Canberra, Friday 28 September 2001

Australia best as 'broker' in US terror attack aftermath

Australia will gain most by acting as a broker between Southeast Asia and the United States in the aftermath of the US terrorist attacks, helping the latter to formulate policies that achieve the broadest possible international consensus, a senior ANU academic will tell a conference in Sydney, TODAY, Friday, 28 September 2001.

Professor Anthony Milner, Dean of ANU's Faculty of Asian Studies, will tell the conference that Australian leaders will get no domestic electoral rewards from playing such a role. "Good crisis decisions in foreign policy and other areas are more likely in the context of a sophisticated electorate," he will say.

"The absurd dismissing of 'Asia' that prevails in many quarters in Australia today not only offers the worst possible context for good policy, but also suggests we are becoming the type of unfortunate country that is at odds with its immediate region."

Professor Milner said the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington, and the Islamic response to those attacks from Southeast Asia, reinforce a growing awareness that globalisation is a far more complex process than we once believed. We may even be moving into a post-globalisation period.

"The dangers for Australia are formidable," Professor Milner will say. "Ties of sentiment link this country to the United States, but the fact remains that geography gives us a very special involvement in the Asian region. The optimism regarding Australian relations with Asia that prevailed a decade ago is now severely punctured.

Over the last couple of years ethnic and religious tensions, problems of unity in Indonesia, threats to the new democracies elsewhere in the region, growing illegal immigration, a revival of piracy, and slow recovery of once 'miracle' economies have all suggested a return to turbulence, especially in Southeast Asia. The region is beginning to look more like it did in the 1960s and 1970s than we have known it in recent years.

Today, considerations of security once again seem at least as important as commercial aspirations when Australians look north. "Australia will need to demonstrate diplomatic skill in the next weeks and months, especially as it becomes clear that significant sectors of opinion in Southeast Asia has sympathy for Afghanistan.

Our intelligence information will have to be exemplary, and it is time to recall that in-depth expertise on Asian societies (including Islamic ones) is in a precarious situation in Australian universities. Finally, Australians need to remember that unlike the United Kingdom, for instance, we live in a Muslim region - the attacks on mosques in this country have the potential to disrupt vital international relationships.

"In the last few years - beginning with the Asian Economic Crisis - we in Australia have begun to lose our focus on the Asian region. Many Australians have drifted toward psychological dependence on the United States' alliance, and neither side of federal politics has been willing to exercise sustained public leadership on Asia. The fact is that the United States itself values Australia partly because of our Asia experience and expertise. In this sense Australians who seek to choose the United States over 'Asia' are deluded."

WHERE: 15th Australian International Education Conference Clancy Auditorium University of New South Wales, Sydney

WHEN: 11.30 am-12.45pm Friday, 28 September 2001

For more information contact: Andrea Haese, 02 6125 3207

No: 85/2001

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The Australian National University.
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Last Modified Tue, July 16, 2002