Obviously, this is only right within limits. As Michael says, Luxembourg hardly ranks as a global power despite high per capita incomes, so overall size counts for something. Intuitively, the primary economic factor determining national power is the total resources that can be applied by the state for national purposes, and that would seem to depend much more on the size of the overall economy than the wealth of individual citizens.

Michael's response to this, again if I understand him correctly, is that per capita income is nonetheless a better index of national power because it correlates with two other factors which counterbalance the effects of sheer GDP size. First, higher per capita income countries have more advanced economies and can harness more advanced technology, therefore using their resources more efficiently, so they get more power for each dollar. But is this true? I'm not sure it is, at least in the military field with which I am most familiar. History suggests that large numbers of simple weapons can often beat smaller numbers of more expensive ones. Quantity has a quality all its own.

Second, I think Michael argues that high per capita income countries have an advantage in power because they can devote a higher share of their overall wealth to national purposes, since a lower proportion is needed for bare necessities. 

Again, it is not clear how far this is true. The proportion of national wealth available for national purposes depends on many other factors apart from per capita income – including how much of the economy the government controls directly, and how willing the people are to surrender what they control to the government. It is not at all clear, for example, that the US Government commands a bigger share of America's wealth than the Chinese Government does of China's. 

So while I agree that GDP is a very imperfect measure of the economic foundations of national power, I think it remains the best we've got.

How big a shift?

As Michael suggests, many people both exaggerate the scale of China's rise, and wrongly believe that America is declining. There are interesting questions about the long-term trajectory of the US economy, but it is simply wrong to say that the shift in relative size of GDP between the US and China is even partly the result of US decline. It is all down to China's growth.

Remarkable as that growth is, I agree with Michael that it is often exaggerated. China is unlikely to 'rule the world'. It has little chance to achieve the preponderant share of global GDP that America has previously enjoyed, partly because of inherent limits to its own trajectory – especially demographic – and partly because there are just too many other big players in the world with (actually or potentially) the combination of big population and high productivity required to generate a huge economy. China may be the biggest for a while, but it will be one of a crowd at the top.   

Nonetheless, China is much bigger economically relative to the US than it was ten or twenty years ago, and much bigger relative to the US than any country has been for over a century. This is a very big shift. And if size of GDP is a correlate of power, it is a very big shift in relative power. 

What does this mean?

Is this shift big enough to make a difference to the way America manages its relationship with China? To be more specific, does it mean that the US should rethink the widespread assumption that continued American strategic primacy is the only acceptable basis for the future relationship? To be even more specific, does it make sense for the US to try to impose its primacy in China, as China's power grows? Well that's a big question, but here are two quick points.

First, this question is not entirely answered by deciding who is stronger. What matters in framing the relationship between the US and China is not just how much power each has, but what they need to do with it. 

There are three key asymmetries in the US-China relationship which all break China's way. China's objectives are focused in Asia, while America's are globally dispersed. The theatre of competition is on China's doorstep, but an ocean away from the US. And in the military sphere, to maintain primacy in Asia, America must maintain sea control, while to prevent that China need only achieve sea denial. Together these asymmetries mean that China does not have to become as strong as America for the balance of costs and risks of sustaining primacy in Asia to grow sharply for America.

Second, the answer does not just depend on what America can do, but on what it wants to do. We might argue about how far China's power has grown, but we cannot doubt that it has grown a great deal. It will therefore cost America a lot more to sustain primacy in future than it has in the past, against China's clear opposition. The big question for America is whether the costs are worth it. That of course depends on what the alternative is. If the only alternative is Chinese hegemony in Asia, maybe they are. But that is not the only alternative.

Photo by Flickr user Silly Little Man.

Beyond the inner arc, Australia's strategic interests, though very important, are less direct, more widely shared with others, and harder to defend by ourselves. So beyond the inner arc, Australia need not be able to defend our interests by ourselves, but only in coalition with other powers. So Sam is right: we do not need to be able to operate against China independently in, say, a Taiwan scenario, and would be foolish to pretend we could.

One further elaboration. I think Sam presupposes that if we are not fighting alone we must by definition be in coalition with the US. I think that's only half right, or rather, only right when you move north of what our predecessors used to call the 'Malay Barrier' of maritime Southeast Asia.

I cannot imagine Australia fighting in Northeast Asia except as an ally of the US (or perhaps, in some more distant future, some other major Asian-power ally), but I can imagine us supporting Indonesia against major power intrusion into the greater archipelago. This was of course what drove Paul Keating's idea for a treaty with Indonesia back in the mid–90s.

Now back to the first question: can it ever make sense for Australia to contemplate fighting China alone, even on our own doorstep? Many people answer 'no', including my old colleague Paul Dibb, but I think they do so without enough thought. They believe on the one hand that we will never need to do so, because they assume that the US will always be there to save us. That's a big topic, but suffice to say the further ahead we look, the less sure of that we can be.

On the other hand, they cannot imagine how we could ever win against China. This depends a lot on what we mean by 'winning'. Certainly we could never beat China the way the allies beat Japan or Germany in the Second World War. But we could, I think, if we were very clever and careful, raise the costs and risks to China of trying to penetrate our approaches to the point that it was simply not worth their while.

This would require us to focus our efforts single–mindedly on maritime denial operations. That might seem a modest and unheroic aim, but it is the absolute maximum that we might be able to manage independently, and it might just be enough. I've set this argument more fully in my 2009 Lowy Paper, A Focused Force.

And note that this does not mean we would never want to deploy forces independently against a great power beyond the inner arc. We would want to impose costs and risks on an adversary as far from our shores as possible, and hence undertake sea denial as close to the adversary's ports as possible.

Which brings us at last to Sam's points about JSF, Superhornets and submarines. I'd agree that for this role, submarines will be really critical, and the more the better. I'd also agree that for the time being more F-18 Superhornets might be a better investment than the JSF. Indeed the more I hear from Andrew Davies about Lanchester Equations, the more I wonder whether I was wrong ever to plump for the JSF in the first place. But that's for another time.

Photo courtesy of the Department of Defence.

I've argued elsewhere (most fully in Power Shift) that we cannot assume that the US will remain the dominant maritime power in Asia indefinitely. Indeed, the risks are rather high that the US will either run down its engagement in Asia, or maintain it solely on the basis of a bitterly contested and very dangerous power struggle with China for reasons which we did not consider justified. Either way we would find ourselves without a great and powerful friend.

Sam might believe that in that situation we would have no choice but to become a small power. But that is a big and risky step, and not one to be taken until we are sure that there are no affordable and acceptable ways we could establish ourselves as an independent middle power. 

