US must co-operate with China, says Keating

beijingwalker · Aug 6, 2012

US must co-operate with China, says Keating

August 6, 2012 - 1:21PM

Consensus with China ... Paul Keating. Photo: Lee Besford

The United States can never expect to win a land war in Asia and should strive to co-operate with a rising China rather than confront Beijing, says Paul Keating.

The former prime minister has also urged Australia to be more independent about asserting its national interests, and criticised conservative and Labor governments in the last decade for allowing Australian foreign policy to be seen as synonymous with Washington's.

"This, of course, could never have been broadly true, notwithstanding the points of coincidence from time to time," he said.

Mr Keating was speaking in Sydney today at the launch of a new book on the US relationship with China, which he described as central to Australia's security and prosperity.
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He criticised "the assumption" in Australian foreign policy circles that Australia has no choice but to support American primacy in Asia.

He said China must be recognised as a legitimate power despite not being democratic with reasonable aspirations in Asia.

Directly tackling criticism of China's human rights record including by US President Barack Obama - Mr Keating said critics ignored the dramatic improvement among China's people, with a 10th of humanity being lifted to a better way of life in a generation.

"The seemingly perpetual invocation of this human rights mantra attributes no moral value to the scale and quality of the Chinese achievement," he said.

Mr Keating warned the US cannot expect to dominate Asia.

"I have long held the view that the future of Asian stability cannot be cast by a non-Asian power especially by the application of US military force," Mr Keating said.

"The failure of US wars in Korea, Vietnam and outside Asia in Iraq and Afghanistan, should lead the US to believe that war on the Asian mainland is unwinnable."

Mr Keating was launching The China Choice, a book by ANU strategic studies professor and former Defence department official Hugh White.

In the book, Professor White argues the US and China should forge a consensus on shared influence in the region to prevent a dangerous confrontation spiralling into warfare.

He calls for a "concert of Asia" similar to the "concert of Europe" that broadly maintained peace between the great powers in 19th-century Europe, before the spectacular collapse that led to the First World War.

The book which expands on an earlier Quarterly Essay article by Professor White, but is aimed at a US audience - has prompted fierce debate in foreign policy circles over its diagnosis of America's ills.

Mr Keating said it was "a matter of wonderment" why it has taken the US until last year, when President Obama spoke to the Australian Parliament, to make its so-called "pivot" to Asia.

"We have had the US walking out of Iraq with virtually nothing, having lost many lives and a trillion dollars of fiscal treasure, only to rediscover a new and potentially greater power than itself rising in the East," he said.

He said the US engagement in Asia was safer but a structure was needed to encourage China to participate rather than dominate the region.

US must co-operate with China, says Keating