群体思维误导澳大利亚对华政策
2023-04-17 08:30阅读：
很多人看到了澳大利亚战略形势变动和不确定的现实，但他们给出的应对办法过于绝对化，缺少应有的仔细观察。
其结果是群体思维，破坏了政策的力度。正如受人尊敬的美国政治专栏作家沃尔特·李普曼所说，“所有人想的一样的时候，就等于没有人深入思考。”
在堪培拉的许多国家安全机构、在大多数新闻评论员和许多智库学者当中，如今就存在一种李普曼能一眼识破的共识。这种共识如果有人质疑，就会被认为是异端。更糟糕的是，会被质疑对国家不忠。因此，当一位杰出的前澳大利亚外交官尝试解决国家的这一难题时，尤其值得密切关注。
伍达德曾在1976年至1980年任驻华大使。退休后，他对澳大利亚冷战时期的外交政策，特别是对澳历届政府的对华政策颇有研究。
伍达德写道：“孟席斯政府一直遵循的政策是不卷入中国内部争斗。抵制住了美国试图让澳大利亚分担对台湾的责任，或加入一个更广泛防务组织的压力。”伍达德担心，阿尔巴尼斯政府“没有勇气进行公开讨论，也没有意愿减缓澳美军事合作的快速增长”。
在伍达德看来，这将是一场非比寻常的赌博。阿尔巴尼斯总理将作出他所有的前任都避免作出的承诺。在决定之前，他本应事先进行广泛的咨询，并进行议会讨论。没有哪位澳大利亚总理能接受将他们的国家置于这种危险、甚至致命境地的后果。
重温历史至关重要。然而，无可辩驳的是，澳大利亚疏于借鉴历史，尤其是和中国相比，这简直无法接受。
Groupthink means no one's thinking about
China
I
t bears paying close attention when a distinguished former
Australian diplomat warns Australia risks sliding into war
alongside the US over Taiwan with no proper debate.
James Curran
The great paradox of the new cold war between China and the US is
that while many discern the fluidity and uncertainty of Australia’s
strategic situation, their prescriptions for approaching it
typically favour the absolute over the subtle.
The result is groupthink, undermining policy contestability.
As the esteemed American foreign affairs columnist Walter Lippmann
wrote, “When all think alike, no one thinks very much.”
Within much of the national security bureaucracy in Canberra, among
the majority of press commentators and with many think tankers,
there is a consensus Lippmann would easily recognise, one that if
questioned invites the charge of heresy. Worse, disloyalty.
Witness the near unbridled confidence both political parties place
in AUKUS – a vast enterprise requiring political will across three
countries over three decades.
Witness, too, the slew of metaphors being dusted off and deployed –
the “lessons” of Munich, the shame of appeasement, the doctrine of
containment.
It therefore bears paying close attention when a distinguished
former Australian diplomat attempts to wrestle with the nation’s
predicament.
Garry Woodard, formerly ambassador to China (1977-80), Burma
(1973-75) and with postings in Washington, London, Malaysia, South
Korea and Singapore, also served as the first head of the National
Assessment Staff in the Joint Intelligence Organisation in the
early 1970s. Since his retirement he has written important,
archival based studies of Australia’s Cold War foreign policy, and
in particular the China policies of successive governments.
In a paper circulated privately late last year, Woodard asked a
critical question: whether the great Australian post-war foreign
policy dilemma – “namely, the dynamic of reconciling its geography,
situated in a fast-developing Asia, with its deeply rooted
psychological attachment to an external protector” – had “reached a
dénouement”.
If so, he stressed that “the implications for Australia’s place in
the world and its national self-confidence will necessarily be
profound”.
How, he asks, “Could this turning point have crept up on us?”
Woodard knows the cause is China, especially its }return to
traditional one-person rule and the revitalisation and streamlining
of the vast supporting Party structure”.
Xi, he says, is “ruthless … seemingly ready to go for broke in
preying on the humiliations suffered by the Han, a civilisation and
a culture resting on jus sanguinis: that allegiance to China,
wherever resident, is to be secured by fear or favour”.
Australian governments, notes Woodard, “became early subscribers to
this view of China as a central threat. They could have opened a
debate, normal in a democracy, but instead chose actions which
amounted to a direct challenge to Xi and which accepted the
inevitability of retribution”.
Its architects “were the faceless men of Canberra, the personal
advisers and the intelligence community responsible to the prime
minister personally, and through him venturing into policy,
[thereby] breaking the golden rule” regarding the critical
separation between intelligence and policymaking.
Woodard also recognises that “Intelligence has at the same time
reverted to its origins as an arm of the defence bureaucracy”. He
does not dispute its critical importance – he notes that
intelligence has given the US the edge against actual or potential
enemies. And he believes intelligence co-operation would survive a
conflict even where the US fought alone. “It is a good tool’, he
adds, ’but should never be the master of policy or policy
makers.”
In his paper, Woodard is particularly interested in the
implications of Australia’s policy turn on Taiwan, a recognised
flashpoint since the remnants of Chiang Kai-Shek’s Kuomintang fled
there in 1949.
He observes: “For 16 years, the Menzies government followed a
consistent policy of not being drawn into a revival of the Chinese
Civil War, whether sparked by either side or by the US. While it
came to accept that the US had a veto on recognising the People’s
Republic of China, it rejected numerous American pressures and
stratagems to draw Australia into sharing its responsibilities for
Taiwan or entering into a wider North-East Asian defence
treaty.”
Woodard is concerned that the Albanese government “has no stomach
for an open debate or inclination to slow the rapid growth of
Australian-American military co-operation, deepening the moral
commitment to fight alongside the Americans wherever or whenever
conflict breaks out in Asia”.
As Woodard sees it, “this would be an extraordinary gamble. Prime
Minister Albanese would have entered into a commitment all of his
predecessors had avoided. He would have sidled or slid into it as
if by divine right, just as the trend is running in the reverse
direction, towards wide prior consultation and possibly a
parliamentary debate” preceding an Australian decision to go to
war.
“The long-term implications for Australia of fighting alongside the
US in a war between the US and China over Taiwan would be
horrendous and impossible to overstate,” Woodard argues. “If, as is
likely, the US had to resort to nuclear weapons to avoid defeat,
Australia, which would not have been consulted, would be condemned
as a white country participating in the second nuclear conflict,
both against Asian countries. No Australian prime minister could
accept the consequences, immediate and for a century, of putting
their country in that parlous, probably fatal, position.”
This digression into history, though brief, is vital. It points to
concerns some South-East Asian neighbours already hold about
Australia’s commitment to the future policies of a riven United
States.
And yet, indefensibly, Australia is criminally slack about learning
from its history, in contrast to America and Britain, and above
all, China.
https://www.afr.com/policy/foreign-affairs/curran-20230412-p5czyl