Indeed, the great question for Australian defence policy today is whether we can conceive and implement an affordable and sustainable defence posture which would give us the independent strategic weight of a middle power in the Asian century. If, after full analysis, it becomes clear that we cannot, then so be it. But let's not simply assume away our future as a middle power. 

Photo by Flickr user peretzp.

The answer is the impact on politics. One of the ideas I floated in my op-ed was that US politics has got scrappier, and government less effective, because the political choices have become harder as income distribution has become less equal, and the US political system does not seem to be able to cope. Perhaps history will judge that the Founding Fathers' handiwork, so good at managing a fast-growing and evenly-distributed economy, is not so good at managing a slower-growing and increasingly unequally-distributed one. 

If so, we'd better get used to the present dismal state of US politics and government. That has implications for American power, and how it is used. In particular, I think it may be that the seemingly intractable politics of the fiscal deficit has it roots in divergent interests between rich and poor which the US system finds hard to handle.

Second, I'm not as optimistic as Matt that US manufacturing can continue to compete with China in the long term by continuing to innovate. I fear the story may turn out to be that US manufacturing output remained high in the 80s and 90s thanks to productivity gains, as US firms became leaner to compete with Japan and others, but that more recently output started a long-term decline too, because of the new competition from China. 

This has happened because, while productivity gains could help US firms compete with highly-efficient but high-wage Japan, they can't keep them competitive against reasonably-efficient and low-wage China. Productivity gains can only go so far without new major technological breakthroughs, and we haven't seen any of those since the first wave IT revolution, which is now a decade or two ago. IPads are nifty, but they are not productive; they may even be counterproductive. 

Of course, something may turn up, but we should not simply assume it will. There seems to me to be a real possibility that China (and other low-wage, high-quality manufacturing exporters) will either drive much more of US manufacturing offshore or out of business, or drive US wages way down.

My third reason to worry has to do with the elusive concept of value. Over the past few decades we have all bought the idea that the shift in the centre of gravity of the US economy from manufacturing to finance and software has no negative implications for America's overall economic weight, because the value created by the new sectors is as great or greater than those they replaced. 

How do we know? Simply from the value the market puts on them. But has the market got it right? Has the US finance sector really added as much value to the US economy over the past decade as prices suggest? Does the marginally more efficient allocation of capital via the latest exotic derivative-of-a-derivative financial 'product' really add more value to the US economy than, say, 1000 new bulldozers? Does Facebook really add three times more value to the US economy than GM? 

Is it possible that the growth in the US economy based on the value added by these industries might be illusory – a reflection of the market's irrational exuberance?

Photo by Flickr user akoray. 

We – military, civilian, politicians and layman alike – very commonly get these decisions wrong, because we so often misunderstand the link between ends and means in war. Afghanistan provides an apposite case study. Mistakes happen at every point of the process; we muddle our objectives, mismatch objectives to means, and then mismanage the operations themselves.

Clearly, to make these decisions better, strategists need to know both ends of the link: they need to know about military operations and capability on the one hand, and political objectives on the other. And above all you need to understand as much as you can about the link itself – about the connections and disconnections between them. 

If this is a useful way to think about the word 'strategist', we can turn now to 'civilian'. What does one need to know to do strategy? Clearly I agree with the claim which I suppose Rodger to be making, that no one can call themselves a strategist who does not know a great deal about military operations and capability. I think most civilians who do strategy know far too little about these things. But no matter how hard they work, civilians will not know as much as military professionals who have been immersed in it from the start of their careers.

But equally, no one can call themselves a strategist (at least in my sense of the word) without knowing a lot about political objectives, and about the link between organised violence and political purpose. I think most military officers, even those of very high rank indeed, know far too little about these. And no matter how hard they work at it, any military officer who has spent the first ten or even twenty years of his or her career at the tactical and operational level will not know as much about these aspects of strategy as those who immerse themselves in strategic-level problems from the age of 20.

So we need both uniformed and civilian strategists, and they need to work together. The way to do strategic policy better is not for one 'side' or the other to claim a monopoly on strategic wisdom  and ownership of strategic decisions, but for both sides to educate themselves much better about all aspects of strategy, and to realise that both skill-sets are needed.

Photo by Flickr user The California National Guard.

Clearly we disagree about whether it helps to talk publicly about the risks of strategic rivalry between the US and China and the need to reconfigure the Asian order to minimise these risks. He thinks it doesn't help, I think it does. Fine. 

But I'm still unclear what Geoff thinks about the underlying issue: does he believe that American primacy can continue to provide the foundation of Asia's order if China keeps growing? Does he think China will accept it? Does he think America can impose it if China doesn't? What kind of Asia would that lead to, and what would it mean for Australia?

Lastly, does he think there might be any alternative to American primacy other than Chinese primacy? I ask this particularly because, in his latest post, Geoff attributes to me the idea that we should accept a Chinese 'sphere of influence' in Asia. But as I said in my previous post, 'trying to understand and explore the difference between a region no longer dominated by America, and one dominated by China, is what the debate in Australia should be all about.'

Photo, of US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen visiting a Chinese airbase, by Flickr user Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

What strikes me is how reluctant aid advocates are to claim that it can. Annmaree's post leaves me a little unsure of her view, because to my eye none of the three examples she offers of what aid can do seem to show that it does much to support growth. 

Her first example, the Millennium Development Goals, are a mixed bag. Some relate to eliminating poverty, and some to ameliorating its consequences. Many are being achieved, but Annmaree doesn't say whether the ones relating to poverty elimination are being achieved, in part or in whole, as a result of aid. 

Her second and third examples both relate to health care. I'm sure the programs she mentions are very successful in helping improve health. But that is not the same as overcoming poverty by fostering economic growth. 

So where is the evidence that aid can achieve the Government's declared objective for the aid program? Or, are we to conclude instead that the 'real' outcomes of the aid program are quite different from its declared objective? Rather than overcoming poverty, it is really just about ameliorating its effects.

I think it's a bit of a worry that the Government can commission, receive and accept a Review of Aid Effectiveness without resolving a deep muddle about core objectives. I do not see how we can begin to explain why the aid program should quadruple in a decade when we can't be clear what it's trying to do. 

Photo by Flickr user isafmedia.

I think economic interdependence makes it more likely that Washington and Beijing will make the compromises necessary to negotiate a stable relationship reflecting their changed power relativities. Optimists like Geoff seem to think it makes negotiation and compromise unnecessary. Their confidence in Adam Smith and Immanuel Kant provides an agreeable illusion that the invisible hand will keep the peace, so politicians do not have to bother. And that makes it less likely that they will make the compromises necessary to avoid escalating rivalry, and hence more likely that the rivalry will indeed escalate.

