US power won't last: labor

[Strengthandhonour]

US power won't last: labor

By Tom Hyland

The Age

AUSTRALIA cannot risk alienating China as there is no guarantee the United States will remain the dominant power in Asia, Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Robert McClelland says.

Nor should it sign a defence treaty with Japan or enter formal security talks with our allies and India, which China would see as an attempt to encircle it, Mr McClelland said.

His blunt comments to The Sunday Age contrast with the more measured words of his leader, Kevin Rudd, who has sought to reassure voters — and Washington — that Labor regards US leadership and strategic presence as enduring and essential to peace in the Asia-Pacific region.

They also risk reinforcing suspicions among critics of Labor that foreign policy under a Rudd government would be overly sensitive to Chinese concerns.

While the Government has not openly made the same criticism, it has been expressed by media commentators who are sometimes favoured by the Government.

"The difference between the Government and Labor is that the reality is you can't ignore the fact that China is going to be a major economic and military power in our region," Mr McClelland said.

"We can't assume that for ever and a day the United States will have the predominance of influence that it currently has.

"We therefore have a choice as to how we structure the region so that we have participants literally participating according to international rules, or whether we isolate and expel or alienate one of the major participants and give them cause not to comply by the rules and indeed to break and stretch the rules."

Mr Rudd's position, he said, was that Australia would not be "subservient or submissive" to China. But at the same time, Australia should not support any alliances that were seen to be an attempt to encircle China.

For this reason, Labor opposed any ANZUS-style defence treaty with Japan and formal security talks involving Australia, the US, Japan and India.

Prime Minister John Howard has conceded a new security co-operation agreement signed with Japan in March could lead to a formal defence treaty — a development Mr Rudd has warned could "unnecessarily tie our security interests to the vicissitudes of an unknown security policy future in north-east Asia".

Mr McClelland was less diplomatic. A defence pact with Japan would mean "we would be compelled to go to war if they were attacked", he said.

His doubts about the endurance of Washington's regional dominance contrast sharply with the message Mr Rudd took to Washington last month on his first overseas trip as Opposition Leader.

In a speech to the Brookings Institution think tank, he said Australia and the US had to view the rise of China through the framework of the ANZUS alliance, "which is destined to endure into the future".

The peace and prosperity in the region hinged primarily on "continued US strategic engagement in East Asia and the West Pacific anchored in the existing pattern of US military alliances", Mr Rudd said.

All Australian governments from both sides of politics "continue to state in clear and unequivocal terms to our friends in Beijing the continued centrality of Australia's alliance relationship with the United States".

On other issues, Mr McClelland accused the Government of neglecting pressing problems close to home while it was distracted by Iraq.

He accused Foreign Minister Alexander Downer of behaving like a "school prefect" who had been "patronising and belittling" towards Pacific Island leaders. In South-East Asia, the Government's style was seen as "arrogant and patronising".

The only reason Australian troops remained in southern Iraq was "so we can have a combat flag in the sand to support the current US Administration", Mr McClelland said.

Mr McClelland did not rule out the plausibility of a Rudd government appointing former foreign minister Gareth Evans to a senior diplomatic job.

He said he had not considered the possibility of Mr Evans, who currently heads the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, being offered such a position.

At the same time, he said Mr Evans was held in "considerable respect" internationally.

"Certainly he should not be disentitled to an international role because of his (former) political involvement, but he certainly would have to earn it on his merits, the same as anybody else."

Queensland academic Professor Michael Wesley, a former senior official in the Office of National Assessments and author of a recent book on Mr Howard's foreign policy, told The Sunday Age he believed Mr Rudd would appoint Mr Evans to a "super diplomatic role", possibly as a personal envoy.


source: US power won\'t last: Labor - National - theage.com.au