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asia policy and this in turn affects Australia. Even one of Australia’s most prominent advocates of a more accommodating approach to the rise of China, Hugh White, has acknowledged that to concede control of the South China Sea to Beijing “would be to concede more than is compatible with the vital interests of other great powers, especially Japan.” 13 The U.S. alliance and Asian security partnerships. A third set of considerations framing Australia’s engaged perspective on the South China Sea relates to its security alliance with the United States and its burgeoning partnerships with a range of Asian countries, including Japan. Australian observers recognize that the tensions in the South China Sea are testing the United States’ resolve, credibility, and diplomatic dexterity. From strong foundations, the U.S.-Australia alliance has become even stronger still in recent years. It draws wide public support in Australia and provides benefits in intelligence, military capability, and technology that this middle power could not otherwise attain. 14 Australia has moved in recent years to support and facilitate the U.S. rebalance to Asia, including through the rotational presence of U.S. Marines in Darwin, enhanced access arrangements for U.S. ships and aircraft, and heightened cooperation on maritime and space surveillance. Although official public statements are diplomatically worded, it is safe to assume that this hewing closer to the alliance is in significant measure about China. Canberra’s policy elites do not perceive a direct or simple China “threat” but are concerned about China’s growing military power and uncertainties about its long-term effect on regional stability. 15 The credibility of U.S. alliance commitments thus matters deeply to Australia. If one of China’s objectives in the South China Sea is to undermine that credibility, then it is in Australia’s interests to help ensure that goal is not realized. Australian strategic diplomacy in the Indo-Pacific involves seeking to shape the regional security environment to maintain a balance of power and discourage coercive changes to the status quo. This helps explain Canberra’s efforts in recent years to improve security cooperation with Japan, India, South Korea, and various Southeast Asian states. Navigating between conflict and coercion. At the same time, Australia is not seeking to encourage recklessness by any side, including the United States or claimant states such as the Philippines and Vietnam. It has as 13 Hugh White, The China Choice: Why America Should Share Power (Melbourne: Black Inc., 2012), 151. 14 External Panel of Experts on the 2015 Defence White Paper, Guarding Against Uncertainty: Australian Attitudes to Defence (Canberra: Department of Defence, 2015), 33–34, 111. 15 See, for instance, Richardson, “The Strategic Outlook for the Indo-Pacific Region.” [ 10 ]
oundtable • non-claimant perspectives on the south china sea profound an interest as any country in the avoidance of armed conflict or escalation. Australian policy on the South China Sea consistently calls for restraint on all sides. Australia is understandably seeking to build a reasonable security relationship with China, alongside its massive economic one, and it is not in Australia’s interests to be gratuitous, needlessly provocative, or entirely insensitive to how China defines its own interests in the South China Sea. Canberra does not take sides on the territorial claims and has been an advocate of practical confidence-building measures, transparency, and dialogue, including in ASEAN-centric forums such as the East Asia Summit. At the start of 2016, as China’s island-building moves to completion and with no rules-based solution to the South China Sea tensions in sight, the limits of a mostly declaratory policy approach by countries such as Australia have been made plain. A series of speeches and statements by ministers and officials throughout 2015 suggested that Australia was firming up its South China Sea policy. Following the publicized activity of the destroyer USS Lassen in October 2015, Canberra openly supported the U.S. policy of conducting freedom of navigation operations. 16 Intriguingly, it then came to light that Australia was quietly continuing to conduct its own activities to assert its rights of freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, or more specifically of overflight. In December 2015, a BBC journalist intercepted and broadcast radio communications from an Australian P-3 Orion maritime surveillance aircraft telling Chinese forces the plane was exercising rights under international law. Australian media reports suggested that the tempo of these flights had increased as a sign to Beijing that Australia did not accept claims to maritime territory or authority supposedly generated by China’s artificial islands. 17 What Lies Ahead: Choices and Costs The question arises, what else is Australia likely or prepared to do to protect its interests in response to China’s behavior in the South China Sea? There had been some initial speculation that the moderate conservative government of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who replaced the markedly right-wing Tony Abbott in September 2015, would 16 Shalailah Medhora, “Australia Strongly Supports U.S. Activity in South China Sea, Says Marise Payne,” Guardian, October 27, 2015. 17 David Wroe and Philip Wen, “South China Sea: Australia Steps Up Air Patrols in Defiance of Beijing,” Sydney Morning Herald, December 15 2015. [ 11 ]
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