Or perhaps optimists like Geoff believe that no compromises are necessary because peace and order between the US and China can be maintained indefinitely on the basis of the old understandings that were reached in 1972. So either they think that relative power plays no very great part in shaping such relationships, or they do not think that power has shifted much in the past 40 years.

I think Geoff is in the second camp. The giveaway is his reference to American decline and Mark Twain. Of course he is right, American decline is greatly exaggerated. But the story of shifting power is not about America, it is about China. America's decline has been exaggerated, but China's rise has not. Or perhaps Geoff thinks it has? I’d be interested to know.

Finally, if Nicholas Burns perceived a consensus among Australia’s 'chattering classes' that Australia must 'come to terms with a China-dominated region', he was deeply mistaken. Very few people in Australia think that. Some people think we have to come to terms with a region which is no longer dominated by the US, but that is not by any means the same thing.

In fact trying to understand and explore the difference between a region no longer dominated by America, and one dominated by China, is what the debate in Australia should be all about. Australia's future security and prosperity depends on the evolution of a new order in Asia which is dominated neither by the US nor by China, but by peaceful coexistence between them. I'm afraid Nicholas Burns didn't have much to offer on this, except to remind us how hard and urgent the task is, and how likely it is to fail. 

Photo by Flickr user monojussi.

As we think about how America might retain primacy in the face of Chinese opposition, our attention naturally turns to America's military preponderance. I think Stephan suggests that US primacy in future will, or could be, sustained in the face of Chinese opposition by American military preponderance.

Actually America has only ever enjoyed preponderance at sea. Maritime predominance has been sufficient to underpin a primacy uncontested by other great powers, but it will not be sufficient against concerted opposition from China. Moreover sustaining maritime predominance itself may prove impossible: China's sea denial capabilities have already eroded the capacity for sea control on which it has hitherto relied. 

Stephan does not address this. He argues instead that US military preponderance in Asia will depend on its allies — 'it is a consequence of their choices'. Well, only up to a point: allied basing in Asia is perhaps necessary for American maritime preponderance, but certainly not sufficient. So I don't buy Stephan's (and Burns') conclusion, that America can and will sustain primacy in Asia based on military preponderance as long as it can sustain the support of its allies and partners.

Nor am I as confident as Stephan seems to be, that America's Asian allies will support America in maintaining primacy at any cost. He may be right that China's navy won't necessarily make Asians more deferential to China, but its economy might. One big difference between the Cold War in Europe and what's happening in Asia is that everyone in Asia has an economic stake in good relations with China that none of the Western Europeans had with the Soviet Union. Another is that it is not yet clear that Beijing's conception of Asia's future order is as incompatible with its neighbours' most vital interests as Moscow's was in Europe in the Cold War. 

Perhaps most fundamentally, I do not share what is I think Stephan's (and perhaps Burns') implicit assumption that a rerun of the Cold War is the best we can hope for in Asia over the next few decades, and not a bad outcome. My memories of the Cold War are not that rosy. And I'm not sure we'd win this one, because China is not the Soviet Union.

Finally, Stephan's critique of my views rests on an apparent assumption that any change to the US-primacy based status quo in Asia is unacceptable, and should be met with an implacable determination to fight. I'd be interested to know whether I have him right on this. Perhaps, like many others, he will say that the question is not as stark as that, because he expects the Chinese to back down in the face of American firmness. I'd be interested to know how confident he is of that, and why.

If this is what Stephan thinks, he's in good company. Many people believe that any change in the existing order in Asia in China's favour must be resisted by force. They draw the obvious lesson from the history of the 20th century — the lesson of 1938 — that it is a cardinal error not to go to war to defend what cannot be compromised in the existing order. And to save themselves the trouble of deciding what falls into that category, they assume that any change to the existing order is unacceptable.

If only life was that easy. As power shifts, orders change. Our generation is faced with one of the biggest power-shifts in history, and our responsibility is to manage the resulting changes in Asia's order as well as we can. The unthinking defence of the status quo is unlikely to achieve that.

It would prevent Chinese hegemony only at the price of very dangerous strategic rivalry or appalling conflict. That is why I think our most important task is to explore what kinds of new order in Asia could be constructed to avoid either of these disastrous outcomes. I'd be interested in Stephan's views on why he thinks no such order is possible, if that is indeed his view.

The last century teaches another, equally important, lesson — the lesson of 1914. It is surprisingly easy to be sucked into a conflict far worse than anyone images, and which no one can win, over issues which are, in retrospect, not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier.

Photo by Flickr user Rego - d4u.hu.

For me, the issue is not whether American primacy is desirable in itself: as I've often said, I would like nothing better than for the US to sustain primacy in Asia indefinitely, because this would be by far the best outcome for the region and for Australia. The issue is how much it would cost, and how those costs weigh against the costs and risks of other options.

The real problem with today's debate about China in the American foreign-policy community is the failure to address these two issues with the care they require. On the first issue, it is too easily assumed that America can sustain primacy in the face of China's power at a cost and risk that is acceptable to the US. 

Those people who believe that the US will be able to sustain military predominance need to explain in detail how that will be done against China's growing sea-denial forces, and what the cost and risks will be. Those who believe that America can count on the support of allies and friends in Asia against China need to explain precisely how and why those allies will be willing to oppose China to support American primacy.

Which brings us to the second issue. How far other countries in Asia will be willing to support America in preserving primacy against China, and what price America itself should be willing to pay for primacy in future, depends on the alternatives. Mike Green, Nic Burns and many other Americans seem to assume that the only alternative to US primacy is Chinese primacy. If that was true, most of Asia would be right behind them supporting US primacy at almost any cost. But that cost would be very high indeed, so we need to be very sure that there is no third option. And of course there is.   

Photo by Flickr user nsjmetzger.

The concentric hierarchy of strategic interests set out in Australian defence policy papers over the past decade is intended specifically to do that, and — though I am not an impartial judge — I think it succeeds. We can draw specific judgments about the kinds of operations needed to defend those interests, and the kinds of forces we should therefore be building.

In other words, while we cannot predict wars of choice, which are decided by the shifting sands of politics, we can predict wars of necessity, which are governed by enduring geostrategic circumstances. And on that basis we can make sensible decisions about future force needs. 

Therefore, Australia should give clear — though not exclusive — priority to air and naval forces over land forces. Put simply, I think land operations are less cost-effective than maritime operations in defending Australia's high-priority strategic interest and hence, that air and naval forces rather than land forces should take priority. The kind of army we have today would be able to do much of what would be required of it over the next few decades in a more contested Asia. The navy and the air force need to change fundamentally. 

