US military moves welcome
From: The Australian
November 12, 2011 12:00AM
Increase Text Size
Decrease Text Size
Print
TO have a US President visit Australia and focus primarily on regional issues is a historic prospect.
Our mission in Afghanistan will be high on the agenda, but changing military arrangements in Australia and the Pacific will be central. Our new US military co-operation will be welcome on a number of fronts. It represents a deepening and modernisation of the bilateral strategic links with our ally, it helps to anchor the US military in our region and it underpins an ongoing amplification of the US commitment to East Asia.
The details of the joint military arrangements will be announced by Julia Gillard and Barack Obama during his Australian visit, and his speech to the joint sitting of parliament will detail the wider context of America's Asia-Pacific strategy. Australia's interests will be well served by Mr Obama outlining a long-term and far-sighted role for the US in the Pacific, where we, along with Japan, continue to be crucial liberal-democratic allies as well as economic partners.
Free trial
The military investment in Darwin has been coming for some time, and will help the Americans disperse their strategic resources from the concentrated bases on the islands of Okinawa and Guam. The Gillard government has been heavily involved in these considerations, and it has been determined to co-operate while also ensuring Australia's interests and sovereign rights are protected.
The Weekend Australian foreshadowed this in September when Defence Minister Stephen Smith told our Foreign Editor Greg Sheridan that the decisions coming from the US forces posture review would be "the single biggest co-operative development in the practical co-operation of the alliance since the negotiation of the joint facilities in the 1980s."
The US and Australian military posture is now more focused on regional stability, and the new deployments through Darwin will be seen as another important step in balancing the rising military might of China. The Chinese unilateral assertion of sovereignty over the South China Sea, where its navy sometimes harasses foreign vessels, continues to foster uncertainty across East Asia. Australia and the US, along with Singapore and Malaysia, often conduct naval exercises in the South China Sea. The possibility that tensions will rise only underscores the wisdom of buttressing US commitments here through the marine arrangements. No doubt the crucial regional counter-terrorism task will also benefit.
This is not a zero-sum game that somehow plays off our relationships with the US and China. Rather, we can continue to nurture our strong alliance with America while building our economic relationship with China, urging the communist power to be more transparent about its military ambitions, and more co-operative in our shared strategic objectives. In fact, maintaining a US commitment and focus on the Asia-Pacific will support the stability of this region as it continues to lead the world's economic realignment, and as China exerts its growing power in a responsible fashion.
Ms Gillard, Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd and Mr Smith, for all their apparent tensions over internal ructions, clearly agree on this strategic direction, and it is an unambiguously good outcome that they have struck a mutually beneficial arrangement with the Obama administration.