Canberra's Approach to Asia-Pacific Regional Security

CHAPTER SIX

SINCE the pace of international change started to accelerate in 1989, the extraordinary has so much become the commonplace that we sometimes need to stop and pinch ourselves to appreciate fully the scale of the transformation.  Following the abortive August 1991 coup in Moscow we have seen nothing less than a massive historical earthquake, in which the USSR has vanished, communism has disappeared as a ruling force in all but four countries, and nearly 20 new states have emerged on the Eurasian landmass.

In short, we have seen in less than a year the total collapse of the bipolar global structure that has characterised and underpinned international affairs since 1945.  On the positive side, this has meant not only that we need no longer fear a global nuclear holocaust, but that the sterile ideologies of the past no longer in themselves constitute stumbling-blocks to the promotion of security measures through disarmament and arms control, to regional problem-solving, and to the effective intervention of the United Nations in peace-keeping and peace enforcement.

On the other hand, the lifting of the heavy hand of Marxism-Leninism has seen a resurgence of nationalism and ethnic identification, with violence increasingly employed as the means of self-determination in the break-up of nation states -- the appalling series of events in the former Yugoslavia being only the most obvious current case in point.

The fact is that the so-called new world order of the post-Cold War world is far more complex, diverse and unpredictable than the East-West polarity it has replaced.  In the fluid situation we now confront, there are both opportunities and risks.

ASIA-PACIFIC ADJUSTMENTS

The Asia-Pacific area has adjusted to the end of the Cold War much more effectively than many other parts of the world, and in the main, developments have been positive.  These have included movement, albeit stalled at the moment, towards a settlement of the long and tragic Cambodian war, the reintegration of Vietnam and Laos into the region, and a modest reduction of tension on the Korean Peninsula.  Greater regional economic integration, which is a fundamental objective of initiatives such as APEC, will also play its part in reducing regional tensions.

In a phase of world history that has seen a superpower vanish in a matter of weeks, nothing can be regarded as invulnerable to the forces at work in the current international environment.  And problems and possible sources of tension do remain in our own region.

The economic success of some Asia-Pacific countries, for example, is bringing with it greater political power, and in time this will require some adjustments in regional attitudes if envy and competition are to be managed.  The increased wealth and technological sophistication of some regional nations is also leading to increasing weapons imports.  While this cannot yet be called an arms race, the situation will bear watching in the medium term.

Another potential source of tension is Japan's role in regional and global affairs.  While there is growing regional acceptance of Japan playing a political role commensurate with its economic power, there remains considerable resistance to it assuming an enhanced security role, even in the very narrowly defined context of UN-sponsored peace-keeping operations.

The development of China's response to the new international environment has been complicated by the approaching leadership transition, and while China has been playing a very co-operative role within the Security Council, especially on Cambodia, we have seen signs that it could adopt increasingly hardline positions on many international issues, not least on some long-standing territorial claims.

CONTINUING TROUBLES

Residual territorial disputes do continue to trouble parts of the region, most obviously in the South China Sea.  In the most volatile single area of the region, the Korean Peninsula, the North Korean nuclear program and its possible weapons application continues to loom as a spectre.  And there are a significant number of transnational issues -- particularly so-called "police" issues such as refugees, piracy, and drugs -- which are likely to continue for some time causing low-level but irritating problems.

Quite apart from these potential sources of difficulty, the end of the Cold War has also set in motion a quite different process, namely a reshaping of the United States role in the region.  Claims of a US intention to withdraw totally are misinformed, but are themselves tending to contribute to regional uncertainty.

In responding to the changing circumstances around us, the starting point of the Australian Government's national security policy has been very clearly defence self-reliance, as articulated in the 1987 Defence White Paper and in the process of implementation subsequently.

But when we talk about security policy we are, of course, referring to something much broader than just defence policy in the military sense.  As explained very clearly in the Regional Security Statement of December 1989, the Foreign Affairs complement to the 1987 Defence White Paper, we in Australia do not just look to military means -- important though they are -- to protect our interests.  Rather, we have adopted a multi-dimensional approach which looks to other policy instruments as well.  Political co-operation through traditional bilateral diplomacy and in the emerging trans-national problem-solving agenda;  economic and trade relations;  development assistance;  the promotion of people-to-people contacts -- all these enhance Australia's security.  The development of a sense of real interdependence in all these respects will be tremendously helpful in creating the kind of regional environment in which resort to aggression becomes a less and less palatable policy option.

THE POLITICO-MILITARY DIMENSION

The particular dimension of regional security policy which has tended to attract most attention in recent times is the politico-military or "pol-mil" one:  at the interface between diplomacy and traditional defence policy.  What is primarily involved here, in this context, is the fostering of patterns of multilateral security co-operation, in which countries come to see that they are all best served by building their security with, rather than against, each other.

This does not presuppose the establishment of any new military bloc, nor that countries should combine against some external threat.  What is envisaged is a variety of programs that can involve all countries of the region in activities that boost the confidence of each one and at the same time weave a web of security co-operation relationships.  These activities would not be a substitute for existing security links;  rather they would complement them.

In building more intense patterns of regional security co-operation it is important not to ignore the increasingly important contribution to this process of what in the past would have been classified as global co-operation strategies.  Global security mechanisms such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the Missile Technology Control Régime (MTCR) and the impending Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) are all essential foundations for consolidating regional security.  This is one of the reasons Australia has worked so hard, for example, in the chemical weapons context, not only in trying to reach a concluded text in Geneva, but also in building a regional technical expertise and political consensus to ensure that the Convention will be embraced and applied in the region as soon as it is capable of implementation.

As so much of the United Nations' activity in the post-Cold War world is demonstrating -- right across its repertoire from arms control negotiations to peace-making to peace-keeping to peace-enforcing -- there is an increasingly fuzzy borderline these days between global and regional (and in some cases even internal) matters, and certainly security measures in each of these realms can and should be regarded as complementing each other in a mutually reinforcing way.

There has recently been published an advance account of an allegedly wholly new Opposition defence policy which puts all these regional security matters into very interesting relief, and which gives me a useful opportunity to highlight just what the present policy is.

As described in an interview with Opposition spokesman Alexander Downer in The Weekend Australian of 4 July (the date, as will be seen, is a nice irony), the new Opposition policy seems to be built on three basic propositions.  First, that present Australian defence policy is wholly premised upon the alliance relationship with the United States;  secondly, that the United States is withdrawing from the region, leaving our policy denuded as a result;  and thirdly, that what is necessary is a new policy of "co-operative regional deterrence," the creation of a credible regional deterrent to would-be aggressors through a web of closer military links with Australia's Asian and Pacific neighbours.  Each of these propositions is, however, quite seriously flawed.

The criticism that the present policy is over-reliant on the US is rather a startling one to hear from the conservative side of Australian politics!  When the Government released the Dibb Review -- the basis for the current defence policy -- in 1986, the Opposition said this was "a preamble to isolationism."  It accused the Government of leading a "military retreat from ANZUS."  Now the opposite is heard -- that we have been overly reliant on our great and powerful friend.  The reality is we have got the balance right.  A policy has been put in place based on a capacity to defend ourselves, effective co-operation with our regional neighbours and continued strong alliances.  We derive technological, intelligence, training and logistic benefit from our alliance with the United States, and we want to maintain it, but self-reliance means what it says.

As to the post-Cold War United States role in the region, it is of course the case that we have to anticipate a lesser presence but it is not a matter of having to build arrangements that provide for security in the absence of any significant US engagement.  The disappearance of the Soviet threat has removed the rationale for a very large US military presence, of the kind there has been in Asia since the end of World War II, and the absence of this rationale will lead to a less all-pervasive role, simply because American perceptions of its interests are changing.

AMERICAN RECONFIGURATION

But the US is not vanishing, rather going through what is best understood as a reconfiguration of its regional presence.  The US has to decide what its real interests are, determine those which are most important to it in the contemporary post-Cold War world, and devise how to defend them.  This process of redefinition is very important for the region:  it is probably the case that only when US activities in the region are clearly derived from demonstrable American interests will the countries of the region really be convinced that the US presence is reliable and for keeps.

The most important US interests in the region are in fact fairly self-evident.  In geographical terms alone, the United States is a Pacific country.  An extensive western coastline, Alaska, Hawaii, Samoa and Guam give the US more of an Asia-Pacific identity than any imagined European connection.

Even more importantly, US trade with the region is already outstripping that with Europe.  The measure of these growing US economic and commercial links across the Pacific gives the United States a major stake in the continuing prosperity of the region, a prosperity that would be hard to maintain without a high level of regional security.

Commercial considerations aside, the mere presence of two of the world's great powers, namely China and Japan, in the Asia-Pacific region inevitably generates interests for the US as the sole remaining superpower.  The US security arrangement with Japan is widely viewed as vital to regional stability.  Beyond its past effectiveness in providing a check on Soviet aspirations in the area, it has also provided reassurance to the region with respect to Japanese intentions.  Memories of Japanese imperialism linger, and although Japan's growing military capabilities are not a present concern, there is more chance of them becoming seen as such if, in turn, they are seen as supporting an independent military role outside the parameters of the US-Japan security pact.  Without the glue of a common threat, and in the absence of a wiser management of the US-Japan relationship, the competition between the two economic superpowers could lead to increased friction and added incentive for Japan to go its own way.  Such a major change in the complexion of the region would have serious implications for the US as well as for other regional countries.