And just to reassure Rodger, that does not mean a blank cheque for the other services. As he says, we do need to ask what Air Warfare Destroyers (AWDs) and air combat forces are for. As it happens, I have addressed both of these issues directly. I argued in a Lowy Paper back in 2005 that there is no good reason to buy AWDs, and I take a hard look at air combat in a paper out soon in an Air Power Studies Centre volume. And I'm working on submarines…  

Photo by Flickr user Amanda M Hatfield

His emphasis on new security threats over traditional state-on-state conflicts sits oddly with the clear recognition in Washington that China poses America's principal strategic challenge over the next few decades, and with what he said a week later at the USAF Academy (more on that below). But the focus on China is consistent with his priority for air and naval rather than land operations in high-level conflict. It is clear that US has no plans at all to confront China on continental Asia.

Likewise, we should not be surprised that Gates rules out large-scale land operations in the Middle East. But Gates' view of the Army's future has intriguing implications for America's posture in Europe, which is rather pointedly not mentioned in any of the passages that deal with US strategic priorities.

Shorn of diplomatic window-dressing, America's core strategic objective in Europe since the Cold War has been much the same as it was during the Cold War – to keep Russia out of Europe (well, if it's not that, what is it?). America could not fight Russia in Europe without engaging Russian land forces on the continent. The eastward extension of NATO carried clear implication that that the US was willing to do that, all the way to the Estonia.

Gates is now very clearly implying that the US does not need to be able to fight Russia in Europe. So either he thinks there is a negligible risk of Russian military pressure on its Western neighbours over the next three or four decades, or he doesn't think America needs to be able to do anything decisive about it. Either way, its pretty startling.

Moreover, it leaves a very big question: what exactly is the US Army supposed to do in the post-Cold War, post-War on Terror world? American strategic interests on other continents do not justify the huge costs and risks of major land campaigns against other major powers, and nor do they justify major land campaigns to stabilise weaker states. 

The only compelling strategic rationale Gates seems to see for American land forces is to provide 'swift-moving expeditionary forces, be they Army or Marines, airborne infantry or special operations' for 'counterterrorism, rapid reaction, disaster response, or stability or security force assistance missions'. And what sort of Army is that? Well, it looks to me like the Marine Corps.

We face a similar question here. If we can defend the continent at all, we must do it at sea. We will never be able to exercise significant strategic weight against Asian major or middle powers with the land forces we could deploy and sustain beyond the continent, and after the last decade's experience we have neither the ability nor the appetite to use land forces on large-scale stabilisation operations near or far. So what exactly is the Army for?

That takes me briefly to Gates' USAF Academy Speech. There he repeated earlier statements about the growth of China's (and others') anti-access and area denial capabilities. 'The Air Force will play a lead role in maintaining U.S. military supremacy in the face of this anti-access, area-denial strategy', he said, and went on to speak of the emerging Air-Sea Battle Concept. It is clear Gates sees countering China's anti-access strategy as the core role for America's air and naval forces over coming decades.

But this sits oddly with what he said at West Point the week before. He told the Army that America was not interested in projecting major land forces into Asia or anywhere else against major or even middle-power adversaries. So why does America need to defeat China's anti-access strategy?  Would it not be enough to be able to achieve the same anti-access objectives against China? What exactly is the Air-Sea Battle against China meant to achieve?

Photo by Flickr user Jonathan_W.

Now consider America's most important ally today. END is not a free good for Japan. Preserving END costs Japan the option of developing its own nuclear forces. The future of END for Japan depends not simply on whether Japan believes it benefits from America's promise, but whether it believes accepting END provides Japan with more security than the alternative. This is a pressing question for Japan today, not just because its fears of China are growing, but because Tokyo's confidence that America's promises will stick are fading.

The reason is that END carries costs to the US as well. As I said in my earlier post, these costs are low when the adversary cannot retaliate against the US. But against an adversary capable of nuclear attack on American soil, the costs are considerable. It is easy to underestimate the costs of END imposed by the risk of retaliation if we discount the risk that a crisis involving a US ally would escalate to a nuclear exchange. But should we do that?

To explore this we need to look quickly at the relationship between END and its close cousin, Extended Conventional Deterrence (ECD). Several posts in this debate have touched on the connection between END and ECD, but I'm not sure we are clear about it. At first glance it seems simple enough: in both cases the US promises to protect its allies, and the only difference is the kind of forces it is prepared to use. Much is made of the effectiveness of conventional US forces to protect allies, which carries the optimistic implication that the costs to the US of this kind of extended deterrence are low. Indeed optimists about the durability of END tend to blur the distinction between END and ECD, viewing them as two sides of the same coin and suggesting that END is really not much more risky than ECD for the US.

I do not agree with this. First, how distinct are ECD and END in practice? Much depends on the context. It is easy to exclude the possibility of nuclear use by the US against a non-nuclear adversary that does not have clear conventional superiority. But against an adversary which has either the capacity to prevail against US and allied conventional forces, or has nuclear weapons, or both, then excluding a nuclear response would drastically weaken the value of US promises of support. So against these adversaries — the ones that matter, in other words — any extended deterrence must be nuclear to be effective. 

Second, the threshold at which the nuclear element of extended deterrence comes into play in a crisis would be much lower than people may think. Several posts in this debate — Stephan and Ben's talking about the Baltics, for example — seem to suggest that the US could respond to conventional threats with conventional forces, and hence fulfill its promises to allies, without running the risks of nuclear war. This is because the threat of US nuclear retaliation would deter the Russians from threatening nuclear action in response to US conventional operations. 

My hunch is that, on the contrary, there is a real risk of escalation to a nuclear exchange in any conventional clash between two nuclear powers, as long as there is asymmetry in their calculations of cost and risk. In particular, geography imposes structural asymmetries of interest between the US and its Eurasian competitors which would profoundly affect calculations in a crisis.

For example, in a crisis between the US and Russia over a Baltic state, the risks might be symmetrical but interests are not. The Baltics matter a lot more to Russia than they do to America. This does not mean Russia would be prepared to accept a nuclear attack to get hold of Estonia (for example). But it does mean Moscow would probably calculate that the US would not be willing to risk nuclear attack to save Estonia. So, assuming the Russians believed they could prevail in a conventional attack on Estonia, they might well calculate that the US would not be willing to escalate from conventional to nuclear warfare to stop them. And the Estonians might well think so too. 

Now back to Japan. It is entirely credible that the US would retaliate with nuclear forces to any direct nuclear attack on Japan, so this element of END remains intact. But that is not enough for Japan to feel secure, especially from China, because it leaves open the credibility of US undertakings in the event of a conventional crisis.

