This week Defence Minister Linda Reynolds and Foreign Minister Marise Payne flew to Washington to attend the annual Ausmin talks. The backdrop to this year’s talks is a series of escalating events and rhetoric on Hong Kong’s new national security laws, ownership of the South China Sea, cyber-attacks and theft, and the closure of consulates in the US and China. But the deeper issue on the agenda was a choice. The US was hoping Australia would throw everything in with the US – and officially cast China as a strategic rival.
Alan Dupont, defence strategists and a non-resident fellow at the Lowy Institute.
Geoff Raby, Australian ambassador to China between 2007-2011.