Taken together, these various factors argue cogently for not only a continuing, but a significant, US engagement in the region for the foreseeable future.  I think we can take statements of intention to remain thus engaged, of the kind made by former President Bush and former Secretary Cheney, at their face value in this respect.

Overall, I believe that the United States will re-engineer its presence in the region, rather than retreat out of sight.  In pursuing its interests in this new environment the United States will have a trimmer military presence, one in which there will be less emphasis on being able to solve problems single-handedly, and more on multilateralism and coalition-building.  Certainly I see the regional security environment as continuing necessarily to involve both the US presence and the kind of positive US role that has been played in the past.

REGIONAL DETERRENCE

As to the third and most self-consciously adventurous leg of the new Opposition policy -- "co-operative regional deterrence" -- there are several things that need to be said.  The first is that the description is unlikely to be appealing to anyone in the region:  it implies that there is a threat to be deterred, risks antagonising major countries, and generally seems more likely to add to tension than to alleviate it.  The ASEAN countries have repeatedly forsworn becoming involved in formal defence pacts, partly because of the perception that this would if anything tend to attract threats.  What the region needs more than simplistic prescriptions is a subtle understanding of its history and dynamics.

The second thing to be said is that even if the Opposition has in mind not so much a formal mutual defence pact as more formalised co-operation in specific areas like training, exercises, procurement and defence industry, there seems to have been a conspicuous underestimation of the degree of difficulty involved in negotiating such arrangements.  The region is moving towards more formalised co-operative arrangements, but the process is slow, cautious and evolutionary:  it is not easy, and it cannot be rushed.

The third point to make is that we of course fully understand the desirability of achieving more comprehensive and far-reaching patterns of mutual defence co-operation;  but I believe that we have already been doing everything a country like Australia could reasonably do to advance the process, building on the long history we have had of involvement in both bilateral and regional defence co-operation arrangements.  So to the extent that there is any legitimate substance in what is being proposed by the Opposition, there is simply nothing new.

ESTABLISHMENT OF REGIONAL SECURITY

It needs to be appreciated that the countries of the region are already now very much engaged in post-Cold War regional security policy formulation, and they are becoming ever more so with each passing month.  In developments barely conceivable four or five years ago, regional security has now become firmly and centrally established on the agenda of the ASEAN Post Ministerial Conference, the region's premier political dialogue forum, and the ASEAN Heads of Government at their recent Summit themselves formally agreed for the first time to regularly and systematically address security issues.

Indonesia has sponsored a very constructive series of workshops on the conflicting territorial claims in the South-China Sea and more are to follow.  And several major seminars and conferences on regional security, involving both officials and non-government experts, have already been held in Manila, Bangkok and Bali.  They have been valuable in getting the debate going and in beginning to identify the range of issues that need to be addressed, even if they have yet only begun to scratch the surface of some of the fundamental conceptual issues thrown up for debate by the end of the Cold War -- including, for example, the applicability of the concept of balance of power in the new era, the place of the theory of deterrence, implications of the changes that are occurring to the concept of sovereignty, and the consequences of embracing "common security" as an underlying policy approach.

Suggestions for further accelerating this process have also been coming forward from regional states.  Malaysian Defence Minister Najib has proposed a meeting of Asia-Pacific security officials, which I understand will take place around the middle of next year.  Japanese Prime Minister Miyazawa, in a speech in Washington, floated the idea of a "dual track" approach whereby an Asia-Pacific security dialogue would complement the sub-regional management of specific problems like Cambodia and Korea.

Australia has been centrally involved from the outset in this process of generating and exchanging ideas.  I believe that real progress on regional security will only be achieved in practice by gradual, incremental measures in which the confidence of each relevant country is won and consolidated step by step along the way.

The overall task, after all, is not so much to define threats and mobilise resources against them, either unilaterally or co-operatively, but rather to build the kind of relationships of mutual respect, co-operation and interdependence in the wider region which will ensure that those threats will never materialise.

US Politics and Asia-Pacific Policy

CHAPTER FIVE

THE end of the Cold War, plus an election year, has led to further reductions in the usual low level of American interest in foreign affairs.  There is a general feeling that they won the essential conflict of the post-World War II period.  The communist enemy that they have been fighting in earnest since Truman's presidency just gave up.  Communists still hold power in China, Vietnam, and North Korea, but global communism no longer threatens to engulf America and its allies.  I, and many of my conservative friends, agree with the sentiments of the broad American body politic that we have earned a deserved respite, that our defence and foreign aid budgets can be reduced -- not for the purpose, in my mind anyway, of increasing domestic spending, but to give Americans a tax break.

The real question this begs is whether America is now going to be moving back to an era of isolationism.  So far, and despite some disturbing trends during 1992's election campaign, I would say no, but there is a serious continuing American debate that Australia would do well to follow.  Two years ago Owen Harries included a member of the libertarian Cato Institute, Ted Galen Carpenter, in his delegation.  We conservatives are allied to the libertarians on many issues, such as the necessity to eliminate farm subsidies and to promote free trade.  But the libertarian foreign policy represents the conservative movement's hard isolationist fringe, which actually was a strong tendency in the Republican Party until the end of World War II.  Today in too many respects libertarians sound much like the discredited American left, calling for disengagement from most if not all of our foreign involvement.

And to varying degrees, we see this libertarian-left mix in some of the policies that were advocated first in the Democratic primaries (by Bob Kerry and Tom Harkin), then by Patrick Buchanan, and later still by Ross Perot.  All of these men have favoured sharp reductions in US military commitments to our allies.  Buchanan and Perot have both called for increased protectionism for US industries, largely in response to Japanese competition.  Perot seems to favour an industrial policy of subsidising select industries to increase their competitiveness against Japanese companies.  But at a minimum, it's safe to characterise both Perot and Buchanan as inward-looking, unwilling to exercise the global leadership now expected from Washington.

All this makes the work of a mainstream conservative organisations much harder.  In March a relatively long study was released -- about 30 pages -- outlining suggested goals for a post-Cold War foreign policy.  It can best be termed a call for selective engagement in areas which threaten global stability, and which in turn threaten the United States.  For example, it was maintained that the US can no longer be concerned with every African civil war that in the past would have engaged them because it was a likely area of superpower confrontation.  Nevertheless, it was also believe that, as the sole remaining superpower, the US has -- at times and in specific circumstances -- to exercise leadership to defeat real threats.  1991's successful defeat of Iraq illustrates the continued need for American leadership.  But just as importantly, it should be a lesson to their allies that Americans expect those allies to assist their efforts to meet future common enemies.

Asia has been one area where strong and effective American engagement has long been advocated .  This year they celebrated the tenth anniversary of their Asian Studies Center.  In that Center, they have issued more than 150 papers addressing specific challenges to American interests in Asia, including many having to do with the American-Australian bilateral relationship.

They created their Asian Studies Center because they believed at the time that Asia would rise in its importance to American interests, relative to Europe and other areas.  Their two-way trade with Asia has outpaced their total trade with Europe by more than 50 per cent.

As conservatives we support a progressively liberal trading régime, exemplified by free trade.  We support GATT, and an immediate conclusion of the Uruguay Round.  If GATT breaks down, I suppose that Americans will not feel as threatened as will the Australians, because there is an alternative for America in terms of the Free Trade Agreements which they have been negotiating.  We support both bilateral and multilateral free trade with our Asian friends as a means of increasing that trade on both sides.  As did the Bush Administration, we strongly oppose the creation of an Asian trade-bloc, such as the one most recently proposed by Malaysia.  Such a bloc is, we believe, designed to be dominated by Japan and to exclude the United States:  very likely Australia as well.

At this point we are sometimes accused of hypocrisy, because we are also one of the most vocal boosters of another trade-bloc, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).  But I would make the following distinction:  NAFTA is not a bloc that will erect common barriers to the outside world, as does the European Community.  It is merely an agreement to lower internal barriers among its members, and we hope it will eventually include all of the Western Hemisphere.  But why stop there?  Let us use the forum for Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) -- which originally was an Australian idea -- as the basis for a NAFTA-APEC free-trade alliance.  APEC is an excellent idea, as long as it does not produce a ponderous, expensive bureaucracy, and as long as it makes a free-trade alliance its highest priority.

We also have consistently supported American strategic and military engagement with their Asian allies.  It is an essential corollary to support for free trade, which cannot succeed without political stability.  That political stability, in turn, depends on a stable military balance in the region.  While the defeat of Soviet communism has allowed the US to reduce its military presence in Europe sharply, the Cold War's Asian flash-points have not all disappeared.  And we recognise that most of Asia hopes the US will maintain its military presence.