Consider a Chinese conventional attack on Japan's Ryuku Islands. America's formidable sea-denial capability would be able to interdict Chinese sea-borne forces, but China could threaten substantial conventional retaliation against US interests, so the costs to the US of supporting Japan in this situation would be very high. The question would arise whether the Ryukus were worth it. But say firmness prevailed in Washington, and the Air-Sea Battle swung into action. China might then threaten nuclear escalation if the US persisted — initially perhaps against Guam.

America would of course threaten nuclear retaliation against China. But while the risks are broadly symmetrical, the interests are not: China cares more about the Ryukus that the US does. It is the Cuban Missile Crisis in reverse. So American decision-makers might well decide that China's threats must be taken seriously. They would then ask themselves whether the Ryukus are worth LA, just as General Xiong suggested. The answer is not a forgone conclusion.

This is very important for Japanese decision-makers weighing the costs and risks of different options for Japan over the next decade or two. Going nuclear would carry huge costs for Japan, but relying on END carries big risks.    

END evolved during the specific circumstances of the Cold War when, for reasons I sketched in my earlier post, American interests in Europe and Asia were as great as those of the Europeans and Asians themselves. Today this is no longer true, because neither China nor Russia today poses the kind of threat to America that the Soviets once posed. It is this widening asymmetry of interest between America and its Eurasian allies that undermines END.           

The Nuclear Reactions column is supported by the Nuclear Security Project of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, as part of a wider partnership between the NSP and the Lowy Institute  

 Photo by Flickr user discoodoni

I do not think Ross agrees with that, but perhaps I misread him.  So just to be clear, let me pose a direct question to him. Do you believe that American primacy in Asia is essential for Australia's security, or do you believe that we should explore options to reshape Asia's order to accommodate China to some extent, even if that means accepting that America will no longer exercise primacy? 

Or we could pose the question another way: do you propose that we should prepare to fight China to preserve US primacy, or to prevent Chinese hegemony? Because they are not the same thing.

The way we answer these questions directly affects the probability of war with China. If we decide that US primacy must be preserved at all costs, then the only way to avoid confrontation with China is for China to continue to subordinate itself to US primacy, even as its economy grows to equal and perhaps overtake America's. Ross would agree that China is very unlikely to accept that. The implication is therefore that confrontation with China becomes, if not inevitable, then very probable indeed. 

Will deterrence work?

Ross reaffirms his confidence that the best way for Australia to prepare for the possibility of war with China is to build forces that can hit the Chinese leadership's core interests so hard that they would have no choice but submit to our will.

He calls this an asymmetrical and indirect approach, but I do not see what is indirect or asymmetrical about it. The kind of actions he suggests — attacks on trade, cyber-attacks, perhaps even direct strikes on mainland Chinese targets — all seem to me to be exactly the kinds of things that the Chinese could do back to us, and much harder. And it appears certain that they would indeed retaliate very hard to such direct attacks upon them. 

Ross' recent post seems to acknowledge this, and suggests that we just need to build forces big and potent enough to dissuade them for retaliating — in other words, to establish escalation dominance over China. But his vivid account of China's future power makes one wonder whether even the US will be able to do this. I'm sure we could not.

Perhaps it would help to clarify these issues if we look at a scenario in which an important Australian strategic interest was under challenge from China. I'd be happy to offer one myself, but I might be suspected of framing it to suit my own argument, so I'd encourage Ross to suggest one — perhaps one of those explored in his high-level workshops. I'm sure it would be possible without endangering national security to explain in broad terms how the deterrence concept would play out in a hypothetical situation, and how problems of symmetry and escalation could be managed. In return, I'd be happy to sketch how my Maritime Denial concept would work in the same scenario. 

Photo by Flickr user Today is a good day

These negotiations would aim to reach a deal on Asia's future which avoids the dark future Ross predicts for us by satisfying China's ambitions for more influence without conceding hegemony to it. Of course, China might refuse to curb its ambitions. But we will never know unless we offer China the choice between a bigger role in a peaceful Asia where it must share power with others, or the immense costs and risks of confrontation with the rest of us.

There is at least a chance they will prefer peace, and if they do we would all be much better off. If they do not, then the need to confront China will be unambiguously clear. Strategic Edge would have us move straight to strategic competition without exploring the alternatives. That seems to run a big risk of taking a very hard road which we might be able to avoid.

Second, I nonetheless agree with Ross that we need urgently to start developing capabilities to maximise our strategic weight in a more contested Asia if that proves unavoidable. A lot of attention has focused on some of the specific proposals in the Strategic Edge report, but my main concern is the operational concept that underlies them.

The capability proposals in Strategic Edge are based on a concept of deterrence by punishment, which is an old favourite of Ross'. He has long believed that Australia should not aim to use its forces to counter hostile actions directly, but respond indirectly by attacking whatever the adversary leadership holds most dear. It is an attractive idea, and made a lot of sense in the 1980s when we wondered how to best fight Indonesia. But as I have argued elsewhere (A Focused Force, pp.31) there are real limits to its credibility as a core operational concept for Australia against a major power like China.

It is far from clear that Australia, using conventional capabilities, could ever inflict enough damage on a country the size of China to deter its leaders from action against us. Nuclear weapons may be different, but Strategic Edge does not argue that we should go nuclear. Even if it did, there would still be many questions about whether that would achieve what Ross has in mind. I'm not sure it would, against a nuclear armed adversary like China.   

Nor does Strategic Edge consider how China might respond to Australia's deterrent attacks on its most vital interests. Ross believes China would do what we ask, but it would have other options. Even leaving nuclear questions aside, we can hardly plan, for example, to mount a trade blockade against China unless we consider how effectively China might be able to apply a trade blockade back against us. Who then hurts most, and blinks first? It is very risky to adopt a strategy of escalation – which this is – when you do not have assured escalation dominance – which we don't.

So I think we need to explore more deeply than Strategic Edge has done the question of how Australia could plan to use armed forces to protect its interests in the Asian century most cost-effectively. I think there are other options which might be more promising — Ross mentioned my favourite, maritime denial, in passing – and we need to spend a lot more effort exploring these options before we can decide which would work best for us.

Finally, I think Strategic Edge is too optimistic about what all this would mean for Australia. It seems to assume, for example, that Australia could adopt the tough approach to China it recommends but still see our trade with China keep growing. It seems to assume that America will remain a staunch ally against China, even while warning that it might not meet China's challenge. Above all, it is confident that Australia will have the economic and demographic weight to support the forces which would make us a middle power in the Asian century.

I do not think we can take any of these things for granted. We have more and tougher choices to make than the ones proposed in Ross' report.

Photo by Flickr user cheesy42.

