According to the US State Department, there is no “specific deliverable in mind” likely to emerge from the discussions in Brisbane this Saturday between the Australian foreign and defence ministers and their American counterparts.
The big-ticket items are being reserved for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s state visit to Washington, possibly in November.
But AUSMIN 2023 remains a critical moment to exchange views on the regional and world situation.
While US “unpredictability” is a watchword, Washington has still marshalled much of the western effort to defend Ukraine. And as recent visits to China by Antony Blinken, Janet Yellen and John Kerry show, America retains an appetite for dialogue with Beijing. US officials have been more vocal than the Chinese in wanting guardrails in an increasingly tense relationship.
Canberra hopes that President Joe Biden wins next year, but the two sides might also discuss mutual apprehension over elections in Taipei and Jakarta in 2024, Japanese ambivalence over going to war with China over Taiwan, and South Korea’s desire to join the Quad.
It is often stated that Australia is now more important to America than ever. Sure, but how is Canberra using this intimacy to gain new leverage?
Labor is tentative. Last December, Foreign Minister Penny Wong pressed the Americans to increase their regional economic footprint, aware that its Indo-Pacific Economic Framework is anaemic. Moreover, she reminded them of the architecture of restraint that prevented the unthinkable in the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962.
But America now is also more demanding of Australia, and it is unclear what Canberra’s thinking on this is. The United States is uninterested in being a mere balancing power in Asia – reaching some kind of modus vivendi with China and allowing a more stable multipolar system to develop. Its exceptionalism will not contemplate this alternative to primacy.
