Jeff Byrne

    FOLLOWING the recent failure of Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd to overthrow Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Rudd was consigned to the government’s back benches.

    He was replaced by a former state premier, Bob Carr, who has signaled a change to the nation’s foreign policy by concentrating on the Asia Pacific region, including China.

    This change in policy is wholeheartedly supported by former senior diplomat Richard Woolcott, who believes Australia has a greater responsibility in dealing with her neighbors than with her traditional links to Britain, Europe and the United States.

    Rudd commissioned Woolcott to contribute to a report being prepared by former Treasury Secretary Ken Henry about Australia’s role in the Asian Century.

    According to Woolcott, the report would be directed toward determining a more appropriate and updated role for Australia’s relations with the United States and China.

    He says the report needs to frankly assess the extent to which the United States might be in relative decline and how China is likely to evolve over the next decade. He concedes that the United States will continue to be the major world power for the foreseeable future.

    Australia’s China policy is a priority for Carr, who expressed concern that the rotation of U.S. troops into Australia’s north would be seen as anti-China.

    That would seem to be the thin end of the wedge. In the past week, it was learned that the United States was planning to establish a military base on Australia’s Cocos Islands in the Indian Ocean.

    America already has one of the world’s biggest military bases on the archipelago of Diego Garcia. It is perhaps the most strategically important and secretive base outside the United States and is accessible only to the military.

    In his contribution to the report, Woolcott warns that the ANZUS (Australia, New Zealand, United States) Treaty should not be regarded as an “absolute guarantee” of American military support, or as a political cow. He points out that ANZUS, or the broader U.S. alliance, had taken Australia into three wars — in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan — all unsuccessfully (and costly).

    Woolcott contends that the report should send a clear signal to the public at large and to China and the United States that, while Australia has values different from China and an alliance with the United States, Australia welcomes China’s rise and opposes policies directed at China’s containment.

    “[Australia] sees no intrinsic reason why China ... cannot continue to rise peacefully,” he stated. “A failure to accommodate a rising China, [or] if mismanaged, could lead to instability and frustrate progress toward Asia-Pacific regional cooperation.”

    He maintains that Australia does not engage enough with China at governmental, ministerial and business levels.

    Australians, and others, should view with alarm the proposed Cocos initiative. There is already a U.S. satellite monitoring base at Pine Gap in northern Australia that restricts visitors, even Australian government officials.

    Americans and the Australian Government claim this has nothing to do with “containing China.” If you believe that, you must believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

    If the Cocos Islands become another Diego Garcia, Australia will have no control whatsoever. And she will be dancing in the dark with almost every nation in the Asia-Pacific region distancing themselves.

    It appears that the U.S. military industrial complex has identified a new, nonexistent threat for the new century.

    (The author is a former Shenzhen Daily senior copy editor and writer.)