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US-China relations
OpinionComment
Daryl Guppy
Daryl Guppy

Opinion | Australia’s Albanese sounded the wrong note with his US-friendly tone at the Shangri-La Dialogue

  • Stripped of platitudes, Albanese’s speech aligned with the US concept of regional peace
  • However, there was no acknowledgement of the legitimacy of any of China’s responses to the obvious attempts to contain its development

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From the left, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese walks with US President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at Point Loma naval base in San Diego, California, on March 13. The three nations make up Aukus, a trilateral security pact for the Indo-Pacific region. Photo: AP
Daryl Guppy
Shangri-La is a mythical place of peace and tranquillity. Its namesake, the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, does not quite live up to this mythical reputation. At the conference this year, the keynote address by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese made it clear that, in his opinion, only the US-endorsed version of peace and prosperity is acceptable.
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Apparently, peace and stability, complete with “guardrails”, could be achieved by working to support US objectives. Albanese said that “if one nation imagines itself too big for the rules, or too powerful to be held to the standards that the rest of us respect, then our region’s strategic stability is undermined and our individual national sovereignty is eroded”.

There was no doubt the remarks were directed at China, not the United States, as he suggested no change to the stance and approach taken by the Americans.

At a practical level, he could have encouraged the US to rescind the personal sanctions imposed in 2018 on General Li Shangfu, now China’s defence minister. Lifting the sanctions would have gone a long way to enabling an official discussion with US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin.

Stripped of the platitudes about Australia’s support for the region’s desire for peace and prosperity, Albanese’s speech was an agreement with the US concept of what this peace and prosperity should look like.

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There was no acknowledgement of the legitimacy of any of China’s responses to the obvious attempts to contain its development. Instead he said a call for guardrails did not amount to a policy of containment or placing obstacles in the way of any nation’s progress or potential.

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