MIDDLING POWER: Can we handle being alone in the Pacific?

Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective.

“I never took never took the Chinese military bases in the South Pacific very seriously as a a military factor, leaving aside the broader political questions, because it's always seemed to me that compared to where we were, for example, when we were worried about Japanese bases in the South Pacific in the decades before the Second World War.”

“You know, if Australia plays its cards right, if we build the right sort of armed forces we need, it shouldn't be very difficult for us to be able to neutralize a Chinese base operating within the inner arc of islands for conflict.”

“But that doesn't mean they're not useful in a peace time setting, as a kind of a global network or at least a regional network.”

“There is a tendency here that I think, you and I, as former intelligence analysts would both be familiar with the problem of mirror imaging. The idea that just because we want something, the other side must want it as well.”