Candidates Bring U.S. Pacific Policy ‘Full Circle,’ Says Former Australian Defense Minister

HONOLULU (Oct. 1) -- The American presidential candidates may have dramatically different world views, but both are “men of the Pacific,” a major Australian political figure and academic said here last week in an address on U.S.-Australia relations.

Kim Beazley, the former and often outspoken leader of the Australian Labor Party and previous defense minister, said the U.S. election pits one candidate (Barack Obama) who, for the first time, has no intellectual involvement in the Cold War, against another (John McCain) whose foreign policies are still rooted in that era.

But despite this profound generational and philosophical gap, he said, the foreign policy of the next president – particularly when it comes to Asia and the Pacific – is likely to have the same broad outlines as those that have emerged in the latter days of the outgoing Bush presidency. That policy includes more assertive American involvement in the Asia Pacific region, said Beazley, who recently stepped down from politics and in January will become Chancellor of the Australian National University.  

Beazley was in Honolulu to participate in a meeting of the Australian American Leadership Dialogue, hosted by the East-West Center.

By reason of their own personal history, Beazley noted, both McCain and Obama are “men of the Pacific, and indeed, men of Hawaii.”

He recounted that McCain served in the Navy in Hawaii; his grandfather commanded a battle task force in the Pacific during World War II; his father was commander-in-chief of Pacific Forces while the younger McCain flew in combat over Vietnam; and Hawaii “was a staging point for the toughest conceivable crucible of an education into the region’s affairs” for the Republican candidate, who spent years as a prisoner-of-war in Hanoi.

As for Obama, he was born in Hawaii and his world view was forged by the values of the island-state and, later, by the years he spent with his mother as a school child in Indonesia, Beazley noted.

Despite the fact that they share Asia-Pacific experiences, Beazley argued, the two candidates approach the world from different philosophical perspectives. This is not found in their rhetoric about the region or the U.S. –Australian alliance, Beazley said, but rather in the way they approach foreign policy challenges and problems.

“McCain’s (approach) is an extension in the new era of the Cold War approach,” Beazley said. “That approach was about building structures to advance Western interests and to contain potential military and ideological threats.” By contrast, he contended, “Obama is the first presidential candidate free of intellectual involvement in the Cold War world.”

“The words (from the two) from time to time may sound the same,” Beazley said, “but the underlying meaning is different.”

That different meaning, Beazley suggested, is seen in the distinctly different way that a President Obama or a President McCain would approach foreign policy challenges. Obama encounters problems and then searches around for solutions, he said, while McCain would mobilize his foreign policy first around principles and structures (alliances and the like) and then utilize these fundamentals when problems arise.

But while their approach may differ, Beazley predicted, their conclusions are most likely to be largely the same. And, he said, the outlines of those conclusions – particularly for the Asia Pacific region – are firmly grounded in the theories and approaches set in place by the current administration.

The clearest outline of this approach, Beazley said, was contained in a “fascinating” speech by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates at the recent Shangri-La regional security conference in Singapore, in which Gates stressed that the United States “is a Pacific nation with an enduring role in Asia.”

While Beazley noted that Gates’ comments on the U.S. role in promoting regional stability and protecting open space on the high seas, in space and in cyberspace may look unexceptional, in fact they sent an unambiguous message “that an activist U.S., informed by these principles, is an essential protection for all states in the region.”

“Even more fascinating,” he added, “is Gates’ re-characterization of the U.S. as a territorial part of the Western Pacific. Hitherto, American statespersons have tended to argue their presence as legitimized by alliances rather than territoriality.”

What this means, according to Beazley, is that the United States is asserting its legitimate right to be considered for participation in any Asia-Pacific regional structures, and that it will not accept any other nation’s effort to “deny” American presence in the region.

Neither Obama nor McCain is likely to reject this 21^st century view of America’s role in the region, Beazley predicted.

“Gates’ new formulation of the United States as a Western Pacific territorial power has a practical manifestation,” he said, demonstrated most conspicuously in the enormous expansion of the American military presence and facilities on Guam in the Western Pacific. “The new president will inherit this subtle geopolitical shift.”

In some ways, he argued, this marks a return to the political and security “map” that resonated in the minds of statesmen and leaders during and following World War II, where formal and informal groupings focused on the United States, Australia and other regional alliances.

While the reality of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and economic troubles at home will make it difficult for the next president to focus much energy on the region at least in the first few years, the outlines of a Pacific policy for the next American administration are clear, he said.

“With these two candidates, the Pacific story has come full circle,” Beazley concluded.

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