Evans Third World diplomacy
p. 20 · Read in the full issue
DESPITE the sweeping changes of the past couple of years, the end of the cold war and the collapse of Eastern European Communism, Australia’s Foreign Minister Senator Gareth Evans sees a bright future for diplomacy by the small nations of our region.
That along with the revolution in Australia’s approach to Asia form the central themes of his new book Australia’s Foreign Relations in the Third World of the 19905, co-authored with diplomat and journalist, Bruce Grant. Australia’s Foreign Relations in the Third World of the 1990 s is a rare book in that it deals with the process as seen from a serving foreign minister’s perspective. And it has been well received, even scoring a plug by Indonesia’s Foreign Minister, Ali Alatas, on the dust jacket.
It will be of interest in the Pacific, not just because it gives an authoritative account of Australian foreign policy but because the issues Senator Evans tackles on Australia’s behalf
how to become a part of the 21st century boom in Asia and how, as a small nation one can make oneself visible are also issues at the top of the agenda of Island governments.
It also takes a close look at “new internationalist agenda” issues such as the greenhouse effect and other global environmental problems, the growing trend away from free market trade and the threat of AIDS and international crime, for which collective solutions are needed.
As Evans points out, a geographically remote country of 17 million people in a world of five and a half billion should not get ideas above its station but “a middle-sized power like Australia can nonetheless do a great deal using techniques of coalition building and niche diplomacy, paying careful attention to priorities and credibility maintenance, exercising intellectual creativity at the right times and through sheer persistence and stamina.”
As evidence for what can be done, Senator Evans cites Australia’s key role in the recent Cambodian peace settlement (in recognition of which he has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize), the establishment of the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation process and the Cairns group of free trading nations which has made a big impact in multilateral trade negotiations and in getting international agreement to protect Antarctica’s pristine environment.
To that list the Island nations could add their success in halting driftnet fishing and in helping build a coalition of small island states demanding tough international action to deal with the greenhouse effect. Although both Australia and the Island nations may feel proud of in their diplomatic record over the past few years, now is not the time for complacency.
Recent changes, particularly the faltering multi-lateral trade negotiations under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) add new uncertainties for small countries.
Australia’s strategy for dealing with this new fast-changing world has been to firmbly embed itself in its own region, the Asia-Pacific.
Half of the Evans-Grant book is given over to a detailed examination of relationships with individual countries and regions, beginning with the South Pacific and followed by South East Asia, Indo-China, North-East Asia, South Asia, the Middle East and Africa, finishing with Europe and the Americas.
As Gareth Evans stressed at the launching of the book, this was a deliberate choice. “It reflects a way of looking at the world which we believe is long overdue for a country whose
geography and future is that of the Asia Pacific,” he said.
On placing the South Pacific first, Senator Evans said the region was “in many ways the part of the world closest to home.” It is where we have some of our most longstanding and comfortable diplomatic relationships. It is where we have an intricate maze of economic, political, develop ment, defence and personal connections.
Despite that the Foreign Minister warns against seeing Australia as having too much influence. In fact, he says, we have less than might be expected considering what our relative size wealth and market power might imply. As an example he cites Fiji after the 1987 coups. Despite Australia’s desire to see a stable and racially harmonious Fiji, he says “our encouragement to those advocating the resumption of constitutional democracy was at best of marginal utility”.
“The very characteristics that may seem influential our disproportionate size, wealth,
state of political and economic development, and liberal democratic tradition make it easy in these situations to paint us as uncomprehending, domineering and patronising however carefully we may tread.”
It is a paradox that has taken Australia a long time to recognise.That recogniton has now been formalised in the policy of “constructive commitment” defined by Senator Evans as “involving a spirit of partnership rather than dominance, mutual respect for sovereignty and national individuality, and the development of shared perceptions of regional strategic and
security interests.”
While Australia may have had its difficulties with Fiji since the coups, Senator Evans says it is in Asia that we are confronted with our “trickiest foreign policy tasks”
“There has been no greater turnaround in contemporary Australian history than the appreciation that his region from which we so long sough to protect ourselves, whether by esoteric dictation tests to exclude migrants, or high tariffs to protect our manufacturers, or seecurity alliances with the distant great and powerful is now the region which offers us the most,” he told his audience at the launch of his book.
“One of the things which I think has been hardest for many Australians to learn, and I do not exclude myself from this description,” Evans confessed, “is that if we are going to really succeed in comprehensively engaging Australia with our Asian region, this is going to require some moderation of our own instinctive behaviour, which is characteristically direct, blunt and straight down to tin tacks.
“What is involved here is simply recognising the very different cultural milieu that does by-and-large operate with Asia ... The essential characteristic of that milieu is that how something is done is as important, if not more so, than what is done.”
While Senator Evans is receiving plaudits for Australia’s new activist, consensus-seeking foreign policy in Asia, he must also be wishing that the constants of change in international affairs were not quite so relentless.
The massacre of peaceful independence protestors by Mr Alatas’s army in East Timor has left his “good friend and colleague” Gareth Evans, archiect of the Timor Gap treaty and close relations between Australia and Indonesia, in a very uncomfortable position. Senator Evans has been set a test over East Timor which will require all his- undoubted intellectual creativity, persistence and stamina in the months to come.D