By Paul Keating

Peter Hartcher has a lot to answer for, writes Paul Keating in a response to the Nine columnist that did not make it to print.

I should have hoped that after 26 years away from the National Press Club, my appearance there, at the Club’s invitation, would have indicated to Peter Hartcher that I believed the invitation was important to accept — an invitation which had arisen from recent views I had put on Australian foreign policy, including in relation to China.

Instead, in Saturday’s Sydney Morning Herald and Age, Hartcher sought only to disparage what I had had to say including, comparing me to King Canute and in Hartcher’s case, not even understanding the Canute fable.

King Canute was not trying to direct the waves as Hartcher depicts me trying to do and as does the cartoon, rather Canute used the metaphor of his perching on the beach to “let all the world know that the power of the king is empty and worthless save for him, (meaning God) by whose will heaven and the sea obey eternal laws”.

So, right from the get-go, Hartcher mocks the motivation and tone of my speech.

He says, drawing on his misconception of King Canute, that, Canute-like, I gave “orders” to the United States about its geopolitics, that America has to come to a point of accommodation where it acknowledges China’s pre-eminence in East Asia and the Asian mainland.

Of course, I gave no such “order” nor am I in a position to give such an “order”, save to remind the audience that the coldest of America’s Cold War warriors, the implementer under President Jimmy Carter of the Nixon-Mao détente, Zbigniew Brzezinski, had said: “America should tacitly accept the reality of China’s geopolitical pre-eminence on the mainland of Asia, as well as China’s ongoing emergence as the predominant Asian economic power”.

Apparently, Hartcher thinks I should not have quoted Brzezinski, a statesman of enormous achievement and stature to Australians in respect of China — rather I should have fallen back on the philosophy of our very own internationalist, Peter Hartcher himself. I quoted Brzezinski word for word — Hartcher disparages me for this, claiming I was, in effect, giving the US “orders”.

Hartcher claims that I “won’t acknowledge anything that doesn’t have China in charge”. This is an obnoxious fabrication.

What Hartcher seriously failed to deliver to the readership of the Herald and The Age was what I had said to the Chinese leadership in Beijing in 2013, in the presence of a Chinese vice premier — years before Hartcher and his Nine colleagues hit upon their voluptuous contumely about China.

I had this to say:

“A lot of attention has been given to America’s responsibility to China’s rise — but China too has equal responsibility for creating a new stable and sustainable order in Asia. As it steps up to a larger leadership role it will at the same time need to be willing to accept and respect restraints on the way it uses its immense strength, because the acceptance of such restraints by great powers is the key to any successful and durable international order.”

I then went on to instance two points.

I said, first, and most obviously, “China should continually reaffirm by word and by deed its commitment to repudiate the use or threat of force to settle disputes”. I went on to say, “the work of reassurance is never done, that the stronger China becomes the more it will need to reassure its neighbours and this will depend on deeds more than words”.

Second, “China will do a great deal to help build a continuing stable order in Asia if it quite unambiguously welcomes and supports a continued strong role for the United States in Asia”.

These were tough things to say to an audience of Chinese officials, but I said them in Beijing in 2013. And I repeated those words in my National Press Club address. But Hartcher made certain Sydney Morning Herald and Age readers would hear none of those critical references to the Chinese, because my utterances then, pull the rug from under Hartcher’s principal claim that I believe “Beijing is correct and everyone else should fall back in awe”.

Well, I certainly wasn’t falling back in awe in 2013 and Hartcher should have had the decency to have let Herald and Age readers know what firmly held views I had put to Chinese authorities back then.

Read more: https://johnmenadue.com/paul-keating-responds-to-peter-hartchers-king-canute-column/

Zbigniew Brzezinski was a devious clever man. We owe the debacle of Afghanistan to his deceit of the Russians, to prevent that county becoming "socialist"... We have tackled him many times on this site and Paul Keating should know better than to quote Zbigniew... Now Afghanistan is run by medieval men with below Cro-Magnon intelligence, after having defeated the armies of the non-King Canute, the USA.

On the China-US (West) relations, there is bugger all that can be done except serious diplomacy and acceptance of China's importance. Any talk of aggression or mention of war is stupid. Dutton could be a stupid half-baked potato for saying what he said, and Hartcher, usually intelligent, has moved to join the ranks of the idiotic loony warriors. Nothing good can come out of this. Paul Keating is correct, even with his quoting of Brzezinski, though the sooner we forget this dangerous now-dead advisor to US presidents, the better...

See: 

https://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/35220

https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/35424

and especially:

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The Quad, a grouping of the US, Australia, Japan, and India, has slammed "the coercive use of trade and economic measures that undermine rules-based trade" in a veiled jab at China. Beijing, in turn, accused Quad of using "lying and smearing diplomacy".

Australia's strategic allies have made their commercial interest a higher priority during the last 18 months, when a trade row erupted between Beijing and Canberra, the University of Technology Sydney found in its study on Tuesday. 

The US has benefited the most, with one-third of Canberra's lost exports to China captured by American businesses.

The university's Australia-China Relations Institute has compiled the trade data for the first nine months of 2021, showing the value of 12 Australian exports to China affected by sanctions, which fell in value $12.6 billion in the first nine months of the year compared to the same period in 2019.

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/20211130/et-tu-us-steals-most-of-australias-sale-to-china-amid-trade-row-finds-study-1091131686.html

READ FROM TOP.

The more Dutton opens his trap, the more trade we loose... and the US pick up the slack... Brilliant...

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