South Pacific Realism
Last month, I spent nearly three weeks in Australia and New Zealand. In addition to delivering some speeches on U.S. foreign policy, especially the future of America’s role in East Asia, I held a number of meetings with defense and foreign ministry officials in both countries. Three important insights emerged from those meetings. First, although Australia and New Zealand have crucial economic ties with China, they are also increasingly nervous about Beijing’s growing power. Second, despite repeated assurances from U.S. officials and nongovernmental foreign policy experts from America that everything is just fine and that Washington will keep military forces in East Asia and take care of the region’s security problems (as it has since the end of World War II) forever and ever, the Aussies and Kiwis look at our enormous federal budget deficits and have major doubts about those assurances. Third, since they believe that U.S. military retrenchment is likely at some point, they want both India and Japan to play larger security roles in the region. Otherwise, they fear that China will become totally dominant.
I found their thinking far more realistic than the drivel that passes for foreign policy analysis in the U.S. government and most American think tanks. My reflections on the meetings and my analysis of East Asia’s security situation and the choices facing America’s allies can be found here and here.