KOREA

Former Secretary Cheney described Korea as the one place where, he feared, a war could start in 24 hours.  We regard North Korea's nuclear weapons program as a threat to international stability which rivals that of Saddam Hussein's armies.  Imagining somebody as crazy as Kim Il-Sung with nuclear weapons does, in fact, frighten all of us.  Even if you do not believe he is fool enough to use them against Seoul, surely it's possible that he could sell nuclear weapons or technology to radical Middle Eastern régimes, which in turn could use them against Israel.  This issue has now reached a critical phase.  We will soon know whether Kim Il-Sung is prepared to abandon his nuclear ambitions, or whether Seoul, Washington, Tokyo and other allies will have to take further measures to compel Pyongyang to end those ambitions.

The key to long-term peace in Korea, of course, is a peaceful reunification of that divided nation:  something to which everyone gives lip service, but which in practice is at times subverted.  Until the nuclear problem erupted with regard to North Korea, the United States was very vigorously supporting Seoul's efforts toward bilateral talks with Pyongyang.  Japan claimed to be doing so as well, but at the same time was also giving food and other assistance to North Korea, thus effectively undercutting the opportunities for North and South to come together.  Japan has never admitted this publicly, but various officials in Korea on different occasions were highly sceptical of Japan's stated support for a reunited Korea.  I suppose if I were the leader of the Japanese government or a Japanese company, I would be concerned too about the possibility of the 32 million South Koreans coming together with the 19 million North Koreans -- because with their natural resources, it would be a much more formidable international competitor to Japan than a separated Korea currently provides.  In the short term, then, I see differences with Japan over this matter:  though I hope our long-term interests converge.

JAPAN

Ambassador Mike Mansfield used to say, whenever anyone called on him in Tokyo, "Welcome to the American Embassy, Tokyo, which is at the heart of the most important bilateral relationship in the world."  Maybe it is;  maybe it isn't;  but if it isn't, it's certainly near the top of the list.  Today, though, the only thing that necessarily unites Taipei, Beijing, Pyongyang, Seoul and virtually every other Asian city is anti-Japan feeling:  aroused when, for example, the Japanese do something stupid like rewriting their history books to exclude what actually happened during World War II.  Distrust of Japan is felt in varying degrees in Asia, yet it's still there:  perhaps a centimetre below the surface, but always ready to be opened up as a wound.  This is one of the reasons why their allies in Asia particularly want the United States to stay active in the Pacific.  At the same time, however, in terms of their domestic politics, one of the reasons they urged Japan to take an active role in UN-sanctioned peace-keeping operations is very basic:  American public opinion.  No matter that the Japanese are substantially supporting the American troop presence in Japan at this point.  As Ambassador Sembler has pointed out so eloquently:  were they to take those American troops home, they would cost them a great deal more than they now cost us in Japan's various US bases.  But, were they not to get the Japanese involved in long-term peace-keeping, two things would happen.  First, Americans would say that the Japanese were probably lying about how much they spend (however much it might be);  second, if the Japanese were not willing to risk their lives to defeat threats to global stability, American support for their security relationship with Japan would plummet.  That would be in nobody's interest, anywhere in Asia.

Their relationship with Japan is the glue that holds much of the rest of Asia together.  Or, to use a different image, the United States is in many respects the buffer between Japan and the rest of Asia.

CHINA

China analyst, Andrew Brick, has long advocated a China policy that we call Chinese Water Torture:  or Subversion Through Development.  I recently visited the Southern Provinces near Hong Kong, and saw for myself the potential for capitalism to erode communist central authority from Beijing.  For this reason, efforts to grant Most Favoured Trading Nation status to China should continue to be supported -- in the hope that the economics of free trade, of trade between their two countries, will eventually lead to political reform.

In addition, we have long urged that Washington strongly support Hong Kong and the Republic of China on Taiwan -- the closest and most effective sources for importing capitalism to the Mainland.  Hong Kong and Taiwan are also their thirteenth- and sixth-largest trading partners respectively.  Taiwan, for its part, is a major economic actor in Asia.  It deserves membership in multilateral organisations such as GATT, and diplomatic recognition commensurate with its growing economic importance.

But perhaps even more important, both Hong Kong and Taiwan provide examples of Chinese democratic development.  Like South Korea, the Philippines and, we hope, Thailand, they prove the observation made by Milton Friedman:  that capitalist development will precede democratic development, because a wealthy middle class invariably wants to become a free middle class.

SOUTH-EAST ASIA

The rapid American withdrawal from the Philippines is being interpreted as yet another sign that America is not serious about Asia.  First, this view is not correct;  second, the failure of the relevant negotiations simply was not their fault.  We hope -- with the 1992 elections in the Philippines -- that they might in fact be able to make some new efforts towards repairing that relationship.

AUSTRALIA

Papers on how ANZUS can be improved have been published.  Australia's participation in the Strategic Defense program, especially, is something of interest to both our countries.  It follows logically, I think, from the use of the Australian-American Joint Facilities to help shoot down Iraq's Scud missiles;  and it demonstrates how Australia might eventually make a vital contribution to world defence.

CONCLUSION

Domestically, the "free-rider argument" is heard throughout Washington and levelled at various foreign countries.  It's an argument for American withdrawal and isolation.  Yet among American policy-makers in Washington, and among the broad American public, Australia has never been viewed as a "free rider."  No-one who has seen Australia's War Memorial, with its reminders of our countries' shared sacrifices for more than 70 years, will conceive of Australia as a free rider.

Our bilateral relationship and our alliance are strong.  Yet they need constant review and periodic reinvigoration.  There are three pillars on which they rest today, all of which can use further attention from both Australia and America.  The first pillar is trade co-operation:  looking for new avenues, working toward bilateral free-trade area agreements between ourselves and among our related allies.  The second pillar is defence:  in terms of co-operation on things like G-PALS and the SDI program.  The third pillar is extensive public diplomacy, in which our Ambassador has been so effectively engaged here:  whether it's the joint commemoration of the Battle of the Coral Sea or whether it's countering the notion that somehow America is exporting cultural imperialism like Phil Donahue.

I was told by a friend not long ago that he was having a hamburger and filling up his petrol tank at a remote station in the Australian outback, a station which happened to have a satellite dish.  Four employees of this station were watching Phil Donahue.  This Australian had been to the United States, and he said, "You know, that isn't what America is like at all."  The owner of the station replied, "I'm glad you told me that.  I've been watching this for the last two years, and I haven't seen a single normal person on there during that whole time!"  This kind of misinterpretation of America must be countered by people-to-people relationships, which I think are going to be much more important than the Foreign-Ministry-to-State-Department relationships for the future.  Australians and Americans have shared numerous experiences and interests.  It's on the aforementioned three pillars that we will build for our future co-operative relationship.

The Regional Security Outlook: the Australian Viewpoint

CHAPTER FOUR

THE security situation in the Asia-Pacific region in the 1990s promises to be less certain than it was in the Cold War period. ⁽¹⁾  The naval forces of the former Soviet Union are leaving the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.  The United States is reducing its military presence in the region.  Questions are being asked by the smaller regional countries whether these trends will offer greater opportunities for influence by such large regional powers as China, Japan and India.

There is a growing concern about the dangers of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, chemical and biological) and of ballistic missiles in the Asia-Pacific region.  Advanced conventional weapons are also becoming more easily affordable, as the leading arms manufacturers in North America and Western Europe compete for a contracting arms market.  In the Asia-Pacific region, military power will remain a fact of life and a fundamental determinant of relations between states.

From an Australian security perspective, these trends raise important issues about our relations with countries in the Asia-Pacific region and the alliance with the United States.  They suggest a more fluid strategic outlook.  Change and instability are not generally welcome to security planners.  Not all change will, however, be adverse:  the rapid economic growth of the region as a whole, and particularly of North-East Asia and South-East Asia, is underpinning political stability and the development of more participatory forms of government.

This chapter examines these issues and their relevance for Australia's security policy in the 1990s.

ELEMENTS OF CONTINUITY AND CHANGE

Monitoring strategic change is an important function of the intelligence agencies in any modern system of government.  Australia has highly developed capabilities in this area.  For over 20 years now intelligence agencies have evolved a concept of strategic warning time, which has largely determined the size and preparedness of the Australian defence force structure. ⁽²⁾  Briefly, this concept -- which has been endorsed by successive governments and more than 25 Service Chiefs and Secretaries of Defence -- judges that Australia would have several years' warning time of the development of a regional capability to mount a large-scale military attack.  In the absence of the build-up of large military capabilities in the region capable of such an assault, let alone the emergence of hostile intentions, Australia's defence planning is unlikely to move dramatically away from the force structure priorities set out in the 1987 White Paper, The Defence of Australia.

Australia did not structure its defence force to meet the Soviet military threat, so there is no requirement for a "peace dividend" in the form of reduced defence spending.  Rather, it is important that Australia continues to build up its self-reliant military capabilities so as to meet the uncertainties of the future, without being dependent on external combat assistance.

These elements of continuity in Australia's defence circumstances are important to stress at the outset.  Australia is one of the more secure countries in the world.  It does not have any land borders with adjacent countries, nor does it have any heavily armed neighbours.  The countries in Australia's area of direct military interest (Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, the islands of the South-West Pacific and New Zealand) are basically friendly and they have no issues of territorial or military contention with Australia.  These circumstances are unlikely to change quickly.  But lower levels of contingency, and the requirement for us to have closer defence relations with our neighbours, will be demanding of our limited defence resources.

