The Region - Reviewing our Asian engagement

We have the chance to demonstrate that this is a region in which difference is respected, history negotiated, and plurality celebrated, argues Tony Milner. Summary Australian engagement with Asia seems to be getting more difficult. The Bali tragedy and developments occurring since that time underline the need to pause a moment, and take stock. But before assessing the problems ahead, and the resources we possess to deal with those problems, let me try to clear away three debates that seem to me to have been a waste of time. The first debate, or diversion, is the argument about whether Australia is an ‘Asian country’. To the extent to which the phrase signifies anything at all, it does not apply easily to this country. We have a significant Asian population here, but our dominant value system and institutions give Australia an unmistakable European stamp. To suggest we are an ‘Asian country’ provokes confusion and sometimes ridicule in Asian societies. It also threatens the sense of identity of important sectors of the Australian community. The fact is that the more we engage in our region - the more we interact in commerce, education, tourism and diplomacy - the more we tend to recognize the characteristics that distinguish us in the region. Engagement with Asia helps us to recognise the potency in Australian society of our Australian, liberal values. In many but not all situations these liberal values are also something that make Australia attractive in the region. The second diversion that it would be helpful to sweep away is the debate about whether the Asian region could be anything other than our priority in international relations. It will never be our only concern but, living where we do in this world, the Asian region has to be our special challenge and our special opportunity. Our relations with Asia define Australia in the wider world. Deep down, and despite differences in approach and strategy, most Australians will accept this fact. In the 1990s some commentators suggested that ‘Asia’ was taken seriously by only one side of Australian politics, and it is arguably the case that this claim has skewed public discussion about the ‘Asia’ issue ever since. The Labor contribution to our Asian engagement, in fact, is beyond question. But sensible public debate requires a broader narrative. When I was a boy a courageous Country Party leader was forging an historic agreement with the new Japan; it was in that period also that a Southeast Asian newspaper said of the Menzies Government - I repeat, the Menzies Government - that it had shown an unprecedented “consciousness of (Australia’s) geographic and strategic relationship with Asia”. Going back even further, to a time when most of the Asian region was under the power or influence of European colonialism, Australian leaders could nevertheless see what the future would bring. Thus, when my grandparents were children, Prime Minister Alfred Deakin warned Australians that they had “made their homes neither in Europe nor America”. Their fortunes, he said, would be linked to the Asian region “in the closest manner, in trade and in strife”. Even before the emergence of nation-states in Southeast and South Asia, and the economic triumph of Northeast Asia, therefore, the geopolitical logic could be clearly discerned. As for the situation of today, let there be absolutely no doubt that we are engaged in the Asian region “in trade and in strife” and many other areas. Apart from our long-standing security relationships, well over half of our exports go to Asia, and about half of our imports come from there. The flow of investment is smaller but substantial. Six per cent of Australians were born in the Asian region. More than 80 per cent of the vast international student intake comes from Asia, half our tourist numbers (and remember tourism is our leading export industry) come from there. From the point of view of Asian societies as well as our own, all this interaction is important. We are principal providers of international education, for instance, for Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam. There were also half a million Australians visiting Singapore last year, and 350,000 Australians in Thailand. Tens of thousands of Australians work in Asia. They work in banking, financial consulting, cement making, engineering and retail marketing. We have Australians in many places teaching English and advising on heritage projects. We are losing key Australian academics to Asian universities, and our artists are working with artists from the Asian region. In all these cultural, commercial and intellectual ways, Australians are extending their horizons and, in many cases, sharpening their own sense of Australian identity. Turning from the Australia public to government, there is certainly debate about policies and balance, and about appropriate rhetoric, but there nevertheless seems to be an element of genuine bi-partisanship supporting our quest for deeper engagement with China and Japan, for the post-Timor rebuilding of our relations with Indonesia, for our trade agreements with Singapore and Thailand, for the expanding of defence cooperation with many countries in the region and for our involvement in such regional processes as APEC, the ASEAN Regional Forum and the Asian Development Bank. It is important, of course, not to ignore the differences between political parties with