By Kirsty Needham
SYDNEY (Reuters) – U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said he hoped the incoming Trump administration would work with allies Australia and New Zealand in the Pacific, amid “acute strategic competition” with China and not withdraw from the region.
Responding to China’s police presence in Pacific islands and its security pact with the Solomons, the Biden administration stepped up diplomacy, with more infrastructure offers, U.S. coast guard patrols and a defence deal with Papua New Guinea.
But hard work lay ahead for the AUKUS partnership to transfer nuclear submarine technology from the United States and Britain to Australia, Campbell said in a video address to a conference in Sydney on Wednesday.
“The hope will be that the United States will resist the temptation to go inward and to put its interests uniquely first, and to recognise that we are stronger working with allies and partners,” he said at Sydney University’s U.S. Studies Centre.
Australia should make the argument about why the United States should not withdraw from the world, he added.
Republican senators who have made a career of advocating for American engagement in the Indo-Pacific, including Trump’s pick for secretary of state, Marco Rubio, will have a big impact on how the administration moves forward, he said.
The Pacific region is highly contested, and a proposal for a 50% cut to the State Department’s budget and USAID would make it hard to compete, he said.
“China is relentless – they want to build bases, they want to extend their power there, we are going to have to do more, and do more with Australia and New Zealand,” he said.
“My hope is that Senator Rubio, the Trump administration, will recognise that this is a moment of acute strategic competition”.
The AUKUS partnership would call for hard work from the Pentagon, he added.
“Much like the 1950s and 60s, when large numbers of U.S. forces for the first time went to Japan, that same experience is going to have to happen in Australia,” he said.
“We have to make sure that goes smoothly. We are going to need mechanisms in place.”
The previous Trump administration had a China strategy of “play for victory”, he said.
“My own view is the talk about the desire to topple directly the Chinese communist party, I think, will be destabilising,” he said. “It will be unwelcome among most of our allies and partners.”
China was concerned at the prospect of massive tariffs that could disrupt the global economy, and had started to talk about the need for guard rails and responsible competition, Campbell said.
(Reporting by Kirsty Needham in Sydney; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