What, then, are the main elements of uncertainty in Australia's security outlook in the 1990s?  In addition to the strategic developments in the Asia-Pacific region I have already mentioned, they concern, primarily, the economic strength of the nation and whether sufficient funds will be allocated to the defence portfolio to ensure that the capabilities needed for the defence of Australia are acquired by the end of this decade.  They also involve making judgments about Australia's capacity to sustain a margin of technological advantage in its defence force structure in the 1990s.  The introduction of more capable conventional weapons systems into the Asia-Pacific region seems likely to reduce Australia's advantage in this area.  Imported high-technology weapons systems will be incorporated effectively into regional orders of battle more quickly than has been the case in the past.  Australia will still retain a technological edge over the next decade, but with less and less reason for complacency.

It will be important, therefore, for Australia's defence industry to concentrate on those high-technology systems -- such as intelligence and surveillance sensors;  command, control and communication;  combat data systems;  and integrated logistic support -- which will be key force multipliers for the Australian defence force in the next decade.

THE ROLE OF THE UNITED STATES IN THE REGION

The United States Administration states that it intends to remain a military power in the Asia-Pacific region, where it still has important strategic and economic interests to protect.  By the end of 1992 the US had withdrawn its military presence from the Philippines, but it will retain a substantial military presence in Korea and Japan (including the Marine force on Okinawa), in Hawaii and at sea with the Seventh Fleet.  In addition, the US is negotiating access to naval and air facilities in South-East Asia.

The US thus remains a substantial military power in the region.  But there are some doubts about the ability of America to sustain such a large military presence in the Asia-Pacific region in the longer term, particularly given the disappearance of the Soviet military threat and the domestic economic problems that the US faces.  Many influential leaders and officials in the region believe that the mood of the Congress and the US people is moving against distant military commitments. ⁽³⁾

A pessimistic scenario would see the American military presence substantially reduced by the late 1990s in South Korea and Japan -- and the centre of gravity of US military forces having moved eastward, to be based in Hawaii, Alaska and the West Coast.  America's interests would focus primarily on its strategic concerns in North-East Asia.  South-East Asia, Australia and the South-West Pacific would be seen by Washington as areas of low strategic interest.  Under this scenario, the United States would not move to check Chinese military ambitions in the South China Sea, and Japan would be encouraged by the US to expand its military capabilities significantly.  The South-East Asian countries would be expected to do more for their own defence;  and Australia, as the strongest military power in this region, would be encouraged to expand its military activities.  Even in this scenario, however, the United States would retain formidable power projection capabilities;  and its capacity to regenerate forces, with minimum access to military bases in the Asia-Pacific region, would act as a deterrent.

A more optimistic scenario would see the United States retain essentially its current level of military forces in the region once the withdrawal from the Philippines is completed.  United States concerns about North Korea -- and an acute awareness that the alliance with Japan is the keystone of strategic stability in the region -- would see Washington reduce its military presence only by some 10 to 12 per cent.  The Seventh Fleet in particular would be largely protected from large cuts because of the essentially maritime nature of the Asia-Pacific theatre of operation.

It is too early to discern how these policy outcomes will be resolved.  From an Asia-Pacific security perspective it will be crucial for America's close allies in the region -- especially Japan, Australia and South Korea -- to impress on Washington the importance of remaining engaged militarily in this part of the world.  Several reasons suggest themselves:

• United States trade interests in the Asia-Pacific region are now larger than with Europe;
• the US alliance with Japan is a constraint on Japanese military expansion;
• the withdrawal of American military power would leave China with the region's largest military forces;
• an American drawdown will encourage the build-up of regional military capabilities with the attendant risks of arms races and perhaps even the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE GREAT POWERS

With the exception of Russia, the regional great powers -- China, Japan and India -- seem likely to increase their influence in the region in the 1990s.  This will be particularly the case if the United States reduces its military presence rather more quickly than currently expected.  Large powers tend to be ambitious and, where opportunities present themselves, they will seek to extend their influence.  With the removal of superpower alignments, the large regional powers will be freer to exert predominance not only over their immediate region, but -- if domestic circumstances and economic strength allow it -- further afield.

Thus, China sees itself as possessing a natural claim to regional hegemony.  Its manifest sense of historical destiny and its culture, population, size and military potential all lend weight to this ambition.  China will not in the foreseeable future develop a global military reach, but it has much more international status and potential power than either Japan or India.

China will be concerned to prevent the emergence of Japanese military capabilities, and to avoid a disintegrating former Soviet Union from infecting its own political stability and minority groups.  It will increasingly attempt to gain influence in South-East Asia -- which it sees as a natural area for expansion of Chinese influence.  The key strategic question surrounding the future of China is whether communism will be overthrown.  An unstable China erupting in turmoil would not be conducive to a peaceful Asia-Pacific region, and it might encourage China in the direction of external adventures.

China is modernising its military capabilities and is developing naval and air forces that will extend its strategic reach.  In the South China Sea, for example, China is already capable of operating decisively against local South-East Asian military forces.

Japan shows little sign of moderating its military build-up, even though the former Soviet military threat no longer exists.  Japan has long-established suspicions about the Russians, and is likely to retain substantial defensive military forces against the regeneration of Russian military power in the future.  The very proximity of the Russian Far East -- and the fact that Russia will continue to be the second largest nuclear power in the world -- will cause the Japanese to be cautious about hasty cuts to their defence expenditure.

Japan already has very sizeable military forces.  Its navy and air force are larger than those of the ASEAN countries, Australia and New Zealand combined.  Japan's defence spending (US$36 billion this year) and its acquisitions of major weapons systems -- such as Aegis class cruisers -- cause suspicion amongst the South-East Asian countries.  Japan's future defence build-up, and the deployment patterns of its navy, will be closely watched by other regional powers.  China, in particular, will not allow Japan to gain a military edge.

India's economic and social problems seem likely to curtail its military ambitions.  India has a natural desire to be taken more seriously as the largest democratic nation in the region.  It fears China, and it wants to be recognised as the pre-eminent power in the Indian Ocean.  India is steadily developing a more capable navy and maritime reconnaissance capabilities;  and it continues to expand its ballistic missile potential.  India is unlikely to use military force except in its own neighbourhood.  But if China expands its influence in the South China Sea and in South-East Asia, India will be concerned.

India may seek to develop military relations with the United States as a counterbalance to China.  And America may be tempted -- now that India is no longer an ally of the former Soviet Union -- to develop India's military capabilities.  This will not necessarily be to the advantage of smaller countries in the region.

Russia will not be a major force in Asia-Pacific affairs.  It will be largely preoccupied with its domestic problems.  Russia's main interests in the Asia-Pacific region will be in gaining access to the dynamic economies of North-East Asia, which will be important to the development of the backward economic infrastructure of Siberia.  Russia's military forces in the region will be substantially reduced.  By the late 1990s, Russia's Pacific Fleet will be less than half its current size and its naval deployments will be concentrated especially around its own territorial waters.  Russia has no natural partners in the region and it will continue to be the odd-man-out, a country that is seen as basically having little to offer (especially economically) to the Asia-Pacific region.

WEAPONS PROLIFERATION

In this uncertain strategic climate, nations are likely to acquire more capable means of defence.  Nuclear weapons proliferation is already occurring in North-East Asia (China and North Korea) and in South Asia (India and Pakistan).  There is a risk that nuclear weapons might be used in any future Indo-Pakistan war.  North Korea's nuclear weapons program -- if it is allowed to develop unchecked -- could encourage the development of similar capabilities in South Korea.  A nuclear-armed Korean peninsula would encourage deep concerns in Japan about its own nuclear vulnerabilities.  Japan could very quickly develop a nuclear weapons capability, and the means of delivery, if it decided to do so.  This is highly unlikely, but the prevention of nuclear proliferation on the Korean peninsula is important to Japan's sense of strategic confidence.

Together with the proliferation of nuclear weapons, there is a spreading of ballistic missile technology to India, Pakistan and North Korea.  Several nations also have chemical and biological weapons.  The proliferation of such weapons must not extend to South-East Asia, which so far has remained free from weapons of mass destruction.  The creation of a nuclear-free zone in South-East Asia contiguous to the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone would be a useful arms control initiative.

In addition to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, most countries in the region are gaining access to much more capable conventional weapons.  Modern combat fighters, such as F-16s, and warships equipped with modern missile systems, such as Harpoon and Exocet, are becoming commonplace.  As the arms market in North America and Europe shrinks, so the major arms manufacturers are competing for the remaining lucrative markets in the Middle East and Asia.  The risks here are the well-known action/reaction model of regional arms races, and the fact that in even low-level conflict the destructive force of weapons being used will be much greater than hitherto.  The agreement on a United Nations regional arms transfer register for major items of military equipment is a useful initiative in the area of military transparency and confidence-building.

SECURITY PROBLEMS FACING MEDIUM-SIZED POWERS

The medium-sized countries in the region (the ASEAN countries and Australia in particular) will face difficult defence planning problems over the next decade.  The cost of acquiring modern weapons platforms is doubling with every new generation of weapons.  Typically, also, the cost of operating advanced modern weapons, such as F/A-18 fighters and Blackhawk helicopters, is doubling at a similar rate.  Affording even minimum numbers of such aircraft is becoming very difficult for small countries.