respect to Asian engagement. However, it must be emphasised - and emphasised in Asia itself - that by no stretch of the imagination can Australia in its government and people-to-people interaction be seen to have turned its back on the Asian region. The issue which the Australian voter should sensibly consider is not whether or not Asia should be a priority, but just which side of politics can be more effective in achieving our national interest in the Asian region. The third debate I would seek to set aside as time wasting concerns the United States alliance. It is not realistic to suggest there can be a choice between the United States’ alliance and engagement with Asia. We will have both. Australians strongly support the alliance and in the region itself, sometimes to our advantage and sometimes not, Australia is considered to be a long-term American ally. In these circumstances, the issue to focus on - and to ask our political leaders to focus on - is how best we can make the alliance assist our regional objectives, and how most effectively we can make our Asian relations enhance our strength within the alliance itself. In these ways, then, I would seek to clear the decks. Having urged that we set aside the debates about whether Australia is an Asian country, whether Asia can be anything other than Australia’s defining priority, and, finally, whether it would be politically possible to dispense with the alliance, let me now turn to the situation we face today in the Asian region. IN PREVIOUS lectures in this series Professor Wang Gungwu has described the emerging China - determined never to be threatened again by foreign powers, and concerned to develop an alternative civilization, an alternative modernity. Professor Merle Ricklefs, in the second lecture, gave a sweeping view of Islam in this region, and what he termed “the global struggle” taking place within the Islamic community. This is a struggle to which Australia gave little attention in the 1990s. Other developments in the region that challenge some of our previous assumptions include the Asian Economic Crisis, which brought social and political turmoil in a number of countries, and the violent birth of East Timor, which was followed by a breakdown in relations with our huge neighbour, Indonesia. In the last few years we have also seen a strengthening of exclusive, Asia-only regionalism to compete with the open APEC regionalism we favoured. We have seen (and so vividly) the attacks of September 11, the war on Muslim terrorism carried on in this region, and, finally, the Bali bombings which many fear were targeting our own people. Comparing the Asian region today with a decade ago, it would seem that with one possible exception the outlook is genuinely more formidable. But we are perhaps also more realistic today in our assessments. In retrospect the mid-1990s was an optimistic period. It was the period of the miracle economies in Asia, and many in Australia and elsewhere believed that such economic progress would be accompanied by liberal political change. “You cannot compartmentalise freedom”, declared the former Governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten. According to Francis Fukuyama, history had come to an end; there was “no ideology with pretensions to universality”, not even Islam, that could possibly challenge liberal democracy. In Australia, our well-respected foreign minister of the time assured us that just as economies were being transformed so English was spreading as a lingua franca in the region, and a cultural convergence was forming around such liberal principals as multiculturalism and democracy. In these heady years - a decade or so ago - there sometimes seemed to be only two spoilers; Prime Minister Mahathir and the eminent American commentator, Samuel Huntington, who questioned the convergence vision and offered his own dark spectre of a coming clash of civilisations. In Australia at that time I was involved in a national project that aimed to probe the likely role of contrasting views and perceptions in Australia’s deepening engagement with the Asian region. It offers no satisfaction now to make the point, but it was evident to us then that Australians tended to underestimate the potency of value systems, and of history and histories in a larger sense. The project certainly did not speak of clashing civilizations - even today Huntington’s views are overly rigid, overly simplistic; civilizations do change dramatically and they are often deeply divided. Our research, however, left no doubt that history is alive. In such practical areas as national security, business cultures, citizenship, the media and democracy we warned that contrasting histories would be likely to cause different perceptions, different understandings that could lead to confusion in Australia’s interaction with particular Asian societies. In the broad international relations of the region - in the continuing suspicion between China and Japan, between Myanmar and Thailand, between Singapore and Malaysia - we see the working out of historical processes. We see history again in the six centuries of struggle within Southeast Asian Islam, and also in the anti-colonialism that continues to underpin Asia-only region building, and that damages Australian participation because of our perceived British colonial past. We see history’s impact just as clearly in Australia itself - in the fears that helped to drive the