There is no reason to doubt American willingness to use nuclear forces against powers that cannot retaliate directly against the US, at least in relation to nuclear attacks when proportionality is not an issue. It is, for example, entirely credible that Washington would launch a nuclear attack against Pyongyang or Tehran if either of them used nuclear forces against a US ally, because neither have (for the time being) an assured capacity for nuclear retaliation against the US. 

But these are not the tough cases. The real question about the future of END is whether the US can credibly threaten nuclear attack against an adversary that could retaliate against the US – which for present purposes means Russia or China. 

Take Europe first. If Moscow launches a conventional invasion of a NATO ally – say Latvia or Estonia – could America credibly threaten nuclear attack to force Russia to withdraw? Could it persuade Moscow that the independence of the Baltic States is so important to America that it would accept nuclear attack on the US to preserve it? That seems to me very doubtful, because Russia today does not have the potential to dominate Eurasia the way it did in the Cold War. The stakes for America are simply not as high – and not high enough.

What of China? As General Xiong once asked, is Taiwan's independence worth Los Angeles? More broadly, is anything on the western side of the Pacific important enough to Washington to convince Beijing that America would accept nuclear attack on its homeland to defend it? Even Tokyo?

This is the core question for the future of END: what is so important to Americans today that they are willing to suffer nuclear attack to defend it? And can the US persuade friends and allies that it is willing to make this sacrifice? Many would suggest the maintenance of a US-led world order is important enough, but I doubt that, especially when the non-military challenges to that order are so strong anyway.

I think the costs of nuclear attack are so high that nothing except the defence of America's own territory and independence would justify them. In the Cold War, when it seemed one power could dominate Eurasia, America's own security appeared to be at risk from a Eurasian hegemon. Today, with at least two and maybe four major Eurasian powers, that risk seems very remote.

So against any power capable of delivering nuclear weapons onto American soil, END is an anachronism. Neither America not its allies yet accept this. The sooner they do the better for everyone.

The Nuclear Reactions column is supported by the Nuclear Security Project of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, as part of a wider partnership between the NSP and the Lowy Institute.

Photo by Flickr user -Alina-.

Finally, an idle whim to chase up the quote that forms the title led me to read Like the Roman, Simon Heffer's biography of Enoch Powell. I'd always suspected there was more to Powell than was suggested by his bogey-man image from the 1970s. He was, after all, the author of that marvellous line, 'All political careers end in failure.' 

Heffer's sympathetic treatment fails to dispel the distinct air of oddity and some deep questions about Powell' political and social values. But it also conveys a remarkable picture of what would today, when the species seems extinct, be called a 'conviction politician'. Powell's sense of what was good for Britain was deeply and in some ways repugnantly awry, but the way he developed and promoted his ideas in defiance of political convenience is remarkably interesting.

Finally finally, I should confess that in recent years I have fallen prey to the middle-aged man's penchant for crime novels. This year, apart from rereading everything written by Peter Temple, I've discovered with immense pleasure Eric Ambler, Shane Maloney, and a wonderful new Irish writer called Stuart Neville, whose Ghosts of Belfast is really excellent.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Of course that does not make China a winner, necessarily. Whether China gains from the events of the last few months depends on what it's being trying to do. 

We might assume that China has failed because its aim has been to demonstrate its power by controlling North Korea, or expand its influence by wooing South Korea, or both. But China has never claimed to control North Korea; it is the US that promotes the idea that Beijing has such control. So why should China see controlling North Korea as a test of its power, when they judge that America cannot control it either? Beijing may calculate that America's rash and easily falsifiable implication that it can stop further Northern provocations will make America look weak and China look wise.

Likewise, I don't think it has ever been part of China's plan to woo South Korea by promising to protect it from the North. Beijing's major card with Seoul is not its ability to control Pyongyang's actions today, but its central role in managing the consequences of the North's presumed eventual collapse. When Pyongyang crumbles, China will decide what happens, and Seoul will have to rely on Beijing to help manage the crisis and facilitate South Korea's absorption of the North. That remains true today, and it gives Beijing a strong hand to play. 

In fact, I have a hunch — nothing more – that China's refusal to even condemn North Korea may have been intended to punish South Korea for its recent lean towards Washington. Beijing wants to remind Seoul that there is nothing much Washington can do to help when push comes to shove on the Peninsula. The message to Seoul is, 'Do not think you can cosy up to Washington and still expect us to jump when you call. If you want our help with North Korea, you need to lean back towards us. In the end, we are more use to you than America.'

That message might well have some traction in Seoul if, next time Pyongyang misbehaves, Washington does no more than talk tough again. In which case we will have to revise our judgments about who has won and lost these last few months.

Photo by Flickr user Roberto Rizzato.

Second, I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the way some Americans, at least, have responded to the questions about the future of America's power and role posed by China's rise. In my recent Quarterly Essay, I raised a few of them myself in rather stark terms, and I would not have been surprised had I received some rather blunt and dismissive responses from American audiences. 

In fact, the opposite is the case. I spent a few days in Washington at the start of the month, and was struck by how willing my interlocutors were to address head-on the questions I raised about America's future role in Asia.

My impression is that almost all of those I spoke to accepted that the US would have to modify its leadership role in Asia at least to some extent to accommodate China's power. That leaves open huge issues for debate about when such adjustments should be made, and how big they should be. 

Few of my interlocutors agreed with me that the concessions should be relatively large and made quite soon. But the fact that they accept the principle seems to me more significant than differences in timing and degree. And remarkably, I did find some who agreed with me on timing and degree. I can no longer say that I have never met an American who thinks his country should be prepared to treat China as an equal. That to me was a very welcome surprise. Perhaps it should not have been. What we see at work is that great American capacity for adaptation and self-reinvention.

Photo by Flickr user Luther Bailey.

If Rudd was expressing the first view, and hence meant that we should be prepared to 'deploy force' if China refuses to accept the indefinite perpetuation of the current American-led order in Asia, then he was sending a very chilling message indeed. That is because it is almost certain that China will not agree to work within the current US-led order as its power grows to approach America's. It will insist on a bigger share of regional leadership than it has enjoyed in the past.

If this is Rudd's position, he is advocating a vision of Asia's future and endorsing an American approach to China which more or less guarantees contested and possibly hostile relations between Washington and Beijing in future. This is a policy which would make it almost certain that Australia will have to choose between Washington and Beijing. Not in Australia's interests, to put it mildly.

If he was expressing the second view, then he was on much sounder ground. But in that case, it is even more striking that he did not say anything (or, at least, anything interesting enough for the US note-taker to record) about how exactly that new order should evolve. He apparently said nothing about the central issue: what should we aim to preserve in negotiating a new order with China, and what should we be willing to compromise? This is the fundamental question about Asia's future, and one in which Australian interest are deeply engaged. 