Modern submarines and surface ships are also characterised by the high costs of their weapons systems:  particularly in the area of anti-submarine warfare, anti-air defence, embarked helicopters, electronic counter-measures and electronic counter-counter-measures.  Ways will have to be found of designing weapons platforms that are not optimised for high-intensity conflict in the northern hemisphere.  Much more attention will have to be paid by medium-sized countries to common designs and to indigenous technology.  The optimisation of equipment for low-intensity conflict in tropical environments will be a central issue for defence planners in our region.  Much of the defence equipment made by North American and West European suppliers has significant deficiencies in this area.

Among the ASEAN countries and Australia, there will also be an increased emphasis on defending themselves against possible external aggression, without reliance on direct combat support from other powers.  The maritime environment will become more and more significant, as far as credible threats are concerned.

Unlike the large military powers in North-East Asia and South Asia, the medium-sized countries face no direct military threat.  But they need to establish demonstrable sovereignty over their territories and off-shore resources, and to create a military presence and patterns of patrol and surveillance.  These will lend weight to territorial claims and support vital defence interests.

Regional contingency planning will focus around low-intensity operations in the maritime environment, including such non-military areas as unlicensed fishing operations, refugee movements, illicit drug traffic, piracy and marine pollution;  as well as the protection of off-shore islands and reefs, resource zones and oil and gas platforms, and territorial waters.  This suggests a need for more co-operative defence efforts.

The areas to which defence planners in these countries should give highest priority in the 1990s are:  intelligence and surveillance;  command, control and communication systems able to combine data in quick time for military commanders;  combat data systems capable of delivering ordnance (including expensive tactical missiles) accurately onto the target;  and local logistic, industry and defence scientific support.  These capabilities are crucial to the defence of countries which can only afford relatively small numbers of aircraft, warships and submarines.  Much more work needs to be done in these key areas through the sharing of common defence planning problems.

ECONOMICS AND SECURITY

It is commonplace to argue that the growing economic interdependence which is occurring in the Asia-Pacific region is a force for political stability.  It is true that the impressive economic growth of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan has underpinned the stability of those nations and the development of their political systems.  In the communist countries -- China, North Korea and Vietnam -- the centrally planned economic system is faltering (in North Korea it is demonstrably a failure), and dynamic processes of economic and political change are occurring.  It seems immutable that any country desiring economic success must, in the long haul, move to a basically free-enterprise system.  Moreover, future great powers will be those that take advantage of the information technology revolution.  For communist countries, this is almost a contradiction in terms.  The free dissemination of knowledge that the information revolution brings is a fundamental threat to central authoritarian control.

As for economic interdependence, much more analytical work needs to be undertaken to determine whether the fruits of interdependence necessarily are a stabilising force.  Economic differences will become sharper as economic competition is less moderated by the need to co-operate in the face of East-West strategic competition.  Generally, trade between nations is asymmetrical and the benefits are not perceived as evenly distributed between trading partners.  The trade imbalance between the United States and Japan, for example, has resulted in political confrontation.

In the past, wars have occurred when an economic newcomer displaces an established power.  But the political tensions that inevitably accompany growing economic interdependence cannot be settled in the modern world by war.  Yet the necessary political mechanisms for settling such disputes are not in place in the world of the 1990s either.  The situation will be exacerbated if closed trading blocs emerge out of the much more intense focus that economic issues will now receive because of the end of the Cold War.

In our own region, the growing economic mass of Japan (as well as of South Korea and Taiwan), relative to China, has important security connotations.  The relative economic contraction of Australia is also of concern in this regard.

What is being argued here is that not all aspects of economic growth and international economic interdependence will work in favour of regional stability.  In extremis, the economic disparity between nations and the emergence of powerful new economic competitors could lead to confrontation.  We need much better analysis in this area of security studies.

OUTLOOK

The outlook for security in the Asia-Pacific region in the 1990s is for a period of greater uncertainty.  Change will take time.  But the region is unsure about the future military presence of the Americans, and some regional leaders believe that they can no longer rely on the United States to provide military security.  The region is also concerned about the ambitions and future influence of China, Japan and India.  The most unstable parts of the region are South Asia, where there are attendant risks of war between India and Pakistan, and North-East Asia, where China's authoritarian communist régime and North Korea's nuclear weapons program are the key strategic concerns.  Japan's future leadership role -- and the region's reluctance to let Japan's economic power translate into military power -- is another key area of strategic uncertainty.

In Australia's neighbourhood the situation is much more favourable.  ASEAN will continue to exhibit strong economic growth, basic political stability and limited military capabilities.  In South-East Asia, the South China Sea is the most serious potential flashpoint, which could involve the military forces of China against those of Vietnam or even some of the ASEAN claimants.  In the South-West Pacific -- and particularly Papua New Guinea -- the concern will be more with domestic instabilities.  External powers are most unlikely to interfere militarily in the South-West Pacific.  In adjusting to a changed world, however, island countries are looking for reassurance and protection, as well as aid.  And because the interest of powers external to the region is declining, island expectations of Australia are growing.

There are several important strategic planning issues facing Australian policy-makers in the 1990s.  The first issue focuses on the question:  what kind of ally will the United States be?  Part of this question centres on judgments about the likely size and nature of America's military presence in and commitments to the Asia-Pacific region in the 1990s.  Prudent defence planners must contemplate a rather more rapid United States military withdrawal than the Bush Administration planned.  As well, some rather cold-eyed judgments will have to be made about the situations where United States combat forces are likely to be committed.  For example, the Indian subcontinent and the South China Sea are not priority areas for the United States in this regard, whereas North-East Asia -- and particularly the Korean peninsula -- will retain its strategic importance for US defence planning.  The United States' allies will have to ask themselves a series of questions that, for the first time in several decades, probe key defence policy questions -- such as:

• What does "alliance" mean when the discipline of a common threat has disappeared?
• What are the United States' vital interests in its traditional allied partners, Japan, Australia and South Korea, in the new strategic order of the 1990s?
• What does the United States expect of its allies in terms of regional military commitments?

For Australia there is the particular point that, as a medium-sized power, we gained considerable international stature from being seen as one of the close inner group of United States allies (along with Britain and Canada).  Will our status as an ally of America now diminish as the United States concentrates more on domestic issues and, in our part of the world, more on its important economic interests in North-East Asia?

Australia seems likely to have to plan on a more independent defence policy.  We should also develop closer military relations with our friends of South-East Asia, who will have many defence planning problems in common with us in the 1990s.  The alliance with the United States will, of course, continue to be an important element in Australia's security.  While seeking to keep the United States strategically engaged in the region, Australia should also build in the next decade on its existing defence interests with South-East Asian countries.  This is not to suggest some form of regional military alliance.  Australian defence policy will need to concentrate on the network of bilateral and trilateral defence relationships we already have with the ASEAN countries.  That network might be expended to include closer defence relationships in selected areas (such as intelligence, maritime information, defence planning) and perhaps in some common defence production ventures.

In the new world order, Australia is likely to encounter more requests for contributions to United Nations peace-keeping.  We can make appropriate (but essentially limited) contributions -- with priority given to our region of primary strategic interest.  Australia's force structure must not be determined, however, by peace-keeping requirements.

As a prudent measure of insurance against the uncertainties of the future, Australia should press ahead with putting in place the military capabilities to defend itself.  Now is not the time to retreat from the essential force structure priorities identified in the 1987 Defence White Paper.  Defence planning is about the long term.  This requires the allocation of enough defence funds to meet the $25 billion that is required for new capital equipment in this decade and before the onset of block obsolescence in key weapons systems next decade.

The above has identified sufficient uncertainties in our own region -- and concerning the policies of our major ally, the United States -- for a self-reliant defence policy to be the central element in our security planning for the 1990s.  To an even greater degree than before, Australia will need to look after its own security needs in a regional security environment that will be increasingly fluid.

---

ENDNOTES

1.  The Asia-Pacific region is defined here as including India and Pakistan in the west and Japan and the Russian Far East in the east.  Australia, New Zealand and the islands of the South-West Pacific form its southern limits.

2.  See Paul Dibb, The Conceptual Basis of Australia's Defence Planning and Force Structure Development, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Canberra Papers on Strategy and Defence, No. 88, Australian National University, Canberra, 1992.

3.  For example, "... the perceived prospect for American force reduction in the region is a matter of common concern to many Asians ...  The lowering of American political attention to the Asia-Pacific affairs has already been felt acutely in the region," Yukio Satoh, a senior Gaimusho official, in an address entitled Asian-Pacific Security after the Cold War and the Japanese Role, unpublished, 1992.

Not History's End, But History's Resumption

CHAPTER THREE

IN John Le Carre's novel The Secret Pilgrim, his erstwhile hero, spymaster George Smiley, is one evening lecturing some young spies-in-training after dinner over a brandy.  One of these young spies asks Mr Smiley:  "Sir, what was the purpose of your life?"  Mr Smiley responds, "The purpose of my life was to end the time I live in."  Unlike Mr Smiley, we in the West didn't fail.  We won the Cold War.  Not that the victory matters a damn -- maybe we didn't win, maybe they just lost.  Maybe, free from the bonds of ideological conflict which restrained us, our problems are only now beginning.

