Evolving Indo-Pacific Multilateralism: China Factor in Australia’s Perspectives

Abstract

Australia occupies an exceptional geo-strategic position in the Indo-Pacific region; a large political, economic and defence potential, as well as the possession of the South Pacific as its sphere of influence. However, Australia's foreign policy vector increasingly depends on the degree of development of the Sino-US confrontation. As is well known, the United States has been Australia's main strategic and ideological partner, while China has come to be its main trade destination. While the competition between the two great powers (China and the U.S.) has increased, this has made regional environment in the Indo-Pacific multifaceted and complex creating new challenges or opportunities for Canberra. In order to reduce its geo-strategic risks, Australia has increasingly turned to multilateral arrangements in the Indo-Pacific region engaging ASEAN, India, and Japan. This requires the ability to quickly respond to changes in the balance of power between the United States and China. To understand its likely trajectories, this chapter first dwells with the evolution of multilateralism in Australia's defence and foreign policy documents and how it engages with the rise of the China factor in its commitment to multilateral cooperation to gauge Australia’s Fifth Continent's approaches to mitigate the escalating trend of the anarchic situation in the region. First section deals with the definition of Australia as a middle power and its commitment to multilateral foreign policy. The second section elucidates the features and tendencies of multilateralism in Australia's defence and foreign policy vision. The third and fourth sections highlight the connection between multilateralism and the middle powers’ foreign policy strategies. The last section examines selective and balanced frames of multilateralism in the context of rapidly transforming regional alignments in the Indo-Pacific. Finally, it contends how future trends on Australia's foreign policy at the present still remain largely hostages to the degree of the Sino-US confrontation.KeywordsAustraliaForeign policyMultilateralismBig powers