The Economist has a terrific cover story this week on the role of America in the world.
Abroad, America faces a complex and hostile world. For the first time since the Soviet Union stagnated in the 1970s it has a serious, organised opposition, led by China. At home, politics is plagued by dysfunction and a Republican Party that is increasingly isolationist. This moment will define not only Israel and the Middle East but America and the world.
The foreign threat has three parts. One is the chaos spread by Iran across the Middle East and by Russia in Ukraine. Aggression and instability consume American political, financial and military resources. Conflict will spread in Europe if Russia gets its way in Ukraine. Bloodshed could radicalise people in the Middle East, turning them against their governments. Wars draw in America, which becomes an easy target for accusations of warmongering and hypocrisy. All this undermines the idea of a world order.
A second threat is complexity. A group of countries, including India and Saudi Arabia, are increasingly transactional, bent on fiercely pursuing their own interests. Unlike Iran and Russia, such countries do not want chaos, yet neither will they take orders from Washington—and why should they? For America, this makes the job of being a superpower harder. Look, for example, at Turkey’s games over Sweden’s membership of nato, seemingly resolved this week after 17 months of tiresome wrangling.
The third threat is the biggest. China has ambitions to create an alternative to the values enshrined in global institutions. It would reinterpret concepts like democracy, freedom and human rights to suit its own preference for development over individual freedom and national sovereignty over universal values. China, Russia and Iran are forming a loosely co-ordinated group. Iran supplies drones to Russia and oil to China. Russia and China have given Iran’s client Hamas diplomatic cover at the UN.
…These are formidable obstacles. However, America also has formidable strengths. One is its military heft. It has not only deployed those two carrier strike groups to the Middle East, but is also supplying arms, intelligence and expertise to Israel, just as it has to Ukraine. China has rapidly increased its budget for the People’s Liberation Army, but at market exchange rates America still spent as much last year on defence as the ten next countries combined, and most of them are its allies.
America’s economic heft is impressive, too. The country generates a quarter of the world’s output with a twentieth of its population, and the share is unchanged over the past four decades, despite China’s rise. This newspaper worries about the inefficiency and creeping protectionism of Mr Biden’s industrial policy, but we do not doubt America’s technological muscle and underlying dynamism—especially when set against China, where it has become increasingly clear that the goal of economic growth has been subordinated to the goal of maximising Communist Party control.
America’s other underestimated strength is its reinvigorated diplomacy. The war in Ukraine has proved the value of nato. In Asia, America has created aukus and shored up its relations with a host of countries, including Japan, the Philippines and South Korea. In Foreign Affairs this week America’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, spells out how countries which pursue their own interests can still be essential partners. The model is India, which is increasingly part of America’s designs for security in Asia, despite its determination to remain outside any alliance.
It is funny to watch, in the usual dark way, the anti-Americanism that arrives when the US deploys its hard power to protect innocents. Imagine for a moment what the Israel War would look like without America.
Israel would not exist. The two-state solution would never have come about. The Palestinians would all be dead. Israel would either be a regional hegemon or cease to exist.
Arab states would be in perpetual conflict as Russia and China sponsored one against the other. Dictatorships would rule everywhere.
Yet Albo the Groveller takes all this for granted, and Washington has noticed.
Anthony Albanese’s visit to Beijing next week has just become complicated and even more laden with risk.
The message from Washington during the Prime Minister’s visit to the US capital was one of concern that Australia might be going soft on China.
How Albanese handles himself when he lands in Beijing has become ever more important.
This had added another layer of complexity to an already politically risky excursion.
US President Joe Biden himself could not have been less subtle. “Trust and verify” was his publicly stated view about the thawing of relations between Canberra and Beijing, during their press call in the Oval Office.
To stress the point, US intelligence big guns were brought to bear in reminding Albanese about the China threat during a visit he was trying to bill as about everything else. Not that any of it would have been news to him: our intelligence agencies have been giving him the same assessments.
Washington should be pissed. Albo is lying. His China grovelling lacks hard calculus of the Australian national interest and does NOT share values with the US.
US hegemony is the only paradigm in which Australian liberalism can survive, yet Albo is willing to gamble it on a few yuan more.
Alternative scenarios of regional Chinese dominance all end similarly with the swift or steady imposition of Beijing’s illiberal values upon Australia.
This goes far beyond any warm and fuzzy feelings about multicultural tolerance being threatened by war in Taiwan. A Chinese hegemon collapses the keystone of freedom itself.
This is one thing for which we can be grateful to Hugh White. His analysis is honest. If China wins, we will need to choose who to send to the gulags.
Thus, Australia’s only strategic goal is to keep the US engaged in the broader Pacific.
Once again, Albo is putting Labor and vestigial Whitlam grovelling ahead of the nation.