President Bush put it a little differently.  In his view the Cold War was artificially imposed on regional, ethic, economic and national rivalries.  What we have now after the Cold War is not Francis Fukuyama's "end of history" but, rather, the resumption of history.  It is my view that -- free from fears of nuclear Armageddon, and from the riveting focus of superpower confrontation -- regional tensions may very well come to the boil at a lower temperature than that required within the kettle of United States-Soviet confrontation.  The Economist of London put it best when it said that the billing and cooing of the superpowers didn't necessarily mean the world would be run by pigeons.

Let us be frank about what has been going on in the United States, over the last four years, regarding Asia.  It is not exactly a state secret that the United States was somewhat exhausted at the end of the Cold War.  They were somewhat dazzled by the tearing-down of the Berlin Wall.  They were amazingly interested in the dissolution of the former Soviet Union.  And finally -- when it looked as if they might be getting back to business in Asia -- they had Operation Just Cause in Panama, and Desert Storm in Iraq.  As a result, American policy towards Asia has drifted to some extent in recent years.  God knows there are plenty of things to think about in the region.

The first is this:  we are going to have a new player in the Pacific, and that player is called the Russian Federation.  Previously Eastern Europe was the door for Russia in Europe;  right now Eastern Europe is a barrier to the Russian Federation.  The Russian Federation's resources are in the Far East, and I believe that population growth will follow these resources.  Furthermore, the attempt by Kim Il-Sung to do what is theoretically impossible -- that is, either to perpetrate or to perpetuate the first Marxist monarchy -- is fraught with peril for us all, certainly for the Republic of Korea.

How the United States and Japan manage their relationship is also highly significant, as Japan takes a fuller role in the international community:  a role that will include, perhaps, peace-keeping forces.  If they manage this well, we will all benefit;  if it is not handled well on either side of the Pacific, it will redound to the disadvantage of all of us.

The gerontocracy that has ruled China for the last 40-odd years will one day pass from the scene, and then what happens?  This question concerning the future direction of mainland China is given added point by the recent procurement of high-performance aircraft and the rumoured procurement of a Ukrainian aircraft-carrier.  These are matters which can't escape our attention.

American policy-makers are often accused of only spending time thinking about North-East Asia and the North-West Pacific.  The unfortunate events of 1992 in Thailand, however, had a way of directing our attention back to South-East Asia:  back to the realisation that democracies, particularly new democracies, are extraordinarily fragile.  They need to be tended, to be paid rigorous attention.

As we look at the Philippines, we see President Ramos now trying simultaneously to control an insurgency and to develop some concept of nationhood for a country which has heretofore lacked a common identity, a real understanding of who it is.  The Philippines remains an area of high concern.  So do the Spratly Islands and the Paracel Islands, where -- if one assumes that great resources exist in the nearby waters, oil in particular -- there could well be competing claimants for control.

But there is another matter of regional interest, particularly to Australians.  It has to do with South Asia.  We have the spectacle of Pakistan and India shouting, glaring and shooting at one another over the disputed land territory of Kashmir.  One might ask, "What's new about two Third World countries shouting, glaring and occasionally shooting over disputed land?"  What's new is that these two Third World nations may indeed have nuclear weapons.  The outcome of this struggle has enormous consequences for us all.  Fortunately there is comfort in the fact that over recent times, America has been enjoying about the best relationship which it has ever had with India.  Nevertheless there are still serious questions.  Given her great size and enormous population, one doesn't necessarily begrudge India a robust military capability;  yet when India has thus far been unable to articulate the foreign and defence policy into which that robust capability fits, then queries become unavoidable.

But other security problems in the region aren't necessarily related to actual territory.  Weapons of mass destruction, the proliferation of IRBMs, concern us all.  During the Gulf War we were all mesmerised by the spectacle of Israel and Saudi Arabia under attack by Scud missiles.  The fact of the matter is that such technology lies within the grasp of every nation except the dirt-poorest or the most enlightened.  And the irony of the IRBM technology is that in military terms it isn't a very useful weapon.  It can't hit anything, it's very inaccurate.  This very inaccuracy brings about the horror.  Because IRBMs are inaccurate (and expensive), their owner will opt for area weapons, fuel-air explosives, chemical weapons, biological weapons, nuclear warheads:  to make it all more worth his while, and to get more bang for his buck.

About 20 years ago, Marvin Gaye had a popular song called Mercy, Mercy Me:  one of whose verses went "Where have all the blue skies gone?/Oh, this overcrowded land,/How much more abuse from man can it stand?"  It has been man's abuse of "this overcrowded land" that in the past has led to conflict.  The 1967 Six-Day War was as much a war over water as a war over anything else.  In 1985 Israelis and Jordanians were having what almost became a military dispute over water.  As populations grow, competition for resources increases.  Environmental threats and environmental problems are going to come more and more to the fore of every national consciousness.

The same Marvin Gaye album which contained Mercy, Mercy Me had another song whose words have always meant a lot to me:  "Father, father, we don't need to escalate;/War is not the answer, only love can conquer hate."  As a parent, this is a concept which I embrace and which I will share with my children.  As a theoretical and religious point, I certainly endorse it.  But as a practical matter, it seems to me that nothing has slaked man's appetite for adventure at the expense of his fellow man;  nothing has eliminated the search for economic advantage;  nothing has dulled the nationalistic rivalries.  If there is one lesson that the United States has learnt, it is that the ending of the Cold War has not ended the necessity for military clout.  Our two recent endeavours, both in Panama and in Iraq, give added emphasis to this truth.

The great irony these days is that at the very moment of the free world's victory over the forces of totalitarianism, voices are raised in America urging the United States to come home and pay attention to domestic issues.  That such voices are raised is inevitable.  Scepticism about the intentions of outsiders, about the wisdom of being involved with them, has long been a staple of American thought.  It is quite obvious that the problem of providing for the general public good in America is intimidatingly vast.  But at this moment, to heed those voices of isolationism and unilateralism would be to spoil the victory, and to squander the sacrifice that made it all possible.  And as far as I am concerned it does very little to resolve the problems which sap American's vital strength.  Isolationism is not cost-free.  Unilateralism is not risk-free.  The United States can either use its powers wisely and well, or use them foolishly and badly.  To set them aside is to choose the latter.  If they decide to disengage, to walk off the playing field, it is every bit as irresponsible as a reckless intervention when America's vital interests are not at stake.  In fact, unilateralism and isolationism are completely compatible with adventurism and interventionism.  Both reflect a lack of patience, a lack of knowledge, a lack of constancy and a lack of vision.  They represent a uniquely parochial view of America as the centre of the universe;  and they consider that universe to be itself negative, or irrelevant, or perhaps both.  This negative view envisages the United States reacting only at the eleventh hour of a crisis:  rather than acting steadily, resolutely, throughout in order to prevent a crisis.

I take the view that after 50 years' struggle -- first against the forces of Fascism and latterly against the forces of Communism -- America has come home.  This home is not bounded by the constitutional limits of American law, nor are they bounded by the continental limits imposed by our two great oceans.  This home is in the family of nations, at the head of a mighty and peaceful coalition.  The architects of that home are well-known to Americans -- Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton -- and the master-builders of that home are well-known to all of us:  Lincoln, Wilson, the two Roosevelts.  Every single post-war president has shared the vision of a world made safer and more humane by an America fully engaged in defence of human freedoms and human rights across the world.

A siren-song of isolationism has always been perceptible in American history.  It is something that has to be resisted every day, and I hope that this responsibility of the world's greatest nation will not be avoided.

Australia's Regional Interests

CHAPTER TWO

THE Heritage Foundation has established an enviable reputation, both for intellectual rigour and for the breadth of its research.  It has achieved what many similar institution can only ever aspire to, and that is, both quality and influence.  It has stood for a clear set of principles:  for intellectual honesty, often against the tide of prevailing opinion.  But it has always done so with an admirable fearlessness and on the basis of careful argument rather than blind emotion.  It looks beyond the short term:  to the forces of change that will affect Australia's international interests over the next decade, and beyond.

History shows that Australian foreign policy has not been characterised by a clear concept of national interest, nor by any consistent pursuit of this interest.  Too often our foreign policy has been reactive rather than forward-looking.  Too often it has been held back by ambiguity, by insularity, by grandstanding or simply by the hope that the interests of other nations will turn out to be identical to our own interests.

The strategic purpose of all policy-making has been to make Australia a major economic and political player in the Asia-Pacific region by the year 2000.  We have set ourselves that clear policy objective not because we are regional isolationists, but because the Asia-Pacific region is central to the pursuit of Australia's national economic and security interests.

Except for times of war, there has never been -- in my view -- a period when the purposes of Australian foreign and domestic policy have been more interdependent than they are today.  Indeed, Australia can only achieve its objectives in the Asia-Pacific region if we correctly anticipate the nature and pace of regional change, and if we act decisively to achieve reforms within Australia:  particularly basic structural economic reforms.

Essentially, I believe that there are six major forces of change which will shape "Tomorrow's Pacific."

