Post by pim on Aug 3, 2020 8:07:01 GMT 10
‘The US enterprise is up for grabs’: why the Trump-Biden race is so important for Australia
The choice: ‘America first’ or a renewed alliance. For once, the cliche about this being the most important election in living memory is actually true
Daniel Hurst Sun 2 Aug 2020 amp.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/aug/02/the-us-enterprise-is-up-for-grabs-why-the-trump-biden-race-is-so-important-for-australia
As a career diplomat and former head of Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Peter Varghese has always had to choose his words carefully. But having moved on from the public service, and free of the need for diplomatic niceties, he offers a stark assessment of the stakes for Australia – and the rest of the world – in the forthcoming US presidential election.
“I think the world can survive four years of Donald Trump; I would be much less confident that the world can survive eight years of Donald Trump,” he says in a Lowy Institute podcast. Of course, Varghese doesn’t mean it literally – that a second term would spark some sort of mass extinction event. But for countries like Australia that depend on a stable rules-based order, effective global bodies to make its voice heard and open and predictable trading conditions, an extension of Trump’s abrasive “America first” approach poses significant risks. The complexities for Australia in dealing with the Trump team were on full display last week, with senior ministers in Washington for security talks insisting that the alliance was in “great shape” while resisting pressure from their counterparts on at least two fronts. The American wish list included Australian freedom of navigation operations close to disputed features in the South China Sea and for Australia to extract its citizens from fighting zones in Syria.
While Scott Morrison and his government have now grown somewhat familiar with the vagaries of dealing with the Trump administration, officials are beginning to contemplate two distinct possibilities for the next four years, each with major consequences for Australia. The election could result in either a second Trump term – with the president emboldened to persist with his isolationist and crash-through approach to world affairs – or the return to a more conventional Canberra-Washington relationship under Joe Biden. The polls currently heavily favour Barack Obama’s former right-hand man, but Australian officials are believed to be planning for either outcome.
‘Renewing’ the alliance under Biden
While Biden would have significant domestic problems in his in-tray – like getting on top of the coronavirus debacle and turning around the crisis-ridden economy – the former vice-president has also vowed to “renew” and “strengthen” US alliances with Australia and other partners. He talks about restoring American leadership while launching new diplomatic efforts to raise the level of ambition on tackling the climate crisis. Varghese believes a Biden presidency would not simply pick up where the Obama administration left off. “Australia is less than comfortable” with some aspects of the Trump administration’s policy approaches, but a number of those “will probably continue to drive American policy. But I think we will see a more multilateral United States administration under Biden – and for a country that can’t buy or bully its way in the world like Australia, that will be a plus,” Varghese, now chancellor of the University of Queensland, says in the podcast interview.
Joe Biden attends an AFL match at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in 2016. Analysts think we would see a more multilateral US administration under Biden
“I think we will see more sensible, considered alliance management under a Biden administration than we’ve seen under the Trump administration. While I don’t expect a Biden administration to be a great champion of trade liberalisation, I don’t think it will be quite as mercantilist in its trade policy as we’ve seen so far in the United States.”
Allan Behm, a former defence strategist who now heads the international and security affairs program of the Australia Institute, says the 3 November election “is of enormous significance to Australia”. An emboldened, re-elected Trump would further accelerate the divide between the US and China and see America “head far, far further into isolationism and exceptionalism. It will be brutal in its dealings with friends and foes alike. It will simply screw everybody,” Behm tells the Guardian
’We don’t always agree’
The Australian government, first under Malcolm Turnbull and now Morrison, has tried to make the most of the relationship, even if there have been bruising moments (such as the phone call in which the former reality TV star berated Turnbull over the refugee resettlement deal, and the initial difficulties in securing exemptions to new US tariffs on steel and aluminium). For the most part, Australia has avoided the turbulence experienced by other US allies such as Japan, South Korea and Germany, which Trump has repeatedly accused of freeloading on defence and exploiting the US on trade. But in Washington last week, Australian ministers were at pains to insist that Canberra set its own policy, particularly when it came to China. Australian officials believe the idea of sailing Royal Australian Navy vessels within 12 nautical miles of disputed features in the South China Sea would be needlessly provocative, particularly at a time of heightened tensions with China. Australia and the US agreed to deepen defence cooperation more broadly. Australia would not be drawn into US electoral politics, Morrison insisted on Wednesday. “While we have the deepest and most lasting of friendships and alliances with the United States, that doesn’t mean we always share every view to its minute detail and there is often a difference in nuance or emphasis or timing and, on occasion, in substance,” the prime minister said.
