2 weeks ago
3
When Michael Fullilove was invited to deliver the prestigious Boyer lectures a decade ago, the head of Australia’s top foreign policy think tank insisted upon one condition. The Lowy Institute’s executive director wanted to deliver his first speech, examining Australia’s place in a rapidly transforming world, in Beijing. Since the annual lecture series was launched in 1959, Fullilove’s talk at Peking University was the first, and to this day only, time an address has been given overseas.
It was a divisive choice. Fullilove recalls that some conservative commentators criticised him for choosing the capital of communist China over Washington or London. When he stepped onto the tarmac in China, he had a voicemail from an Australian diplomat saying: “May I just ask you one favour: please don’t screw up the relationship with Beijing this week!” But he believed no other nation was changing Australia’s relationship with the world as much as China, the emerging superpower.
Lowy Institute executive director Michael Fullilove argues Australia needs a larger diplomatic network and reinvigorated foreign service.Credit: Kate Geraghty
The geopolitical vista of 2015 looked, in many ways, much less grim than today. Barack Obama was in the White House and Donald Trump’s ambitions for high office were largely seen as fanciful. Xi Jinping had not yet been named China’s president for life. Vladimir Putin had seized Crimea, but a full-scale invasion of Ukraine seemed unthinkable. So did the horrors of the October 7 attacks and two years of war in Gaza.
Yet Fullilove titled his speech Present at the Destruction, reflecting his fear that the post-Cold War global order that had benefited Australia was beginning to disintegrate. It seemed like a dire message. Reflecting now, he says he was probably not gloomy enough. “Ten years later, the liberal international order has almost faded away,” he will say in a speech at the Lowy Institute on Wednesday.
A central theme of Fullilove’s Boyer lectures was that Australia needed to adopt a more ambitious and confident foreign policy, shaking off the tendency to talk ourselves down and downplay our potential influence.
Loading
A decade on, he says there is much to be proud of when examining Australian foreign policy. He praises the Albanese government for striking an alliance with Papua New Guinea, innovative security agreements with Pacific nations like Vanuatu and a new security treaty with Indonesia. As for its approach to China – summed up in Anthony Albanese’s dictum “co-operate when we can, disagree when we must” – he could hardly dispute it, given he coined the phrase in his 2015 lecture.
But Fullilove believes Australia still needs to strive for a bolder, more expansive role on the world stage – and to invest the necessary energy and money to make this possible.
Coming off Albanese’s successful White House meeting with Trump in October, Fullilove is urging the prime minister to think strategically about how to maximise Australia’s influence with a transactional US president. A cautious, narrowly self-interested approach is not enough, he argues.
“President Trump likes a winner, and he seems to like the PM,” Fullilove says. “Now Canberra should build on this success by seeking to play a co-ordinating role with other US allies in the region.”
Just as European leaders realised they needed to team up to influence Trump’s thinking on Russia and Ukraine, he says Albanese and leaders such as new Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba need to do the same for the Asia-Pacific.
President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at the White House in October.Credit: AP
Fullilove, an Americanophile and historian of the US presidency, is no acolyte of Trump, whom he describes as “an unbeliever in the liberal order and an alliance sceptic”. But he continues to believe the US alliance is central to Australia’s national security interests. “We shouldn’t shrink America to the dimensions of one president, even an outsized president such as Donald Trump,” he says in an interview at the Lowy Institute’s Sydney headquarters. “And to those who think that the world would be a more stable place or Asia would be a safer place if the United States were to exit, I say: be careful what you wish for.”
He believes South Korea’s nascent efforts to acquire nuclear-powered submarines from the US show that the AUKUS pact, for all its critics, is the right move for Australia as it seeks to beef up its deterrence capabilities.
The government is right to assert that Australia faces its most dangerous strategic circumstances since the end of World War II, he says, but believes its actions do not fully match its rhetoric.
Fullilove says European leaders have learnt the hard way that they can no longer be dependent on the United States, as seen by their commitment to dramatically increase defence spending. Asian nations like South Korea, Singapore and Japan have also announced significant increases in defence spending. Australian defence spending is still hovering around 2 per cent of GDP, even as it moves to acquire hugely expensive nuclear-powered submarines. Leaving aside the question of specific spending targets, he says a more lethal defence force will require a bigger budget.
“There is no similar sense of urgency here in Australia,” he despairs.
The same goes for diplomacy. Fullilove says it is dispiriting that Australian diplomatic spending has remained roughly flat over the past decade as a percentage of government spending.
“Why should Australia have fewer overseas posts than smaller countries such as the Netherlands, Hungary, Greece and Portugal?” he asks. “We have the world’s 14th-largest economy, but only the 25th-largest national diplomatic network. We need a larger network of diplomatic missions and a reinvigorated foreign service.”
On the upside, he is relieved Australia is not slashing foreign aid funding like other nations and that the revolving door of Australian prime ministers has finally stopped turning. Albanese, whom he says has mastered the art of personal diplomacy, is ensconced in The Lodge, aided by a “forensic, industrious” foreign minister in Penny Wong. He just wants them to aim even higher. “Now is the moment to think big.”
Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.
Most Viewed in Politics
Loading