THE WIDER INTERNATIONAL ORDER

First, and perhaps most obviously, the Asia-Pacific region will be affected by the character of the wider international order of which it is a part.  Debates will continue to rage over the type of post-Cold War international order which is emerging, but certainly not over the fact that it has fundamentally changed.  The sources of international power are more diversified;  structures are more complex;  and the limits of State sovereignty are more apparent.  In short, the international order of the 1990s does not lend itself to description under the neat labels of a less complicated past.  Traditional notions, such as "the balance of power," simply no longer suffice.  What is emerging is an international order in which no single hierarchy of power dominates.

In terms of military power, of course, the United States is clearly superior to any other country, and will remain so into the foreseeable future.  In terms of economic power, the balance is tripolar (based on the United States, Europe and Japan), as indeed it has been since the 1970s.  Complementing these realities of global economic and military power is, of course, the influence of what is so often quite awkwardly described as "transitional interdependence" -- namely, the impact of global markets for trade, capital and information;  the spread of technology;  and the international consequences of environmental problems (such as global warming) and health issues (such as AIDS and drugs).

The countries of the Asia-Pacific region are no less influenced by these characteristics of the emerging international order than the nations of Europe, the Americas and elsewhere.  But it is economics which is driving the foreign policy of nations in a powerful and dominant way.  As one writer recently put it:  "The rules of the game have changed;  indeed the game itself has changed."  At the heart of the recent changes in the international system lies the great transformation of economic power and leadership in the Asia-Pacific region.

It is the market economies of Asia that are setting the pace.  With Japan at the forefront, they lead the world in terms of economic growth and dynamism.  They also provide a model to which the developing world can aspire.  And in the new era of "geo-economics," that pattern of economic dynamism and pace-setting in the Asia-Pacific region certainly looks set to continue.

Second, the Asia-Pacific will be influenced increasingly by pressures towards greater regionalism and sub-regionalism.  The impact of transnational economic influences has long been apparent, as have the advantages of genuinely global markets.  But these realities co-exist with regionalist pressures.

At an economic level, the momentum continues to build in favour of increased regional co-operation.  The Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum (APEC) is perhaps one example.  Proposals for an ASEAN free-trade zone are another.  This trend is partly a recognition by the Asia-Pacific states of the need to expand intra-regional trade and to liberalise trade in a GATT-consistent way.  But it is also partly a response to the fear of a breakdown in the open international trade system, and to recent developments affecting trade arrangements within Europe and in the Americas.  With its variety of motives, the trend towards greater economic regionalism in the Asia-Pacific region is set to continue.

It is far from inevitable, however -- and certainly not intended at this stage -- that such regionalist influences will lead to a world of competing trade blocs.  Such a development would certainly run counter to the global trading interests of the major states.  It would handicap smaller countries, which would be dominated by the leaders of each bloc.  And it would be inconsistent with the security concerns of many Asia-Pacific states, which want to see a continuation of the American defence presence in their region.

Yet GATT-consistent regionalism will continue as a powerful force for change, in Asia and in the Pacific.  It is also apparent that economic sub-regionalism is set to grow, under the impact of local trade and financial flows.

Throughout Asia, there are many examples of Natural Economic Territories (NETS) being formed.  Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Guangdong province of southern China constitute one such NET.  Another is developing between China's Shantung province and South Korea.  An NET is also taking shape around the littoral states of the Sea of Japan.  There have been discussions between Singapore, Johore (in Malaysia) and Batam Island (in Indonesia) about establishing a NET.  And there are many similar examples of this trend towards economic sub-regionalism.

NATIONALISM COMPETING WITH INTERNATIONALISM

A third force of change in "Tomorrow's Pacific" will be the competing interaction between nationalism and internationalism.  In the context of the emerging international order, all states and regions will be subject to these competing pressures.  But in Asia and the Pacific, there will be particular strains.

At one level, those strains are reflected in the re-emergence of ethnic tensions, religious rivalries and nationalist aspirations, particularly in relation to territorial and political disputes.  At another level, they are apparent in the growing awareness and self-confidence among regional states about Asia's own identity.  This process has been labelled "the Asianisation of Asia."  It highlights a growing awareness of a basic (although, perhaps, an exaggerated) common heritage of race, geography, culture and history.  Whatever the merits of the label, there can be no denying the significance of the growing network of economic, political, cultural and other ties within the Asia-Pacific region, and the fact that its influence is set to expand further.

Fourth, there are significant forces of change affecting the regional security outlook.  They lie not so much in the potential regional flashpoints that exist, such as on the Korean peninsula, in Cambodia, in Burma, in China and Hong Kong, as in disputed territories (such as the Northern Territories and the Spratly and Paracel Islands).  Resolutions or neutralisation of these regional security trouble-spots is an important priority.  But the longer-term extent of regional security lies in the changing attitudes of regional states to managing security issues.

With the end of the Cold War, traditional alliance relationships are having to react to new realities and priorities.  There is, of course, a tendency to exaggerate this trend.  It is fundamentally mistaken, for example, to believe that somehow everything has changed to a point where the established alliance structures and security arrangements are now little more than "transitional arrangements" on the road to a brave new world of regional security.  Nor is there any obvious need for immediate and major changes to be made in institutional arrangements to facilitate dialogue on security issues in the Asia-Pacific region.  At the same time, however, significant changes in regional security structures are occurring:  partly of their own accord and partly in response to shifts in American strategic priorities after the end of the Cold War.

In the Asia-Pacific region, what appears to be developing is the type of "pluralistic security communities" that analysts such as Karl Deutsch foreshadowed many years ago -- that is, states and groups of states among which there have been relatively long periods of peace and between which there is no expectation that disputes will be resolved by resort to force.  It is not a question of new alliances between such regional states, or new formal institutional arrangements on defence co-operation.  Too often proposals for such arrangements are, as Dick Solomon once said, "solutions in search of problems."  But we may well be seeing the evolution of a greater sense of strategic community.

New possibilities are also opening up in terms of confidence-building and dispute-settling mechanisms.  They relate not so much to grand designs for imposing a European mould on Asia-Pacific security issues.  Rather, they are focused on special-purpose sub-regional security structures -- what Professor Robert Scalapino has called "concentric arcs" -- designed to promote maximum flexibility and communication among those in dispute.  They may or may not become established over time.  But it is important to recognise that the old structures, within which regional security issues have long been addressed, are changing significantly.  And they are likely to continue to change over the rest of the decade more quickly than they have at any time since 1945.

THE US-JAPAN ALLIANCE

A fifth force of change at work is the nature of the US-Japan alliance relationship.  This relationship is the key to every other issue of stability in the Asia-Pacific region.

Genuine questions are being asked (in both Japan and the United States) about whether fundamental social, cultural and business differences at a bilateral level are greater than shared economic and security objectives.  Will the Cold War in fact accentuate those bilateral differences and, over time, fatally poison the relationship?  Will a new strategic era be the catalyst for a new kind of US-Japan partnership?

Putting the most pessimistic scenarios to one side, it is quite possible that the interests of Japan and the United States may diverge more in the years ahead than they have in the past.  With the rise of "techno-nationalism" in both countries, and given Japan's growing leadership role in Asia, the partnership may become one of more open rivalry.

Some, of course, go further and argue that such a trend is a slippery slope which could lead to a deterioration in US-Japan relations over the medium to long term, thereby harming both countries and the region as a whole.  But a major rupture in these relations remains highly improbable, and certainly highly undesirable.  The two nations' shared agenda -- of economic growth, new trade and investment opportunities, secure and diversified sources of energy and raw materials, and a rising living standard in both countries -- is one that is likely to overcome other competing priorities.  Furthermore, the American and Japanese economies are already highly integrated, and that process is set to continue.  The Japanese stake in the health of the US economy is growing, not diminishing.

Similarly, at an international level, Japan's focus is on its leading role in East Asia's economic dynamism, it has neither the need nor the desire to become an independent military power, and most regional countries would be particularly disturbed at any such prospect.  In addition, like most other Asian nations, Japan sees a continued US military role in the region as essential to its own national interests, and to the interests of the region generally.

Despite all this common ground, there is no escaping the fact that the partnership between the United States and Japan is currently facing a critical test.  The goal of preserving a close, effective US-Japan political relationship requires a delicate balance.  On the one hand, there is the need to maintain justified pressure against Japan on some of its particular trade and fiscal practices.  On the other hand, there is the need for the United States to face issues of its own domestic economic management which have contributed to the two countries' current trade and economic tensions.

Finally, the Asia-Pacific region will be vitally affected over the coming years by the outcome of the continuing debate between those who advocate the primacy of spreading democracy and those who share the same long-term goal but give short-term priority to economic development.  Assisting the expansion of democracy is currently a powerful motive in American foreign policy.  The influential American commentator, Charles Krauthammer, reflects that view when he writes that the end of the Cold War creates a "unipolar moment" for America in which it can, and should, assert America's democratic interests and values.

This view runs counter to the dominant view in most Asia-Pacific countries which maintains that the transition to democracy is only effective if it is preceded by a period of economic development, underpinned by a strong and firm government committed to consistent market-based economic policies.