China tensions spill over to Australia
One of the most important issues for Australia in the US election is how Washington manages its relationship with Beijing – because officials view that as “the principal driver of strategic dynamics in our region”. The Trump administration has adopted an increasingly tough tone – no doubt influenced, in part, by electoral calculations – with the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, declaring in July that “the freedom-loving nations of the world must induce China to change” because the Chinese Communist party cannot be trusted. It’s an approach that has alarmed some regional players, with Singapore’s prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, warning the US against the binary choice of either “colliding with China” or “deciding that you have no stake in the region and [leaving] us to our own defences”. But many observers believe the hardening of America’s stance towards China is likely to continue regardless of who wins on 3 November, given that there is now broad political support in the US to take a firm line against an increasingly assertive Xi Jinping. Biden may, however, try to take some of the heat out of the China relationship. Antony Blinken, a senior foreign policy adviser for the Biden campaign and a former deputy US secretary of state during the Obama years, argues Trump has made strategic errors by failing to properly coordinate with allies and by withdrawing from international institutions – giving China an opening to fill. “We need to rally our allies and partners instead of alienating them to deal with some of the challenges that China poses,” Blinken told a Hudson Institute event in early July. While taking steps to “deter aggression”, Biden would try to work with China on issues like climate change, dealing with health emergencies, and preventing the spread of dangerous weapons.
It’s an approach likely to be welcomed by Australian diplomats. After Morrison dabbled in Trump-style rhetoric last year by warning against “negative globalism” and unelected global bodies, the Australian government pivoted in the midst of the pandemic to emphasise the importance of multilateral organisations, saying if Australia retreated into isolationism the world order would be shaped by others. While sympathising with Trump’s criticism of the World Health Organization, Morrison has said Australia won’t “throw the baby out with the bathwater” by following the American move to disengage. On the trade front, Australia has had to team up with the European Union, China and others to build a workaround for resolving disputes after the Trump administration blocked World Trade Organization appointments. Australia also fears collateral damage from an unorthodox trade deal between Trump and Xi that committed China to massively ramp up agricultural purchases from America.
Second Trump term could erode alliance support
Trump’s brash approach in dealing with America’s long-standing allies is not cost-free, according to the former Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd. Rudd fears that a second Trump term – with a continuation of the America First mantra and therefore allies second – could “fray” support for the US alliance in Australia. The Lowy Institute’s annual poll of Australian sentiment towards global issues lends some weight to this view. While it shows more than three-quarters of respondents value the American alliance, just 51% trust the US to act responsibly on the world stage – about 30 points lower than the Obama-induced high of a decade ago. And just 30% trust Trump to act responsibly on global issues. In the same poll in 2019, two in three respondents agreed that Trump had weakened the alliance with Australia. Michael Fullilove, the executive director of the Lowy Institute, says that for once, the cliche about this being the most important election in living memory is actually true. “The reason for that is that Australian security depends on the United States, and the whole success of the US enterprise is up for grabs, and the US role in the world is to be decided,” he says.
Donald Trump and Scott Morrison at the opening of Pratt Paper Plant in Ohio. The US role in the world is to be decided at this election, says Dr Michael Fullilove
Fullilove worries that in the event Trump is re-elected, more of the “adults” advising the president would leave the room, “the deep state would get shallower”, and the US would continue with a “semi-isolationist, anti-alliance, anti-free trade agenda” that was at odds with Australia’s interests. “Scott Morrison has done a good job of managing President Trump, but the bottom line is President Trump doesn’t believe in alliances and his views on alliances and trade and democracy run counter to Australia’s views,” Fullilove says. He says a Biden administration would be much more cognisant of allies, so there was unlikely to be a repeat of the turbulence experienced between Trump and Turnbull – but Biden’s team would also have higher expectations of allies.
