Australia's Overdue "Re-Orientation"

"Ultra Asia" (Beyond Asia) is an apt anagram for Australia.

Geography pointedly and unsentimentally places Australia right at the southeastern corner of Asia, yet the country's cultural heart wanders wistfully in the mid-Atlantic, somewhere between the US and the UK. If it were possible for countries to move house, tectonic plates and all, that's the white picket-fenced neighbourhood Australia would choose to reside in. Alas, the tyranny of geography has no room for pity.

Australia is in serious need of "re-orientation" (pun fully intended). Map courtesy "thetruesize.com"

Now these are the most interesting times in over three centuries. The world order is being overturned before our living eyes. The future is Asian, and Australia's corner of the world has never seen this asserted so forcefully.

Former prime minister Paul Keating lectured for years to deaf ears that Australia needed to accept it was an Asian country, and that it needed to start behaving like one. His countrymen never bothered. And now, the future is here. Australia has been wrenchingly yanked back to Asia, away from the seppos and the poms, and forced once more to mingle, however uneasily, with Asian hordes of all hues.

Australian foreign policy over the past century has been quite simple-minded - to fight other countries' wars instead of looking towards the interests of its own citizens. First it fought in Britain's wars, then in America's.

The Gallipoli campaign during the First World War is a breathtaking example. Australian troops were sent to fight a European war. It wasn't even the understandable assignment of defending Britain against an attack by its enemies. It was an offensive campaign against Turkey, a country Australia had had no quarrel with. Over 8000 Australian soldiers gave their lives for a British war. To this day, the event is remembered in Australia as ANZAC Day, with the accompanying slogan, "Lest We Forget". Pity that Australians do forget to ask why they had to fight an offensive war against a country that had no quarrel with them, and shed their blood for another one that they just happened to identify with.

Lest we forget to ask why

The Second World War was a bit different, with Australian troops initially fighting at several overseas theatres in the service of the British Empire, and allying with the United States after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. The only dramatic rift came in 1942, when Australian PM John Curtin defied Winston Churchill and brought Australian troops back to defend the home country instead of deploying them to Burma, as Churchill had wanted.

Soldiers of the British Commonwealth, sorted by colour

By the end of the Second World War, Australia had switched its loyalties across to the United States, faithfully sending troops first to Vietnam and then to Iraq, both ill-advised misadventures that could have been avoided. Canada proved a savvier country in that respect.

All of these go to show that Australia's heart has belonged in the Anglosphere, and if anyone thought the years since Iraq may have brought about a change in attitudes Down Under, these latest examples should disabuse them of that notion.

• Needlessly antagonising China to please the US, predictably inviting Chinese sanctions. (What did the US do to bail out Australia? It threw Australia under the bus and sold the same goods to China!)
• Cancelling a multi-billion dollar submarine deal with France in favour of getting US nuclear subs - 20 years in the future! The Anglosphere doesn't even care about other Western nations.

For a country situated in Asia's neighbourhood, Australia has shown a contemptuous refusal to belong.

Australia's attitude to Asia thus far has been quite unsubtle:

• We're white
• We're Western
• We're superior

But now, Australia is starting to hear Asia's message:

• You're in our backyard
• You're alone, and the odd one out
• There are far bigger players here than you

It will be interesting to watch the tenor of public discourse in Australia as the new reality begins to sink in.

History holds some pointers. The first Englishmen in India who came to trade were quick to learn Indian languages, adopt Indian modes of attire, and some even took Indian wives. But as Western power grew, cultural adaptability gave way to hauteur, and the received wisdom of Western superiority over the East took root. As history begins to right itself, my guess is that hauteur will once again yield to gracious accommodation.

From my experience living in this country for the past quarter century, my bet is that after a round of characteristic cursing, Australians will take to being Asians with gusto.