Hi, I'm Daniel James and you're listening to seven Am. Australia is called in a perilous balancing act. This week, Anthony Alberezi met with Jijing Ping to stabilize ties with China, as leagues from Washington revealed the steep demands of our Defense Pact within the United States in the shadow of rising tensions over Taiwan. The question of where Australia stands
and who we stand with has never been more complicated. Today, host of the ABC podcast Global Roaming, Hey miss McDonald, on how the Alberzi government is navigating our fraud alliances and whether we could be headed for war. It's Friday, July eighteenth. Hey a, missh thanks for speaking with me. It was interesting timing for the Prime Minister's meeting with Jiji Ping this week. It came just as we were expecting to hear how the Trump administration's review into the
Orcat Agreement went. And while that wasn't released, there were leaks out of the Pentagon. So what do we know about what the review is likely to say at this stage?
Yeah, So this is curious and I guess we have to take this with all the usual caveats, one being that they're leaks. We haven't seen what the report, the review suggested to the White House. And the other really big caveat is who knows what Donald Trump will do or will make of it. Ilbridge Colby is the guy that has conducted this review. He's someone that has expressed some, if not quite skepticism about orcas skepticism about the delivery of it.
This is actually the single most important conventional military asset we have for a Taiwan fight or for a contest against the Chinese center on the first silent chain, which is conventional nuclear powered attack submarines, and we are talking about selling them. So my concern is why are we giving away this crowndewl asset when we most need it now?
That is, if we believe the leaks. What Donald Trump might be asked to do is tell Australia to pay more for the submarines, the nuclear powered submarines, and to get a guarantee, an explicit guarantee from Australia that they would be used if America were to go into conflict with China, in particular over Taiwan on the side of the Americans.
And while the Americans are reviewing Aucus. There's also been a lot of criticism of the deal here in Australia. So if we are to stick with it, how important is it for the Australian government to lay out exactly why they think ORCAS is the answer.
Look, I think, to be fair, a lot of Australian politicians, both on the conservative side and the more progressive side, have laid out the reasons for UCAS. It's just that they tend not to be very explicit about what the threat is. It's China, It's China's role in our region, China's growth as a military power, its growth as a naval power. The concern is that, look, if China, for example, will tried to take Taiwan by force, that it might also disrupt trade in the South China Sea and that
would have a profound impact on Australia immediately. Because we rely on trade both export and import. We have very limited long term fuel supplies. It would be very easy if you disrupted the trade routes to really make life very difficult for Australia in a pretty short space of time. The argument is that the nuclear powered submarines are the APEX predators of the sea, they can go further, they need less refueling. In fact, the nuclear fuel rods within
them last for the lifetime of the submarine. That means that they need to come up to the surface less often to take air in to allow their systems to reenergize. It's less easy for China to know where our nuclear powered submarines are at any given time, and so that might make it more risky for them, for example, to launch an invasion of Taiwan. That purely and simply is the risk calculus.
So if, as the League suggests, the US requests US to commit to using our submarines in the war over Taiwan, what do we know about where the Australian government stands on that.
But weirdly, our government kind of stands where the US government stands, which is a place of relative strategic ambiguity. It's one of those weird foreign policy terms. What it means essentially is not committed either way. You will have heard Anthony Albanezi this week say well, Australia on the question of Taiwan, supports the status quo. We support the status quo by definition, we don't support any unilateral action.
On Taiwan.
That is no attempt by the mainland Chinese government to invade Taiwan. The United States position has always been in thisrategic ambiguity idea that you don't really say whether there's a security guarantee for Taiwan, but you give the Chinese the impression that there would be a very high cost if they attempted to take it.
You said, the government is ambiguous on purpose when it comes to his position on Taiwan. But if China did invade Taiwan, what's the likelihood of us actually getting involved? Amish?
I think that's a really good question, and I think it's one our leaders haven't clearly answered. I was really looking at the language from Anthony Albanezi this week during his visit.
It kind of seemed to catch him off guard. The questions around that didn't the look.
It's a vexed issue. It's a particularly vexed issue on the left of Australian politics because you know, there is a more dubvish approach amongst some of the senior labor figures today, but also some of the labor luminaries like keeping like Gareth Evans. You know, they do have these more nuanced positions on Taiwan. They you know, see these arguments from the Chinese about Taiwan being part of the Motherland. Some of the liberals seem to be more clear sighted
about this. They say, this is exactly like Russia wanting Ukraine. This is a great power saying we're bigger and we have historical ties here and if we want them, we'll get them. I was in Taiwan recently and asked a question to someone about the possibility of China retaking Taiwan, and they picked me up actually on the language and said, what do you mean, retake Taiwan? Communists, China can't retake Taiwan because it never held it in the first place.
But you know, there's a lot of people in Taiwan that really value their democracy. And I guess it is a question for us to what extent do we believe that the people of Taiwan have the right to self determination.
After the break the preparations underweigh in Taiwan as the threat of the Chinese invasion looms, and how the US will respond ay this, You have just returned from a trip to Taiwan. How real does the possibility of conflicts seem to the people there a.