Climate to ‘roar back as an issue’ under Biden
“It may be harder to say no to a Biden administration,” Fullilove says. “Climate will come roaring back as an issue in US foreign policy under a Biden administration. That would require more action by Australia.” Biden has vowed to put the US on “an irreversible path to achieve net-zero emissions, economy-wide” by 2050, and to rally the rest of the world to meet the climate threat – indicating that he would “fully integrate climate change into [its] foreign policy and national security strategies, as well as [its] approach to trade”. Amanda McKenzie, the chief executive of Australia’s Climate Council, believes Trump’s climate stance – including withdrawing from the Paris agreement – has emboldened some within the Australian political system who have sought to frustrate effective action for years. But she says the Black Summer of bushfires “was a big wakeup call for a lot of Australians. I think Biden’s leadership, particularly that $2tn [climate] plan, which is an enormous investment, could have a revolutionary effect globally,” McKenzie says. “To have the US fundamentally changing its stance and to be much more effective would have a transformative impact globally and countries around the globe would follow suit. It is a pivotal election from that perspective.” The economist Ross Garnaut has also speculated that a Biden win could lead to Australia being placed “in the naughty corner” on climate policy.
Back to the Trans-Pacific Partnership?
Supporters of the alliance are also watching to see where Biden lands on trade. John Berry, who served as the US ambassador to Australia from 2013 to 2016 and is now president of the American Australian Association, tells the Guardian he believes Biden would be “more likely to pursue multilateral approaches and solutions” on both trade and climate. Berry credits Australia with playing a leadership role in advancing the Trans-Pacific Partnership – originally a 12-nation regional trade pact from which Trump withdrew – and he thinks “the reconsideration of TPP will be one of the possibilities actively considered for positive US economic engagement in the region”. But other former government insiders say Australia may have difficulty pushing a trade liberalisation agenda, regardless of who wins. “Since Australians like straight talk, I’ll be straight with you on politics: if Trump’s reelected you’re not going to do anything on trade because he’s a protectionist,” Robert Zoellick, a former president of the World Bank, said at a recent event hosted by the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre. Zoellick, the US trade representative in the George W Bush administration when the US/Australia free trade agreement was reached 15 years ago, added that if Biden was elected he would “have a very full plate” so trade may slip down the list. “He’s got the pandemic, he’s got economic recovery, he’s got racism and sense of inequality, he’s got global climate change, and frankly there’s only so much that a US president can take on,” Zoellick said.
The choice: ‘America first’ or a renewed alliance. For once, the cliche about this being the most important election in living memory is actually true
Daniel Hurst Sun 2 Aug 2020 amp.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/aug/02/the-us-enterprise-is-up-for-grabs-why-the-trump-biden-race-is-so-important-for-australia
As a career diplomat and former head of Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Peter Varghese has always had to choose his words carefully. But having moved on from the public service, and free of the need for diplomatic niceties, he offers a stark assessment of the stakes for Australia – and the rest of the world – in the forthcoming US presidential election.
“I think the world can survive four years of Donald Trump; I would be much less confident that the world can survive eight years of Donald Trump,” he says in a Lowy Institute podcast. Of course, Varghese doesn’t mean it literally – that a second term would spark some sort of mass extinction event. But for countries like Australia that depend on a stable rules-based order, effective global bodies to make its voice heard and open and predictable trading conditions, an extension of Trump’s abrasive “America first” approach poses significant risks. The complexities for Australia in dealing with the Trump team were on full display last week, with senior ministers in Washington for security talks insisting that the alliance was in “great shape” while resisting pressure from their counterparts on at least two fronts. The American wish list included Australian freedom of navigation operations close to disputed features in the South China Sea and for Australia to extract its citizens from fighting zones in Syria.
While Scott Morrison and his government have now grown somewhat familiar with the vagaries of dealing with the Trump administration, officials are beginning to contemplate two distinct possibilities for the next four years, each with major consequences for Australia. The election could result in either a second Trump term – with the president emboldened to persist with his isolationist and crash-through approach to world affairs – or the return to a more conventional Canberra-Washington relationship under Joe Biden. The polls currently heavily favour Barack Obama’s former right-hand man, but Australian officials are believed to be planning for either outcome.
‘Renewing’ the alliance under Biden
While Biden would have significant domestic problems in his in-tray – like getting on top of the coronavirus debacle and turning around the crisis-ridden economy – the former vice-president has also vowed to “renew” and “strengthen” US alliances with Australia and other partners. He talks about restoring American leadership while launching new diplomatic efforts to raise the level of ambition on tackling the climate crisis. Varghese believes a Biden presidency would not simply pick up where the Obama administration left off. “Australia is less than comfortable” with some aspects of the Trump administration’s policy approaches, but a number of those “will probably continue to drive American policy. But I think we will see a more multilateral United States administration under Biden – and for a country that can’t buy or bully its way in the world like Australia, that will be a plus,” Varghese, now chancellor of the University of Queensland, says in the podcast interview.
Joe Biden attends an AFL match at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in 2016. Analysts think we would see a more multilateral US administration under Biden
“I think we will see more sensible, considered alliance management under a Biden administration than we’ve seen under the Trump administration. While I don’t expect a Biden administration to be a great champion of trade liberalisation, I don’t think it will be quite as mercantilist in its trade policy as we’ve seen so far in the United States.”
Allan Behm, a former defence strategist who now heads the international and security affairs program of the Australia Institute, says the 3 November election “is of enormous significance to Australia”. An emboldened, re-elected Trump would further accelerate the divide between the US and China and see America “head far, far further into isolationism and exceptionalism. It will be brutal in its dealings with friends and foes alike. It will simply screw everybody,” Behm tells the Guardian
’We don’t always agree’
The Australian government, first under Malcolm Turnbull and now Morrison, has tried to make the most of the relationship, even if there have been bruising moments (such as the phone call in which the former reality TV star berated Turnbull over the refugee resettlement deal, and the initial difficulties in securing exemptions to new US tariffs on steel and aluminium). For the most part, Australia has avoided the turbulence experienced by other US allies such as Japan, South Korea and Germany, which Trump has repeatedly accused of freeloading on defence and exploiting the US on trade. But in Washington last week, Australian ministers were at pains to insist that Canberra set its own policy, particularly when it came to China. Australian officials believe the idea of sailing Royal Australian Navy vessels within 12 nautical miles of disputed features in the South China Sea would be needlessly provocative, particularly at a time of heightened tensions with China. Australia and the US agreed to deepen defence cooperation more broadly. Australia would not be drawn into US electoral politics, Morrison insisted on Wednesday. “While we have the deepest and most lasting of friendships and alliances with the United States, that doesn’t mean we always share every view to its minute detail and there is often a difference in nuance or emphasis or timing and, on occasion, in substance,” the prime minister said.
China tensions spill over to Australia
One of the most important issues for Australia in the US election is how Washington manages its relationship with Beijing – because officials view that as “the principal driver of strategic dynamics in our region”. The Trump administration has adopted an increasingly tough tone – no doubt influenced, in part, by electoral calculations – with the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, declaring in July that “the freedom-loving nations of the world must induce China to change” because the Chinese Communist party cannot be trusted. It’s an approach that has alarmed some regional players, with Singapore’s prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, warning the US against the binary choice of either “colliding with China” or “deciding that you have no stake in the region and [leaving] us to our own defences”. But many observers believe the hardening of America’s stance towards China is likely to continue regardless of who wins on 3 November, given that there is now broad political support in the US to take a firm line against an increasingly assertive Xi Jinping. Biden may, however, try to take some of the heat out of the China relationship. Antony Blinken, a senior foreign policy adviser for the Biden campaign and a former deputy US secretary of state during the Obama years, argues Trump has made strategic errors by failing to properly coordinate with allies and by withdrawing from international institutions – giving China an opening to fill. “We need to rally our allies and partners instead of alienating them to deal with some of the challenges that China poses,” Blinken told a Hudson Institute event in early July. While taking steps to “deter aggression”, Biden would try to work with China on issues like climate change, dealing with health emergencies, and preventing the spread of dangerous weapons.
It’s an approach likely to be welcomed by Australian diplomats. After Morrison dabbled in Trump-style rhetoric last year by warning against “negative globalism” and unelected global bodies, the Australian government pivoted in the midst of the pandemic to emphasise the importance of multilateral organisations, saying if Australia retreated into isolationism the world order would be shaped by others. While sympathising with Trump’s criticism of the World Health Organization, Morrison has said Australia won’t “throw the baby out with the bathwater” by following the American move to disengage. On the trade front, Australia has had to team up with the European Union, China and others to build a workaround for resolving disputes after the Trump administration blocked World Trade Organization appointments. Australia also fears collateral damage from an unorthodox trade deal between Trump and Xi that committed China to massively ramp up agricultural purchases from America.
