It's been a slow start for Australia in what is supposed to be the Asian Century. Despite being tipped off as early as the 1980s, our leadership at times seems to have been caught by surprise, frantically looking around for Britain and the US like a teenager trying to use a washing machine for the first time.
Australia failed to land an impact at either the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in Da Nang, Vietnam, or the East Asia Summit held in the shadows of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit in Manila at the start of November. Given the attendance of US President Donald Trump as part of his first official visit to the region, it was unlikely an Australian leader would garner much attention even if they weren't focused on the domestic troubles plaguing Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
The events were a wasted opportunity for Australia, which has long held a bipartisan policy of ever-increasing engagement with Asia. Trump's apparent total disinterest in foreign affairs has created gulfs around the world as the US turns inward, heralding a refreshing shift in the traditional world order. Globally, the focus of this has been on India and China, particularly in Asia, but Australia is facing prime conditions in which to move beyond the safe realms of trade and soft power lip service.
While Trump is more popular in Southeast Asia than perhaps anywhere else in the world, with US-based commentators positing this popularity can be put down to decades of destructive US foreign policy in the region and the view Trump truly is an 'outsider', he has so far refused to wield that popularity. Conversely, President Barack Obama, who had also been popular after spending some of his childhood based in Jakarta, used his influence to press regional leaders on human rights concerns and towards the end of his term refused to engage Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte after his more colourful commentary.
Many in the US know this. Back in Washington, an alarming report from the New York Times earlier this month shows this disinterest is rife within the entire administration. Staff at the State Department are leaving in droves and sounding the alarm on the way out the door — there's inward-looking foreign policy and then there's plain old negligence.
The Times reported Senator John McCain and Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a Republican and a Democrat respectively, had sent a letter