Chris Trotter asks: What will/can the USA do to avoid becoming the sick, old man of the Indo-Pacific?

They were called the 'Winged Hussars'. In 1683, at the gates of Vienna, these elite Polish cavalrymen, sporting feathered “wings” designed to give them the appearance of avenging angels, provided the vanguard of the largest cavalry charge in history. Emerging unexpectedly from the forested heights above the capital city of the Hapsburg Empire, they swept down upon the besieging Ottoman army of Sultan Mehmed IV and swept it from the field.

Never again would the Ottoman Empire threaten the security of Christian Europe. Over the next two centuries, what had been the dominant power of the Mediterranean world would decline to the point where it could be described, by Tsar Nicholas I, as “the sick old man of Europe”. And, as it declined, the hungry powers of the West extended their sway to encompass the entire planet.

There will be those in Beijing who look at the United States of America and see the Ottoman Empire. Not the Ottoman Empire that existed after the Siege of Vienna, but the Ottoman Empire that might, with a bit more luck, and better military leadership, have taken the city and put the whole of Europe in play.

But, those same Chinese geopolitical strategists will also see in the USA of 2024 what was doubtless equally clear to Western European leaders in the 1600s. That, for all its strategic reach, the hegemonic power of their age was over-extended militarily and fatally wounded economically.

The maritime triumphs of Portugal and Spain had opened alternative routes to resources which had previously flowed from East to West through Constantinople. Paradoxically, winning control of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles would end-up proving disastrous for the Ottomans’ long-term prospects.

Similarly, the Americans’ dominant global position has been undermined by the dramatic resurrection of China, and looks set to be further weakened by the rapid growth of India. Perceiving this, the geo-strategic thinkers of both nations are perfectly aware that their leaders need only watch and wait.

Looking to their defence (so that the US cannot do in the Twenty-First Century what the British did to India and China in the Nineteenth) and continuing to broaden and deepen their economies, these rising powers have no sound geopolitical reasons for attacking the USA. Global power has always been zero-sum. The bigger and stronger the Asian tigers grow, the weaker the American Eagle becomes.

The most important question, therefore, is what will/can the USA do to avoid becoming the sick, old man of the Indo-Pacific?

For the moment, at least, the answer would appear to be AUKUS. Two increasingly decrepit former global hegemons have succeeded in ensnaring a much younger and more vigorous regional power in a confused and, almost certainly, fruitless attempt to reassure themselves that their imperial writ still runs in the Indo-Pacific theatre.

Not that Australia has ever played hard-to-get in these increasingly forlorn adventures. It gaily traduced the UN Charter in 2003 alongside its American and British confederates, committing Australian forces to the same “forever wars” that did so much to weaken the military capacity of all three nations. Undeterred, Australia has now cheerfully agreed to put the “A” into AUKUS. Mostly, this entails spending impossible sums of money on a force of Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines, vessels which the Australian geostrategist, Hugh White, is quietly convinced will never be delivered.

Hitherto declared “off-limits” to every other nation on earth, this formidable weapons-system is now being made available for sale – if not to the highest bidder, then certainly to Uncle Sam’s self-proclaimed “Deputy-Sheriff”. The deal may be seen as proof of the USA’s and the UK’s increasingly evident willingness to let others do the fighting – and dying – for them. What’s been good for the Ukrainians is now, apparently, doubleplusgood for the Aussies. In the unlikely event that China does decide to force the issue over Taiwan and/or the South China Sea, however, Uncle Sam will, as White argues persuasively, move swiftly to bring all his nuclear subs under strict American control.

So, why have the USA, the UK and Australia embarked on this AUKUS course? And why are Canada and New Zealand giving serious consideration to joining them?

Much of the explanation undoubtedly boils down to a failure of geostrategic imagination, made worse by the UK’s former colonies’ more-or-less instinctive Anglocentrism. (The less forgiving observer might attribute the five nation’s behaviour to the pernicious legacy of old-fashioned, white supremacist, imperialism.) Bluntly, none of the present AUKUS partners, nor those thinking about signing up for “Pillar 2” of this glorified arms purchase, can envisage a world in which English-speaking white people are not setting the pace, and calling the shots.

In the case of Australia and New Zealand this failure of imagination is especially egregious. Both nations are, to slip into antipodean, “a bloody long way from anywhere”. Except, of course, from Asia. Both countries have always known this, but resisted strongly the obvious conclusions to be drawn from their extreme geographical isolation from the metropolitan power that created them.

For a few terrifying months in 1942 that isolation from the “Mother Country” was brought home to Australians and New Zealanders in ways impossible to ignore. But then the deus ex machina of the American Pacific Fleet at Midway restored Anglophone supremacy – albeit with an American accent. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki sealed the deal. In a matter of milliseconds, Asia had, once again, ceased to be a problem.

Except, as the Ottomans discovered, nothing stands still. Even successful attempts to enlarge their power only end up lumbering expanding empires with more peoples, more territories, to defend. And all that effort, as the UK learned in the Boer War, and as the USA discovered in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, is not only economically draining, but it also saps the citizenry’s willingness to go on footing the bill – in blood and treasure – of imperial greatness. That’s when making your country great again means telling the rest of the world to go to hell.

Which way New Zealand elects to jump in this geopolitical game will not trouble China greatly. Its diplomats and spies have doubtless already explained to their bosses in Beijing the present New Zealand Government’s curious conviction that the certainties of the past are recoverable and durable. That Australia’s Labour Government is as convinced of this as its National Party-led trans-Tasman ally merely confirms the unwillingness of both nations to see clearly the nature of the global reality that is fast emerging.

Hugh White has noted how easily Aussies and Kiwis slipped into the comforting assumption that “America would keep us safe, and China would make us rich.” For a while, it even appeared to be true. Now, however, the Americans are at our gates, determined that their hegemony in the Indo-Pacific region remains unchallenged. Exactly what shape the Winged Hussars of the Twenty-First Century will take is yet to be seen. But, that they will come should not be doubted.

*Chris Trotter has been writing and commenting professionally about New Zealand politics for more than 30 years. He writes a weekly column for interest.co.nz. His work may also be found at http://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com.