What a missed opportunity to shape American thinking.

Which view did he mean? If we judge by his position in other contexts, the data is mixed. In his speeches launching the APc, Rudd often spoke of the need to build a new order in Asia, which suggests he might take the second of these views. But if you look at the Defence White Paper, and the way he and Smith signed up to support US leadership in Asia at last month's AUSMIN, without any acknowledgment of questions about how that leadership might evolve as power shifts in Asia, then it seems likely he was expressing the first view. Perhaps he doesn't really know himself. 

All of which shows that on the most important foreign policy issue for a generation, Australian diplomacy is at best indolent, muddled and incoherent, and perhaps profoundly and tragically mistaken.

So why have a lot of smart people got such big issues wrong for so long? My hunch is that two factors are at work. One is a failure of imagination: we have all found it hard to imagine a world in which the US is not the most powerful country, because US power has been the dominant fact of the international system for a century. The other is the insidious power of preference: we don't want to live in a world in which China is as strong, or stronger, than America.

Together, these impulses have made us too eagre to accept, and too unwilling to scrutinise, arguments that lead away from this unthinkable and unpalatable prospect. Only in the last two years – since the GFC — have we seen the beginnings of a serious understanding in America that the unthinkable and unpalatable might happen. That makes the next few years very interesting indeed.

Photo by Flickr user Chi King, used under a Creative Commons license.

To me, the whole difference between national and international politics is that in the international space we do not have a sense of community embodied in institutions. We have armed forces instead. So I have my doubts about this as an application of conservative political theory to international politics. Once the kinds of institutions that make national politics work spring up between states, they cease to function as separate states and become one community. See under 'Europe'.  

Second, on Asia's institutions specifically: if Sam is right and a Concert would require domestic-style institutions to make it work, we will not get a concert in Asia. The regional institutions we have – ARF, APEC, EAS etc – are far too weak. To me they carry little or nothing of what Sam calls 'that sense of authority and allegiance' which makes domestic institutions work. We are not Europe.

Photo by Flickr user Changhua Coast Conservation Action, used under a Creative Commons license.

Both Beijing and Washington will have to compromise to build this kind of order, and that will not be easy on either side. However, to be fair to Stephan and Ben, in the Quarterly Essay I do focus more on America’s choices than China's, for two reasons. First, I think America's choices are harder, simply because it must relinquish some of the power it now has to build this new order. China need only moderate its ambitions for more power, which is much easier.

Second, America is our ally. Of course we should urge compromise on both sides, but it is much harder for us to ask America to relinquish some of the power on which our own security has been built for many decades. I therefore devote more time to this aspect of the question.

Second, Stephan and Ben suggest that the key cause of tension in the region is America's relatively modest military response to China's growing power. That all depends what America is trying to do with its armed force. I'm not sure whether they are suggesting that America should contest China's challenge and try to maintain primacy with armed force. This would be a hard position to support, unless they assume that China would back down, and stay backed down, in the face of a determined US military response.

It is very unlikely that, as its economic power grows, China could be compelled to accept US primacy by the force of American arms. Already the US is losing the assured superiority in conventional and nuclear options required to make this work, and over coming decades, the balance of force is much more likely to move against the US than in favour of it. More broadly, why assume that it would be better for the region, for Australia, or indeed for America to sacrifice peace in Asia to preserve US primacy in this way?

On the other hand, if Stephan and Ben mean that regional countries' confidence in a new order in Asia would be bolstered by a strong US presence to ensure that China does accept the limits imposed by that new order, then I would agree with them. I'm not sure I agree that America is doing too little to maintain their confidence.

Third, Ben and Stephan raise some questions about the kind of regional order I think would best keep Asia peaceful in future. I say we need an Asian order in which power is shared among the strongest states, and suggest the European order of the nineteenth century as an example of such a system. My German colleagues disagree with my use of the term 'Concert of Europe' to describe this order, and I won't argue the toss with them on the point of historical nomenclature.

But more substantively, they prefer a 'balance of power' system to what I call a concert. They think Europe's nineteenth century was rougher than I do, and they prefer something that looks a lot like the Cold War – Asia divided into two systemic blocs – which they say is much like it is today.

I cannot agree with them here. Asia today — or at least, over the past four decades — has not been divided into blocs, but united under US primacy. Moving from that to an Asia divided into Cold War style US- and China-led camps seems very dangerous. How confident can we be that these blocs would remain, as they hope, 'much less clearly organised' that the Cold War blocs? How confident can we be that they would not go to war with one another?

This seems a recipe for a poorer and more violent Asia, and I cannot see how this model of Asia's future is preferable to one in which power is shared equally. I fear it is more likely. So perhaps I’d better make myself clear here: my purpose is not to say what I expect to happen, but to say what I think we should want to happen.

 

The point is partly methodological. Andrew's point would be decisive if my argument was that Asia will become more violent in future for the same reasons it was violent in the past. But in fact, I emphasise how different Asia will be in future from anything we have known before or since 1970, and the sources of violence will be different too. The only resemblance I see with pre-1970 Asia is that the region may again be highly contested. I confess the essay only referred to Asia's violent past to help readers imagine what a disordered Asia might be like, not to explain to them how it would occur.

In fact, I think Asia is more dangerous today partly because of the changes Andrew mentions. I do not take much comfort for the fact that Asian states are stronger now then they were, because I do not think that stronger states are less likely to compete and fight than weak ones. Indeed, history does suggest that states are more likely to clash when their relative power is shifting rapidly as they grow. And the stronger states are, the more damaging their conflicts. 

Moreover, while universalist ideologies may not drive competition in future, nationalism certainly can. In fact nationalism always seems to me more dangerous than any universalist ideology, because it tends to have a stronger grip on people's minds.

Andrew's third and fourth points relate to economics and institutions. He says that Asia's economic integration makes conflict more expensive and hence more unlikely, and new regional institutions make it easier to manage and avoid. The point about institutions deserves a longer analysis, but let me just say here that I think Asia's institutional alphabet soup reflects rather then supports the regional order. There is no reason to expect it to be able to manage fundamental challenges to that order effectively – indeed it is as likely to exacerbate differences by displaying them.

Economic integration is a much more serious matter. As I say in the essay, economic integration gives everyone immense incentives to manage Asia's power shift peacefully, and this is the best reason to believe they will succeed. But this is not a fool-proof mechanism. We had an excellent debate on this question on The Interpreter a few months ago, and I will not rehearse it all here.

