Eminent strategist Peter Varghese is concerned that policy substance has gone missing in action.
My lunch with Peter Varghese, regarded as one of Australia’s most eminent strategic thinkers and a former head of the Office of National Assessments , has been pushed back by half an hour. I’m stuck in the Brisbane Convention Centre listening to the prime minister give his closing address during the debate over the AUKUS agreement at Labor’s national conference.
On this Varghese is clinical, thoughtful. “I don’t think we spend as much time these days in explaining the first principles of policy. I think policy is explained more in rhetorical than substantive terms.” This is not a distinctively Australian phenomenon, he adds, nor is the presence of a 24/7 media, which consumes the attention of ministers.
“It’s one thing to have good, deep policy settings when things aren’t changing, but when things are changing around you very rapidly, there’s no substitute for that first-principles based, deep analytical understanding of what’s happening.” He is keen to stress Australia is not yet handcuffed to US policy, but he doesn’t want to see that happen either. Mainly “because the US might make a decision to protect or advance its primacy, which makes sense in Washington, but may not make much sense at all in Canberra”. Exhibit A of this mentality is the thread of argument in Washington “which says that to preserve primacy, we should thwart China”. Varghese is emphatic: that’s not in Australia’s interests.
Varghese concedes the risks: “It might make saying no harder, but it doesn’t make it impossible.” Putting it crudely, he adds, he can “see the utility … in arming ourselves with Americans”. Australia is not a neutral player, and he endorses Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s emphasis on finding a regional “strategic equilibrium”.
From there it was back to Canberra and into a departmental speech-writing job for Labor foreign minister Gareth Evans.
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