The Guardian is going me pretty good at the moment, which I thoroughly welcome. Last week, Amanda Meade had a modest crack:
David Llewellyn-Smith, the editor of Macrobusiness, bills his online publication as “Australia’s leading business and investment blog” but he has some strong opinions when it comes to foreign affairs.
An article about China’s deal with the Solomon Islands contains more than just intemperate language – it calls for Australia to “bomb Honiara”.
“Whatever it takes now to prevent this outcome must happen,” Llewellyn-Smith wrote this week. “Either we undertake to destabilise the islands politically using whatever means necessary or we openly bomb Honiara into submission.
“A smoking crater to Australia’s north is not what anybody wants but it’s transparently preferable to a weaponised Chinese satrap that all but ends Australian freedom.”
Llewellyn-Smith defended his language in the context of how “extreme the risk” is.
“Basically, if a Chinese naval base is allowed to develop in the Solomons it represents a clear and present danger to Australian sovereignty,” Llewellyn-Smith told Beast.
I explained to Amanda on the blower if we allow a Chinese naval base to develop in the Solomons then it is the first step towards her and me sharing a cell in future Pilbara gulags, which seems to win her over in a kind of backhanded way.
A more serious Guardian attack was launched yesterday by Terence Wood, a Research Fellow at the Development Policy Centre at the Australian National University:
In late March, journalists revealed that China and Solomon Islands had signed a policing agreement. Someone from within Solomon Islands government also leaked a broader draft security agreement with China. In April, this agreement was finalised and signed. (Its text hasn’t been released but appears likely to be very similar to the draft.) You can see the draft here. It’s short and clear. Solomons can ask China to provide police and military assistance. If, and only if, Solomon Islands government of the day consents, China can “make ship visits to, carry out logistical replenishment in, and have stopover and transition in Solomon Islands, and relevant forces of China can be used to protect the safety of Chinese personnel and major projects in Solomon Islands.” Permanent bases are not mentioned.
This, however, didn’t stop antipodean pundits from racing to hype the threat of a Chinese base. To be fair, few went as far as David Llewellyn-Smith, who demanded that Australia preemptively invade Solomons. He was an outlier (although it didn’t stop him from being uncritically quoted in the Courier Mail). But all spoke of a base as a near certainty.
…Amidst the racket, much was lost. Australia has its own security agreement with Solomon Islands. It’s more carefully worded, but it affords Australia similar powers to China. And China already has a security agreement with Fiji. Indeed, there was real talk of a base when that agreement was signed, but no base materialised, and the agreement has had no effect on regional security.
And as Scott Morrison pointed out, Manasseh Sogavare, Solomon Islands prime minister, has explicitly ruled out a Chinese base. True, Sogavare is a political manoeuvreer who can’t be taken at his word. But a Chinese base in Solomons serves neither his interest, nor that of the Chinese.
It doesn’t serve Sogavare’s interests because it won’t give him what he wants – a stronger hold on power. He’s unpopular in Honiara. His election brought riots. As did his standoff with Malaitan premier Daniel Suidani. So he wants Chinese police training and maybe military assistance in times of instability. But a base won’t help.
Solomons is a Sinophobic country and the obvious presence of a base will increase Sogavare’s unpopularity. It would also jeopardise the security support he gets from Australia, as well as Australian aid. (By my best estimate, based on Chinese promises, which are likely to be overstatements, Australia gave more than 2.5 times as much aid to Solomons in 2019, the most recent year with data.)
I’m not defending Sogavare. I’d rather Chinese police weren’t helping him. But a base isn’t in his interest. And he’s no fool.
A base isn’t in China’s interests either. I don’t like China’s repressive political leaders. But their military ambitions are limited to places they view as part of China. What they’ve done, or want to do, in Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan is odious. But Australia isn’t next on their list.
…Our behaving like it’s a catastrophe is harmful though.
It’s harmful to countries like Australia and New Zealand, because the main advantage we have over China in the Pacific is soft power. Thanks to anti-Chinese racism and a healthy wariness of China’s authoritarian government, most people in Pacific countries, including political elites, are more hesitant in dealing with China than with us.
Sure, money talks, and China can procure influence, but we are a little better liked. And that helps. Yet we lose this advantage every time we talk of invading Pacific countries, or call the region our “back yard”, or roughly twist the arms of Pacific politicians. The Pacific is not some rogue part of Tasmania. It’s an ocean of independent countries. That means diplomacy is needed, and temper tantrums are unhelpful.
Worse still, our propensity to view the Pacific as a geo-strategic chessboard has consequences for the region’s people. Geopolitical aid is too-often transactional and poorly focused on what people need. It is less likely to promote development.
There’s an alternative: to choose realism over hype in our collective commentary. And to earn soft power by being a respectful and reliable partner. It’s not always easy. But it’s not impossible. Yet it has completely escaped us in the shambles of the last few weeks.
That is a good argument. I wholeheartedly hope that it is correct. Though, I will add that one of the main reasons such an article exists is my own efforts to lift the profile of the Solomons issue. On occasion, it takes polemic to move the debate along.
