Bob Carr on China’s military might || Insiders: On Background

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While the rather bizarre sight of Dan Andrews posing for a photo alongside the leaders of China, Russia and North Korea drew widespread condemnation and plenty of attention in Australia this week, the actual events in Beijing and Shanghai earlier in the week carried far greater significance for Australia and the world.

China was showing off its diplomatic and military might, and it wasn't just unfriendly dictators standing alongside Xi Jinping.

Importantly, Indonesia's president was there and earlier in the week, India's Prime Minister, Narendra Modi too.

The scenes were a triumph for Xi Jinping.

This was meant to be a commemoration of China's historic victory over Japan in World War II, but it was also about projecting the vision of China's future.

Someone else who was there, former Foreign Minister and New South Wales Premier, Bob Carr.

Unlike Dan Andrews, he chose not to take a front row seat for the military parade, but I'm keen to understand what he took from it all.

From Ngunnawal Country of Parliament House in Canberra, I'm David Spears.

Welcome to Insiders on Background.

Bob Carr, welcome.

Good to talk to you.

Yeah, David, good to talk to you.

So I'd like to start with your thoughts on what China was trying to achieve this week with both its diplomatic and military displays.

What do you think it was all about?

Yeah, I think we run them together.

The meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which is a Chinese-led multilateral with 10 members and

very, very significantly part of China's projection of power into Central Asia, the Stan States and Mongolia,

supported by

the Belt and Road initiatives.

With that meeting and Modi so decisively expressing his distress or anger with America, with his treatment by Donald Trump.

I think you saw China invited to take up opportunities created by the erraticism of the Trump presidency, and it's worked dramatically

with the rapprochement

between India and China.

The question for me is, does China, and I'm exploring it with meetings I've got with Chinese scholars and diplomats, does China have the flexibility to go further in exploiting opportunities created by Trumpism?

What does that mean?

What sort of flexibility are you suggesting there?

Well, for example, in the meeting I had with the Institute of Foreign Affairs yesterday, it was a meeting that had a couple of ambassadors and some think tankers.

of some significance.

I threw out this challenge.

I said, what has China gained from its assertive behavior against the Philippines?

Has any gain in access to

fisheries by excluding Philippines fishes been worth the fact that it's offered people hostile to China an example to quote of Chinese aggressiveness?

Good question.

Now, yeah, the assertiveness, the assertiveness that China's demonstrated in that maritime territorial dispute hasn't wanted any friends.

I hope I planted the idea, and I've said this in other exchanges, earlier exchanges with Chinese, that

settling differences with the Philippines should be a goal of a new post-Wolf warrior Chinese diplomacy.

And I'm now able to quote...

the communique between Probo,

the President of Indonesia, and President Xi, which appeared to do precisely that in respect of maritime territorial differences between Indonesia and China.

So they have,

in that communique, Indonesia and China have settled their maritime differences?

One would need to choose language carefully, but they addressed the differences in the communique that followed the first meeting of, or the second meeting of Probo and Xi,

and use the key expression, joint development.

Key expression, because one approach taken over the years as an alternative to conflict over these disputed areas in the South China Sea, is that you set aside the differences and you jointly develop the resource and share the proceeds.

And do you think there's a willingness to do that with the Philippines, which we've probably seen the most

confrontation between China and the Philippines?

Do you think that's where we're headed on that front too?

I guess that's what you're asking of them.

There's no supportive evidence.

Let me quickly say there's no supportive evidence.

And the resentment against China runs deep in the Philippines.

And

the Chinese need to reflect that the previous president of the Philippines, on his first visit to China,

was so effusive about friendship between his country and China that he actually said, he actually referred to China as an ally.

Well, China doesn't have an alliance system.

China declares that it's a non-aligned nation.

It has partnerships.

But China threw that diplomatic advantage away by being so unrelentingly focused on what is a pretty trivial

argument to draw with the Philippines.

The territory

is very close to the Philippines' mainland.

And

I think,

given the dramatic gain that China has made

with Modi's appearance at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the communique he struck with Xi that says we, China and India, will make our own relationship without reference to any third power, for which read the United States, that that ought to provide China with an incentive to attempt more amenable diplomacy with the one nation out of the ten in ASEAN, Southeast Asian nations, with which it's got a troublesome, a prickly relationship.

Just on India, this is a huge moment, right?

Modi standing there with Xi, also with Putin and so on as well.

And you've described a dramatic gain in terms of that relationship between India and China.

