Australian media has been accused of “hyperventilating” over US President Joe Biden’s cancelled Sydney trip, but the other Quad partners appear significantly less bothered by the snub.
Japan will still host the leaders of India, the US and Australia for a G7 summit this week.
Foreign policy experts say the Quad agenda will not be affected by the change of plans — and for India, it may even be a boon.
“It’s almost a sigh of relief for Modi,” Australian Strategic Policy Institute analyst Teesta Prakash told Crikey.
She said Biden’s change of plans will mean Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will get to visit Papua New Guinea by himself, and will still go ahead with his own trip to Australia.
“Strategically, it’s advantageous [for Modi], the PNG leg of his trip was more important than the Australian and Quad stuff.”
Prakash said India was looking to expand its diplomatic footprint in the Pacific, including a desire to have greater influence in Papua New Guinea.
“It creates a lot more breathing room for Indian and PNG officials to really focus on their own growing relations.”
While Biden decided to cancel plans to visit Australia and PNG, he will still go to Japan for a summit of G7 nations, according to the White House.
The reason for the curtailed trip is a looming domestic crisis in the US: a political stalemate over the country’s borrowing limit that has the potential to cause an economic meltdown.
“The US can’t have its president a world away while the country faces economic catastrophe and default,” Bruce Wolpe of the United States Studies Centre told Crikey.
Wolpe said the strategic goals of the Quad would not be hurt by the cancellation, especially since Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Biden, Modi and Anthony Albanese will meet on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Hiroshima.
But the situation may be a bad look for the US in the eyes of China, Wolpe said.
“Biden likes to say in all earnestness to world leaders ‘America’s back’. How long is that going to last? When something like this happens, when a president has to curtail an important mission to deal with a domestic political issue of major import to the world, from a distance it looks absolutely ridiculous,” he said.
“I think that’s something that concerns his foreign policy team.”
In Australia, media analysts have interpreted the change of plans as a “snub to a friend and a gift to a rival”, in the words of The Age’s editorial on Thursday.
“It is quite extraordinary that Biden let slip the chance to draw a further line in the Pacific against an expansionary Beijing,” it read.
Ex-prime minister Malcolm Turnbull urged Australians to “get a grip” in a tweet overnight.
“Biden’s cancellation of the visit to Australia is not a ‘snub’ or a ‘gift to China’ — this is hyperventilation on steroids. His first duty is to do and be seen to do everything he can to ensure the US Govt can pay its bills,” Turnbull tweeted.
Biden’s cancellation feeds nicely into the hyperventilating NineCostello media people and their Red Menace agenda. Having blundered into that, they are now looking at every incident from every angle in seeking to support that agenda.
Is Sky on that same SILLY page?
Yes, obviously. But it is still utterly ridiculous and embarrassing that the USA’s Congress regularly authorises spending by passing all the relevant legislation, waits until the bills come in for payment for all the goods and services it has bought and only then decides it might refuse to pay. Anyone else doing this would be accused of extortion and fraud. It’s outrageous. If Congress does not want to spend the money it should not authorise the spending to begin with. It brings shame on Biden and the whole USA that its legislature acts this way. How many times has this dangerous and demeaning farce been repeated already?
Governance in the USA has always been beyond embarrassment. A look at their history shows that. To repurpose a famous quote, no-one ever got into trouble underestimating the ethics of US politicians.
Real mobster tactics. Nothing new for the Republicans. They did the same with Obama and Clinton.
Does that make it a failed state? Aren’t we duty-bound to bomb failed states? That’s what the US has done countless times.
Has any country been better of after American intervention? I cannot think of one.
It is pretty obvious to me that Biden has to deal with the Republican nut jobs in Congress first. He would get into unnecessary trouble if he absented himself from the debt limit process. There is no reason for us to tear our hair out. Bex, cup of tea….
Why the focus on what’s in the the small pond herald when the the real story is the GOP is once again rampaging across US national interest to the benefit of the anti-US lobby no matter where in the world that arises from.
This highlights the unreliable nature of USA politics. The question that Australians rarely ask, is just how reliable is the American ‘pact’ and should our defence be more independent.
Hey Scruby, every day as I walk up the road and see all your rellies running around (Genuine Scrub Turkey Aussies) I thing “I am Australian!” so why the hell are we tipping our brow to the septics.
Reliable – What country have they not intervened in? What country have they not retreated from and left in a mess? Totally predictable.