I can’t claim to have singlehandedly injected the Solomons issue into the election but the articles did push back the boundaries of acceptable debate and it is now both wide and varied when previously it was ignored in favour of some trans-obsessed fruitcake.
I will add that Mr Wood is engaging in a bit of rhetorical license himself by conflating my scribblings with the wider debate. I am sure that Solomon Islanders are not so thin-skinned.
All military options must be on the table when something so fundamentally threatening becomes a real risk. A Chinese military presence in the Solomons is an Australian red line and must never be allowed.
Whether that needs a response to be an invasion, bombing, the parking of the USS Ronald Reagan offshore for a few weeks, or nothing at all is up to Manasseh Sogavare.
The one person it does not appear to be up to is PM Scott Morrison. Bernard Keane has summed him up perfectly:
Scott Morrison’s failure in the Solomon Islands, opening the way for a major strategic advance by China on our doorstep, has been, note for note, a perfect replay of his failures in so many other areas.
There’s been the bluster and the media announcements, the vaunted “Pacific step-up”, a phrase repeated over and over for the cameras, followed by a lack of substance, and a failure both by his government and Morrison personally.
Taken by surprise by China and the government of Manasseh Sogavare, Morrison neither felt it worthwhile to interrupt Marise Payne’s electioneering to dispatch her to Honiara — preferring to send Canberra work experience kid Zed Seselja — nor to bother contacting Sogavare himself. Phones it seems are for leaking confidential texts, not calling.
As has happened so frequently under Morrison, the moment any complexity of response is required from his government, it fails miserably — at even the basics.
As the magnitude of Morrison’s failure became obvious, and he faced the unusual situation of a prime minister having to field foreign policy questions during an election campaign, the bluster and announcements returned: Australia shared a “red line” with the US in relation to China establishing a military base in the Solomon Islands, he said yesterday: “We won’t be having Chinese military naval bases in our region on our doorstep.”
When challenged on how exactly that would be prevented, Morrison fell back on Sogavare’s guarantee that that would be the case: “He clearly shares our red line.” So this is a voluntary red line, enforceable only by the subject of the red line itself. This nonsense was shredded even at News Corp, where Greg Sheridan has been openly mocking Morrison’s national security credentials.
Morrison’s national security failings were previously limited to the longer term — the alienation of France, a major Pacific power, and the decision to abandon the Naval Group submarine contract five years in, in exchange for a vague idea of a study to buy US or British nuclear submarines some time in the 2040s, leaving a major gap in Australia’s submarine capability. Now his failings extend to the here-and-now, with a Chinese strategic presence 2000 kilometres from our shores.
National security is supposed to be adults-in-the-room stuff, where the stakes are too high for political games. And national security is supposed to be at the very core of the Coalition’s claim to being a superior party of government. But Morrison has botched it in a way that no previous government ever has, by applying the same Morrison method of administration: announcements, incompetence, evasion of blame. The gap between the performance of Morrison and his idol John Howard is stark.
Even a n utterly compromised Paul Kelly can’t hide the immense failure:
“Who lost Solomon Islands?” is the wrong question for Australia today. Yet the recriminations in an election are inevitable given the betrayal of Australia’s Pacific family policy and the proof that China can threaten our country on its doorstep.
Beijing has struck back at Scott Morrison. This follows its humiliation at the Prime Minister’s hands over the past two years in rebuffing China’s economic coercion of Australia, with Morrison being a catalyst in mobilising strategic resistance on a wide front against China’s aggressive tactics.
But Morrison is now exposed at Australia’s point of maximum vulnerability: our failure to secure the immediate region where Australia is the metropolitan power given our inability to persuade Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare from his China adventurism.
This problem has been misunderstood. It is not that Morrison was complacent. On the contrary, he tried and failed – and that’s more serious for Australia. It demands a national rethink to avert any domino effect in China’s favour. Any notion this setback could have been averted by a phone call, a belated visit by the Foreign Minister or more aid is a fantasy that doesn’t comprehend the challenge.
…Whoever wins this election, a policy rethink and greater effort will be needed to reverse China’s gain.
In short, Morrison has failed and we need renewal. Just say it, Paul. Needless to say, your nation’s freedom is a bit more important than your boss’s political biases.
Labor’s efforts are much better at this stage with its new Pacific platform which includes:
- Better labour market access for islanders and not on the former enslavement terms.
- Deeper economic engagement.
- Deeper military engagement.
- Filling regional military capability gaps urgently.
- Industrial revitalisation.
- Energy security.
I note as well that Penny Wong also declared that an Albanese Government would work closely with the US on the issue, which is not something that is obvious in Morrison’s failure.
Much more will be needed. And that’s the point. Morrison has done nothing, just as he has done on energy security, economic diversification and resilience, and military rebuilding in any useful timeframe.
All Morrison has done in his term is accidentally break the China relationship then let it waltz into the Pacific in revenge. The first was a wonderful stroke of good fortune but now we need actual policy to prepare for what comes after.
A disordered Scott Morrison ain’t that!