What does this mean for the Quad and the efforts that we've seen Australia, the US play for years and years to try and court India?

Is the Quad going to survive, given Modi is clearly annoyed at what Trump is doing on the tariff run?

Yeah, well, let me make it clear.

I'm a supporter of the Quad.

I think the Quad is valid hedging.

I think it sends a message to China that you've got these powers prepared to talk to one another,

exchange views, but it could become a more significant association, more than a diplomatic talking shop, if China's behaviour warranted it.

So I'm a supporter of the Quad.

I want it to succeed with the limited goals it set itself.

I think it's useful diplomacy.

But I really do think it's in trouble when, as a result of his irritation with India, irritated because of its position on tariffs, irritated because it won't support his nomination for the Nobel Prize,

nominated, of course, by Pakistan, God help us,

the Trump...

it appears, will not be at the planned meeting later this year.

It's meant to be in India, isn't it?

Yeah, this quad leader.

You don't think that's going to happen at all?

Well, according to Indian media, Trump is not going to be there.

So that's a demotion of what, and I'm just speculating, Trump may see as a Biden initiative, a quad that involves leaders' meetings and not just meetings of senior officials.

So there's a question mark over the quad, although I think Australian diplomats in Delhi had thought for some time that India's commitment to it had not been full-bodied.

Should Australia be worried if

those concerns you're expressing about the fate of the Quad, India and China dramatically improving relationships, should Australia be concerned?

No, my view is different.

India seems to have settled on

a multi-alliance system.

Instead of being non-aligned,

it's aligned to multiple entities and associations of nations.

India is asserting its right to have a relationship with Vladimir Putin's Russia, notwithstanding the war crimes being committed on a daily basis in Ukraine.

India has now said we are going to have a bilateral relationship with China without reference to the cares or sensibilities of the United States.

So

I think India

provides a model for Indonesia, which Indonesia seems to be following already.

In January, Brabo just walked his country into BRICS.

And I remember around about the time I was foreign minister, the alarm we all felt at any suggestion Indonesia would join BRICS.

But now it's happened and it seems to be Indonesia saying we've got a good relationship.

with Australia, we respect that.

That's important in our diplomatic armoury.

And indeed, I had a quick meeting with the Indonesian Foreign Minister here which I thought was valuable.

He's been foreign minister for 10 months.

He says our relationship has never been better and that's a tribute to the priority Albanese, Prime Minister Albanese has given the relationship.

But

we are likely to find

a multiplicity of relationships being struck by our neighbour Indonesia, almost on the model of the diversity of contacts that Indonesia, that India.

Yeah, no, that's interesting.

That's interesting.

In this more complex world, I just think Australia should be looking for opportunities rather than expressing any despair or anxiety.

Let me ask you about the military parade.

You didn't go to it.

You made a decision not to have a look at all the hardware, as you put it, but you wouldn't have missed it at the pictures.

I mean, the hypersonic missiles, the drones, the robot dogs.

I mean, this isn't about just acknowledging their victory 80 years ago over Japan.

This is really about sending a message about China's vision of the the future, isn't it?

What is that message do you think that it's trying to send the region?

Well,

here's my own take on the military parade.

It's an exercise in anthropology.

It's China continuing the reflexes that it adopted from the Soviet Union.

Part of the political ethos of China reflects the Soviet Union's influence on the Chinese Communist Party established in the early 20s and very much guided by Russian advisers

on

its long military campaign

against the Japanese and then in the Civil War 45 to 49

in which Soviet battle tactics were very recognizable apparently.

And one thing they inherited from this,

one part of their Soviet heritage is a fondness for military parades, which would strike any observer from a liberal democracy as crass.

This was bigger, though, than any of its previous ones, and some say the biggest parade the world has ever seen.

Well, that's interesting.

I think, though, it is a reflex that goes back to that Soviet ethos, which has shaped the country in many respects.

Nonetheless,

is it trying to tell the region to rethink the calculus on the South China Sea or even Taiwan that China is now at a position of enormous strength.

I don't think it was necessary to do that because the military intelligence agencies of all those nations would know a thousand times more about China's capacity than China is revealing with a military parade.

Maybe the audience was Donald Trump watching on the TV.

It could well have been, and he's easily impressed.

and unpredictable in his responses as we know.

I did see a headline that he's just now, that he's renaming his defense department the department of war um the timing of which seems interesting so soon after that chinese military parade um

and and and terrible as we contemplate this look i my thinking on the nightmare of uh an american china conflict is fed by of all things a novel i've read called 2034 written by admiral stavridis and a co-author ackerman which imagines how a U.S.-China war could come about and how it would be fought.

