Introducing the Scenarios
Denis Bright introduces three scenarios for the future of Australia’s international relations in 2051. It is the 150th Anniversary of Australian Federation but just another season in 60,000 plus years of Indigenous settlements.
Pre-historic indigenous migrations and exploration of our northern coastlines by Makassan, Indo-Malaya and Chinese navigators had also long predated such formal constitutional events in the long historical perspective of the Australian Republic.
The scenarios have the macro-political goals of fostering debate about future trends in international relations across a vast Indo-Pacific Hemisphere that extends from East Africa to the Pacific Coast of the US and Canada.
The three scenarios presented in these articles are far from cataclysmic. Other darker scenarios are possible.
The first two scenarios might indeed be very consoling to surviving federal LNP stalwarts from the Abbott-Turnbull Era.
In Scenario 1, Australia is a key player in the US Global Alliance Systems which has been re-branded as the New Coalition of the Willing (New Coalition).
Our localized responsibility is to monitor the sea lanes and strategic air routes between the Pacific and Indians Ocean which are adjacent to US Bases in Micronesia and Diego Garcia in the Mid-Indian Ocean.
This is a demanding responsibility for Australia. It comes with a heavy price tag. It is also compromises Australia’s sovereignty. For the centre-right government of the Australian Republic, the challenge is a true imperative.
Clinging onto the strategic might of the US remains the cornerstone of Australian foreign policy in 2051 in the re-branded New Coalition of the Willing.
Australia basks in its evolving role as a key regional player with Japan, Indonesia, a United Korea and India to consolidate key strategic and economic goals of most countries in the Indo-Pacific Hemisphere.
Progress in building the New Coalition had come through a series of clever incremental steps since those unstable days of the Abbott-Turnbull Era. Eyewitness news services barely noticed the extent of Australia’s firm integration with the New Coalition. Media coverage of open days on naval vessels and sweeping shots of US troops in transit through Darwin helped to answer any doubts about Australia’s sovereignty.
Step by step the momentum of the New Coalition became unstoppable. Looking through the news archives prior to 2051, today’s students are becoming concerned at the extent of commitment required to be on the verge of armed conflict year after year. The universal concern after archival sessions in foreign policy research is quite simply how did Australia get into such an international stew.
Let’s visit this hypothetical university class who is looking back through the digital archives on the events of 2017. What incremental pathways towards the New Coalition is the class identifying?
Vital Incremental Steps from 2017
Back in the last weekend of July 2017, Australia and Indonesia had just co-chaired a leaders’ forum at Manado in South Sulawesi Indonesia. Makassan navigators had visited Northern Australia from here at least three hundred years ago. Now our leaders arrived in Sulawesi on a strong tail wind of political enthusiasm from the mythical South Land.
Australia’s then Attorney-General Senator the Hon George Brandis QC had arrived with some high-profile information briefs. The official agenda was to encourage leaders from Malaysia, Brunei and New Zealand for joint action against Islamic terrorism in South East Asia (ABC News Online 29 July 2017: DFAT Media 29 July 2017).
A secondary but possibly more important longer-term agenda was to rescue the Philippines and Indonesia from any drift towards non-alignment in international relations.
Except for Australia, governments represented at Manado had supported the Draft Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons at the UN Committee Meetings in New York during 2016-17 and supported the draft text for ratification on 7 July 2017.
Intensive lobbying by Australia and the US failed to stop Brunei and New Zealand from breaking ranks with their long-standing support for the Draft Treaty. This agenda had not been exhausted. A short-term set back was quite anticipated.
Ratification of this Draft Treaty would have closed the sea lanes and air routes in our near north to the movement of nuclear weapons between US bases in Micronesia to Diego Garcia and the Middle East.
Despite its long-standing commitment to non-alignment in Indonesia, Australia had worked behind the scenes with supportive sections of President Widodo’s administration which was still basking in the successes of a state visit to Australia in February 2017.
Indonesia’s Defence Minister Retired General Ryacudu was particularly receptive to a more militarized Indonesia. He proved his strategic credentials as Chief of Staff of the Indonesian Army (2002-05), Commander of Security Operations in Kostrad (2000-02) and long-standing but retrospective supporter of General Suharto’s coup d’état in 1965 when General Ryacudu was still at high school.
Despite the relative decline of the US in the global economy particularly after the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) in 2007, right-wing governments from Israel to Saudi Arabia, India, Taiwan, United Korea all welcomed the assistance of Australia and Japan in maintaining US strategic influence across the Indo-Pacific Hemisphere.
In 2017, New Zealand was still a strategic challenge for the New Coalition. Since 1986, New Zealand had been off-limits to visits by nuclear powered ships carrying nuclear weapons.
Now in 2017 opportunities existed for changes in New Zealand’s strategic outlook after the election on 23 September 2017 if Prime Minister Bill English could be returned as a minority but potentially unstable government with the support of the NZ First Party of Winston Peters to survive the unexpectedly strong swing to the Labour/Green Alliance bloc.
The role of Japan’s Abe Government in maintaining the profile of the New Coalition was also invaluable to the New Coalition across the Indo-Pacific Region. Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott had helped by claiming Japan as our best economic and strategic partner in Asia. Now our contacts in the New Coalition were swamping us with more and more strategic friends from Israel across to Canada.
Japan contributed $3.1 billion to assist in the redeployment of US Marines in Micronesia which still bristles with US bases in Guam, Marshall Islands and other locations (ABC News Online 27 April 2016):
While international attention is often captured by US military operations in the Middle East, for the past decade, Guam has quietly been the location of what the US assistant secretary for the navy, B.J. Penn, called “the largest project that the Department of Defence has ever attempted”.
About $US20 billion ($26 billion) is being spent on establishing a Marine base and upgrading existing bases including the Andersen Air Force Base and the naval base around Apra Harbour.
Guam also hosts an increasing number of B52 bombers and jet fighters, and its upgraded ports will soon be able to accommodate more submarines and destroyers.
The US regularly flies its B52s on training missions over the South China Sea, which is now the site of aggressive Chinese territorial expansion.
Always on Patrol
Keeping the sea lanes and air routes open for strategic aircraft between Micronesia, Diego Garcia and the Middle East to Australia’s North became a diplomatic imperative for other right-wing governments in Taiwan, India and Israel whose Red Sea Fleet operates in the Indian Ocean with operational undersea nuclear missiles (The National Interest Online 9 October 2014).
As the confidence of these loyal US Allies increases, Australia is becoming more daring in its local commitments to Pax Australiana with offers of military assistance to our neighbours in the Near North in PNG, Timor-Leste and Vanuatu who persist in retaining that foolish nostalgia for ASEAN values of keeping out of the global arms race.
Under Australia’s highly politicised presidency, Australia remains a bastion of the New Coalition.
This is a badge of honour which continues to frighten dissidents at home and abroad. After a century of evolution since the ANZUS Treaty of 1951, the New Coalition has become a locally focused article of faith in shared wider economic and political values. Singing that our land is girt by sea has become a real understatement in 2051 in the centenary year of the ANZUS Treaty under its mid-century New Coalition logo that is so eulogised by the mainstream pro-republican media networks.
Tomorrow … Scenario 2 in Indo Pacific Futures 2051: Living with Strong Steady States
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