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| Image source: Australian Government |
On 28 October, the Prime
Minister released the Government’s ‘Australia in the Asian Century’ White
Paper. The Parliamentary Library has
released several publications examining different aspects of the White Paper
and the reactions to it:
This piece discusses the regional
security and foreign policy dimensions of the White Paper (chapters eight and
nine).
Regional
security
Whilst acknowledging serious
challenges, the White Paper adopts a largely optimistic view of the region’s
geo-political future. It is a future in
which a continued US presence, engagement with a rising China, the benefits of
trade and investment, and evolving regional multilateral institutions
underwrite stability and prosperity. The
White Paper states that Australia will continue to pursue cooperative
arrangements among the major powers, strengthen key bilateral relationships,
and support multilateral institutions like the United Nations, the G-20, and
the East Asia Summit as the foundations of a rules-based regional security
order (pp.222—239).
This optimism is appropriate
for a policy blueprint that is attempting to motivate government, business,
education and community sectors to embrace further domestic reforms and
strengthen their understanding of and links with Asia. It does, however, mean that the downside
risks are underplayed. In the words of one security
analyst, the White Paper is ‘a massive one-way bet on Asia’s
strategic context being pretty much the same in the next dozen years as in the
last 40 years, one of benign development’.
Another has
nominated increased nationalism among the region’s rising middle classes, disaffected
youth in India, and a ‘feasibly unpleasant shift’ in Indonesian politics as
just a few of the specific strategic risks not canvassed. Former senior diplomat, Richard Woolcott, argues the
document fails to unambiguously rule out Australian participation in a
potentially destabilising strategy of ‘containment’ toward China, a view rejected by
the Government.
In a similar vein, the
Opposition contends the
document does not address the ‘critical issues’, although it has not defined precisely
what it believes these to be. We can only
assume that some of the regional security risks will be discussed more fully in
the forthcoming 2013 Defence White Paper. As with Australia’s diplomatic network, the
issue of funding remains at
the centre of contemporary defence policy debates.
Diplomatic
engagement
The White Paper commits
Australia to increasing its ‘diplomatic footprint’ in Asia through the
establishment of several new posts, including a full embassy in Ulaanbaatar (Mongolia),
and new consulates in Shenyang (China), Phuket (Thailand) and eastern Indonesia,
‘when circumstances allow’ (p.254). It also
confirms our ‘diplomatic deficit’—Australia is now eclipsed by countries like the
Republic of Korea, Indonesia and Vietnam in terms of our representation across
Asia (p.255).
Discussion of this issue is likely
to intensify following the release, a day after the White Paper, of a
Parliamentary Committee inquiry’s finding
that our diplomatic network is suffering from ‘serious deficiencies’. The White Paper also comes in the wake of claims that
Australia will need significant additional resources to service its upcoming term
on the UN Security Council and the release of documents
by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) that state that its staffing
presence overseas has fallen by 13.7 per cent since 1996.
Notably, the White Paper omits
a ‘medium priority’ Asia post, Chongqing (China), nominated by DFAT in its May
2012 submission to
the aforementioned Parliamentary inquiry in favour of the proposed Shenyang
post.
The Government has also
announced that it will appoint a full time, resident Ambassador to the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Jakarta (p.257). Since 2008,
this role has been performed on a part-time basis by a Canberra-based official.
According to
the Foreign Minister, there is ‘no regional grouping more relevant to our
security, our prosperity’. This change will place Australia’s representation
to ASEAN on par with that of the US, China, Japan,
and the Republic
of Korea.
Aid
and development
The paper devotes relatively
little attention to the role of Australia’s aid in strengthening our regional engagement. This is surprising given that, despite
impressive economic growth, two-thirds of
the world’s poor still live in our region, this issue was a source of some interesting
debates during the White Paper’s preparation, and the Government
plans to spend
around $2.7 billion annually on aid to East, South and West Asia by 2015—16,
including almost $1 billion annually to Indonesia.
The White Paper notes the
positive development outcomes that have accompanied the region’s economic rise
(pp.32–36). It also states, however,
that growing disparities in incomes and living standards threaten social
stability and long-term growth (p.60). Importantly, it recognises the development
constraints associated with the ‘middle-income trap’— the fact that, since 1960,
only 13 of 101 countries classified as middle–income have gone on to reach high-income
status (p.56). Eight of the ten ASEAN
economies are still classified as
either middle or low income.
The majority of Asia’s poor now
live
in large middle-income countries, alongside
‘an increasingly mobile and wealthy middle class’ (p.46). Poverty
reduction in these societies is not necessarily linear—the Asian Development
Bank estimates
that a 30 per cent increase in
international food prices could push an additional 64 million Asians back into
poverty. The White Paper acknowledges
that escaping the middle-income trap and achieving further poverty reduction will
depend on major institutional reforms, reforms that both developed and
developing countries have often found very difficult.
To help address Asia’s development
challenges, the White Paper identifies building resilient water, food and
energy markets as priorities for future aid (pp.239–249). In order to build human resource capacity, it also
commits 12 000 places for Asian university students to study in Australia over
the next five years through the ‘Australia Awards’ scheme (p.251). The Government has subsequently confirmed
that these are not new places but reflect previous budget decisions. A new ‘Australia Awards Office’ will be
established to strengthen alumni networks among Asian leaders educated in
Australia (p.266). Whilst this is an
important goal, if this Office takes the form of a new stand-alone agency
it could add more complexity to a program that is already spread across at
least three agencies (DFAT, AusAID,
and the Department
of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education) and about which the Australian National
Audit Office has previously flagged concerns
about coordination.
Country
strategies
Finally, the White Paper commits
the Government to developing ‘comprehensive’ strategies to guide engagement
with key countries. China, India, Indonesia, Japan,
and South Korea will be the ‘initial priorities’ for these strategies which will
set out the ‘objectives and priorities for [these] relationships across the
whole community’. They will be tabled in Parliament and ‘regularly evaluated
and updated’ (p.257).
If these country strategies
are to be more than just a shopping list of aspirations and activities they
will need to involve choices about priorities.
Getting consensus around these could prove difficult, as the Government
has found in
relation to efforts over the last several years to finalise country strategies
in the area of development assistance. For
example, portions of the Australian community may view public advocacy for
improved civil and political rights in Tibet as a potentially important part of
our overall engagement with China, but this is not likely to be an objective
shared by authorities in Beijing, or one that is easy to ‘evaluate’ in any
meaningful sense of the term.
Managing community
expectations around what these strategies can and cannot achieve will be just
one of the future challenges facing the Government as it moves to implement this ambitious new blueprint.
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