Interview with Jim Middleton, Newsline, Australia Network

Subjects: AUSMIN talks; US in the Pacific; China

Transcript, E&OE, proof only

8 November 2010

JIM MIDDLETON: Hillary Clinton and Mr Gates are now on their way back to the United States after wrapping up the AUSMIN talks in Melbourne with Australian Defence Minister Stephen Smith and Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd.

Foreign Minister welcome to the program.

KEVIN RUDD: Pleasure to be with you.

JIM MIDDLETON: We have been here. We are here. We will be here. Those are the words of Hillary Clinton at your joint press conference just a few hours ago. It sounded like a real shot across the bows to China not to even think of shutting the United States out of the Pacific.

KEVIN RUDD: Well I think what Hillary was saying was simply a statement of fact. The United States has been here since the early '40s. Or if you retrace the history of things, somewhat earlier than that as well. And it's been a strong continuing strategic presence; alliances with Japan, alliances with the Republic of Korea, alliances with Australia.

Significant security partnerships with Thailand and the Philippines. These have been long standing and underpinned of course by the strategic presence of the US Pacific fleet, anchored in - or based out of Hawaii.

So that's a statement of fact. What I think both the Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State were saying today is that this will continue into the future. The Secretary of Defense in fact went on to say that there will be a more significant presence in the future.

JIM MIDDLETON: Enhanced in fact I think were the words he used. At the weekend also the Secretary of State while in Australia declared that relations with China are not a zero-sum game but it - that is in itself an admission, is it not, that the United States is no longer, as it was for so long, the paramount power particularly in the Pacific?

KEVIN RUDD: No I think we've just got to face facts. I mean China is a rising power within our own region and globally. Look at the significance of the Chinese economy to our region in the world and look at the enormous benefits which are flown to our region in the world because of China's phenomenal economic growth.

And also the benefits which have been delivered to 1.3 billion Chinese people, lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty. These are huge factors, positive factors.

At the same time because China's wealth has increased is in investing more in its military capabilities. And one of our challenges for the future is of course how we work with China in shaping a regional rules-based order for East Asia and the Pacific for the decades ahead so we don't end up repeating the great power rivalries which effectively undermine so much of the history in modern times of Europe.

JIM MIDDLETON: Indeed, one of your regional counterparts, Singapore's Foreign Minister George Yeo who I spoke to in Hanoi a little over a week ago, said that gravitational changes like the dramatic re-emergence of China had never occurred before without war and revolution. He's right to be concerned, is he not, that the rise of China could be visited by conflict?

KEVIN RUDD: Well I think if you take a long view of Chinese history, China does not have a history of external conflict.

JIM MIDDLETON: India.

KEVIN RUDD: No, no, what I'm talking...

JIM MIDDLETON: Vietnam.

KEVIN RUDD: Well George's reference there goes back to hundreds of years. I'm talking about significant external territorial ambition.

Go back to China and the Han Dynasty, the Tang Dynasty, the Shun Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty, the Qing Dynasty, basically the challenge of Chinese history has been how to hold the country together. That's been the overriding challenge of most Chinese leaders over the last two and half thousand years or so.

A fairly big challenge when you've look at the... the population of this country. So therefore, on the question of the inevitability of conflict I don't share that view. I believe that China's phenomenal economic growth delivers huge opportunities for growth and living standards across the region, across the world.

But learning from the history of Europe where the brittleness of international arrangements throughout the 19th and throughout the first half of the 20 century gave us wars, and a series of wars. We need to learn.

And that is why the Americas, ourselves, the Japanese, the Koreans, and the Chinese, will be working through this institution, the East Asian Summit, to fashion a regional rules-based order, politically and in security terms for our needs, for our region, for our century.

JIM MIDDLETON: We'll come to the details of the East Asia Summit and its prospects in a moment, but first a couple of the initiatives from the AUSMIN talks today, US plans to station more troops and presumably material, weaponry in Australia, and the Space Security program are both clearly designed to counter both the growing military might and posture of China, are they not?

KEVIN RUDD: Well what the United States is currently engaged in is a massive forced posture review for the future. And this is a global exercise, not just a regional exercise. And it's far reaching. We of course are providing our inputs to that with our American friends.

So when it comes to the future deployment of assets both by the United States in the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean...

