Ordinary New Zealanders and Australians have little idea about the momentous changes coming our way. For a couple of centuries we have been outposts of a Western empire that is losing its dominance of the region. Instead of having open national discussions about how our countries should respond to the rise of China, India and Indonesia – just part of the coming Asian Century – our leaders are shuttering our minds and framing public discourse in ways that hinder rather than help. Our media and many leading members of the commentariat are keeping our collective minds in thrall to a US-Western world view. If we wish to survive and thrive in this region – and in the emerging multipolar world – we may need to free ourselves from this form of mental slavery.
Singaporean Kishore Mahbubani, twice President of the UN Security Council, says Australia – and this applies equally to New Zealand - is going to have a very difficult time in the Asian century if we do not adjust our headsets:
“Australia has benefited enormously from the 200 years of Western domination of world history. The West will remain strong but will no longer be the single dominant civilization. So Australia, psychologically, has got to accept that it is in a multi-civilizational world. Australia will have to adjust and adapt to Chinese power and live with that reality. It means a psychological adjustment first before you carry out your other adjustments.”
I’d suggest a good place to start would be for our media to stop having American, English and other European voices hogging our airwaves. How often do we hear Chinese, Indonesian, Singaporean, Indian, Iranian or Malaysian officials and experts compared to the Usual Suspects: anglosphere officials and commentators from the Telegraph, NYT, Washington Post, CNN, BBC, etc. Why do we have to go to Youtube or elsewhere to hear Iranian officials and commentators like Mohammad Marandi, correspondents from Anadolu Agency (Turkish), the Palestine Chronicle, Hamas representatives, Drop Site, CGTN (Chinese) and so on. Even drawing from the anglosphere, John Mearsheimer, Chas Freeman, and Medea Benjamin would contribute fresh American perspectives - and yet, despite their stature, are seldom invited. Gideon Levy, Amira Hass or Shir Hever can give contrarian perspectives on Israel but are largely blocked from sharpening our geopolitical understanding. Why are we so reluctant to share the microphone with people who we may disagree with? Are we afraid they may successfully challenge the dominant narrative?
Professor Hugh White, one of Australia’s sharpest defence analysts, says the Western preeminence that has framed the political and economic order in Asia for centuries is facing the most severe challenge it has ever faced.
Our recent efforts to respond have been less than stellar. On AUKUS: “Don't get me started, because it's the stupidest thing which we've tried to do,” Professor White told an audience in Wellington in August.
He says our two countries will be hugely impacted by how the US deals with the rise of China and the other Asian powers. Few people are even aware that our close neighbour Indonesia will be the world’s fourth largest economy and with it a significant power by the middle of this century.
Professor White set out the three options open to the US, each consequential for Australasians. It could seek to contain China and maintain its regional hegemony (doomed to fail, or worse). It could accept a role as “one of the gang” and stay involved (White’s preferred scenario) or the US could eventually be pushed out of the region (the scary-sounding option for us).
AUKUS, however misguided it is, could at least be a way into a much-needed debate about how Australia and New Zealand position themselves going forward. Current thinking in Canberra and in Wellington has reflexively signed us up for Team America. We apparently share values with the most violent country on the planet. A sounder template for our foreign policy would be close adherence to UNSC resolutions, and not joining up to things that don't have such authorization, including military adventures in the Red Sea or South China Sea.
Our leaders, our policy elites and our media have formed a trio beating a simple anti-Chinese drumbeat that could keep the Americans happy but may lead us down a path that is not in our own strategic interest – either in security or economic terms. War is a real risk and siding with a belligerent US hell-bent on dominance could mean painting targets on our own backs.
It is more than a little mystifying why Labor under Albanese is allowing an expansion of US bases that many see as virtually handing over the country’s strategic decision-making to Washington. New Zealand’s government also seems increasingly captured by Pentagon-think. Will Kiwis be pressured to move away from the long-held anti-nuclear policy and drift further from a US-friendly-but-relatively-independent approach? If the US has a brain explosion and pushes the region into a proper war, our long-held assumption that we are far away and safe may evaporate in a flash.
“If the risk of war is high, then the risk of a nuclear war is high,”Professor White says. “This may seem a bit melodramatic, but we cannot avoid a discussion of whether our countries believe we should go to war with China, if necessary, to try to preserve the US-led order in Asia. Because that is the big choice we potentially face.”
Rather than upping military budgets, allowing our countries to be turned into US protectorates, and preparing to kill Chinese people, it would be wiser to invest in deepening our relationships with all our neighbours.
Jessica Kruk, Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at Monash University, is one of a group of academics warning that Australia (and, most certainly New Zealand too) is going backwards not forwards in engaging with Asia. One of the litmus tests: the number of students learning Asian languages. Bahasa Indonesian studies is falling through the floor at the very time this near neighbour is joining the ranks of the major global economies. More students are still learning Latin, French and German than the countries that we will share our futures with.
“Many politicians have spruiked the importance of learning Indonesian. But to borrow the words of former Prime Minister Paul Keating, this is “all tip and no iceberg”. In fact, you’d have to go back to the Keating era to find a concerted government effort to understand Asia,” she and other Monash academics wrote last year.
To end, Professor White says the emerging multipolar world will demand more of us; but we shouldn’t catastrophize.
“What we need to do is to prepare for it. The heart of it is that our neighbours will be much more important to us than our old, distant friends – and we can't be sentimental about that.”
EUGENE DOYLE
Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz.