Britain’s Foreign Secretary Liz Truss was in Sydney at the weekend for high level ministerial talks with her Australian counterparts. Not surprisingly, former prime minister Paul Keating had something to say.
In a typically combative spray published in public policy journal Peals and Irritations, Keating called Truss “demented” for her suggestion that a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine could inspire China to similar aggression in the Indo-Pacific.
But beneath the bluster was a deeper point about Britain’s place as a serious strategic partner in the Indo-Pacific.
“The reality is Britain does not add up to a row of beans when it comes to East Asia,” he said. “Britain took its main battle fleet out of East Asia in 1904 and finally packed it in with its ‘East of Suez’ policy in the 1970s. And it has never been back.”
The comments came as Truss, Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne, Defence Minister Peter Dutton and his British counterpart Defence Secretary Ben Wallace discussed further security cooperation in the region under the AUKUS pact signed last year.
And while Scott Morrison’s government has touted the controversial deal as a key bulwark against an increasingly assertive China, there are real questions about whether a Britain distracted by Brexit and Boris Johnson can ever step up as a serious strategic partner in the Indo-Pacific.
What AUKMIN delivered
The Australia-United Kingdom Ministerial Consultations (AUKMIN) provided some good photo ops and quotes for defence reporters, but little of substance. Two Royal Navy boats would be deployed to the region. Wallace and Dutton hinted that more permanent British defence assets might be based in Australia at some point.
Truss, meanwhile, made concerned noises about Russia and China. But in the context of AUKUS, billed as critical to a safer, more prosperous Indo-Pacific, Britain’s reentry to the Asia-Pacific was tentative at best.
For Keating, the whole thing was a “desperate” attempt to promote Britain as a serious counter to the last gasps of an imperial has-been suffering “delusions of grandeur and relevance deprivation”.
Does Keating have a point?
Whatever AUKUS delivers (in a few decades, we may have some nuclear submarines), Keating’s analysis of Britain’s abilities has merit, according to some foreign policy experts.
Speaking to Crikey late last year, Australian National University defence and strategic studies professor Hugh White said Britain hadn’t exercised serious strategic weight in Asia since the early 20th century.
“Forget the UK and the idea that it’s going to exercise serious weight in Asia,” he said. “In Whitehall, it’s one of those harmless trappings of empire. In Canberra, it’s a dangerous fantasy.”
The UK’s apparent pivot towards the Indo-Pacific should also be looked at in the context of domestic politics.
Australian Institute of International Affairs president Allan Gyngell says Britain had been weakened in the international arena by Brexit. Since becoming prime minister, Johnson has started talking up the idea of “global Britain” which Gyngell sees as a “nostalgia trip” to a grand imperial past long gone.
“The idea that Britain will be anything other than a useful outside contributor in a minor sort of way to developments in the Indo-Pacific I think is a fantasy,” he said.
Gyngell believes France — which has actual territorial possessions in the Pacific — could be a more reliable security partner. But that relationship has been tainted by Australia cancelling its French submarine contract ahead of AUKUS, with President Emmanuel Macron willing to call Morrison a liar.
If Truss’ warnings about Chinese aggression in the region come true, and things really do escalate in the Indo-Pacific, a limited, nostalgia-driven British presence might not be enough.
UNSW Canberra international and political studies Professor Clinton Fernandes says while the UK continues to play a role “upholding US primacy in the region” and could contribute to any US effort, the military centre of gravity is China’s formidable integrated air defence system (IADS).
“That prevents the US from having air superiority, and without that, it cannot win in the Taiwan Strait. Britain can try to thwart the IADS but cannot defeat it,” he said.
Many of Keating’s views, always expressed with a dose of invective, aren’t fashionable among a foreign policy establishment that is far more hawkish on China. But on the reality of Britain’s reentry to the Indo-Pacific, he may just have a point.
Editor’s note: a previous version of this story said Paul Keating’s comments were reported in The Australian. The comments were first made in and opinion piece published by Pearls and Irritations .
