Putin’s attack on Ukraine has been devastating, but he is not the only leader with expansionist ideas: China's emergence also poses a great threat to the existing world order – says Tony Abbott, former prime minister of Australia. Interview.
An expert from Australia has told me that despite the fact that the war in Ukraine is far from Australia, New-Zealand and the South-Asian region, it has its effects on politics and geopolitics. How do you see the situation? What are those effects?
I think there is no doubt that the attack on Ukraine has been seismic everywhere. Obviously it is the heroic Ukranians who are bearing the brunt of it and it is the Europeans who are suffering some of the consequences of all that, but it is seismic everywhere. It has reminded everyone that history didn’t end when the Berlin wall came down. Liberal capitalism is not triumphant everywhere, there are still agressive dictators, who want to impose their will, not only on their own people but on other countries too. It has really been a bit of a wake up call, particularly for the countries of East-Asia because if Putin would get away with his agression against Ukraine, there is another dictatorial leader not so far away from us, who has agressive desires on places such as Taiwan. If Putin is to get away with his attempt to exterminate the independence of Ukraine, there is absolutely no doubt that Xi Jinping would be emboldened to exterminate the practical independence of Taiwan. The consequences of any Chinese attack on Taiwan would be even more serious.
One expert told me that Putin wants to destroy the world order, Xi Jinping only wants to change that. How do you see that?
I think that is too optimistic about Xi Jinping. In fact, there is no doubt that Putin sees Russia in mystic terms, and I think he sees himself in messianic terms, but I don’t think he wants to do anymore than recreate Russia of Peter the Great, whereas if you look at Xi Jinping's speeches and if you look at the Communist Party’s statements, Xi Jinping wants China to be the world dominant power by mid-century. He wants to replace the United States as the world’s number one country. He wants to remake the world order in a Marxist-Leninist way. Countries like Hungary that had to endure forty years of Marxism-Leninsm know just how horrible and immiserating that is. Having escaped from Soviet-style communism the last thing we want to see is Beijing-style communism.
You have been talking about the People’s Republic of China and its growing threat to the world order. What soft and hard powers does China have that you think are the most threatening today?
I think people have just assumed that the United States has remained overwhelmingly the world’s number one power. After the end of the Cold War there was this assumption that the United States was the hyperpower and no one worried about the Russian and the Chinese leadership. Whatever mistakes America makes - and America does sometimes make mistakes - I don’t think anyone could doubt America’s benevolence and good intentions. I think we assumed that America was and would remain by far the world’s most powerful country. It is really with a bit of a shock that the world has suddenly discovered that the Chinese navy is now bigger than the US navy, the PLA Rocket Force is now of such scale and sophistication that the United States’ dominance of the Western-Pacific is very much in doubt – in a serious fight between the Chinese- and the US-forces in the West-Pacific. The only way that the Americans could be confident in winning if they were going to strike massively the Chinese mainland. That wasn’t the case ten or twenty years ago. Any American carrier group that sailed through the straits of Taiwan would be at grave risk of destruction if the Chinese wanted to – that wouldn’t have been the case ten or twenty years ago. China is now a very serious military competitor with the United States, particularly in the Western-Pacific and we have to face that fact.
Why is Taiwan so important? If I see it from a Central-European point of view it is just a small island.
The Taiwanese might think that Hungary is just a small country too! A world where the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must is a pretty ugly, horrible world. The whole point of liberal humanist values is to get away from that "might is right" world and we want to leave that behind as far as we can. A China that brutally crushed the freedom of twenty-five million Taiwanese is a China which could readily make completely unreasonable demands of Vietnam, South-Korea, or Japan. Back in the day when the Chinese emperor was scarcely aware of countries that weren’t on China’s immediate periphery, that was the expectation that he was the lord of all under heaven and the job of other countries’ rulers was to offer tribute. That’s very much still the mindset in Beijing.
Henry Kissinger has had a statement on China in a book. According to the statement „China is an empire, but it is an internal empire”, meaning that it does not want to conquer lands by force.
I don’t think that is correct. Ask the Tibetans, ask the Vietnamese, ask the Russians for instance. China has long expected to completely dominate its borderlands and effectively its borderlands in the global world are everywhere.
Going back to the question of Ukraine: while Hungary is geographically very close to Ukraine, Australia is on the completely opposite side of the globe. How would you say the Australian public sees this war and how much does it affect the Australian society?
There is probably about fifty to hundred-thousand Australians with Ukranian background who feel it particularly acutely. We are a NATO-partner and Australia has probably made the biggest both humanitarian and military contribution to Ukraine outside of NATO. We have sent nearly a hundred bushmasters and other armored personnel carriers to Ukraine, and we are just about to put a training team into the United Kingdom that will train Ukrainian soldiers in Britain. Because we have little trade with either Russia or Ukraine, there has been no economic disruption to Australia. In fact, this whole thing is probably been perversely a benefit to Australia at one level, because coal and gas prices have gone through the roof recently and we are a big exporter of coal and gas. Don’t get me wrong, Putin’s attack on Ukraine has been a catastrophe and it has also been a thoroughly and absolutely evil act. The way Putin has conducted the war – he has done an evil thing in an evil way. The war crimes that Russian troops have committed – the attacks on Ukranian cities, the torture that has been routinely inflicted on people. Absolutely barbaric. There is nothing wrong with Russian patriotism, but no person who is simply a Russian patriot would act this way.
Anthony John Abbott is a former Australian politician who served as the 28th prime minister of Australia from 2013 to 2015. He held office as the leader of the Liberal Party of Australia. He was invited to Budapest by the Danube Institute for the Second Danube Summit on Geopolitics.
Food design inside and out #3—Edible gifts
Portable, gourmet and fun | Regional Gift Guide—boyfriend edition