I thought if it descended into a nuclear exchange, it would be a 24-hour

Armageddon.

But

they quite convincingly suggest a slow-motion nuclear exchange with America losing a battleship carrier fleet and then responding with a strike on a single Chinese city and the Chinese with a second strike capacity, of course, untouched, being able to take out two American American cities, Galveston and San Diego, and then America forced, under a struggling president, a weak president in this novel, a woman president, as it happens, to make a decisive response, and that being a nuclear attack on Shanghai.

Now,

this novel has been recommended by Robert Gates, former Defense Secretary and others, but it just makes you think of the chilling horror of a descent into war and how quite credibly it could become a nuclear exchange and one that really finishes off American and Chinese civilization.

It prompts me to ask the question, what do you think the prospects are of war between the US and China?

Well, one worries about the prospects of the one that this novel is based on, of a miscalculation, an accident in the South China Sea.

One worries about the stability of political leadership in Taiwan.

China will tolerate just about anything from

their political leadership except a dash for independence.

One worries about a hint in Washington of America saying, well, we end strategic ambiguity.

The defense of the American homeland begins in the First Island Chain.

On the other hand, I find some relief in the fact that under Marco Rubio, they've they've turned down the dial on Taiwan and

they're using the language of diplomatic,

of strategic ambiguity.

And

Trump, and

I find this encouraging, is probably less committed to Taiwan rhetorically than any other U.S.

President has been.

Certainly Biden.

Yeah, and that sends a message of caution to the Taiwanese leadership because

they've got

a lot of influence in this equation, although over the years they've been very restrained and responsive to American pressure to be restrained.

I think

China in deep thinking about a war over Taiwan Straits would have to be worried that it could end in disaster.

And the sort of disaster that alone of...

the disasters you could contemplate would be one that would threaten the rule of the Communist Party.

Look, finally, finally, Bob Carr, I know you're reluctant to criticise your friend Dan Andrews for taking part in that group shot with the leaders of Russia, North Korea, Iran, and so on.

But you've got to admit, this was pretty bizarre.

You wouldn't have done that.

Well, I decided not to do it.

I accepted for a commemoration.

And

in the lead-up to this event, the notion of this parade had slowly taken shape.

And when it became clear what it was, what it represented,

I told the

Chinese ambassador I wouldn't be there.

But as Helen Clark said to me, the former Prime Minister of New Zealand, Bob,

we wouldn't have settled on this guest list.

But there are plenty of like-mindeds, Prime Minister of Malaysia, the Indonesian President,

and

a number of ambassadorial

people from European embassies, although without official status,

to make it worthwhile for me, and I'm sure for Daniel Andrews.

I mean, some of the criticism, including from the Deputy Premier of Victoria, Ben Carroll, is that this was about furthering Dan Andrews' personal business interests.

Is that fair criticism?

I can't

comment on that.

I've got enormous respect for him, not least for his political skills,

which have involved in the past in beating savage media.

Sure, but his judgment on this one, I mean, the fact that you and Ellen Clark didn't pop up in that photo says a bit, doesn't it?

I'm not going to

be drawn into criticism of a colleague that I'm

a business party you're very fond of.

And just on the business interests, I mean, people often wonder, what about you?

Do you have business interests in China that bring you there?

Not one.

Not one.

I haven't been a consultant.

I haven't been an advisor.

I'm not a board member.

I've got...

No part of my income has come from activities related to China.

China.

I'm drawn to this as someone with an academic interest, if you like, in foreign policy, but a desire to see that there's an Australian voice,

an Australian presence at some meetings that were very important.

When I was there at the think tank yesterday, the Chinese Institute of Foreign Affairs, I was able to explain some of our foreign policy positions.

I was able to highlight the success of the Prime Minister Albanese visit.

And I just think that getting an understanding of Australia's position with people who make decisions in China is a role I can contribute.

Well, Bob Carr, very interesting to hear your thoughts after a very significant week in China.

Thanks so much for joining us.

My pleasure, David.

Thank you.

And if you have any thoughts on this podcast, do drop us a line, insiders at abc.net.au.

We'll have more on this significant week in China coming up on the show Sunday morning.

Susan Lee, the opposition leader, is our guest.

Hope you can join us at 9 a.m.

on ABC TV.

You're making us all feel very excited about being here.