One of Australia’s most important contributions will be persuading Washington to accept China’s status, rather than trying to contain the rising power.

Chinas foreign policy under Xi Jinping is different from Chinas foreign policy under his two predecessors, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. It has become substantially more aggressive, insensitive to the concerns of regional countries and the broader international community, and its style has become disconcertingly pugnacious. But from my own observations over many years, Chinas foreign policy was always going to head in this direction as it became wealthier and more powerful.
Australias regional objective and its strategic intent should be to contribute to a satisfactory and stable balance of power in the Indo Pacific region.
As American academic Graham Allison has pointed out in his thesis on what he called the Thucydides trap, there is inevitably serious tension between a rising power and a status quo power. Allison argues that over the last 500 years, a rising power and the status quo power have frequently ended up at war because of the mismanagement of those tensions.
If we call China our enemy it will become our enemy. Containment rather than engagement is a recipe for disaster.
The most catastrophic example of war erupting between a rising power and status quo powers was the World War I. You know that story.
Today, we have China as the rising power and the United States and its Western alliance as the status quo powers. To be blunt, the single most important geopolitical challenge for Australia is to make a physical, economic and intellectual contribution to ensuring that tension is manageable. To avoid a catastrophic descent into conflict between China and the United States will require wise leadership in Beijing and Washington, and sound counsel for Washington from the leaders of its allies.
You may wonder about the strategic wisdom of Xi Jinping and Donald Trump. Wonder indeed! As we know from the catastrophic events of the first decade and a half of the 20th century, leaders can sleepwalk into disaster. If they dont think strategically, bad things can happen.
For America and its allies, they need to accept and understand the rise of China. China does need space and needs to be granted greater respect and consideration than it has been over the past 200 years. For example, if we want China to adhere to the rules-based international system we have to acknowledge the important part China must play in the managing and making of those rules.
America and its allies also have to be careful not to pursue a policy of containment of China. A policy of containment is a policy which calls the contained power your enemy. If we call China our enemy it will become our enemy. Containment rather than engagement is a recipe for disaster.
For Chinas part, as its wealth and power increase, it too has huge responsibilities to manage its relations with the Americans and their allies. It needs to show a degree of sensitivity. In particular, it needs to show sensitivity towards its neighbours and the other nations of the Indo Pacific, not intimidate them as it has done in the South China Sea. It should also understand the totemic significance of Hong Kong and remember that the agreements of the 1997 handover are part of international law.
Whatever you think about Donald Trumps rhetoric, and this is not the place to examine that, Chinas foreign policy has become increasingly unacceptable to America and the West. This has only been exacerbated through the COVID-19 crisis. If China had handled this more sensitively, then that would have helped to tone down antipathy towards China as the source of the virus.
Australias contribution to this should be to promote above all a balance of power in the Indo Pacific region. That involves at least two things. First, we need to ensure that Americas network of alliances is maintained in the region. That was why I set up the trilateral strategic dialogue between the United States, Japan and Australia. It was a small contribution to architecture which would diplomatically strengthen America in the region. Adding India to that framework has always been a good idea.
Those Australians who think pushing America out of the region would be good for Australia do not remotely understand the strategic importance of Americas role in maintaining the regional balance of power. Without the United States, most, if not all, Indo Pacific countries would become client states of China, which in turn would generate huge and destructive resentment and fear.
Secondly, we need to continue to strengthen plurilateral diplomacy in the Indo Pacific region. We have been successful so far in building a series of plurilateral regional institutions. There is APEC and its associated Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement, there is the ASEAN regional forum and a series of ASEAN dialogue meetings and in recent times there has been the East Asia Summit.
One of the seldom lauded but great achievements of Australia was to get into the East Asia Summit as a founding member despite the resistance of China.
The rise of China can be managed, but it has to be managed with great intellectual rigour and caution. In the past few months we have seen China throw that much-needed caution to the wind. It needs to reflect on where its new wolf-warrior diplomacy is in the end going to leave it. All it has done so far is unite US alliance countries all the more closely. That is hardly the wisest strategy for China.