Even before Hamas struck, foreign-policy makers have had to get used to a pitiless procession of global shocks.
Spare a thought for the burdens of Australia’s leaders, diplomats and security caste at this perilous time in global geopolitics.
The global repercussions of Putin’s war in Ukraine and the China-Russia partnership were already seeing to that. This week’s Belt and Road summit in Beijing – a durbar for a new variant of empire, complete with Putin as the world’s first nuclear-armed subaltern – presents a model of the kind of tributary visit an Australian leader will want to avoid.
Meanwhile, hopes of neat alignments to comprehensively defend a global rules-based order – if ever they were plausible – face confronting new strains. Even as Australia courts India as a rising mega-state, economic opportunity, source of human capital and partial balance to China, and accepts our differing stances on Ukraine, the accusation persists of a link between the Indian government and the killing of a Canadian citizen.
Following the unsuccessful referendum to establish an Indigenous Voice to parliament – a fraying experience, no matter where one stands regarding the best path to national reconciliation and historical justice – now is a time, however unpropitious, for cross-partisan solidarity and national readiness.
Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil, true to her credo of multicultural respect, speaks of shared grief with Australia’s Jewish and Palestinian communities, while properly attributing the cause of carnage to Hamas.Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles, while keeping to his commitments this week in North Asia, is openly identifying the connections between multiple threats to global order, from Russia, China, North Korea, Hamas and its other enablers.
Even while travelling, and with Marles as acting leader, there will be the expectation that the government build and sustain a message of national unity, whatever worsening shocks the Middle East conflict may bring.
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