PRESIDENT TRUMP and Secretary of State Pompeo increasingly sound as if they desire an iron curtain-like stand-off with China, but how that is possible with China’s global economic heft remains unclear. The White House’s recent release of its “Strategic Approach” to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) might have been at pains to point out that Washington did “not seek to contain China,” but it still talked about “prevailing in strategic competition with the PRC.” There are some signs of optimism, particularly with the cautious agreement of both sides to push on with phase one of the trade deal. But a Pew Research Center survey in March found that 66 percent of Americans now have an unfavorable view of China—a rise of 20 percent since Trump came to office. Even if a Biden presidency sought to reset the tonal mood of U.S.-China relations, and encourage limited cooperation, it will still have to deal with increasingly febrile attitudes within the United States towards Beijing.

There is little doubt, then, that Australia is and will continue to be feted by Washington as the United States rallies allies to the cause of standing up to China.

Secretary Pompeo certainly sees the ongoing development of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or “Quad,” in that light. “We’ve built momentum in the Quad,” Pompeo said last September in Sydney, and there is “room for growth.” But the inordinate time spent by its Australian proponents in refuting its containment credentials is in itself instructive. Thus, in its new iteration, as one analyst explains, the Quad has “the potential to constrain China’s strategic choices beyond its maritime periphery, but not to contain it as the Soviet Union was contained in the 1950s.” This new emphasis on “constraining,” not “containing” China leaves room for some level of engagement, particularly on trade. It has been given its most powerful expression by the former head of Australia’s foreign affairs department, Peter Varghese, who has stressed that “containing China, in the way the West has sought to contain the Soviet Union, is a policy dead end,” since a “country which already looks to redeem itself from a century of humiliation does not need its worst fears confirmed.” Rather Varghese espouses a policy of “engage and constrain.” Unable to see Japan, Indonesia or India supporting containment, Varghese has expressed the hope that “Australia will have more sense than to embrace it.”

That reticence among some in Australia at the use of the very word “containment” will be sorely tested over the near-term, as Washington looks to erase whatever might be left of a longstanding Australian policy of strategic ambiguity where the question of commitments under the terms of the ANZUS treaty are concerned. Washington would no doubt be pleased to see the recent lift in Australian defense spending to above 2 percent of GDP, but they would have noted that the government’s recent Defence Update, by stressing the centrality of Australia’s “immediate region,” appears to exclude Northeast Asia. It is doubtful that this is blunt signaling to Washington that Australian assistance in any future U.S.-Sino conflict in the region is not necessarily a fait accompli. But equally the government will not mind that others apply that interpretation to the document. The essence is that Canberra does not want to be pressured to contribute to further U.S. military adventures in the Middle East.

Australian leaders will also resist implicit American calls to economically self-harm by diversifying trade away from China. All this is likely to profoundly displease the more hawkish voices in Washington. What it does show, yet again, is the propensity for American observers of Australian politics to get the jitters when its junior ally acts in a way not fully commensurate with U.S. expectations and demands.

THIS IS by no means the first time that American observers have asked this most fundamental of questions about Australia’s ultimate stance. In late 1982, a former U.S. foreign service officer, James A. Nathan, writing in Foreign Policy, raised precisely the same question, contending that “Who lost Australia?” might “soon be a significant debate in American politics.” Nathan at the time had been on an academic exchange to Australia, and was writing in the wake of ongoing speculation in Australia that the CIA had been involved in the downfall of the Whitlam Labor government, which had been in power in Australia from 1972–75 and whose time in office pushed the U.S.-Australia alliance to breaking point. Henry Kissinger told one Australian official at the time that Whitlam’s approach to Asia policy amounted to a “symbolic retreat of Western power” from the region. And so low did relations sink, most particularly over disagreements between Whitlam and President Richard Nixon about the end of the Vietnam War, the shape of a new Asia and the status of critical U.S. intelligence facilities on Australian soil, that Nixon ordered a National Security Study Memorandum to explore options for essentially abrogating the alliance.

By the time Nathan’s article appeared in late 1982, the conservative government of Malcolm Fraser that had replaced Whitlam’s looked headed for electoral defeat, and the then Labor party leader, Bill Hayden, was publicly calling for joint control over the U.S. intelligence facilities. With other calls from prominent academics for a review of the ANZUS treaty, Nathan saw only “ominous portents” ahead. A new Labor government, he felt, might well see fit to end the alliance. Nathan could not have known then that Hayden would be replaced as Labor leader on the very day that the Australian election for March 1983 was called, and that Labor’s new leader, Bob Hawke, would go on to be one of the most pro-American prime ministers since the Second World War. Indeed, it was Hawke, along with his Defence Minister Kim Beazley, who calmed rattled nerves in the Australian Labor party on the very existence of the U.S. intelligence facilities. 

There is, of course, an alternative to how this plays out. If Australia’s China posture continues to harden, then Canberra could well end up being a more forceful advocate of containment than Washington itself, particularly if the United States continues to be more inwardly focused over the next presidential term. But that would mean the need for Australia to develop—and fast—not only an independent defense capability but a suite of new markets. Neither can happen overnight. The new cliché in the Australian foreign policy debate is that management of both relationships is “getting harder.” The reality is that such a statement reveals the continuing grappling within government in relation to its longer-term thinking on foreign affairs, and especially its China policy. It shows Australia playing once more for time, hoping that it will not be forced to choose, knowing though that the clock is ticking as both the United States and China make it clearer than ever the stakes involved for Australia’s future.

James Curran is Professor of History and United States Studies Centre Senior Fellow at Sydney University. He is a former analyst at the Australian Office of National Assessments and is writing a book on Australia’s China debate.