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 to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson highlighting concerns held by both sides of politics. 'America's diplomatic power is being weakened internally as complex global crises are growing externally,' the letter warned.
While this is no doubt alarming, the opportunity for Australia is a silver lining and something both the government and opposition clearly want to capitalise on. The bones of the foreign policy white paper, released last week by Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, have been picked over by the country's leading international relations thinkers and the consensus is clear — the timing is right and we must act now.
"For all its rhetoric over decades, Australia must now take responsibility for this power vacuum, lest we lose out to disengaged superpowers with questionable motives."
The benefits to deeper and more meaningful engagement within the region impact both Australian and Southeast Asian communities. Australia's stated goal of 'leadership' within the region, no matter how vaguely defined, requires a multi-pronged policy utilising hard and soft powers. For everyday Australians, this brings job opportunities in many of Australia's strongest trade industries, but more importantly engagement produces soft power relationships through sports, language education and plain old good will as the whole planet undergoes a rapid transformation in world order.
For the communities abroad, deeper Australian engagement in the region brings, ideally, more aid funding to plug healthcare and education gaps. A stronger Australia is also in a far better bargaining position when it comes time to advocate on behalf of those unable to do so, including the Rohingya people of Myanmar and those suffering under Cambodia's increasingly authoritarian government crackdowns.
Without Australia building on its place in this space as the US looks as though it is pulling out, the whole world loses out on these important relationships and developments. For all its rhetoric over decades, Australia must now take responsibility for this power vacuum, lest we lose out to disengaged superpowers with questionable motives.
Under the current government, Australia has few leaders capable of both developing that vision and seeing it through to execution. Turnbull, preoccupied with maintaining control over his own leadership, failed to signal to Australians back home any sort of policy priority or reaffirmation of our place in the region. Instead, he was widely lampooned for confessing to never having eaten a banh mi before visiting Da Nang — an affront to multicultural Australia where the sandwich has been a lunchtime favourite for years.
Meanwhile, over the years Bishop has expertly teamed up with her Indonesian counterpart Retno Marsudi to navigate the bumps in the Australian-Indonesian relationship following years of tensions, including the spying scandal and the execution of two Australian nationals, and the pair has overseen the most robust relationship in decades. She appears to be perfectly comfortable jet-setting to summits around the world and has, although this is an impossibly low bar, never been busted on a hot mic laughing about the desperate fate of Australia's neighbours.
But with the writing on the wall for the next election, it is unlikely Bishop has much time to roll out the priorities set out in the white paper which will certainly be her strongest legacy. The first foreign policy white paper in 14 years, the vision it offers is unlikely to differ from that which a near-inevitable Labor government would prefer. The key concerns the paper is built around — terrorism, climate change and erratic shifts within the traditional world order — will not change regardless of who is at the helm of the country.
Disappointingly, the paper touches only briefly on soft power and does not develop beyond common wisdom. It is in this space that Australia has the most to offer the world. There's a lot preventing us from being a major power: we're geographically away from much of the action, our population is relatively small, and getting onto the world stage is not a priority for voting Australians.
But our soft power could be a game-changer. Australia's brilliantly diverse communities of Asian diaspora must be effectively engaged and utilised to build stronger links between their home countries and the wider region. But first, Australia needs a leader willing to put the work in.
Erin Cook is a Jakarta-based journalist with a focus on South East Asia, and editor of the SEA news digest Dari Mulut ke Mulut.
Main image: Indonesian Foreign Affairs Minister Retno Marsudi with Julie Bishop during the 2016 MIKTA meeting in Sydney.