you know. I mean, it's an affront to everything we've created here that our head of state isn't one of us, you know, but we still have the queen as our head of state. I mean, we we have, um, uh, as Allan says in his book, Fear of Engagement, which was a cause of our doing this discussion, that we made this audacious claim here. We were a little colony in Sydney Harbour, a little group of people who said, thank you, we'll have the whole continent of Australia. I mean, the gall of it. You know, I mean, apart from the the damage and dispossession to the indigenous, the gall of it. And, you know, but, but the fact is, we have a continent to our own and a border with nobody. And all of the states we've mentioned tonight, Russia, the United States, China, they've all got borders, countries on their borders. We don't. So therefore, we've been given this great inheritance. I mean, you would be in there trying to reorder the whole East Asian system to suit us. That's what I was trying to do back 25 years ago with the APEC leaders meeting, you know, getting the US engaged in Asia, getting China into the thing, sitting the Chinese and the Japanese down together, us sitting down with the Indonesians, you know, uh, you would you would take this on with such gusto, you know, but you've got to do some things right. You got to say, we can't have the monarch of another country as our head of state. We can't have a flag with the, the flag of another country in its corner. You know, uh, we can't keep, can't keep, uh, maintain the policy that we have in respect of the indigenous, you know, or the general, notwithstanding a a a lot of interest and kindliness on the part of the Australian community, the fact we'd never actually busted that problem. Um, and, uh, so we go to Asia. We should be going to Asia as, as a sort of, as, as the new Australian people, as, as the continent which has turned a leaf, you know, but here we have Tony Abbott a couple of years ago, you know, bringing back knighthoods, you know. I mean, you gave poor old Prince Philip a knighthood, you know. You can you can imagine what he said when he found out, you know. Um, you know, and there they are, the Liberal Party lickspittles. They'll be over there at Whitehall looking for their baron, their baroncies, and like Ming Ming the Merciless, you know, the what was he, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, Menzies, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports? I mean, you know, getting around the gown with the thing. I mean, these people had no idea about the future of the Australian nation in Asia, and that was before China turned into what it is now. I mean, so if, if you see the shift in the world of the kind Alan's describing, and I'm describing, you know, you'd be hitting the panic button. No, no, no. They're all on, they're they're all on the Valium tablets. This bunch. You know, you know, I mean, I mean, this is a cabinet which pops a bland tablet every morning. You know, you know, uh, and so, and so as a consequence, as a consequence, the place is unled. You know, it is unled. And and and the fact is, even through some of the last recent Labor governments, we, we, you know, neither Kevin Rudd nor Gillard did anything to change the republic. You know, they said, "Oh, we'll wait till the Queen dies." I said, "Well, that that would make us a brave bunch, wouldn't it?" You know, wait till the old lady dies and we'll take that, take the crown from her, you know. Um, you know.
But why, why do you think it is that we're in this period? I mean, it is a period of of opportunism. I mean, it's a great opportunity for for a a political leader, you know, political leaders, great legacies are often to do with circumstance. You happen to come in and there is, you know, you've got crisis.
Thrilled every day.
Yeah. And yet,
On both sides of the aisle, there is this sort of quiescence, there's a timidity, um, around the kind of role Australia should play. What, I, I mean, what's your sense, um, of what drives that? I mean, it's not just that they're, there's a kind of, they're popping the bland pills. There's a reason they're reaching for them.
The lack of imagination. That's the two great, the two ingredients in leadership are imagination and courage. Seeing the big vista and then having the wherewithal to go and to go and go and move towards it. And now, there, there isn't the imagination. It's not true of, not true of everyone in public life. I mean, people go into public life in both parties to serve the country and serve them well, you know, and I can name names on both sides of politics in doing that, but, but you, you, there's nothing like the power of a big idea to remake the debate. You know, people say, oh, look, it's so hard now, you know, if you were in public life now with social media, you know, you wouldn't, you wouldn't have been able to do what you did in the past. Well, so, I mean, there's there's an even greater role for the pied piper now because in the age of self-expression, which is in the "me" age, you know, the iPhone, I, you know, everything's I, I, me, I, self-expression. Um, they're always looking for the one person who has the central ideas. Yep. And if you don't have the central ideas, you don't get the following. So what happens? You're then subject to the static, the static rains, the static winds. And so you get pushed around by, you know, it used to be the old Canberra Press Gallery. God loved them. Only God could love them, by the way. Uh, but, but now it's all this, the twits on Twitter.
So I want to go back to something you said and be interested also on Alan's views on this, that you said there's still a place for an American strategic presence in Asia and there's still a place for the alliance. Yes, we don't need perhaps to pull out the marriage license every day, but it's there. How do you, you know, what what role does the alliance play or should the alliance play for an Australia that's carving out a more, um, distinctive role for itself in a world in which a China plays a much greater role in in our future? How do you, how do we square those? Because I, there's a sense that the autopilot to Washington comes out of a of a sense that that's the world we know, and anything other than that is deeply unfamiliar and risky.
How do we bring these two things together?
