King Keating sticks it to the world
Like King Canute setting his throne on the beach and ordering the tide to stop rising, Paul Keating this week took his seat at the National Press Club and gave his orders to the governments of the world. Itâs 25 years since he lost the prime ministership, and 26 since his last appearance at the National Press Club, but it seems the reach of his ambition has only grown in retirement.
He gave orders to the US about its geopolitics â" America has to âcome to a point of accommodation where it acknowledges Chinaâs pre-eminence in East Asia and the Asian mainlandâ. US President Joe Biden had better ditch his notion that America is âin competition with China to win the 21st centuryâ.
Illustration: John ShakespeareCredit:The Sydney Morning Herald
Keating set Japan straight about its geopolitics, too â" âif you had a tuppence worth of common sense, youâre a Japanese leader, you would be accommodating yourself to China, finding a point of accommodationâ. Japanâs newly elected Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, will have to abandon his conception that Japan is âon the front line in the international confrontation of valuesâ between democracies and autocracies and his demand that âChina must act responsiblyâ.
Keating issued India its set of strategic guidelines â" âIndia will never be part of the East Asian systemâ and âIndia looks west to Pakistan and the Middle East. It does not look east to East Asia. That is the real position. Now, is that too hard to work out?â
Actually, India had a policy to âLook Eastâ until Prime Minister Narendra Modi re-energised it as an âAct Eastâ policy in 2014, so thatâll have to go. But Modi will be reassured by Keatingâs remark that âIndia is in such a good position, itâs got a wall thatâs impenetrable in the Himalayasâ. Modi can now order the withdrawal of his troops in their tense standoff with Chinese forces along their Himalayan border after a deadly territorial skirmish last year.
And Keating overruled not only Australiaâs government, but also its opposition. âIâm here to say that the parties, in respect of their current policies, are fundamentally not up to it. Both of them. That is the Coalition and the Labor Party.
âThe Australian people are entitled to know that China is not going to try and rip up the system. China is not going to be attacking people ⦠You know, we can have a civil relationship with them, even though we disagree on a range of other issues.â
Yet when he was asked about the cutting edge of Australiaâs confrontation with Beijing, Keatingâs advice was evasive. Nine News reporter Jonathan Kearsley asked him about the list of 14 demands that China made on Australia last November.
Item No. 1 was the demand that Australia stop blocking Chinese investment on national security grounds. No. 2 was that Australia reverse its ban on Huawei. Three was that Australia dump its foreign interference and espionage laws. And so on, including the demands that Australian members of parliament and media cease making any comments critical of China. Recall that Beijing had banned all political contact with Australia and imposed punitive trade sanctions on at least $20 billion worth of Australian exports.
Both Australiaâs government and opposition had flatly rejected the demands and refused any suggestion of negotiating over them. Now Kearsley asked Keating the pivotal question: âWhich of these 14 items would you be prepared to negotiate on?â
Keating began by replying: âLook, the key point is, is the rise of China legitimate? ... The key is to recognise, if we give China the recognition I believe it is due, in terms of its legitimacy, in turning 20 per cent of the Earthâs population back into something approaching even $10,000 a head [in national income], then I think a lot of these issues, the so-called 14 points, sort of fall off the table.â
Two points here. First, he didnât answer the question. Second, even taking Keatingâs point on its merits, no Australian minister ever has challenged the legitimacy of Chinaâs rise. Or the scale of its achievement. In fact, just about every Australian political speech of recent years lauded Chinaâs enormous success in reducing poverty.
Kearsleyâs question remained. Pressed again, Keating evaded again. The implication, however, from his injunction that Australia âgive China the recognition I believe it is dueâ, is that Australia should capitulate. If so, he should say so. If he has a better idea, he should say so. If he has nothing to say about the great impasse, why ask to appear before the National Press Club to talk about Australia and China in the first place?
By Friday afternoon, there was no indication that any of these governments â" the US, Japan, India or Australia â" was acting on Keatingâs instructions. As King Canute found in trying to turn back the tide, he was kidding himself. In the case of the 11th century King of England, scholars think that â" if the tale is true, and itâs probably apocryphal â" he was likely trying to demonstrate the limits of his powers, his humility before God. In the case of Keating, there is no such hint of self-awareness.
Instead, the four countries, rather than yield to Beijing as Keating instructed, have come together to balance against it. The leaders of Australia, India, Japan and the US held the first in-person summit of the Quad â" the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue â" in Washington in September. The only reason the Quad has come together is its shared concern about Chinaâs new aggression. Bidenâs Indo-Pacific Co-ordinator, Kurt Campbell, put it this way: âThe subtext of all of this, of course, is the challenge that China presents and each of the countries in the last year in their own way has faced profound and unnerving challengesâ from Beijing.
Keating had predicted the Quad would never advance beyond meetings at officials level. Asked about the Quad this week, Keating had nothing coherent to say about it and brushed it aside.
Here is a great disjunction in Keatingâs position. One of his longstanding themes is that âAustralia should find its security in Asia, not from Asiaâ. But the Quad is centred on Asia, with Japan at the north of the four-pointed diamond, India to the west, Australia to the South and the US to the East. Why wonât Keating accept it? Itâs committed to âa free and open Indo-Pacificâ and explicitly acknowledges âthe centrality of ASEANâ, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. It seems that he wonât acknowledge anything that doesnât have China in charge.
And that illustrates the central problem with Keatingâs appearance this week. He simply cannot accept anything or anyone that fails to conform to his preconception of the world order. Any inconvenient fact is attacked, mocked or ignored.
So the US, Japan, India and Australia are wrong. Britain, because it has joined the AUKUS group and expressed concern about China, is to be ridiculed: âBritain is like an old theme park sliding into the Atlantic compared to modern China.â Prime Minister Boris Johnson is âold coconut headâ.
Australiaâs national security agencies, which heâd previously said were run by ânuttersâ who should be sacked, are wrong, too, in Keatingâs view. And The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age he dismissed this week as âning-nongsâ. Iâm happy to admit to being one of the leading ning-nongs of Keatingâs characterisation. The definition of ning-nong seems to include anyone who has recognised the reality that China has changed under the rule of Xi Jinping. Under Xi, China has transformed from being a status quo power to a revisionist one.
As Lavina Lee, senior lecturer in international relations at Macquarie University, put it on the ABCâs Q+A: âWhen you listen to Paul Keating, heâs got a very benign view of China thatâs based on a 1970s assessment of its foreign policy objectives. I think thatâs a kind of wrong basis from which to act. China is the only dissatisfied power in Asia, in the region. It is revisionist and it has expanded its ideas of what its territorial borders are. It used to be satisfied with consolidating control over its land borders in Xinjiang and Tibet. Now it sees the South China Sea and the East China Sea as part of its natural territory and seeks a permanent presence there.â
Illustration: Jim PavlidisCredit:The Age
The more its power grows, the more territory and rights it demands from its neighbours. Yet in Keatingâs view, Beijing is correct; everyone else should fall back in awe.
After 26 years, did Keatingâs return to the press club have any value? It did. Whether you agree with him or not, he revived debate about Australia, China and the world. And he drew attention to the growing tensions over Taiwan, which loom as a potential flash point between Beijing and Washington. If so, Australia will face a grave choice. Itâs one we discuss rarely, yet its consequences would be profound.
Keating, naturally, wants Australia to stay out of any war over Taiwan. But could Australia remain indifferent if Beijing invaded an island democracy of 25 million people? If the US intervened to protect Taiwan, what would Australia do?
Keating might not be able to reorder the world to his liking, but at least he gets us talking.
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Peter Hartcher is political editor and international editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via email.
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