China’s current conduct towards Australia is hostile, offensive and lacking dignity.

This doesn’t alter how the lead up is study in cack-handed incompetence highlighting the worst of #auspol’s long standing inability to develop sophisticated #foreignpolicy. A thread...

As #COVID19 spread, China was reeling, on the back foot, defensive and humiliated. An inquiry would be useful.

But why @ScottMorrisonMP chose to step forward and kick China squarely in the nuts, in front of the whole world, at that moment - that still hasn’t been explained.

China claimed it was a knife in the back.

China says a lot of disingenuous things, but I believe they felt this way.

It was plainly a deliberate step, and we still have not been given the real reason #ScottyFromMarketing chose to take that step, at that time, on that issue.

Did #ScottMorrison do it to (a) impress docile Australian voters (b) impress our rarely-reciprocal big friend or just (c) to pick a fight?

It feels like a bit of a and b but it’s simply not credible to claim substantial offence wasn’t intended.

This has yet to be explained.

There’s an unsustainable yet persistent narrative in Aussie media & politics that the #LNP are more competent on ‘foreign policy’. This is plainly wrong: Iraq, the misdeployment of the #sas, Howard screwing up our Asian relations & the current shemozzle are just a few receipts.

One wonders if any of those now suffering from loss of China trade who voted for the party with the long record of botching #foreignpolicy -ie the #LNP - are joining the dots.

If you voted for this clumsy jingoistic bumbling, you might want to look in the mirror.

But back to Morrison kicking them over #COVID19:

I thought wow, that’s serious aggro. I searched up our export stats & confirmed China takes more than anyone else. They were laying our golden eggs.

It felt like we were eating our cake and trying to still have it.

China would have seen it that way too, and wondered: why?

And then made an immediate calculation involving the immense pain they could cause us by crunching our exports.

But... did we not look up our trade figures before embarking on this path? Are we really surprised?

(No.)

Over the course of an MA in international relations I learnt so much: history, security theory, foreign policy making. Yet I felt like I barely scratched the surface.

It’s a sophisticated field. Yet we don’t respect it, and the #DunningKruger is very strong.

Australia really really really needs to start developing its own independent #foreignpolicy and move away from our historic proxylateralism (my term) where we hitch ourselves to the US.

The US is not hitched to us.

This is not the same as being supplicant.

I think we need to substantially reduce our reliance on China, and be an ally to democratic forces in the region and the #MilkTeaAlliance

But we need to be intelligent.

As an aside, this shows just how much alleged misconduct and war crimes by #sas troops are a betrayal of our country, as well as being horrific and inhumane.