Over the past five years, the challenges that Canberra faces in the Indo-Pacific region have intensified, mainly due to an increasingly aggressive Chinese foreign policy, the growing rivalry between the latter and the United States – the only formal ally of China. ‘Australia – and the steady demographic, economic, and potentially strategic growth of many nations often overlooked by Australia in previous decades.
It is in this complicated context that the new government headed by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese , the first Labor head of government for almost 10 years, fits.
On the one hand, there is a clear need to maintain Australia’s traditional strategic asset alongside the United States and its allies, while on the other hand there is an urgent need to make national foreign policy more inclusive. This implies expanding not only Canberra’s list of active partners, but also the issues on which Canberra is willing to play an important role. Both elements of continuity and innovation are therefore required.
The first two months after the inauguration of the new Labor government certainly show positive signs in this sense; however the challenges are numerous and often global in nature, and the level of attention given to the new course of foreign policy under the Albanian administration should therefore not be surprising.
The six great challenges of Canberra
Among the many existing challenges, the first point refers to the historical ally, the United States , which represents the pivot of the entire Australian foreign policy. Like all “junior partners”, Australia also runs the two typical risks of asymmetrical alliances: the fear of being abandoned by Washington (fear exemplified by the Trump administration , considering that there is no automatism in the ANZUS alliance that binds the two Countries), and the risk of being trapped in non-strategic conflicts for Australia due to US interventionism (in the recent past Afghanistan and Iraq, in the future potentially Taiwan). There are further risks, of course, but these are the main ones.
The second challenge inevitably refers to China , a nation with which a third of Australia’s entire global trade takes place . At first, the colossal trade relations led to some diplomatic milestones: strategic partnership in 2022and free trade agreement in 2022. As of 2022, however, Beijing’s intense military and economic activities in the international waters of the South China Sea , espionage and cyberwarfare activities against Canberra , and increasingly frequent commercial blackmail have prompted conservative governments in Canberra to seek new trading partners and to support US policy in the Indo-Pacific with renewed vigor (thinkQuad / Quad Plus and AUKUS ). Whether and how the rift between the two countries can be partially mended remains to be seen.
The third point concerns the type of political and strategic partners with which Australia works most closely. After Washington, these are Japan, the United Kingdom, South Korea, France, Thailand, and the Philippines. Without exception, they are all formal allies of the United States . Net of the many advantages, this partly undermines Australia’s image in the region, as does the flexibility of its foreign policy.
The fourth challenge focuses on Australian relations with Southeast Asia , formally represented by the ASEAN association , with which Australia mainly collaborates on issues of an economic nature (with many margins for improvement) and regulations. There is no significant strategic collaboration to support the existing consensus on the importance of international law, essentially due to Beijing’s cumbersome geographical, economic and strategic proximity to ASEAN member states. Since several of these – Indonesia among them – will become economies of global dimensions within a few years, it is essential for Australia to strengthen relations quickly and to be able to extend the perimeter of bilateral and multilateral collaborations.
The fifth test for the new government is that of the South Pacific , a region in which Canberra has historically held the role of regional power and “big brother”. In recent years, the many archipelagic nations have suffered the risks of climate change – including rising seas – but have not found in Australia the right partner to mitigate its effects. On the contrary, Australia continued to export and use non-renewable sources (mainly coal) while minimizing the effects for its regional partners. The harsh and prolonged closure of the borders during the COVID-19 pandemic – later managed also thanks to vaccines destined for the poorest countries, through the COVAX scheme – has thenfurther undermined the regional image of Australia , leaving ample room for Beijing’s Indo-Pacific policy, a policy that the new Albanian government quickly tried to counter.
The sixth and final challenge is that of relations with Europe . Relations are cordial and slowly but steadily improving, although the announcement of the strengthened strategic partnership AUKUS has recently overshadowed the announcement of the EU Indo-Pacific policy. This has caused a lot of irritation in the Old Continent, in addition to the French anger at the exclusion from the famous contract to build submarines for Australia. With the exception of those with the United Kingdom, relations with economic and military powers such as France, Germany, and Italy (and with the European Union itself) have many margins for improvement , with a substantial strategic potential still to be exploited.
The new government and the way to go
It has been pointed out elsewhere that Australia’s greater collaboration with ASEAN , the South Pacific nations, and Europe would be able to strengthen Australian foreign policy with alternative and complementary methods, focusing Canberra on the “soft power” to be supported. to the “hard power” projected and used by Washington. Such complementarity would not require any strategic distancing from Washington .
In the first two months since the inauguration of the new government led by Anthony Albanese , professionals and observers of international relations have seen some catastrophic forecasts denied that feared a dangerous change of course in foreign policy.
On the contrary, the new government immediately took part in the annual meeting of the ” Quad ” (strategic cooperation between Australia, the United States, Japan, and India), and organized a tour of the South Pacific by the Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, in order to counter the growing Chinese influence in northern Australia. At the same time, the new executive has shown a clear willingness to tackle important issues such as climate change, requests for constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians, a new start in relations with the archipelagic nations of the South Pacific, and others that the previous conservative executive led by Scott Morrison aimed to avoid.
It is certainly too early to say that Australia’s new foreign policy course is exactly what the nation needs to address the multiple challenges ahead, but it is certainly possible to say that Canberra is now moving in the right direction .
