Rudd Pacific Plan Lost at Sea?

June 02, 2010

By Anthony Fensom

‘The policy of Howard was determinedly bilateral rather than multilateral, which fits with his pragmatism and realism. Rudd is more multilateral, which comes from the “Asian engagement” philosophy which dominates Labor orthodoxy.’

Rudd, who served as a diplomat in Sweden and China in the 1980s and as Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs from 2001 before becoming Labor leader, argued before gaining office that Australia’s foreign policy must be concentrated on its near neighbours.

Nevertheless, his government’s foreign policy has been based on three pillars: support for the US alliance; strengthening the United Nations, including seeking a seat on the UN Security Council by 2014; and ‘comprehensive engagement in the Asia-Pacific region.’ Nuclear disarmament has been another avowed Rudd goal, pursued on a multilateral basis with backing from Japan.

But by early 2010, Rudd’s honeymoon in foreign affairs, along with other areas of government, was well and truly over.

In a January 15, 2010 article published in The Australian headlined ‘Dysfunctional diplomacy,’ the newspaper’s Asia-Pacific editor, Rowan Callick, argued that despite Rudd’s credentials, ‘Australia’s relations with most of the important powers in the Asia-Pacific region are worse now than when Rudd took over.’

According to Callick, the Government’s goals of gaining admission to the UNSC, nuclear disarmament and developing the new APc ‘remain distant.’

‘Relationships with China, India and Japan have hit some turbulence…Relations with Fiji, the hub of the Pacific Islands region, have plummeted since military rule was established there,’ he wrote. He described the Indonesia relationship as ‘steady,’ although it was subsequently rocked by the Oceanic Viking refugee stand-off.

Dr Martin-Jones agreed with the criticisms, saying Rudd had seemed ‘politically deaf’ to Asia’s requirements in launching the APc onto an unsuspecting region.

‘It seems very strange that someone who is supposed to be Asia-literate has approached ASEAN in such an illiterate way,’ he said ‘He raised the APc proposal without first raising it informally in the ASEAN context, which is how ASEAN operates and is well known to any ASEAN literate scholar or diplomat.’

‘To send Richard Woolcott, a gerontocrat, a dinosaur, around the region to try and create some impetus, strikes Southeast Asians and any kind of objective commentator as a kind of surrealistic move,’ he said.

While Rudd’s election was originally welcomed in China, relations have soured over Chinese investment in Australian resources, the arrest and imprisonment of an Australian mining executive in Shanghai, an Australian defence white paper warning of the Chinese military threat and over the visit of a Uighur activist.

Ties with Japan have suffered over Rudd’s perceived closeness to China—a perception supported by his long-delayed visit to Tokyo and apparent initial kowtowing to Beijing—and the Government’s apparent collusion with radical opponents of Japanese whaling and threat of international court action over the issue.