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Australia's Strategic Importance

When Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of Australia took office last December, there was widespread speculation in Australia, Asia, and the United States that his foreign and defense policy would favor loosening ties with the United States and tilting toward China.

Speculators pointed to his major in Chinese history and language in university, further study of the Chinese language in Taiwan, and service as a diplomat in Australia's embassy in Beijing. The officially controlled Chinese press and TV news were close to ecstatic that Lu Kewen, as Rudd is known in Chinese, had come to power.

To the contrary, said Australia's Defense Minister, Joel Fitzgibbon, who asserted that the speculators had shown "poor judgment." In an interview during a stopover in Hawaii on his way to Washington, Fitzgibbon said that his prime minister was "well-versed in Chinese politics" and saw his experience in China as an opportunity "to promote trust."

He insisted, however, "that should not be read as a pro-China tilt." An American officer said the Pacific Command was "intrigued" by Prime Minister Rudd's connection with China and was watching to see how it developed.

Fitzgibbon met here with the leader of the Pacific Command, Admiral Timothy Keating, and visited Australian ships in port at Pearl Harbor for the biennial 10-national maritime exercise known as Rim of the Pacific or Rimpac. He was scheduled to arrive in Washington on July 14 to meet with Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Fitzgibbon said his ministry was deep into drafting a new White Paper on defense, the first in eight years, and it would re-emphasize Australia's commitment to its alliance with the US. Even with a new government in Canberra, he said, Australia's reliance on the US for security "certainly hasn't changed." The White Paper is due to be published in March 2009.

He applauded a budding concept at the Pacific Command, which holds that the US need not take the lead in every contingency in Asia and the Pacific. Rather, others should be encouraged to lead while the US takes a supporting role. Some US officers call it "leading from the middle," others "leading from within," and still others "leading from behind." Fitzgibbon said Australia was ready to carry out its responsibilities.

Although a nation with a relatively small population of 22 million, Australia has been integrated into the US security posture in Asia because of its strategic location next door to Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. Fitzgibbon said the new White Paper would focus on Australia's role in that region. Said a senior US officer: "If they are there, we don't have to be there."

The defense minister said Australia hoped to improve the multilateral security architecture in Southeast Asia, which Australians call the "Near North." He said the Rudd government wanted to see included all nations within the region or with interests in that neighborhood. Some proposals in the past, notably those from the former Malaysian prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, have sought to exclude the US.

Fitzgibbon said he hoped to widen the current focus on economic issues to include more on strategic issues of foreign and security policy. Southeast Asia today is the site of an alphabet soup of organizations such as ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation), and EAS (East Asia Summit). They are sometimes considered "talk shops" of questionable accomplishment.

The defense minister, a member of the national legislature in Australia's parliamentary government, said he was encouraged by Japan's increasing engagement in security issues, and had met with Japanese Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba at the Shangri-la conference of defense ministers in Singapore in May. Fitzgibbon said, however, he saw no need to formalize the emerging trilateral security partnership among Australia, Japan, and the US.

Fitzgibbon, who is 46, is relatively new to the defense field. He was elected to parliament in 1996 and for ten years was engaged mostly in domestic issues. Earlier this month, he stirred controversy by calling for the abolition of the nation's state governments, saying Australia was "the most over-governed country in the world.'' He pointed to duplication, inefficiencies, and buck passing that cost the economy billions.

In 2006, after being appointed shadow defense minister in the Labor Party, then in opposition, Fitzgibbon sought to get up to speed on defense issues by consulting with former defense ministers and "doing a lot of reading."

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Related Topics: asia | australia | china | national security |

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