From Foreign Policy magazine, response to those who say Australia is simply following a US lead, and that our current foreign policy is not in our domestic interest. This article argues that Australia is actually leading the way on strategic readjustment in Asia, and that it’s in response to China’s doings [my emphases]:
It is not only China’s military capabilities, which it has been building for decades, that have caused anxiety. Rather, it is their increasingly aggressive use that has caused a growing sense of alarm. In just the last few months, Beijing has asserted control over Hong Kong, intruded into Taiwan’s airspace, trained guns on the Philippine Navy, harassed Malaysian vessels, sunk a Vietnamese fishing ship, rammed a Japanese coast guard vessel, reignited a deadly border conflict with India, and conducted cyberattacks and economic coercion against Australia....
Australia’s leaders have committed to a major spending increase and explicitly promised to “take greater responsibility for our own security.” This has more to do with China’s increasingly aggressive behavior than with U.S. pleas. Regardless, Australia is putting resources behind its strategy. [Read on...]
Since then (July), of course, China has waged economic war on Australia, because we had the temerity to demand an international enquiry into the source of the coronavirus. This is a fair demand, and no other country would have responded with such a hissy fit. But not our China:
The Chinese Government has either placed bans on, or impeded, exports from Australia of coal, copper, wine, lobsters, cotton, wheat, sugar, barley and timber.
Other countries are taking notice. Is this the way a country wishing to be a leader in the world should act? Only if it plans to be a brutal leader. Will we take that? All the while China is rather shooting itself in the foot...
