Regional News
President Barack Obama’s long-awaited trip to Australia
on November 16 and 17 will provide a welcome opportunity
to deepen ties with a long-standing U.S. ally.
The visit comes at a time when Australia and the United States
have mounted efforts to strengthen their alliance through new
levels of security and military coordination and have developed
a shared vision on the development of emerging regional
security and trade architectures in Asia and the Pacific.
At the September Australia-United States Ministerial (AUSMIN) meeting
in San Francisco attended by the Australian ministers of defense and
foreign affairs and the U.S. secretaries of defense and state, the two
countries agreed that U.S. troops would be granted increased access to
three Australian bases in Western Australia. This is expected to allow
U.S. troops use of Australian training and exercise ranges and facilitate
the pre-positioning of U.S. military equipment. Australian defense
minister Stephen Smith called the basing deal “the single biggest
change or advancement of alliance relationships since . . . the 1980s.”
President Obama and Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who visited Washington
in March, are expected to discuss incremental steps to implement the
basing agreement during their meetings. They will also discuss ways
the United States and Australia can collaborate to prevent threats to
both countries from cyberattacks. Such cooperation will be particularly
timely: on November 3 the U.S. government released an intelligence
report charging China with stealing vast amounts of corporate and
economic secrets in cyberspace as a matter of national policy.
The president’s visit, which was delayed twice in 2010 due to the health
care debate in Congress and the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, will mark
the 60th anniversary of the signing of the ANZUS treaty, a document
that laid out a shared security arrangement between Australia, New
Zealand, and the United States. Australia’s ambassador to Washington,
Kim Beasely, argues that the ANZUS alliance is the only treaty
partnership the United States established during the Cold War that has
intensified rather than waned since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
President Obama will travel to Canberra and Darwin, and Prime
Minister Gillard has confirmed that he will address the Australian
Parliament. Darwin was the site of the first and most devastating
Japanese air attack on Australia during World War II, earning the city
the nickname “the Pearl Harbor of Australia.” A stop there gives the
president an opportunity to celebrate the long and shared history
of the two nations’ defense forces in the Northern Territory.
Darwin also carries symbolic meaning for the present: another of
the city’s nicknames is the Australian “gateway” to Asia, derived
from the fact that it is only 500 miles from the easternmost
islands of Indonesia. A visit offers a compelling opportunity for
the president to highlight Australia and the United States’ mutual
interest in furthering engagement with East and Southeast Asia.
The Australia visit falls between three major multilateral meetings
involving the United States and countries in the Asia Pacific. The
president will host the 21 leaders of the Asia Pacific Economic
Cooperation (APEC) forum in Honolulu on November 11–12, a few days
before his visit to Australia. Immediately after his Australia visit, the
president travels to Bali, Indonesia, for his first East Asia Summit
meeting on November 18. He will hold a summit with the 10 leaders of
the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) a day earlier.
According to a White House press release, the president’s goal for his
Australia trip is to “build on the APEC agenda and expand bilateral
cooperation to increase global economic growth, trade, and jobs.”
Ambassador Beazley says that “any time a U.S. president shows
up in Australia . . . he’s greeted with a considerable amount of
excitement.” This visit will give President Obama an opportunity to
further articulate his administration’s view about the U.S. role in
the Asia Pacific and how Australia and the United States can work
together to achieve their common interests in the region. It will
offer a chance to reflect on a 60-year partnership with a steadfast
ally, but also to appreciate how that partnership grows more valuable
with each passing year. Australia no longer exists in a strategic
backwater (as it did during the Cold War), but on the southern
edge of the new focal point of global politics and economics.
Murray Hiebert is senior fellow and deputy director of the Southeast
Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies
in Washington, D.C. Alexander Vagg is researcher with the Southeast
Asia Program.
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By: Murray Hiebert and Alexander Vagg
Source: Center for Strategic & International Studies, Nov. 4, 2011
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