Hanson movement, and in the Australian determination to intervene in East Timor’s struggle for independence. In speaking of the potency of history, it is important not to go from one extreme to another and neglect the continued importance of globalising forces. But globalising technologies and economies do not necessarily bring cultural homogeneity, and a tough-minded outlook for the Asian region must stress the way religions, ethnicities and historical experience will continue to encourage division and misunderstanding between Asian communities and, importantly, between some of those communities and Australia. I suggested earlier that there was a possible qualification to the view that the Asian region has become more difficult for us today than it was a decade ago. This possible qualification concerns the “war on terror”. In the words of our Foreign Minister, since the events of September 11 there has been “a remarkable level of cooperation between our regional countries”. For all its grim purpose and continuing danger, the “war on terror” is nevertheless a project that provides a context for enhancing Australian relations with the countries of the region, as well as with Washington. Even Prime Minister Mahathir was pleased to take the journey to Washington. As one country after another has joined the American posse - while these countries focus on the United States rather than, for instance, on ASEAN +3 regionalism - Australia has had an opportunity to strengthen regional relations. In the “war on terror” Australia is not the outsider. We have experience as an American ally, as well as real professionalism in defence. We can speak about the possibilities of maintaining an independent viewpoint within the United States’ alliance and even about ways to influence the sheriff. In the “war on terror”, then, Australia has an opportunity - if we get it right - to move back and forth between the Asian countries and Washington, adding value to the relationships on all sides. This optimistic observation, as I say, is an exceptional element in the generally difficult situation with which Australia is presented in this region right now. And recently, as everyone here will know, real tension has arisen between Australia and some southeast Asian countries regarding the particular way we are pursuing counter-terrorism. SURVEYING the region today - recognising, for instance, that Australia faces challenges substantially more serious than the United Kingdom has to handle in Europe - let us take stock of our resources. First, we are fortunate to have a reasonably healthy economy and a relatively stable society. We are one of the oldest democracies in the region. We are a country with a good record for absorbing immigrants from different cultures, and we offer opportunities. A Singaporean newspaper recently published a major article on a Singaporean businessman, Alvin Phua, who has chosen to live in Australia. Mr Phua spoke of Australia as a country of freedom, where it was “no offense to argue with teachers or view one’s opinion freely”. Australia, said Mr Phua, was a place where the little entrepreneur was not discriminated against. The “overall mindset in Australia encourages you to just have a go”. Newspaper articles like this are good for our education and tourist interests, as well as our commercial prospects. They also remind us that engaging effectively with Asia is not opposed to the maintenance of our long-established liberal value system. In considering Australia’s resources, we need to stress also our strong defence capabilities, and particularly the long experience our forces have had in cooperating and, ironically perhaps, making friends in the region. My colleague, Paul Dibb, is surely right in saying we need to attend to our defence budget. But in assessing security resources we should also heed the recent warning of Sir Michael Howard, the former President of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, who insists that the war against terror is less a military war than “police work”. Sophisticated police work, of course, will require high-quality intelligence and intelligence analysis - and that, I understand, is expensive. It also raises the question of the Asia expertise we currently possess in this country. The terrorist analyst, Rohan Guneratna, has recently suggested that “the Australian malaise is one of not being sufficiently educated on the Asia-Pacific region, with a poor understanding of the cultures, politics and economies of its neighbours”. He accuses us of a “she’ll be right” attitude. Guneratna’s judgement seems unnecessarily harsh. In a number of universities, including the Australian National University, we have large concentrations of Asia specialists, and a broad range of courses (including language courses) on the region. What must be admitted, however, is that (as recent statements from the Asian Studies Association of Australia suggest) there has been a decline in the number of Asian language courses. Furthermore, it is true that the targets for Asia-teaching in our school system, set in the 1980s by the Asian Studies’ Council, have never come close to being met. Until this year, the present government continued to fund the Labor-initiated NALSAS Strategy for promoting Asian language and Asian studies in our schools. Given recent concern in the aftermath of Bali about the need for an Asia-informed community, we must assume that the federal