Agonising about Australia’s place in the scheme of things has been the principal pastime of policymakers since our notional independence. As Michael Wesley argues persuasively in Blind Spot: Southeast Asia and Australia’s Future, our “government and society suffer from a form of strategic long sightedness”. We reflexively identify with faraway members of the Anglosphere, such as the United States and the United Kingdom. But even more consequentially, we outsource responsibility for our foreign and security policy to one great and powerful friend or another. This means, Wesley argues, that “our leaders seem to believe that whatever the challenge, the solution was investing ever more heavily in the alliance with the United States”.Review: Blind Spot: Southeast Asia and Australia’s Future: Quarterly Essay 101 – Michael Wesley (Black Inc.)Trusting that another nation’s foreign policies will somehow automatically align with our own – even if we knew what “ours” actually were – is irresponsible and pusillanimous at the best of times. When Donald Trump is rupturing the rules-based international order and acting like a “predatory hegemon”, it is a foolhardy form of wishful thinking. Wesley describes this a process of “strategic infantilisation”. Little wonder that many in Southeast Asia view our efforts at “engagement” with scepticism. Like China, they view us as an appendage of America’s grand strategy, with little capacity for independent thought, much less action. We are where we areWe are a perennially anxious nation, seemingly unable to come to terms with the reality of our geographic position. As an island continent a long way from the world’s trouble spots, we might be forgiven for thinking we really are the “lucky country”. As far as Australian policymakers are concerned, however, this means we are also a long way from our “natural” allies and adjacent to countries that might threaten us. Even Wesley subscribes to a version of this idea, albeit a very sophisticated version: “we are difficult to invade,” he writes, “but relatively easy to coerce if hostile forces gain access to the islands to our north”. This is what makes our relationship with our immediate neighbours in Southeast Asia so important, he claims, especially when an Asian “great power” has emerged in our region.When the great power in question is China, it is more accurate to say “re-emerged”. China dominated East Asia for centuries before European imperial expansion plunged it into a “century of shame”. The resumption of its former role has a certain inevitability. Wesley characterises this process as Beijing seeking to create a “sphere of deference”. This means, in effect, that Southeast Asian states will “agree to abide by Beijing’s wishes in both domestic and foreign policy, where these are deemed by China to affect its regime security”.This is a nuanced and novel take on the fashionable “spheres of influence” debate, which has gained traction in the wake of intensifying competition between China, the US and, to a lesser extent, Russia. Wesley observes that our less powerful Southeast Asian neighbours are especially vulnerable to China’s threats – and blandishments – at this historical juncture, because their “governments are as disoriented as any by the Trump revolution”.Or as disoriented as any country except Australia, it seems. Even when the US violates international law, slaughters innocent civilians and assassinates or kidnaps leaders it doesn’t like, our government remains remarkably unperturbed. It has suggested it “supports” the bombing of Iran, for example. Michael Wesley. Black Inc. No way with the USAAustralia’s position may be entirely unsurprising, given its participation in every American war of choice. But it is important to recognise how difficult it makes regional relations.To his credit, Wesley is clear-eyed and unsentimental about what Australia’s unswerving, uncritical and frequently self-harming support of America’s version of a “sphere of deference” might mean. The US is starting to look remarkably like a “tributary state” – like China, which maintains a relatively stable regional order in return for an acknowledgement of Chinese superiority. The problem with the American version is that it is increasingly kleptocratic and there is no guarantee peace will be ensured in return. As Wesley points out, this is a potentially major problem when “our foreign and defence policy has a heliocentric quality: it is consistently shaped by the perceptions and strategies of our great ally”. One of the many charms of Blind Spot is Wesley’s ability to name – and analyse – emerging trends in a novel and instructive way. An insight that isn’t novel, but is rightly highlighted, is the way Australian leaders are bedazzled by their American counterparts in the annual schmoozathons known as the Ausmin talks. These bilateral meetings between Australian ministers for foreign affairs and defence and the US secretaries of state and war, and other senior officials, are supposedly opportunities to coordinate policy positions. But, as Wesley observes, “Australia’s role in steeling American resolve in Asia is a fast-perishing asset”. Australia’s continuing over-investment in this asset, not least in the woefully ill-conceived and likely undeliverable AUKUS project, means this is potentially a major problem. This is unlikely to be acknowledged or even recognised in Canberra, and Wesley is right about the cause. Prospective policymakers and analysts, he observes, are subject to “a process of intensive and sustained socialisation into the thought patterns and values of our major ally”. This is “very difficult for an ambitious Australian official to avoid”, according to Wesley, because career progression depends on a willingness to accept of existing assumptions.This may spare our policymakers from the challenge of thinking independently, but the danger is that “close identification with US strategy to balance and deter China is a drag on influence and acceptance among our neighbours”.This is the nub of Wesley’s overall argument: the interests and policies of great powers will inevitably differ from their less powerful alliance partners. If we reflexively align with an extra-regional power, it inevitably undermines Australia’s claim to be a sovereign nation capable of making an independent contribution to regional diplomacy. Hedging our betsStopping China from dominating Southeast Asia should be Australia’s priority, especially because, as Wesley argues, “shifting the regional status quo towards hostility to Australia’s interests is arguably the most overlooked aspect of the China challenge in Australian official thinking”. Instead, we have “placed all our chips on a single bet: that the US strategy for facing down China will protect Australia’s interests wherever they are threatened”.This was a foolish wager even when Barack Obama was in the White House, as his still unrealised US “pivot” to Asia reminds us. Now it looks reckless and indefensible. Our ability to influence our Southeast Asian neighbours is at an “all-time low”, argues Wesley, and they have noticed the sometimes “patronising quality to Australian entreaties”. Rather than attempting to tell Southeast Asian states what to do, Australia might think about adopting a strategy of hedging and non-alignment, in the style of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which promotes voluntarism, consensus and conflict avoidance. There are plainly limits to the effectiveness of the so-called “ASEAN way”. But Southeast Asia has been relatively peaceful. The great powers at least pay lip-service to the centrality of the ASEAN way when dealing with the region. The eleven ASEAN states are mostly middle powers, too, so we have more in common with them than we do with either the US or China. Perhaps ASEAN could be enrolled in a reset of international relations, along the lines suggested by Canadian prime minister Mark Carney, with some pressure from similarly positioned states. A defter, more flexible, non-aligned foreign policy might even give Australia and Southeast Asia the chance of playing one great power against another. For ASEAN states, writes Wesley, “the act of not choosing is seen as the ultimate act of agency and autonomy”.Despite all the talk about our “national interest”, the chances of something similar happening in this country are vanishingly small. As Wesley ruefully notes, “we have sleepwalked into a mindset in which to think more independently of the United States, and to consider the alliance as one of the means of foreign policy rather than as the end of it, is literally unthinkable.” It doesn’t have to be this way. Wesley is one of a growing number of Australian academics, former military personnel, NGOs and public intellectuals who are crying out for a change of strategic priorities, not least because of the sheer cost and sovereignty-shrinking implications of projects like AUKUS. As foreign policy analyst Sam Roggeveen points out in another thoughtful contribution to the debate: “Australia remains easy and inexpensive to protect.”Try telling that to the people who decide our security policy. Even prime ministers are not immune to socialisation. “Despite his intelligence and experience,” writes Wesley, “[Malcolm] Turnbull was no match for the powerful and consistent messages he was receiving from the strategic ecosystem in which he […] was embedded.” All of which raises the question of how much influence those not part of the magic security circle can ever hope to have on the most consequential policy decisions any nation can make.Mark Beeson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.