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US Secretary of State Designate Antony Blinken promises discomfort and opportunity for the Morrison government in Australia.
Blinken could hardly represent a more striking contrast to his future predecessor, Mike Pompeo, in his views on the need for the United States to reinvigorate alliances and tackle pressing global issues like climate change.
He will bring to the job all of his experience as a staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a foreign policy aide to President-elect Joe Biden for many years, and an undersecretary of state in the Obama administration.
Blinken’s worldview could be summed up as “America together”, not “America first.” It was expressed in helpful detail in a Hudson Institute dialogue on American foreign policy on July 9. This document should be required reading for the Coalition’s foreign policy advisers.
Pressure on climate change
First, consider Australia’s discomfort of a Biden administration in which Blinken will play a central role.
After lounging around in the shadow of a virtually non-existent American climate policy, the Australian government will now have no choice but to participate more constructively in global efforts to tackle global warming.
Morrison and his ministers will find it increasingly uncomfortable to avoid a commitment to net zero global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, in line with the policies of a new US administration.
Read more: What would a Biden presidency mean for Australia?
Biden has heralded such a compromise as a cornerstone of US foreign policy.
In the same way, Australia’s deception of using leftover Kyoto carbon credits in order to meet its climate targets under the Paris Agreement will be difficult to sustain in a new, more climate-activist era.
AAP / AP / Carolyn Kaster
This state of affairs will have implications for Australian domestic politics, in which counterproductive climate policy has left the country without a sustainable energy policy for more than a decade.
This is poorly reflected in successive governments.
Biden’s commitment to rejoin the Paris Agreement from “day one” and the centrality of climate policy in his administration was amplified by Blinken at the Hudson event. He said:
Very simple, [climate change] it is possibly the only truly existential problem we face. It has to be, and under Biden’s administration, it would be a number one priority.
Blinken said a top priority for the Biden administration would be to convene a summit of the world’s top carbon emitters to:
… Encourage countries not only to stay with Paris, but also to raise their ambitions and try to push progress faster and faster.
He notified that the United States would work to insist that China:
… Stop subsidizing coal exports and outsourcing pollution to other countries by financing billions of dollars worth of dirty fossil fuel energy projects through the Belt and Road Initiative.
These initiatives will inevitably have implications for Australian coal exporters.
Read more: Hopes for an improvement in Australia-China relations were dashed as Beijing ups the ante
Blinken also spoke about “securing enforceable commitments to reduce emissions in global aviation and shipping.”
These are ambitious goals from any point of view and will inevitably fuel the Australian political debate. The Morrison government’s choice is to either accept the program or allow it to be considered an outlier, along with Brazil and Saudi Arabia, of countries resistant to coordinated global efforts to cut carbon emissions.
An opportunity to thaw the frosts with China
In China, where the Australian government’s policy has been at sea, the incoming administration presents Australia with an opportunity to reestablish its relationship with its most important economic partner.
Those attempts at such a reboot emerged in a speech this week by Morrison to the UK Policy Exchange, a London-based group of conservative think tanks. Here, the prime minister put aside some of the bluster that has characterized recent exchanges, in which Australia vowed not to succumb to Chinese harassment.
In light of the real damage that the Chinese boycotts are doing to Australian companies, Morrison sounded more conciliatory:
Australia is not and has never been in China’s economic containment field […] Australia wants an open, transparent and mutually beneficial relationship with China as our largest trading partner.
These words are not exceptional in themselves. But they clearly amount to an attempt by Morrison to tap into the potential for a new beginning offered by a new administration in Washington.
Blinken’s comments on China to the Hudson Institute should receive a lot of attention in Canberra. He points to the need for the United States to first restore confidence in its own democracy, to be in a stronger position to counter the rise of China.
Beijing had been able to take advantage of the internal turmoil in the United States over the past four years to advance its own global reach.
In turn, the United States needed to revitalize its alliances to cope with China’s rise. Once done, a Biden administration could:
… engage China and work with China, in areas where our interests clearly overlap, whether it is struggling with climate change again, dealing with global health and pandemics, [or] deal with the spread of dangerous weapons. However, we are much better at finding ways to cooperate when we act from a position of strength than from a position of weakness.
These sentiments are to be welcomed in Canberra, where China’s uneven policy in recent years has tended to be consumed by security concerns. It would be desirable to restore the balance of that policy in coordination with a US push to strengthen the alliances of Western democracies.
At his Hudson Institute event, Blinken addressed a variety of contentious foreign policy topics. These included the controversial question of what to do with Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Biden has indicated that he would like to reactivate America’s involvement in the Iran nuclear deal abandoned by Donald Trump. However, that will be easier said than done, given the progress Tehran has made toward acquiring a nuclear disruptive capability.
On the Middle East in general, Blinken said:
I think we would be doing less, not more in the Middle East.
This view no doubt reflects the frustrations Blinken himself has experienced over many years in trying to salvage seemingly intractable conflicts, such as the Palestinian issue, at the expense of other priorities.
The appointment of former Secretary of State John Kerry as US climate envoy attests to the Biden administration’s commitments on the global warming front. Kerry was one of the architects of the Paris Agreement.
Blinken’s appointment as secretary of state should be seen as a positive development from Australia’s perspective, given his significant foreign policy experience and his proclaimed willingness, indeed determination, to work with friends and allies.
The Australian government, marinated in a security mindset, would be advised to buy what promises to be a much more expansive American foreign policy with the climate as the centerpiece.
