The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum of 21 Pacific Rim nations and the G20 summit in Beijing and Brisbane, respectively, commenced with a curious predilection for vindication this week. Both summits exuded a sense of satisfaction with the state of the world economy, if not outright hubris. Perhaps it is Australian exuberance, coupled with the outlandishness of the Outback, that lends the continent-country its unique sense of smugness that matches New York's chutzpah. Australian foreign policy, in much the same fashion as Washington's, does have its bouts of excess. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott epitomises the heady projections of his country's economic rise, even as US President Barack Obama personifies the American Dream. Fortress Australia, too, is on the rise. “Most of the people who are coming to Australia by boat have passed through several countries on the way, and if they simply wanted asylum they could have claimed that in any of the countries through which they'd passed,” as Abbott put it. Political culture matters, and America and Australia have much in common. I believe it was the Australian actor Mel Gibson who once boasted, “I don't think of myself as either American or Australian. I am a true hybrid. It's a good thing for me because both of them are really good countries.” To be sure, for many Asian nations the defining foreign policy objective seems to be to defer to Canberra's pre-eminence and converge on the West's way. Australia, awash with wealth, has been oblivious to the slipping away of the West's global dominance. But this particular outpost of the West, jettisoned like some gargantuan Gondwanaland between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, is surrounded by ravenous Asian Tigers. Perhaps Australia's hubris comes from the fact that it is the world's twelfth-largest economy, has the fifth-highest per capita income, the second-highest human development index, and is a magnet for immigrants in search of greener pastures. Ominously for a nation of less than 25 million, Australia's military expenditure is also the world's thirteenth-largest. Perhaps this is why Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to dispatch a fleet of warships to Australia ahead of the Brisbane G20 summit was dismissed by some as “international machismo.” Canberra concurs with Washington that weakening Asian ties to the United States, including trade and military dominance, are a threat to both America and Australia. The constitutional monarchy, with Queen Elizabeth II at its apex as queen of Australia, has long rejected the notion of an American-style republic. Yet Australia, which trades more with China than with the US, is reluctant to underscore China's rising economic clout. Mineral-rich Australia was the only industrially advanced economy not to experience a recession during the 2008-2009 global financial downturn precisely because as a commodities exporter, as opposed to an exporter of manufactured goods, it has enjoyed a huge increase in its terms of trade over the past two decades. This perhaps accounts for Australia's optimistic national mood. The country's population has quadrupled since the end of World War I, yet is still only a quarter of the population of an average Chinese province. Like in Australia, successive Chinese trade surpluses have resulted in a torrent of American dollars washing into the People's Republic. The launch of Alibaba, China's biggest online commerce company, on the New York Stock Exchange recently embodied the emergence of China as a serious economic rival to the US. To coincide with the APEC meeting in Beijing, China announced a near-record trade surplus for October of $45.4 billion. China is already the world's second-largest economy and a central fact of contemporary global commerce. China's connections with the rest of the world are increasingly political and military, as well as economic. China's central bank, the People's Bank of China, also unexpectedly pushed up the heavily controlled value of the country's currency, the renminbi, ahead of the summit in Beijing. Beijing was also a key player, albeit low-key, at the Brisbane G20 summit. President Obama declared on the eve of the gathering that the United States has reached a bilateral understanding with China on eliminating tariffs on a wide range of information technology products, including video-game consoles, computer software, medical equipment, GPS devices and next-generation semiconductors. At the summit, Obama found himself rubbing shoulders with Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, representing the world's third-largest economy, kept a low profile at both the Beijing and Brisbane summits, even though key differences were ironed out between China and Japan in both cities. “Raising global growth to deliver better living standards and quality jobs for people across the world is our highest priority. We welcome stronger growth in some key economies. But the global recovery is slow, uneven and not delivering the jobs needed,” read the Brisbane leaders' communique. When the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) took to the podium at the meetings their presence marked the end of an era of Western dominance, notwithstanding Cold War-like antics. The focus of the G20 summit was on the global economy, employment provision and the betterment of world living standards. Nevertheless, there was a suspicion that the underdogs of this world were not the priority of the powers-that-be. “We, the APEC leaders, gathered by Yanqi Lake in Beijing for the 22nd APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting, held substantial discussions on the priorities of advancing regional economic integration, promoting innovative development, economic reform and growth, and strengthening comprehensive connectivity and infrastructure development,” read the final declaration. The onus on Beijing was on regional cooperation, and Putin was made comfortable by the Chinese. In Brisbane, on the other hand, he was given the cold shoulder. “I guess I'll shake your hand, but I only have one thing to say to you: Get out of Ukraine,” Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper told Putin. German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared that the European Union is considering further financial sanctions against Russian individuals affiliated with Putin because of the crisis in Ukraine. “The present situation is not satisfying,” she told reporters in Berlin before her departure. “At present, the listing of further persons is on the agenda.” The Russian leader's conversations with his counterparts in Beijing and Brisbane were hardly mentioned in the international media. However, he lambasted the United States and its allies and accused Washington of precipitating the collapse of the international security system and abusing its role as a global hegemonic superpower. Africa was an afterthought in Brisbane. “We are deeply concerned with the humanitarian and economic impact of the Ebola outbreak in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone,” read the Brisbane statement. The arms race between Russia and the West was also barely given a mention and nor was the nefarious global trade in arms. Russian arms exports exceeded $14 billion last year, with most of its trade in arms conducted through the state intermediary Rosoboronexport. Russia is a major arms supplier to Africa and the Arab world, but South Africa was the only country from the African continent represented in Brisbane. The question of the Australian aborigines was also at best an afterthought. “The problem with politicians getting to know the issues in indigenous townships is that we tend to suffer from what Aboriginal people call the ‘seagull syndrome': we fly in, scratch around and fly out,” Abbott concluded.
