A missile is launched from an unspecified location in China in response to US Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan last August.Credit:AP
Wong can build on her strong diplomacy among the 10 nations of ASEAN which stand,like us,to be impoverished and shell-shocked by the furnace of an East Asian war. We can become a gutsy,nagging,endlessly creative advocate for peace – engaged,by the way,with India which,despite its Quad membership,will never join a war in East Asia.
Loading
There is a resilient diplomatic formula on Taiwan that preserved the peace for 70 years. If détente could be nurtured between the Soviet Union and the US under Brezhnev and Nixon,why can’t it be revived for relations between China and the US? One of the authors of détente,Henry Kissinger,warns we are looking at a catastrophe comparable to World War I,and he knows his diplomatic history better than the armchair warriors in the Australian Strategic Policy Institute or the United States Studies Centre.
More should have been made of comments in November by the outgoing spy chief Paul Symon. Stepping down as head of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service,he said war between major powers is no longer “unimaginable”. He added there should be no automatic assumption that Australia would join the US in any war with China over Taiwan.
That is,according to our own version of the CIA,we are right to assume we still control the destiny of this continent and its people. We have the right to say no.
The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge,champion and inform your own.Sign up here.