by Ganesh Sahathevan
As readers of this blog would be aware, the Turnbulls may well have an on-going, current , business connection with China.
In Crouching (Turn)Bull, Hidden Rabbit Parts 1 & 2 the matter of the exact nature of the Turnbull family's business was discussed in the context of the family's ties to China.
In Part 3, US Government suspicions about Turnbull given his China connections were published,
And now, from The Australian , 30 April 2016,excerpts which show that Japan ,having just lost the AUD 50 billion submarine contract to France's corruption prone DCNS , is also wondering about the Turnbull's China connections, even if The Australian thinks these were in the past:
“They suspect China has been pulling the strings and Turnbull kowtowed to China. They also suspect Turnbull’s (past) business connections to China served France.
“There is speculation in Japan that this decision was taken by the Turnbull government based on its assessment of Australia’s relations with China. This sends a message that Australia will not be too close to Japan and possibly not even too close to the United States, especially in the South China Sea. If that’s true it also has an impact.”
Yoshiji Nogami, a former vice minister for foreign affairs and now president of the Japan Institute for International Affairs, responded with world weary sarcasm.
“So the submarines in operation lost to the submarines on paper,” he said, in reference to the fact that the French submarine does not yet exist but is merely a design concept.
“It’s just a coincidence but it’s very bad timing. The decision was announced only a couple of weeks after the Prime Minister (Turnbull) visited Beijing and Beijing has been interfering in Australian domestic politics.”
Japan sees Chinese hand in decision to overlook Soryu
Australia’s standing in Japan, our most important geo-strategic partner in Asia, is deeply diminished as a result of the decision to reject its offer to build 12 new submarines for us.
On Monday the Turnbull government notified Tokyo, and on Tuesday it announced the successful bidder was the French firm DCNS.
Japanese opinion of us, elite as well as public opinion, is bruised, tender and bitter as a result.
Many Japanese believe Malcolm Turnbull kowtowed to the Chinese, folding under their unsubtle pressure. The Japanese also believe they were collateral damage in Turnbull’s intense hostility to Japan’s friend, Tony Abbott. These views may be completely unjustified but they are widespread.
Some influential Japanese are even starting to publicly question Australia’s reliability as a strategic partner. There is a sense of Australia not being altogether a serious country.
That important Japanese are saying these things in public ought to give Canberra the most serious pause for reflection.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his government only ever got involved in our submarines because an Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, asked them to do so.
But then the terms of their engagement kept changing. Australia’s requirements kept changing, as did the identity of our political leadership — the Japanese dealt with three different defence ministers and two different prime ministers over the course of this unhappy saga. Still, all the way along, they were given every reason to think they were still the preferred supplier.
Then their humiliating rejection was leaked in the media before they were told anything about it.
Official Japanese reaction was measured but did not try to conceal Tokyo’s shock and hostility at the outcome.
“The decision was deeply regrettable,” said Japan’s Defence Minister, Gen Nakatani, who demanded a full explanation from Canberra.
On the day of the announcement, I interviewed Seiji Kihara, the State Minister for Foreign Affairs, who confirmed that even at the highest levels Japan had expected, right up until the devastating leak against it, that it would be successful.
Kihara’s comments to me reflect the sober caution of a professional foreign ministry.
“Because the submarine was the symbol of Japan-Australia defence co-operation, and Japan brought both the civilian and government (sectors) together on the project, it is very disappointing that we were not chosen,” he said.
“We accept the decision with humility and sincerity, and quite separately we wish to develop further security co-operation between Japan and Australia.”
You don’t have to travel far beyond the most elevated reaches of official Japanese politeness, however, to get a much starker and more alarming assessment.
Yoichi Funabashi is by a long distance the most influential foreign affairs commentator in modern Japan. Now head of a prestigious think tank, he is a former newspaper editor, a widely read columnist and author of countless internationally acclaimed books on Asian politics, geo-strategic issues, regional co-operation and the US alliance system. He is no hawk, being associated with the centre left of politics, and he knows Australia intimately.
So his words are doubly telling.
“The initial reaction to the deal from the Japanese government and on the part of the defence community has been very much negative,” he says.
“They suspect China has been pulling the strings and Turnbull kowtowed to China. They also suspect Turnbull’s (past) business connections to China served France. All these conspiracy theories are running wild.
“The Abe administration, and the Japanese government generally, were very uncomfortable with the previous Labor government in Canberra. They were very happy to have their soulmate, Tony Abbott, a man they saw as similar to John Howard, replace Labor. Then they were sorry to see Abbott replaced by Turnbull. But they never expected that the higher level promise to Abe from Abbott would be so shabbily trashed.”
Funabashi sees wider strategic implications from the debacle, and they are not good implications for Australia.
“It has been a rude awakening for Abe to see how shallow that US-Japan-Australia facade is — that semi-alliance, just how easily shattered that was.”
Funabashi believes strategic hard heads in Washington will also draw negative lessons about Australia from this episode.
“The US also is naturally very disappointed in this decision,” he says. “They have not hidden their desire to have Australia choose the Soryu (Japanese) submarine. So they too will take a more sober view of trilateral strategic co-operation.”
It is worth pausing here to note Funabashi’s statement of the obvious: that while remaining formally neutral in public, and respecting Australia’s sovereignty, and understanding that ultimately Canberra would choose the best submarine capability available (if one was clearly much better than the others), the Americans nonetheless enthusiastically backed the Japanese and wanted them to win.