My bottom line is simply this: building a stable new order to manage new power relativities will require compromises from everyone. Economic interdependence increases the incentives for compromise, but does not remove the necessity for it. It should ensure that both the US and China are willing to build the kind of shared leadership I propose for Asia. It does not mean that building a new order is unnecessary. So we can test the effectiveness of economic interdependence by seeing what the great powers are actually doing. Are they moving towards this kind of compromise? I do not think so.

In fact I am starting to wonder whether the golden straitjacket might actually increase risks rather than reduce them. The problem is that people too easily assume order will be preserved by the other guy giving way, because they instinctively believe that the other guy has an even bigger stake in economic integration than they do. In other words they think the other guy wears the straitjacket, but they do not. Today many Americans – and some Australians — assume that China will continue to accept US primacy, and Chinese assume that America will tap the mat. The danger is that both will be wrong.

Photo by Flickr user bibliogrrl, used under a Creative Commons license.

But their vision of Asia's future is very different from the Asia of the past four decades, when US power has been uncontested. They see Asia moving to a balance of power system in which Asia is dominated by systemic competition between power blocs. Sometimes in history – eighteenth century Europe, for example – such systems have been relatively stable and peaceful. At other times – twentieth century Europe – they have been disastrous. Ben and Stephan seem confident that Asia in the 21st century would look more like the former. I am much less sanguine.

They also disagree that what I call the European order of the 19th century provides the best model for a peaceful Asian future. They object to my calling this system a Concert of Power, because they think that term should apply only to the first half of the period.

Well I'm not so sure, but let's not argue over labels or even over models. The core question is whether we believe that a future Asian order based on shared leadership could work, and last. If it can, I think it would serve us better than any of the alternatives. I do not share their faith that Asia's great powers, some armed with nuclear weapons, will limit themselves to Cabinet wars as the European great powers of the 18th century did.

Finally, just to be clear, I'm not sure why Ben and Stephan think I reject armed neutrality as a serious option for Australia. I simply point out that it would be very hard, and would get harder as the economic relativities shift further, and that other options might work better. Even so, it is an option we need to consider if we find ourselves living in a more contested Asia.

Photo by Flickr user marfis75, used under a Creative Commons license.

The less obvious but equally important sense in which China's growing power doesn't threaten us per se is that the adjustments we might need to make to live with China's power need not undermine our national identity or fundamental values. This is not self-evident by any means. China's rise and the adjustments it may require of us will challenge our sense of who we are, and some of the less temperate commentary on my essay shows how edgy this makes people.

I understand that, but as I have said in an earlier post, Australia's identity and values are big enough and strong enough and flexible enough to survive the coming transformations.

Of course, much depends on what you think the core of our national identity is, and that is a debate for another time. But the many people who think accommodating China is incompatible with our identity need to say what they mean to do about it, and what price they are willing to pay to preserve those aspects of Australia's identity that might be incompatible with adjusting to China's rise. Resisting that adjustment would come at very high cost indeed to regional order; peace is a value too. 

Those (not Malcolm) who counsel heroic resistance in defence of their vision of Australia's values need to reflect on what that might mean in terms of real policy, involving real human lives and happiness. This is not a debate about abstractions.

What about other East Asian states? Malcolm thinks many of them are more anxious about China than we are, and therefore would not support my idea of urging the US to share power with China. Well, I agree that many states closer to China have more reason to fear it directly, and they are therefore at least as keen as Australia for the US to stay engaged to constrain Beijing's power.

But they also have more to fear if US-China relations become too adversarial, because they are closer to the battle. So like us, they want the US to play the biggest role in Asia possible, consistent with avoiding US-China conflict — unless China's conduct becomes so flagrant as to make it unavoidable. Therefore, like us, they will want the US to seek the maximum accommodation with China that is consistent with Chinese adherence to reasonable norms of international conduct. Hence my hope that, with adroit diplomacy, we could build a regional coalition to support cautious accommodation.

Photo by Flickr user betta design, used under a Creative Commons license.

Huntington called Australia a 'torn' country in the early 1990s because he believed that, under Keating, Australia was trying to turn its back on its Western civilisational roots to join the Confucian civilisation of our neighbours. I think he was wrong about this – that was not what was happening under Keating. 

But he was right to see that the tension between history and geography inherent in our circumstances has always been at the heart of our national story. Our confidence in our future has always depended on our confidence that we need not be torn between history and geography – that we can become a fully engaged part of our region and still retain all that we wish of our traditional affiliations with the North Atlantic world. 

This confidence has been easy to sustain over the past few decades. But in my essay I suggest that this has been true only because America has enjoyed uncontested primacy in Asia. We have not had to choose between the US and Asia because our Asian neighbours have chosen the US too.  China's rise, by challenging America's primacy, will make this much harder. As the US and China become strategic competitors, the question of whether we have to choose looms again.            

As we consider those choices, the key question is not whether the ideas and values and history that we have inherited from the North Atlantic world are vital to our national identity. I take it that they are. The question is whether we can retain that aspect of our identity without being a US ally. 

In other words, is the alliance essential to our Western cultural identity? Does cultural connection require strategic alignment? Is it possible for Australia to retain its Western cultural heritage without remaining a strategic dependency of larger Western powers? Would abandoning strategic alignment with the US mean abandoning the Western aspect of our identity? 

Two or three decades ago – in the 1970s and 1980s – I think most Australian would have answered 'no' to these questions. Now it is not so clear. The idea of the Anglosphere – an alliance based on culture, or indeed on race — seemed a relic of history until it revived after 9/11. And it may be all too easy to see the emerging strategic competition between the US and China in cultural or civilisational terms, just as Huntington suggested we would.

I think that would be wrong. I think Huntington was mistaken in his basic premise that civilisation, not country, is the key focus of identity and loyalty in the post-Cold War World. I think that the mainspring of strategic competition between the US and China is not culture or civilisation but old-fashioned power politics between states. 

The risk is that it remains so easy to dress up power politics in cultural terms. It will be very important to Australia's choices in a more contested Asia to be clear which it is. If the roots of strategic competition in Asia are genuinely cultural, then our alignment with the US is plainly central to our Western cultural identity. If they are national, then our alignment is more culturally neutral. 

Australians have always been a little uncertain whether we really are a separate country or simply a branch-office of a broader western supra-national entity — which is how many people see the alliance today. The current idea that the alliance is central to our national identity thus has deep roots.  This is what Keith Hancock meant when he wrote, back in 1930, that 'for Australians pride of race comes before love of country'. And what Donald Horne meant when he wrote in 1964, 'Australian nationalism — once strong – is now so hesitant that it no longer achieves self-definition. No one any longer tells Australians who they are...'