By Vishnu Makhijani, IANS
New Delhi : China has flexed its muscles in persuading Australia to withdraw from a nascent strategic dialogue with India, the US and Japan, security experts here say.
“This means that China is able to flex its muscles by using soft power to break coalitions, said Abanti Bhattacharya, an associate fellow at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses.
“It’s an indication of China’s crafty policies of embedding power concepts in their soft power statesmanship,” Bhattacharya told IANS, while commenting on Australia’s decision to exit the strategic dialogue.
Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith Tuesday told visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi that Canberra would no longer be a part of the dialogue
“One of the things which caused China concern last year was a meeting of that strategic dialogue plus India, which China expressed some concern with,” Smith said at a joint press conference with Yang.
“When I first became foreign minister, I made the point that we have a good relationship with India, but we need to take that relationship as well to a higher level, but we’re not proposing to have a dialogue along the lines as occurred last year,” Smith added.
“It’s a clear sign that Australia and China are cosying up. (Under Prime Minister Keven Rudd) it is more attractive for Australia to align with China than with India,” Bhattacharya said of Smith’s remarks.
Maj. Gen. (retd) Ashok Mehta, another expert, agreed with this assessment.
“This is a complete U-turn. It’s a completely maverick move. They won’t give us uranium and now we are out of the dialogue,” he said.
Citing the lack of adequate safeguards, the Rudd government has overturned the previous administration’s in-principle decision to sell uranium for India’s civilian nuclear reactors.
According to Mehta, bilateral ties, particularly in the defence sphere, “will certainly not be as they were (with the previous government). That’s what happens when China raises its eyebrows.”
K. Subrahmanyam, considered the doyen of India’s security analysts, was guarded in his response.
“The Rudd government has been making major changes. He is a Chinese-speaking former diplomat so we’ll have to wait and see how things develop,” he contended.
“This is just one more statement. Tomorrow, they may say they were quoted out of context. We can’t immediately jump to conclusions,” Subrahmanyam added.
Australian expert Robert Ayson termed his country’s decision “a very interesting development. There will be no quadrilateral dialogue but the trilateral dialogue between Australia, the US and Japan will continue.
“In doing so, Rudd is signalling he doesn’t want to make too big a deal about the quadrilateral grouping,” added Ayson, who is here for the three-day Asian Security Conference that concludes Thursday.
At the same time, he felt Rudd “wouldn’t accelerate Australia-India military ties even though the Indian relationship is important”.
“Australia would first watch the rise of India and China as the two big players in the Asian security arena work out their moves,” Ayson maintained.
At least one expert thought that India could turn the situation to its advantage.
“We should leverage our strengths. They can’t have their cake and eat it too. We should look at other markets for our imports (if Australia refuses to sell uranium or be part of the strategic dialogue), said Lt. Gen. (retd) Satish Nambiar.
“I am not surprised at the position Australia has taken. What is intriguing is that the trilateral dialogue will continue. This appears to convey that if India joins it, it becomes a gang up (against China),” he added.
“I don’t think we need to give undue importance to this,” said N.S. Sisodia, director of the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), a government supported think tank.
“Any dialogue is based on the requirement of common understanding. It is not aimed at any country, nor is it an alliance or partnership,” he maintained, adding: “Maybe this has been said just to reassure China.”
C. Raja Mohan, a professor at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, spoke in similar vein.
“Not much should be read into this because the dialogue never really took off. The dialogue was over the day (then Japanese prime minister Shizto) Abe fell,” Raja Mohan contended.