Spyke

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I think the article highlights two foreign policy imperatives, and the associated needs those create.

  1. We need to reduce our dependence on the USA as a long term project. Still allies, but we need to have far more ability to act independently from them, and to have an ability to push back, in a friendly way, when its their actions destabilising national security.

  2. We need to pull back from this war mongering attitude we've adopted toward China. Labor has been doing this fairly well. I'd call the link in you're comment a sad exception rather than the rule.

We need this pull back, not only to show China that we can co-exist, but to reduce the mistrust from other South Asian nations that we're a reliable partner that understands the power balancing the region already undertakes vis-a-vis China and the USA.

2

The media performs a similar role. Commentary by John Queripel and Fred Zhang argues that Australian reporting has often made China the default villain, elevating security theatrics over diplomacy and recasting ordinary commercial activity as an “assault” or “surrender”. Whether one agrees with every example, the broader caution is sound: a public sphere saturated with threat language cannot easily sustain calm, evidence-based debate.

2

If human rights are universal, they cannot be selectively invoked

They're not, human rights are just made up

If sovereignty matters, it cannot be breached in the name of an ally and held absolute with an adversary

What? This is completely standard practice

China is our rival, they fund our adversaries who fight us, they fund iran, africa, russia and need I mention the ultimate communist dystopia in North Korea

They took over Hong Kong

The United Kingdom and 26 other countries condemned the national security law; the United Kingdom called it a breach of the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, which provided autonomy for Hong Kong to be retained for 50 years

They threaten Taiwan

If security assessments are necessary, their evidence and assumptions must be subjected to the same scrutiny regardless of which great power benefits.

Why ? They are an adversary, we trade with them yes, but they are not friends, I have no idea why the think we should be doing anything but making sure we are independent and protected for when China inevitably turns on us

Whether it be when North Korea and South Korea go back to war, when China decides to invade Taiwan or if Ji Xingping dies and the next ruler of China decides to start throwing it's weight about US style but at us

I don't understand the point of this article at all

But that approach will remain fragile while the Tier 4 reflex survives beneath the rhetoric.

Then it will have to remain fragile so long as they are:

Tier 4 contains designated adversaries whose conduct is presumed hostile and whose positive actions carry little weight.

An authoritarian dictatorship that is heavily anti-democratic and funds our enemies

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Australia’s China policy built on a strategic double standard - Independent Australia | Spyke