Lot more real and present to I think what we see this threat as it's definitely a very frequent topic of conversation. You see the posters on the streets, you see people turning up to self defense classes, people preparing
themselves for what may or may not happen. But I think beyond that, there's actually already a view in Taiwan amongst some that China's making its advances today not necessarily physically militarily, even though there's drills that go on and rehearsals as some people describe them as, but that cognitive
warfare is already underway. There is this huge body of di and misinformation that's spewing out into the Taiwanese public discourse through social media, through mainstream media, even to some extent which some viewers deliberate attempt by mainland China to shape the discourse in Taiwanese politics and to I guess, make people look more favorably upon the China model than what they might otherwise.
So this attempted softening of the Taiwanese people from China ahead of any potential conflict is taking place. Can you tell me a little bit more about what that looks like in practice.
Yeah, there are some people that say, look, China doesn't really want to physically go to war to take Taiwan. They think there are other ways to do this. You might be able to soften the population. We see examples of disinformation being used to discredit more pro independence politicians. You saw a lot of this during the recent elections that were held there in Taiwan. They had one of the world's first Ministers for disinformation in their government to
try and deal with some of this. It is happening all the time. You know, I was told there. If you buy a new TV and you just open it up, generally these TVs might be made in China.
If you just.
Open it up, the generic version of YouTube will just start spewing Chinese nationalist miss and disinformation at you.
Well, if trying to tries to take over Taiwan, what do you know about how the US will respond.
So Joe Biden actually, during his term as president, was the one that probably moved America a bit closer the woods, saying that America would defend Taiwan if, in fact China tried to invade. Donald Trump's been you know, reasonably cautious as far as Donald Trump can be cautious in his language around these things, so I think it's kind of unclear.
But what we do know is that there's a lot of very China hawkish operatives with quite a lot of power in the Trump administration, and when you look at the broader arc of Trump's foreign policy, it does suggest
rather more affixation on China as a rising power. Part of the argument, if there is an intellectual argument underpinning Trump's foreign policy around Europe and particularly Ukraine, is that they want the Europeans to deal with that corner of the world a bit more because they see China as the big, emerging, rising threat to US hegemony, and so the likelihood might be that they would take a greater interest in what happens in this part of the world.
They may also, i think it needs to be said, make a calculation that they don't mind so much what happens to Taiwan because they're taking all of these steps around the manufacturing of microchips and semiconductors.
You might recall that the big.
Taiwanese semiconductor company has been forced to open an operation in the United States to start producing them there. So you know, there's a debate in Taiwan about whether this was a smart move to try and appease Trump and make him see that Taiwan's really valuable. Others say, well, maybe it made Taiwan physically less important to Trump because some of this stuff's being made there.
How much of our strategy is just trying to when it comes to this thinking beyond a Trump presidency, how are we thinking of the US as a strategic ally in the longer term post Trump?
Look, I think maybe in the first Trump administration there was quite a bit of thinking that he was kind of a one hit wonder and things would return to business as usual afterwards. I don't think so many Australian politicians are assuming that any longer. You'd have to say that, on the face of things, JD. Vance is quite a
likely contender for the next presidency. He may go even further on some of this foreign policy stuff, and so I don't think we can necessarily assume that post Trump will get back to a kind of era of America always playing a role on the world stage that might benefit Australia. Just don't think we can run along with
that calculus any longer. Peter our Geezy, former head of DEFACT, very respected figure in Australian foreign policy, write an article in The finn Review this week saying our politicians don't have the guts. This is very loose and rough paraphrasing. But our politicians don't have the guts to cut and run from Orcus. But maybe the Americans will do us a favor and ditch the deal to force our hand to think more broadly. Certainly, Orcus strategically ties us to
the Americans for a very long time. In many ways, this is the central question for Australia's leaders today, the degree to which we can carve our own foreign policy. Can we, as a middle power manage these relationships in such a way that we are not always at the mercy of the wind, that we're somehow able to carve a place for ourselves where we can continue to extract
advantage from both of those relationships. How do we exist in that world of intense, deep strategic competition between the United States and.
China, Amish, thank you so much for your time, My absolute pleasure. Also in the news, Independent New South Wales MP Mark Latham is the subject of fresh controversy following allegations that he participated in a sex video filmed in
his office at Parliament House. Further allegations claim Latham also took photos of female colleagues, made disparaging comments about them, and claimed to have inappropriately pinched one in p In response, New South Wales Housing Minister Rose Jackson was quoted calling Latham a pig and went on to say in any other workplace, you'd be shown the door immediately and rightfully so.
An unemployment is that with the rate rising to four point three percent in the June figure, yes, that means that there are approximately six hundred and fifty nine thousand, six hundred Australians currently unemployed, the highest we've seen since COVID lockdowns in twenty twenty one. Pressure is down mounting on the Reserve Bank. The Caving crisrads had that next meeting in August, following their recent decision to hold steady
at three point eight five percent. Treasurer Jim Chalmers said the figures show Australia is not immune to economic uncertainty. Thanks for listening to seven AM. This show is made by Atticus Bastow, Shane Anderson, Chris Dangate, Ruby Jones, Sarah mcvee, Travis Evans, Zomfatjoe and Me, Daniel James. Our theme music is by Ned Beckley and Josh Hogan of Envelope BORTEO. If you enjoy our work, please share it with your friends. It's the best way you can support us. Have a great weekend.
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