There is a growing awareness in Asia that an open economy and a closed political system cannot long co-exist.  As the search for capital, technology and markets becomes more intense, and as political power is assumed by a better-educated and more widely travelled younger generation, the old political order in many countries will change accordingly.

But, over the short term, there is a real potential for difficulty.  The different priority given by Western countries and most Asia-Pacific states to the expansion of democracy and the need for economic development will be one of the vitally important determinants in how the Asia-Pacific states interact with the wider international community.

IMPLICATIONS FOR AUSTRALIAN POLICY

These six factors are what I see as the major forces of change that will shape the Asia-Pacific region over the next decade and beyond.  Let me now turn to make some brief remarks about their implications for Australian policy.

First, in terms of the general challenge for public policy-making in Australia, the changes in the Asia-Pacific region demand a careful re-thinking of the legacies of our history and of our geography.  Too often, we have drawn the wrong lessons from our history and taken false encouragement from our geography in relation to the Asia-Pacific region.  For too much of our history, we drew back from committing ourselves to a new kind of dynamic interaction with regional countries because we did not see it to be either necessary or desirable.  Then, more recently, we were mugged by reality, and we too easily deluded ourselves that our geographic proximity guaranteed us both economic access and diplomatic influence in the Asia-Pacific region.

The fact of life for Australia, however, is that "being there" just isn't enough.  For too long, Australia's leaders have built our geographic proximity to Asia into some kind of cargo-cult mentality.  There has been a mistaken optimism that, somehow, by just being where we are, we can overcome all the consequences of our domestic economic mismanagement by tapping into the dynamic economies of our neighbours.  Yet the truth is that a more productive and a broader-based relationship with Asia and the Pacific will not just "happen" because of geography.  It will only happen if a concerted program of major economic reform and public awareness in Australia makes it happen.  Our history won't save us from our geography.  But our geography alone won't guarantee us anything.

The choice, therefore, is not an exclusive one between our history and our geography.  It is about drawing on the best of both -- learning the right lessons from our history, understanding the real forces of change at work in our region, and pursuing deliberate policies of structural economic reform to maximise the potential of our geographic position.

Second, Australia needs to recognise the likely consequences in our own region of any final collapse of the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations.  Such a collapse would gravely damage the economic interests of all trading nations, but particularly those of Asia-Pacific countries including Australia.  It could lead to unforeseen social and political problems in particular countries.  Furthermore, a break-up of the world into competing trade blocs would be likely to lead to a serious challenge to existing security arrangements in the Asia-Pacific region and, in particular, to the continuation in its present form of the American strategic role in the region.  The end of the GATT system of international trade would also be likely to lead to increased environmental damage.  Some developing countries, in response to what they would interpret as developed states "tearing up the rules" of international trade, would be likely to respond by maximising the use of their own natural resources without existing environmental safeguards.

These are just some of the likely consequences in the Asia-Pacific region of a collapse of the GATT negotiations.  They confirm the view that the success of the Uruguay Round is still the most important item on the international economic and political agenda.  And that is why any Australian government must do whatever it can to promote a successful outcome.

Third, Australia needs to respond creatively to the trend in favour of co-operative economic regionalism and sub-regionalism.  We can do this by making APEC more than a debating society, by giving it some specific targets and deadlines, by involving the private sector more explicitly, and by encouraging APEC's development as a GATT-consistent free trade area.  In addition, the trend towards Natural Economic Territories holds out particular opportunities for areas in northern Australia in terms of developing their economic interaction with neighbouring countries.

Australia also needs to monitor closely the developments towards an ASEAN free-trade area.  The decision in January 1992 by ASEAN member countries to establish such an area within the next 15 years should be welcomed.  Such an initiative is seen as complementary to the APEC process, and we believe that it can play an important role in promoting the trend to trade liberalisation in the Asia-Pacific region as a whole.  We also need to assess objectively the prospects for Australia negotiating GATT-consistent free trade agreements in good and services with particular regional countries or groups of countries.  To the extent that they would advance Australia's national interests in the wider region, such agreements should be pursued actively.

Australia must continue to work for a successful outcome of the Uruguay Round.  But we must not settle for a trade policy which amounts to little more than the hope that the open international trade system will survive.  Australia's national interests are at stake and we must act accordingly to cover all contingencies.  Australia has been too willing to rationalise inactivity and find excuses for failure and delay in international trade negotiations.  Australia should act decisively -- at bilateral, regional and multilateral levels -- to ensure that our national economic interests are protected.

Fourth, Australia needs to respond to the changing contours of regional security.  Our alliance relationship with the United States continues to be to the advantage of both countries.  For Australia, there are clear operational, strategic, intelligence and economic benefits.  And Australia should certainly be strongly committed to developing and strengthening defence co-operation under the alliance.  Australia should do all it can to support the American alliance, and also make it unmistakably clear that we expect reciprocity in this approach.  We want to give the alliance new relevance in the 1990s and beyond.  This applies as much to security as to trade and economic issues.  Without such relevance, the danger is that the alliance will wither.  That is not in the interest of either country, and Australia should do all it can to ensure that it does not occur.

I believe that a significant and continued American strategic presence in the Asia-Pacific region is a fundamentally important stabilising influence.  I also recognise, however, the winds of change blowing through the United States in terms of its international involvements and responsibilities.  I know that the 1969 Guam Declaration will have more relevance than ever before in the 1990s.  I acknowledge the changing attitudes to regional security issues which post-Cold War realities are encouraging within the Asia-Pacific countries themselves.

Australia should adopt a positive, forward-looking policy to develop interaction and build confidence between regional Defence communities.  Our purpose in doing so will be to encourage a framework of co-operative deterrence in our immediate region.  I believe there are particular initiatives that can be taken to upgrade co-operation with regional countries in every area including maritime security measures, information exchange, training, personnel exchanges, industry joint ventures and equipment procurement.

Fifth, Australian policy must clearly recognise that our economic and security interests in the Asia-Pacific region coincide in the US-Japan relationship.  We have, in fact, an interdependent "triangle of interests."  One leg of the triangle is our economic relationship with Japan.  Another is our economic and security relationship with the United States.  The third is the US-Japan relationship itself.  The future course of relations between those two countries will depend critically on a common perception of threats to international security, on the success of the Uruguay Round, on non-discrimination by the North American Free Trade Area, and on a genuine commitment to extend and strengthen shared goals and values.  Australian policy has a very limited role to play in that process.  But we should be very clear as to our national interests that are directly involved, and should do all we can to protect them.

Sixth, and finally, Australian policy must strike the right balance between advancing its interests in the Asia-Pacific region and staying true to its values in support of international recognised standards of human rights.  Australia takes the view, shared by all Western aid donors, that human rights are valid considerations in the provision of foreign aid.  I do not believe it is appropriate to apply hard and fast rules of linkage between the two.  But I do see a relevance between them.

Governments, in Asia or elsewhere, are entitled to pursue their own policies in their own way.  But if their actions openly and grossly violate internationally accepted standards of human rights, then other countries, including Australia, have a right -- and a responsibility -- to respond appropriately, including in the area of foreign aid.

Any such response, however, needs to have a broad focus that addresses not only the extent of civil and political rights but other dimensions such as the alleviation of endemic poverty, improvements in education, and the development of social infrastructure.  I remember the striking title of an article that was written in the late 1970s when the human-rights policies of President Carter were running into enormous difficulties.  The article was entitled "The Hell of Good Intentions."

GOOD INTENTIONS NOT ENOUGH

I believe that the pursuit of good intentions in foreign policy does not necessarily create a "hell" for policy-makers.  Good intentions in the area of human rights, however, will create difficulties if they are pursued in a narrow legalistic way, or as an end in themselves, or divorced from any wider concept of national interests.  And they will also cause difficulties if they are pursued for the purpose of giving governments and interest groups a warm inner glow rather than for the purpose of achieving practical, if limited, outcomes.

Support for internationally recognised standards of human rights is a responsibility that has a legitimate place in a foreign policy of "enlightened self-interest."  Australia should promote such rights in a constructive way and with a clear emphasis on regional implications.  We should do so in a principled and a consistent manner that respects legitimate differences of views.

Owen Harries wrote recently about the end of the Cold War, and concluded:

"... conservatives won the Cold War by virtue of character rather than intellect;  won it despite having a flawed understanding of the enemy and of the strength of their own side;  won it while having little confidence in the outcome until the very end;  won it, one might say, by displaying the old-fashioned phlegmatic qualities of a peasant army -- stubbornness, perseverance, endurance, and a simple uncomplicated sense of right and wrong."

I believe Owen Harries' assessment is fundamentally correct.  Success in the post-Cold War era will require many of the same qualities -- but, of course, many others as well.

It will require a clear recognition of the growing interdependence between foreign and domestic policies.  It will require a capacity to match best international practice in areas of comparative economic advantage.  It will require a capacity to reinvigorate old alliance structures and to adapt them to changing regional security priorities.  (In the case of the US-Australia alliance, it will require that we add value and we consciously set out to make it work.  We can't just take it for granted and expect that it will work.)  It will require a recognition of the fact that what the world has witnessed over recent years is not the "end of history", but one of the great turning-points of history, creating opportunities and challenges for every country.