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All take and no give

By K.C. Boey - posted Friday, 2 November 2012


In the jargon of media, Julia Gillard's Australia in the Asian Century ticks most of the boxes on intent, even if they may be short on detail and funding. Author, economics mandarin Ken Henry, admirably addresses most of the 5Ws + H: who, what, where, when, why and how.

The questions are not new. They have exercised Australia and its government of the day variously with the nation's shift in attitude towards Asia since Federation, dictated by domestic imperatives given the perennial contestation between Australia's history and its geography.

As identified by West Australian academics Mark Beeson and Kanishka Jayasuria in a 2009 essay in the Australian Journal of Politics and History, there have been four key periods of Australia's understanding of "Asian engagement".

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They define these periods from Federation to the Cold War; the period of the Cold War; the "turn to Asia" after the Cold War; and the reversal post-September 11, 2001.

The first period was dominated by imperial relations and Australia's "search for political identity within a common order shaped by Britain".

This gave way to a time when the study of Asia was dominated by the imperatives of the Cold War and strategic priorities of Australia's new "great and powerful friend", the United States.

"It is a measure of just how much had changed in both Australia itself and within the wider East Asian region, that our third period is marked by an unambiguous and unapologetic 'turn to Asia' signalled by what came to be known as policies of Asian engagement," write Beeson and Jayasuria.

This was the time of the ascendancy itself of economics mandarin of the time, Ross Garnaut, and his Australia and the Northeast Asia Ascendancy (1987), commissioned by the Hawke-Keating government.

But as Beeson and Jayasuriya note in their study, "the very nature of Asian engagement were surprisingly fluid and uncertain". The tenure of John Howard's government marked another recalibration of Australia's foreign policy priorities.

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"Indeed," Beeson and Jayasuriya note, "Australia-Asia relations during the late 1990s were marked by distinct cooling in enthusiasm for 'Asia', and a renewed interest in reviving older strategic ties with the US."

This shift, punctuated by Howard's personal emotions in the thick of the conflagration in Washington on September 11, marked the start of the fourth period of Australia-Asia relations, "which initially saw a renewed preoccupation with geopolitics, and subsequently came once again to be dominated by economic issues in general and the 'rise of China' in particular".

Beeson and Jayasuriya are an instructive backdrop against which to view Gillard's Australia in the Asian Century. Yet they are inadequate in the larger scheme of American philosopher Richard Rorty, and his contemporary compatriots of the time, political scientists Francis Fukuyama and Samuel P. Huntington.

Rorty took exception to the "essentialist Heideggerian account of the West as a finished-off object", positing instead the alternative notion of the West as a "continuing adventure" (in conversations with the East), in his contribution to Culture and Modernity: East-West Philosophic Perspectives (1991).

Rorty was fighting a losing battle in the triumphalist age of liberal democracy of Francis Fukuyama - The End of History and the Last Man (1992) - and the pessimistic view of Samuel P. Huntington on The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996).

Huntington, of course, was greeted with forceful objection towards the end of Australia's third period of Asian engagement, a brigade led by then foreign minister Gareth Evans. Fukuyama, meanwhile, subsequently recanted the neoliberal stance following the invasion of Iraq perpetrated by President George W. Bush.

On the Rorty view, Western - and thus Australia's - engagement with Asia need go back to post-Enlightenment German philosopher Heidegger. On that view, any understanding of Australia's engagement with Asia needs to be seen from the historical perspective of the "new" Asia(ns).

On the continuum of Beeson and Jayasuriya, Gillard's Australia in the Asian Century would represent the "fifth wave" of Asia engagement. The "fluid shifts" and uncertainty of that engagement need be seen in light of the imperial legacies of the past identified by Beeson and Jayasuriya, and that of Rorty.

In that light, any policy document on Australia's place in Asia need be nuanced on why this "fifth wave" of Australia's engagement with its northern neighbours ought to be welcomed in Asia. On this score, Australia in the Asian Century fails to break from the historically inward-focused "why" question on Australia's engagement with Asia.

And why Asia(ns) ought to welcome Australia(ns), peripheral as Australia is to the region.

Australia in the Asian Century is all "opportunity" (for Australia) in an established and exponentially growing Asian middle class. Asia continues to be viewed through a rose-coloured economic prism - from its author, former secretary of the Treasury Henry, to first reaction sought by the media; essentially the business and economic types. The government's white paper continues to essentially "sell" Asia to the domestic constituency as a market opportunity.

Thus why Australia and her children need to be "Asia literate"; in language and culture - to be able to reap the opportunities; why a third of Australian company directors ought to be Asia-savvy; why Australian media need to cover more of Asia, despite its practitioners not trained beyond the limited technical capabilities of 5Ws + H reportage.

Gillard sought to lift the myopic view when launching the white paper at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney on Sunday, [Oct 28, 2012] sharing her enlightenment from childhood recall of Asia as a basket case of recipient poor of Australian aid.

History has given currency to opposing catchphrases in the region: “Beggar thy neighbour”; and “win-win”. The region judges all and sundry through this prism. Engagement with today’s Asia need be perceived on a more mutual give-and-take footing than the legacies bequeathed to Australia and Asia.

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About the Author

K.C. Boey is a former editor of Malaysian Business and The Malay Mail. He now writes for The Malaysian Insider out of Melbourne.

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