government will be working closely with the state Labor governments to establish a new strategy. It should be appreciated that the study of Asian languages and Asian societies is demanding, and that half a century ago both the Coalition and Labor governments understood that fact when they began to stimulate Asia programs in our education system. The last type of resource I want to discuss in considering our capacity to engage with Asia is our Australian political skill - and I mean political skill in the community as well as in government. Too often we take political skills for granted, or just focus on the destructiveness of politics. But the skills we have honed in overcoming sectarianism over the last two centuries, and in seeking to build a relatively cohesive but multicultural society, may prove increasingly valuable in handling our Asian engagement. Political skill is essential right now, of course, as we deal with the consequences of the Bali tragedy. The Australian’s Paul Kelly was right to praise the Prime Minister’s use of language in addressing the Australian public and the world. It was a fine thing to thank the “lovely” Balinese people for their hospitality to Australians over the years, and it was essential to point out that we have no argument with decent, law-abiding Australian Muslims. In the last few months I have been in Singapore, a country with less political experience than Australia, and have watched the careful way in which its leadership has been addressing one community after another - particular after a series of arrests of Muslim terrorist suspects - in order to maintain a sense of trust and confidence in the society. We in Australia will need much of this patient reassurance, and perhaps trouble should be taken to remind the broad Australian community of the great achievements of the Islamic region and the genuine peacefulness of the Muslim people. Religious violence in Australia would be tragic in itself - it would hurt innocent people and undermine the sense of national community that has been so painstakingly fostered. But religious violence would also have a potentially disastrous international dimension. Already newspapers in southeast Asia are reporting that Muslim leaders have been spat on and mosques vandalised in Australia. Such reports - especially when given in vivid detail - obviously have the potential to damage cooperation with our Muslim neighbours in the region - a cooperation that is vital if we are to punish past acts and prevent future acts of terrorism. But equally important, we have to consider the possibility that religious violence in Australia will endanger the hundreds of thousands of Australians who work, study and travel in the Asian region. These people - often the Australians who are most open and positive toward Asian societies - will be vulnerable to random acts of reprisal. The danger of such spiraling religious and cultural tension, in my view, needs to be widely discussed in Australia. Political leadership is needed in Australia in the longer term as well in assisting our broader, ongoing engagement with the region. Most of all, Australians need to be told why it is important to be patient. We saw such helpful rhetoric, for example, from Prime Minister and Opposition Leader in July 2001 when the last Indonesian President visited Australia. The Prime Minister reminded his “fellow Australians” of the “scale and size of our northern neighbour” and of the "fundamental value of the relationship to Australia”. We were told that the transition to democracy in Indonesia is “one of the most momentous changes in the post-Cold War period”, and both Prime Minister and Opposition Leader were uncompromising in their support of Indonesia’s territorial integrity. This type of bipartisanship will continue to be important. It will often be critical to lift the Asian engagement above in day-to-day politics. Democracy tends to privilege the quick fix, the rapid solution. In the next decades it would appear likely that our engagement with Asia will move slowly. Just as neither side of Australian politics was successful in getting us into some Asian regional processes - for instance, the so-called ASEM meetings between Asia and Europe - so we are now moving slowly in establishing a political dialogue and a trade agreement with the ASEAN grouping. We have had further frustrations in recently with ASEAN, as you will know, including a new round of abuse from the Malaysian leader. It is something that, after two years, last week we completed free trade negotiations with Singapore. Australia is often pushing up hill in Asia - our particular history makes us persistently vulnerable to the criticism that we take a superior colonial approach, and that we do not respect other societies. Many in Australia will be particularly disappointed that some commentators in the Asian region seem to see police raids on suspected terrorist links as being almost as morally repugnant as terrorism itself. We may be disappointed, but we must nevertheless be patient in proving that this is not the case, and that we are by no means targeting Islam as a religion. Another area in which our leaders need to convince the Australian public to be patient is in the task of tracking down the killers in Bali. The Prime Minister was wise to say that we just “can’t go into another country and take things over. We have to work with people”. Others on both sides of politic