The moment a loud shot was fired,the Indians would lock themselves in their peninsula and the Japanese would do what they always do,negotiate from under the table. That would leave the United States and mugs like us carrying a military fight to the Chinese all by our righteous selves.
India is having us all on. India enjoys the impenetrable wall of the Himalayas on its north and the protection of two oceans around its distended peninsula. And it has a population younger and as large as that of China. It is in an undefeatable position. And no power would try to defeat it – certainly not the Chinese.
Henry Kissinger said to me on a number of occasions that he and I shared an important strategic view. And that view,in Kissinger’s words,was that India “would never be part of the East Asian system”. A view I have always firmly held.
It is impossible to imagine the Indian Navy attacking Chinese military or civilian assets in the South China Sea – an area completely remote from the safety and comity of India’s waterlocked peninsula – notwithstanding the odd skirmish each has every decade or so on their Himalayan border.
India is a member of theShanghai Cooperation Organisation. The other states include China itself,Russia and Pakistan. India will turn up as large as life to the next meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation,after it has turned up,as large as life,for America’s Quad follies in the White House.
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India,a founder of the non-aligned movement,has historically been allergic to alliances,having no desire whatsoever to put all its eggs into one basket – something it will never do. But here we are in Australia,at the strategic casino,putting all our money on black,thinking the Indians will turn up for a major showdown with the Chinese. While the Japanese know,in such a fight,China will obliterate them.
But the prophet from the Shire has wandered into all this,unable to comprehend the vector forces of the subtleties at play,when Australian foreign policy had the complete capacity to manage relations between China and the United States,as we have done so successfully for decades before.
I singlehandedly talked two American presidents into sitting down annually with the president of China,the prime minister of Japan and the president of Indonesia and,in China’s case,persuading them to sit beside the representatives of Taiwan and Hong Kong. That is what I did in developing the APEC Leaders’ Meeting. Could you imagine Morrison or Payne or the growling policeman from Queensland achieving such a thing? But now,according to Payne,I am not up to date,I am too long out of it,a relic of a bygone age. Well,I might be,but one thing I am not – an Australian defeatist who,at the first sign of tension,would sell the country out to another power.