Strategic Australia: ‘out of the Anglosphere’?

Penny Wong, Australian Foreign Minister, has gained both popularity and notoriety in Australian and Pacific circles. The well-established figure in Australian politics recently toured Southeast Asia with a focus on the ‘Malay realm’ of Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia, wherein she espoused a progressive theory of Australian grand strategy - getting out of the Anglosphere . While she is by no means the first to discuss this approach, for many, there is simply too much uncertainty regarding how this would materialize.

Penny Wong during a visit to Samoa

Within the foreign policy establishment of Australia, and strong within scholarship, exists a tradition of critiquing the role Australia has long played as first lieutenant to Britain, and now the United States. For many, Australia should in fact be seeking not to grow in importance in the US’s list of allies, but charting its own course in international affairs. Randall Doyle’s 2022 book, The Tragedy of Australian Foreign Policy, dives into the complex reality of a foreign policy designed and led first by Britain, and now by the US. The book touches on numerous events in the 20th century, and takes a look at why Australia joined the Iraq war. While discourse puts Australia in the non-unproblematic box ‘western’, it can be observed that alongside its own internal colonial history, there are sentiments of imperialism around its traditional relationship with the UK and US.

Wong has taken to boldly re-asserting the importance of ASEAN centrality for the region, stressing how multilateralism is a feature of the region, and one that can only grow from here. Within these last slew of speeches she has emphasized Australia’s role as a strong partner in the Asia-Pacific complex, alongside ASEAN and other bodies, instead of placing them at the heart of the Sino-American strategic rivalry. Being of Chinese-Malay and Australian heritage, Wong has become a charismatic messenger across the region. The message does not downplay the strategic importance of China and the US to Australian interests, but it does suggest that playing the game in a bi-polar fashion is highly disadvantageous. Tapping into narratives around ASEAN’s success at courting the great powers into working within their forums, even on their terms, Australian foreign policy experts are thinking about alternative paths as an independent middle power.

This re-evaluation of Australian strategic planning has come amidst heightened discussion over what ‘winning’ could potentially look like for Australia in the Asia-Pacific's current turmoil. With its largest security and trade partners on the brink of military conflict, should it really be picking sides, and is there fertile soil for long-term multilateralism and ‘capitalist peace’?

How would a break look?

The Albanese administration has also taken a step back from the previous Morrison governments’ ‘arc of autocracies’ in Southeast Asia, instead stressing the idea of ‘strategic equilibrium’, as Wong coined, to mean that countries should be left to make their own sovereign choices. This does in theory open up wider diplomatic channels for cooperation outside of the usual liberal-democracies across the Pacific. Southeast Asia is typically construed as cutting through great power politics and working them to their advantage; meaning tangible alternatives do exist. But to what extent is Australia really willing, or even able, to decouple itself from the Sino-American strategic rivalry? A fairly sobering reality is the depth of security cooperation currently held between Australia and the US.

Moving past Australia’s all-in commitment to buy nuclear-powered submarines from the US and the UK (a deal which poisoned its relationship with one ally, France), and not to mention its embedded position within structures such as the Quad, Five Eyes, and Five Power Defense Agreement, it would be pertinent to bring up the subject of Netflix’s newest series: Pine Gap. Pine Gap is an intelligence center in the heart of Australia’s Northern Territories, set up during the 1960s to monitor US satellites while they passed over China and eastern Russia. It has continued beyond its cold-war legacy to monitor nuclear activity in China and North Korea, and even to support both wars in Iraq. While nominally a jointly-operated base, Pine-Gap has always represented ‘what Australia could do for the US’ in providing an isolated location for a critical intelligence center.

The Pine Gap facility

While it is important to stress that this debate is not about Australia leading the next non-aligned movement, to take steps towards an ASEAN-like policy of neutrality would require more than hiring a new speech writer and simply sailing around the nine-dash line. Forget canceling yet another submarine deal, unpicking the security architecture - and indeed infrastructure - of the US-Australian partnership is a strenuous task just to track on paper. The sheer amount of intelligence, development, and dependency that exists between the two in the era of Obama’s ‘pivot to Asia’ is immense. It also cannot be ignored that foreign policy is a major determinant of defense and security policy; if the former changes so will the latter. But, unlike in the field of foreign policy where change can be cheap and quick, changes to defense planning typically lead to breakdown in long-since pre-planned procurement schedules. 

Furthermore, while the legacy of ASEAN centrality is undeniably tangible in the Indo-Pacific, the organization has been thrust - once again - into considerable turmoil over internal divisions, this time over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Without seeking to suggest the breakdown of ASEAN, it is worth stating that the bloc is far from a role model for Australian policy makers. Aside from operations currently underway, such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), there are limited areas in which a cooling of Sino-Australian ties could take place. 

A prominent issue arises from that fact that even if Australia could carve out its own foreign policy, seperate from the US’, after so many years of sustained strategic thinking, many issues that are seen as core security topics for Australia - such as diplomacy in the South Pacific - are also important US objectives. This brings the discussion full circle to a more fundamental problem, where US and Australian security interests are now critically intertwined when it comes to China. 

Perhaps a better question is whether or not Australia can grow out of its historical experience in the anglosphere, in an era where its security analysts may well advise it to sit tight under Uncle Sam.