Well, I'd like to hear what Alan says. Let me have a go at it first. If you've been in a strategic partnership of a kind with the United States for 100 years, do you have to have a fear every week that they may not like what you say about this or that matter, or that you may not join them in escapades in some country or another? Really? I mean, you'd have to have a low sense of self-regard and low sense of confidence to think that somehow you would lose the Americans. We would never lose the Americans. I mean, who else around this part of the world has a continent, you know, English language culture, common jurist students? I mean, we couldn't shake the Americans off if we tried. That is that is the that is the truth. But no, we go on now. Oh, look, we won't say anything about, oh, we better send a boat through the through the South China Sea because some American admiral in Honolulu has suggested if we don't do it, the Americans are going to think badly of us. You know, this is all defeatist bad talk. The truth is the Americans are entirely important to the peace and good order of East Asia and having them there as a balancing power, as Britain was in the 19th century. You know, when when the Germans, when the, when Bonaparte was afoot with the Germans and and conquering the rest of Europe, Britain stood off as a balancing power, as it did with Kaiser Wilhelm in the 1890s, and as it did in the run-up to the First World War. You know, it had that balancing role and conciliating role. Similarly, I think the Americans should enjoy that role in Asia, and we need them to. I mean, that's that's the point. We need them to. But what we don't need them doing is trying to maintain the game like it was at the end of the Second World War. That is to frame and guarantee East Asia, to turn or attempt to turn China into a client state, because the Chinese just will never be a client state of the United States. So that policy won't work. What will work being a balancer and a conciliator, you know, but if you say that now to some of our, to the, uh, to the sort of the policy wimp brigade here, uh, they say, "Oh, you know, this is the front of the United States, you know, this is the front to there." No, no, it's a real, it's a real place for them. It's a real place for them recognizing the great power of China, you know. So, you know, we just should, you know, we we got to really rely upon a piece of paper written in what 1954, Alan, when was, I think '54 or something? You say, oh, well, there it is, the American lines, which is just an agreement to consult one another in times of trouble, you know, or running over to this dialogue which they have every year where they all bow down in Washington, you know. Um, we can do better, and and we can, and we can, and we can articulate a place for the Americans that they are at this point incapable of articulating for themselves.
Something, uh, something strange happened to the discussion about the US relationship, I think in the course of the 21st century, which wasn't there. As I've been writing the history of the, uh, of the, uh, of the 20th, the, uh, alliance took on what Paul separately has described as sort of as a sacramental, uh, quality. You could see it in in government documents. Suddenly started using the the word alliance with a capital A. It, it things changed from a from a small A alliance to a large A, uh, alliance. So it's, um, uh, you know, after 9/11, really, uh, it's t it's taken on a different, um, uh, weight in the in the Australian, uh, uh, debate, and an unnecessary weight, I think. I mean, I agree with Paul. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's important. It gives us, uh, um, uh, great advantages and in intelligence and, uh, and, uh, and other things. It's, it's worthwhile. We share, uh, we share interests, but it, uh, but it's, um, it's a, you know, it's a thing. It's a, uh, it's a, you know, it's a treaty. It's a, uh, it's, it's, uh, it's not ordained by God.
What we've just revisited is a fascinating segment from a public conversation in May 2017, featuring former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating. The context at the time was the recent inauguration of Donald Trump as US President and the emergence of a much more uncertain world order. Paul Keating is one of the most visionary and controversial leaders in Australian history. In the 1980s and 90s, he spearheaded Australia's economic reforms and its diplomatic pivot, strongly advocating for the country to shed its historical baggage and redefine itself as a nation in Asia. In this conversation, we can hear some of Keating's most trenchant critiques of Australian foreign policy. First, he fiercely attacked what he saw as Australia's over-reliance on its alliance with the United States, describing it as what I call the wimp behavior. He satirized Canberra's elites as good little Americans who felt the need to pull out the marriage certificate with the US every week for fear of being abandoned. He firmly believed that this lack of self-confidence was completely unnecessary because Australia's unique position meant that we would never lose the Americans. Second, he made a clear distinction between globalization and globalism. He argued that what the world was rejecting was the post-Cold War globalism, a hegemonic system led by the United States that demanded all other nations to line up. He believed this was different from globalization itself, which is the free flow of capital and technology. Citing Xi Jinping's speech at Davos and China's establishment of institutions like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, he pointed out that a more pluralistic world order was already taking shape. And most centrally, he offered his view on how to engage with a rising China. He stated bluntly that China was undergoing an unprecedented economic expansion and its economy would become far larger than that of the US. Therefore, he argued, the American attempt to maintain its strategic hegemony in Asia and turn into a client state was a nonsense. He warned that if Australia continued to be party to that piece of nonsense, it would find itself in great troubles. In his view, America's proper role in Asia should be that of a balancer and a conciliator, not a hegemon. Now, looking back from our vantage point in 2025, it's fair to say that world events have largely borne out his foresight. His concern about Australia's sacramental devotion to the US alliance only intensified in the years that followed. We saw Australia join the security pact with the US and the UK, tying its national security even more deeply to American strategy. In retrospect, Keating's sharp critique of the wimp and good little American mentality seems even more pointed today. At the same time, his judgment that globalism was dying has also been proven correct. Trump's America First tariff wars shocked the system. And while subsequent administrations have tried to repair alliances, the trend of economic nationalism has persisted. A more fragmented and multipolar world has indeed become a reality. Most importantly, Keating's warning about how to live with China seems particularly profound today. In the 8 years since, we have witnessed the US and China escalate from a trade war to a tech war and then to a full-blown geopolitical rivalry. During this period, Australia's policy of closely following the US into a sharp confrontation with China caused relations between CRA and Beijing to hit rock bottom at a significant economic cost. It is only in the last couple of years that CRA has begun to seek dialogue and stabilization with Beijing again. This appears to be a return to the path Keating had advocated for all along: to acknowledge China's power and reality and to seek a pragmatic path of coexistence. Revisiting this eight-year-old conversation, one has to admire Paul Keating's courage to think independently beyond partisan politics and from the perspective of Australia's fundamental interests, as well as his deep insight into the shifting tectonic plates of global power. We'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments. If you found this speech valuable, please like, share, and subscribe to our channel. Thank you for watching.