Australia is Smarter than it Realizes

AUSTRALIA NEEDS GLEE LIVE!!!!

Reblog if you think we need it too :)

Gay. Gold Coast, Australia  :D

(I’m in the white t-shirt)

flirtingwithdeath17.tumblr.com

It’s amazing what we can do together. Earlier tonight, this poll was the opposite.

Jerry with Aussie stuff hehe

some australian flora.

Lol as.

I will be there soon enough… 

The power of Tumblr. 

Highly controversial iron-ore magnate Lang Hancock called upon Australia in 1979 to ‘wake up’ and secure it place on the nuclear world stage, guaranteeing its security and power for the future. He stated succinctly:

There is no prize for dragging the chain in this fiercely competitive world.

After taking a glance at the Lowy Institute Poll 2011 I initially saw Australia as being similarly asleep in an East Asian world rife with geopolitical difficulties, power transition, exhausting economic complexities, and increasing East Asian militarism. This is not the case. Unlike Hancock’s call for nuclear arms, Australia’s appearance of sleeping on the changes in East Asia is an act. In fact, the Australian polity appears to have been listening, carefully and cleverly calculating its needs and strategies for securing its future; even if it doesn’t realize it.

Contrasting the poll numbers with recent observations on Australian foreign policy and historical trends show Australia is adapting to a world increasingly concerned with traditional notions of international relations rather than post-modern frameworks while cleverly utilizing their self-interest to economically and militarily ‘have their cake and eat it too’.

Behind this view is Australia’s unique geopolitical position defined by its proximity to a rising, increasingly aggressive China, complex littoral region comprised of small populous and sometimes unstable nations, and vast distance from her biggest allies, the United Kingdom and United States. This has caused friction between immediate, rational objections such as power balancing and geopolitical strategy, and the lofty, post-Cold War ideals of multilateralism and post-modern warfare that has engulfed the EU and North America, Australia’s most important allies.

Indeed, Australia has seen this frustration come to a head rather rapidly. The Lowy Institute itself published an infinitely interesting debate on multilateralism’s role and future in Australia that underscores a crumbling foundation to the post-Cold War euphoria of supposedly escaping history. Further, as Michael Wesley implies in his book There Goes the Neighborhood, Australia is waking up to find the assumptions of this peaceful space to be eroding.

Australia, he says, has become a country of “insular internationalists”: rich and well-travelled but complacent and switched-off about the many ways in which the rising giants of China and India are changing their region. “An inversion of our world has happened without us noticing,” Mr Wesley says. In this inverted world, many of Australia’s old certainties are up for grabs, including the alliance with America that was born from that earlier Asian shock.

I ask, is this inversion really taking place without Australia noticing? The answer is no. The crumbling of a globalized world in which progress was linear and Fukuyama had the confidence to celebrate “the end of history” is the byproduct of human nature. Perhaps it takes time for us to become aware of our own actions, but while mouths have been espousing collaboration and harmony, hands have been utilizing those same concerns of power balance, geopolitics, and competition, that have defined human interaction since time itself. The late Samuel Huntington says it best:

Human beings are at times rational, generous, creative, and wise, but they are also often stupid, selfish, cruel, and sinful. The struggle that is history began with the eating of the forbidden fruit and is rooted in human nature. In history there may be total defeats, but there are no final solutions. So long as human beings exist, there is no exit from the traumas of history. To hope for the benign end of history is human. To expect it to happen is unrealistic. To plan on it happening is disastrous.

This brings us back to the original issue of interpreting the Lowy Poll numbers.

Australia has seen a steady warming to the United States over the past five years, while attitudes towards China have equally cooled. On a one hundred ‘degree’ scale (50 being neither hot nor cold) the United States is at 70 degrees in 2011 compared to 62 in 2006, while China has cooled to 53 degrees in 2011 from 61 degrees in 2006. Further, Australians have placed increasing importance on its US alliance, with 82% percieving it to be ‘very’ or ‘fairly’ important, up from 72% in 2006.

The numbers go deeper however. A detailed look shows that Australia is seeking to maximize the economic benefits of a rising China while also hedging against the conventional threat of China’s military growth in Asia. Australia is playing a clever game, perhaps without realizing it. By allowing the US to lead the China-balancing effort in the Pacific, the economic and diplomatic repercussions of such posturing is thereby absorbed by the US. This allows Australia to continue exploiting economic gains from China while simultaneously fulfilling its security needs with minimal national investment.

First I will look at the economic side. Australians overwhelmingly see China’s growth as being good for Australia, 75% agreeing in 2011 with a 12% increase in this view from 2008. However, 57% believe China is allowed too much investment, a sign of both natural tension from shifting power in the Pacific, and a sign of the strength of China’s economic prowess in Australia.

The security side is much more complex. First, Australia sees its alliance with the US as both natural and pragmatic. A large 82% ( up from 72% in 2005) see Australia’s relationship with the US as important, 78% defining it as a natural alliance built on common values and ideals. On a more pragmatic note, 57% see the US alliance as making Australia safer while only 21% believe Australia would be able to defend itself without the US. Further, 75% would expect to see a dramatic increase in Australian defense spending without the United States.

However, with any traditional international relations decision, an alliance carries risks. Substantially, 73% expressed worry that a US alliance makes the nation more likely to be drawn into an Asian conflict that is not in Australia’s interest. Also notable is that 49% believe the US to be increasingly at odds with Australian interests, and 41% worry about US decline relative to China. The rational gains of a US alliance, even assuming the risks described, has manifested itself in a 55% support for US bases.

What threat would make Australia willing to assume such a notable risk of being drawn into a conflict it has not stake in? China, even though Australia might not want to admit it. The poll shows this plainly with 65% agreeing that China seeks to dominate Asia and 50% agreeing China should be limited through alliances with other nations. Most notably, only 34% of Australians believe that China’s increasing power and gains would not harm Australia’s interests.

In condensing the discussion above, Australia places a great importance on its relationship with the US for both natural and pragmatic reasons. China evokes a positive response economically, but there is notable suspicion when it comes to China as a security threat. In a vacuum, Australia would be forced to carefully balance its economic needs with military spending and development to meet China’s military threat. Australia does not exist in a vacuum, however, and the United States conveniently solves their problem. By placing the United States between Australia and China, even if it involves the hosting of US military bases, Australian security needs are satisfied without having to suffer the consequences of reacting militarily to China while simultaneously seeking increased economic benefit.

Australia has been portrayed as waking up to a world in which the foundations of its foreign policy have been rattled, and holes are beginning to appear. This is a false accusation. The world of international relations is constructed by people and effected by our nature. Australians, like every other nation, have been (maybe subconsciously) act in accordance with this nature. Perhaps the wake-up is simply a re-acquaintance with the lessons of history which were obscured in the post-Cold War space. Regardless, faced once again with securing its economic and security interests, Australians cleverly see the United States as a willing, and cheap, shield against resurgent Asian military growth and assertiveness. This allows the island nation to continue seeking the economic gains of Chinese investment, even though the risk is evident that Australia could be pulled into an Asian war against its interests. Although the polity may not be consciously aware, Australia has been cleverly calculating how to best secure its interests in a traditional sense, as distinctly shown by the Lowy Institute’s 2011 poll.