Second Trump term could erode alliance support
Trump’s brash approach in dealing with America’s long-standing allies is not cost-free, according to the former Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd. Rudd fears that a second Trump term – with a continuation of the America First mantra and therefore allies second – could “fray” support for the US alliance in Australia. The Lowy Institute’s annual poll of Australian sentiment towards global issues lends some weight to this view. While it shows more than three-quarters of respondents value the American alliance, just 51% trust the US to act responsibly on the world stage – about 30 points lower than the Obama-induced high of a decade ago. And just 30% trust Trump to act responsibly on global issues. In the same poll in 2019, two in three respondents agreed that Trump had weakened the alliance with Australia. Michael Fullilove, the executive director of the Lowy Institute, says that for once, the cliche about this being the most important election in living memory is actually true. “The reason for that is that Australian security depends on the United States, and the whole success of the US enterprise is up for grabs, and the US role in the world is to be decided,” he says.
Donald Trump and Scott Morrison at the opening of Pratt Paper Plant in Ohio. The US role in the world is to be decided at this election, says Dr Michael Fullilove
Fullilove worries that in the event Trump is re-elected, more of the “adults” advising the president would leave the room, “the deep state would get shallower”, and the US would continue with a “semi-isolationist, anti-alliance, anti-free trade agenda” that was at odds with Australia’s interests. “Scott Morrison has done a good job of managing President Trump, but the bottom line is President Trump doesn’t believe in alliances and his views on alliances and trade and democracy run counter to Australia’s views,” Fullilove says. He says a Biden administration would be much more cognisant of allies, so there was unlikely to be a repeat of the turbulence experienced between Trump and Turnbull – but Biden’s team would also have higher expectations of allies.
Climate to ‘roar back as an issue’ under Biden
“It may be harder to say no to a Biden administration,” Fullilove says. “Climate will come roaring back as an issue in US foreign policy under a Biden administration. That would require more action by Australia.” Biden has vowed to put the US on “an irreversible path to achieve net-zero emissions, economy-wide” by 2050, and to rally the rest of the world to meet the climate threat – indicating that he would “fully integrate climate change into [its] foreign policy and national security strategies, as well as [its] approach to trade”. Amanda McKenzie, the chief executive of Australia’s Climate Council, believes Trump’s climate stance – including withdrawing from the Paris agreement – has emboldened some within the Australian political system who have sought to frustrate effective action for years. But she says the Black Summer of bushfires “was a big wakeup call for a lot of Australians. I think Biden’s leadership, particularly that $2tn [climate] plan, which is an enormous investment, could have a revolutionary effect globally,” McKenzie says. “To have the US fundamentally changing its stance and to be much more effective would have a transformative impact globally and countries around the globe would follow suit. It is a pivotal election from that perspective.” The economist Ross Garnaut has also speculated that a Biden win could lead to Australia being placed “in the naughty corner” on climate policy.
Back to the Trans-Pacific Partnership?
Supporters of the alliance are also watching to see where Biden lands on trade. John Berry, who served as the US ambassador to Australia from 2013 to 2016 and is now president of the American Australian Association, tells the Guardian he believes Biden would be “more likely to pursue multilateral approaches and solutions” on both trade and climate. Berry credits Australia with playing a leadership role in advancing the Trans-Pacific Partnership – originally a 12-nation regional trade pact from which Trump withdrew – and he thinks “the reconsideration of TPP will be one of the possibilities actively considered for positive US economic engagement in the region”. But other former government insiders say Australia may have difficulty pushing a trade liberalisation agenda, regardless of who wins. “Since Australians like straight talk, I’ll be straight with you on politics: if Trump’s reelected you’re not going to do anything on trade because he’s a protectionist,” Robert Zoellick, a former president of the World Bank, said at a recent event hosted by the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre. Zoellick, the US trade representative in the George W Bush administration when the US/Australia free trade agreement was reached 15 years ago, added that if Biden was elected he would “have a very full plate” so trade may slip down the list. “He’s got the pandemic, he’s got economic recovery, he’s got racism and sense of inequality, he’s got global climate change, and frankly there’s only so much that a US president can take on,” Zoellick said.