JIM MIDDLETON: But the United States has come to realise, all of a sudden it seems, that they've got to do something about the Indian Ocean and that flank which is why Exmouth probably is likely to be judged a place to be, possibly Townsville on Australia's East Coast with the other flank into the Pacific and also the fact that this space initiative, quite clearly the language used in it, in describing it, is saying that counter space weapons pose a direct and immediate threat to the rights of all nations.

The only people who've been doing this recently are the Chinese.

KEVIN RUDD: Let me go to the first part of what you said first, where you seem to have greater knowledge of these things than I do in terms of where US assets may be operated from and through in the future.

Look, for a long, long time Australia has made open its ports, its - its facilities, its training facilities, its test firing ranges for the Americans. That's been going on for decades. It will continue into the future as well. And the framework from which we have done that is also included in joint facilities. And that's our approach and our framework for the future as well.

On the question of space cooperation of course we have an interest in the peaceful uses of space. That's been a long standing Australian Government policy as well and we need to make sure that the uses of space by satellite technologies on which so much of our telecommunications infrastructure for example depends, is kept free and open. We have an interest in that. We've stated in the past and will be of course putting our shoulder to the wheel on that front in the future as well.

JIM MIDDLETON: You've just returned from China. Did you inform the Chinese for instance in your meeting with General Chen Bingde about what could emerge from the AUSMIN meeting and what was the reaction?

KEVIN RUDD: Well first of all I never go to the content of diplomatic conversations and that includes with the head of the People's Liberation Army, General Chen Bingde. In the past I've welcome General Chen to Canberra and had good discussions with him.

Those were resumed in robust and friendly fashion in Beijing. But I think the important thing is this. We've made it very plain to our Chinese friends that we have long been an ally of the United States and the reasons for that go back to the darkest days of World War Two. Now the origin of this alliance had nothing to do with China.

It had everything to do with the difficulties we faced in the 1940s. Of course the alliance evolves to take care of and adapt to security challenges over time. But we're not about to be in the business of apologising for our alliance with America or indicating that defence cooperation with the Americans is going to decrease. It's just a continuum.

And the reason for it is that US strategic presence in East Asia and the west Pacific for decades has underpinned the economic growth that we have seen.

JIM MIDDLETON: Hillary Clinton's been full of praise for your pioneering efforts in getting Washington thinking seriously about the need for an Asia Pacific security structure with teeth. Are you satisfied that the East Asia Summit is the right vehicle, particularly given ASEAN's bedrock principle of non-intervention in other countries' affairs?

KEVIN RUDD: Well of course Secretary Clinton's been very generous and kind in her remarks but the work still lies ahead of us. The architecture which I've been talking about for the last two to three years was one which sought to do three things.

First of all to have a body - an institution within East Asia and in the Pacific which had a wide enough mandate to deal with political and security and economic questions. And by and large we did not have such an institution in the past.

Secondly one which also had a wide enough membership to include all the principle players. All the ASEANs as well as the major powers of north East Asia, of course India, ourselves, but now critically the United States and Russia.

And the third thing was this, for this body to meet at head of government level.

Now the architecture is broadly settled. The question now is to make its agenda work. How to we use this agenda to evolve confidence and security building measures across East Asia, as I said earlier in an interview, to avoid a repeat of the problems of Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries where you had rising nation states, very few rules of the game, and as a result wars which brought about untold misery to the peoples of Europe.

JIM MIDDLETON: Is that then, given that this meeting both countries made strong assertions about maritime security, they were raised at the ASEAN closed defence ministries meeting Hanoi at the East Asia Summit as well, does that mean that the South China Sea dispute becomes a real test case as to the value of what is now in place?

KEVIN RUDD: In our neighbourhood we've got a whole number of unresolved territorial disputes. We've got the Korean Peninsula. We've got the East China Sea. The current dispute between China and Japan over Senkaku or the Diaoyutai. You also have the South China Sea which brings together a number of states together with China. Looking further afield you have the continuing concern and dispute over Kashmir.

Now the other thing I'd say is our region also contains within it a significant number of nuclear weapon states as well and those which are seeking to acquire them. You mentioned one possible dispute that's concerning the South China Sea. I think we've got to evolve this East Asia Summit, this East Asia community over time, accommodating people's comfort factors along the way.

And as I've said so often in South East Asia, with our good friends in ASEAN very much at the core.

JIM MIDDLETON: Foreign Minister thank you very much for your time.

KEVIN RUDD: Pleasure to be with you.

END

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