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Australia's Asian
ambitions
By Jeffrey Robertson
The debate over Australia's position in the
Asian region has again risen to prominence with a recent
spate of misunderstandings, misappellations and most of
all, manipulation by leaders and media alike. Yet the
debate remains inconsequential - Australia, by its
actions, is already part of the region.
In what
will be remembered as a difficult week, commencing with
a renewed label from US President George W Bush and
ending with criticism from Malaysian Prime Minister
Mahathir Mohamad, there was little Australia could do
but sit back, relax and hope that actions spoke louder
than words.
The long week, starting on October
20, began with what Bush later described as "a very
careful, clever question" - whether he considered
Australia to be a "deputy sheriff". The unfortunate
label was bestowed unwittingly on Australia by Prime
Minister John Howard and an overly ambitious sub-editor
of The Bulletin magazine back in 1999. It was greeted by
derision and disquiet both at home and abroad - most
notably in Australia's immediate region - Southeast
Asia. The wily Bush, keenly aware of the domestic
criticism faced by Howard for labeling Australia a
deputy sheriff (read puppet), decided to remedy the
situation by promoting it to sheriff. "We don't see it
as a deputy sheriff. We see it as a sheriff," beamed
Bush.
From Bush's first utterance in response to
the carefully loaded question, the majority of regional
journalists knew where the first and probably the last
blows would come from - Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
Mahathir is unquestionably Australia's harshest
critic. Indeed, he is perhaps the harshest critic of the
West in general. His criticism, while representative of
the developing world in its early stages, has
increasingly become vitriolic and even bizarre in the
twilight of his career. With alacrity that would be
amazing even for a politician one-quarter his age,
Mahathir seized upon Bush's fumble, adding fuel to the
conflagration of criticism already dealt to Australia at
the Bali ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations)
summit. According to Mahathir, Australia is regarded in
Asia as "some sort of a transplant from another region".
Yet in the same week actions, not words, have
presented the most powerful evidence of Australia's
membership in the region. On October 20, Howard and Thai
Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra announced the
completion of negotiations on a free-trade agreement
(FTA), making Australia the only country to have an FTA
with two ASEAN member states, after the signing of an
FTA with Singapore earlier in the year.
The week
also included a visit to Australia by Chinese President
Hu Jintao, the highlight of which was the announcement
that Australia and China had agreed to undertake a
detailed joint study toward a comprehensive FTA as part
of the trade and economic framework agreement signed by
Chinese Vice Minister of Commerce Yu Guangzhou and
Australian Trade Minister Mark Vaile. Then on Friday,
China's biggest offshore oil and gas producer, CNOOC
Ltd, signed an agreement for a 12.5 percent equity stake
in the Gorgon gas field off the coast of northwestern
Australia. The deal, worth more than A$36 billion,
surpasses the previous A$25 billion record agreement set
for CNOOC's 25 percent stake in Australia's North West
Shelf venture.
Indeed, if actions were
considered paramount to words, Australia would have long
been considered an integral part of the region. As far
back as the early 1940s Australia recognized the
importance of facing north, opening two of its first
four independent diplomatic missions in Asia - in China
and Japan. Since the 1950s Japan has been Australia's
principal export market. Trade with the region has
continued to grow to the extent that today Asia accounts
for more than half of Australia's exports.
Unfortunately for Australia, actions do not
currently speak louder than words in defining its
position in the region. But it would be foolish to think
that Australia will always be an outsider - regions are
not fixed in time but change as fast as our own
perceptions.
Asian regionalism is a relatively
young concept. Southeast Asia has overcome enormous
obstacles to form what is today an increasingly cohesive
regional voice on the world stage. From the very
beginning it was a challenge to determine what
constituted "Southeast Asia" - a region of immense
geographic, cultural, linguistic and ethnic diversity.
Attempts ranged from a perceived common "elegance of
bearing and apparently innate cheerfulness and good
humor" to a shared exposure to weather patterns
dominated by the tropical monsoon. The difference
between peoples of the Indonesian islands and the
Burmese mountains, or even within ethnic and religious
groups in the city-state of Singapore, lead only to what
has been called "unity in diversity". Ultimately, the
most successful determining factor of Southeast Asian
regionalism was the construction of a regional identity,
attributable largely to the work of ASEAN. Southeast
Asia presently exists only because we perceive and
others perceive the region to exist.
Our
perception of Southeast Asia and external perceptions of
Southeast Asia have changed considerably over time. In
1967 at the signing of the Bangkok Declaration marking
the foundation of ASEAN, the five original members
decided to allow open membership to regional states
sharing ASEAN ideals. Interestingly, one of those states
was Sri Lanka. If Sri Lanka had joined ASEAN, would
Southeast Asia today stretch from the Philippines in the
east to Sri Lanka in the west? Were that the case, the
region of Southeast Asia as we perceive it would be
different indeed. In little more than one generation,
Southeast Asia, through ASEAN, has defined and narrowed
its borders, configured behavioral norms and transformed
a regional economy. Most important, it has constructed a
regional identity.
Similarly, perceptions of
Asia as a region are constantly in flux. Asia can be
understood to stretch from the Urals in the west to
Japan in the east and from Siberia in the north to
Australia in the south. Economic groupings such as
ASEAN+3 (Japan, South Korea and China) or the planned
European-style common market involving ASEAN, the three
East Asian states and India may perhaps prove to be
solid foundations for a future body that could construct
a distinct regional identity - a region that would bring
a new meaning to the term "unity in diversity".
In the end, the countries themselves will change
little - but our perceptions of them as a region will
change considerably. There may even come a day when
eventually words will match actions and Australia will
be perceived as another distinct member of a very
diverse regional community.
(Copyright 2003 Asia
Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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