From Domainfax:
Former prime minister Paul Keating says Australia should “cut the tag” with the United States following Donald Trump’s shock win in Tuesday’s presidential election, and instead assert our own foreign policy in the Asian region.
He said Australia found itself in a “crazy position” where the US alliance had “taken on a reverential, sacramental quality” for both Coalition and Labor politicians, at the expense of pursuing relationships with our closest neighbours.
“The foreign policy of Australia is basically: we have tag along rights to the US. It’s time to cut the tag, it’s time to get out of it,” Mr Keating told the ABC’s 7.30 program. “What we have to do is make our way in Asia ourselves, with an independent foreign policy.”
…”We had the Prime Minister almost saying prayers to the alliance yesterday, and the foreign minister, as if nothing has changed,” the former Labor PM said.
Mr Keating said the basic elements of the alliance – mutual consultation in the event of adverse military action, intelligence sharing and shared defence technology – could be preserved while moving away from total “subordination” to every whim of Washington.
I spent most of my professional life pursuing a Keating-like agenda at The Diplomat. Asian engagement has been badly neglected at the political level since 1996 so I’m certainly on board with greater effort there.
However, it evolved all by itself anyway economically with the rise of China. Keating is fighting yesterday’s war and the notion that we are “subordinate” to the US today is surely a bloomin’ joke. In economic terms we have sailed so far up the Yangtze River that ANZUS really is not much more than a distant cult held together by the spooks of Canberra.
As a card carrying member of the Chinese economic empire already, our challenge is not that we are subordinate to Washington but that we don’t by default become subordinate to Beijing in our politics, strategic outlook and society as well.