Everyone seriously associated with this issue internationally knows this to be the case. That some government officials and one commercial bidder were able to hoodwink several credulous Australian commentators into claiming the Americans were not backing the Japanese is a depressing testament to the shallowness and provincialism of the Australian media and often the strategic debate. Very few commentators have independent foreign sources against whom they can test and verify the stories they are told locally, especially by government. This is a function of Australia’s isolation, and as a result the Australian view of reality in many policy sectors is deeply skewed and inaccurate.
Funabashi also fully acknowledges the weakness of the Japanese bid, its failure to understand how quickly Australian domestic politics was moving or to hire smart local lobbyists early in the process.
Some measure of Funabashi’s analysis is widely shared in Japan and across Asia.
The subs decision was front page news in the Asian editions of The Financial Times andThe Wall Street Journal. The Journal ran an editorial lamenting the opportunity lost for enhanced Australia-Japan strategic co-operation. The editorial’s cross heading was lethal for Australia’s reputation. It said: “Australia rejects a Japanese bid after Chinese pressure.”
The critical reaction is virtually universal among Japanese familiar with international relations.
In Kyoto I meet Hiroshi Nakanishi, an international relations scholar at Kyoto University. He offers the double barrelled Japanese response. The decision won’t destroy Australia-Japan co-operation, he says, but on the other hand: “When it comes to the concrete implementation of co-operation, it might have a long-term impact.”
And he makes this further judgment: “There is speculation in Japan that this decision was taken by the Turnbull government based on its assessment of Australia’s relations with China. This sends a message that Australia will not be too close to Japan and possibly not even too close to the United States, especially in the South China Sea. If that’s true it also has an impact.”
Yoshiji Nogami, a former vice minister for foreign affairs and now president of the Japan Institute for International Affairs, responded with world weary sarcasm.
“So the submarines in operation lost to the submarines on paper,” he said, in reference to the fact that the French submarine does not yet exist but is merely a design concept.
“It’s just a coincidence but it’s very bad timing. The decision was announced only a couple of weeks after the Prime Minister (Turnbull) visited Beijing and Beijing has been interfering in Australian domestic politics.”
Like most people I spoke to in Japan in a week of intensive conversations, Nogami believes, or at least says he believes, that Australia-Japan strategic co-operation will continue to grow because both parties want and need it, though Funabashi cautions there may need to be a cooling-off period.
The sense of disappointment and even betrayal runs across both sides of Japanese politics.
Akihisa Nagashima is a leading politician in the centre left opposition Democratic Party.
He is a former vice minister for defence and national security adviser.
I asked Nagashima if the submarine decision was a setback to vital strategic operation in Asia.
“Yes it is,” he said. “It wouldn’t have been just the submarine itself but all the training and co-operation that goes with it. It’s not just the physical asset; many, many other factors would deepen co-operation.”
However, in a perfectly polite Japanese fashion, Nagashima traces a series of events in Australian politics that affects, damagingly, the way Tokyo looks at Australia now.
“After Australia asked Japan for assistance in this matter, the decision is a result of joint efforts,” he says, “so I don’t want to blame one side.”
And here is the kicker.
“I wonder how the transition in Australian domestic politics affected the submarine deal, from Abbott to Turnbull.
“Recently Turnbull brought a thousand business people to visit Beijing. I just wonder what these actions reveal, and the case of the Chinese so-called private company getting the lease of the Port of Darwin from an Australian government. There was a series of events and the question is how the series of events affected the submarine deal. I don’t know, maybe it was a fair process, I believe.”
Across the board, the Japanese recognise the inadequacies and failings of their own actions. Mitsubishi and Kawasaki were too slow in making a full-blooded commercial commitment to the project. Because they thought they were dealing with a friend and ally, the Japanese weren’t cynical enough in their appreciation of Australian politics.
The Japanese have certainly learnt a lot of lessons from this. One of them, dolefully, may be not to put too much faith and trust in Australia, especially in strategic matters; not to take Australia altogether seriously as a strategic player, even in its own interests.
From Australia’s point of view, this has been one of the worst and most damaging episodes in the postwar relationship with Japan.
This was an episode of vast consequence and epic complexity.
You feel that a lot more information will come out about it in the future.
One story doing the rounds in Japan is that Barack Obama gave Turnbull a pass to choose the French at the very last moment. That would be consistent with the Americans supporting the Japanese all the way through but not going to the wire for them.
And the bigger regional consequences?
Beijing feels delightedly vindicated. It bullied Australia with crude public warnings against choosing the Japanese submarines, and from Beijing’s point of view that bullying worked a treat.
The lessons? Australia can be bullied effectively, and bullying is a good tactic.
Japan feels isolated once more and this isolation reinforces its security anxiety. This anxiety, many analysts believe, in the long run could tempt Japan to look once more at an independent nuclear option. If none of its allies is reliable, it may need to guarantee absolutely its own security, as Donald Trump has suggested.
Asia more widely sees Australia buckling to Chinese pressure. The US is reminded once more of the fickleness of allies.
These perceptions may be unfair but they are widespread.
Finally, if all that our leaders routinely say about the complex security environment we face is true, if their words on the need for us to engage Asia have any meaning, and if all the blather that everyone talks about relative American decline and potential strategic retrenchment in Asia is true, then one thing we need almost more than anything else is a close relationship with Japan.
This whole sorry, messed-up episode has set that back a long, long way. Don’t be fooled for a minute into thinking that doesn’t matter
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