Toward principled pragmatism in Indigenous diplomacy in the Indo-Pacific

ABSTRACT

Mary Graham and Morgan Brigg provide a compelling foundation for developing Indigenous diplomacy for Australia, pointing to principled pragmatism and the integrity of a ‘relationalism’ grounded in landscape. However, Indigenous diplomacy and First Nations foreign policy will be difficult to translate into practice. This is not least because of the diplomatic tension which consistent First Nations advocacy would bring in a region of sovereignty sensitivities, including with regard to some of Australia’s most important foreign relationships: Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and China. A First Nations foreign policy offers significant potential advantages for Australia, such as reinforcing environmental stewardship while projecting the image of a nation reconciled with the land’s custodians and neighbours alike. Difficult work lies ahead, informed by a principled pragmatism.

KEYWORDS:

• Indo-Pacific
• Indigenous diplomacy
• Australian foreign policy

What is Indigenous diplomacy? And how can it be most useful in Australia’s efforts to navigate the challenges and complexities of the twenty-first century? In the inaugural Coral Bell School Annual Lecture on Indigenous Diplomacy, Mary Graham and Morgan Brigg (2023) provide a compelling foundation for thinking through these questions, without claiming to give final or complete answers. As Brigg notes, the Albanese Government’s commitment to develop Indigenous diplomacy and a First Nations foreign policy, championed by Foreign Minister Penny Wong, ‘will require serious and long-term effort’ (Graham and Brigg 2023, 596).

What is most significant about the 2023 Bell lecture is the framework Graham and Brigg provide, drawing not only upon long consideration of research and expert perspectives but upon the personal and lived experience of generations of Indigenous Australians. What is intriguing and refreshing is the way in which the ethos they set out for Indigenous diplomacy is grounded in pragmatism rather than abstraction or ideals. Yet what remains uncertain is how Government can incorporate principles of Indigenous diplomacy into its wider foreign and strategic policy agenda in ways that deliver unquestioned benefit to Australia’s interests, amid a contested international environment.

Relationalism meets pragmatism

In the lecture, Graham and Brigg (2023) build upon their established work regarding an Indigenous political ethos—informed by ‘relationalism’ as a way to manage and counter destructive excesses of ‘survivalism’—and begin to extend this thinking to the realm of international and cross-border relations. They dispel outright some myths and misperceptions about Aboriginal Australian cultures, including ‘noble savage’ stereotypes of Aboriginal peoples being intrinsically collectivist and peaceful. Instead, what emerges is a subtle and layered worldview of relational autonomy, using ‘landscape as a template for socio-political ordering’ (Graham and Brigg 2023, 592), suited both for the sustainable management of peace and for dealing with potential conflict.

This is original and persuasive, and for a non-Indigenous Australian policy analyst, such as this author, a valuable challenge to think again about the hidden history of this country and its regional relations. For those in the foreign policy community entrusted with shaping the Indigenous diplomacy agenda, there is a precious thread of material throughout this lecture and the literature that underlies it. Graham and Brigg (2023) challenge underpinning dominant assumptions of international affairs policy and practice while recognising the necessity of being grounded and operating amidst existing relations. To this extent the lecture (Graham and Brigg 2023) holds clues as to why operationalising a First Nations foreign policy will be difficult and enduring work, requiring a principled pragmatism of its own.

All diplomacy, by definition, involves compromise. Indeed, Harold Nicolson, one of the most prominent practitioner-theorists in the field, uses the term to designate ‘the art of negotiation’ (Nicolson 1962, 10). Foreign policy involves advancement and protection of interests, values, and national identity, despite the constant dynamic of tension within and between each of these categories. One set of national interests, such as those revolving around prosperity, may clash with another based on security, or yet another based on sustainability. All or any of these interests may clash with particular values, such as transparency or freedom of expression. The national identity of an inclusive and multicultural democracy may provide an opportunity to seek to reconcile clashes among interests or values, but narrower versions of national identity may be used to politicise or constrict debate. This is the backdrop against which a country’s diplomats must engage with the world, along with all of the added contest that the external environment brings, complete with the dissonance of other nations’ interests, values, identities, and ambitions—some of which may be directly at odds with Australia’s.

Graham and Brigg (2023) make no claim that the international environment is somehow easy for Australia to manage; quite the contrary, they acknowledge the great friction of the interstate system, including the aggressive extremes of ‘survivalism’ with which Indigenous societies have had to contend (and against which they have proudly endured). For policymakers beginning the journey—in consultation with Indigenous Australians—to develop and implement a First Nations foreign policy, the core question will be how to do so in a way that is pragmatic in delivery yet visionary in direction of travel.

Challenges and complexity

No Australian foreign policy can be credible without coming to terms with the complexities and challenges of our regional geography, regardless of whether that is defined as an integrated Indo-Pacific or as a set of connected subregions (Medcalf 2022). The strategic environment is marked by deepening competition among powerful states, the extending presence and coercive power of the People’s Republic of China, and the risk of conflict (Commonwealth of Australia 2023). At the same time, transnational problems—those that cross borders and do not originate from power relations among states—jeopardise the comprehensive security of all. Climate change is paramount among these hazards, but there also exist wider environmental and resource pressures, pandemics, societal anxiety and instability, technological disruption, crime and terrorism: all these and more connect on a crowded horizon of risk, an ‘uncertainty complex’ (UNDP 2022).

This is the region and the world wherein Australia must make its way as a middle power. Acknowledging or prioritising the concerns of First Nations societies will not necessarily sit neatly with the established Australian diplomatic imperative of treading carefully when it come to the sensitivities and territorial integrity of important neighbouring states. Engagement with Asia or an Asia-centric region has consistently been a pillar of Australian foreign policy (Gyngell 2021, 12). This imperative has often developed in tandem with more inclusive and multicultural framings of Australian identity. However, it would be a mistake to assume that the advancement of a First Nations foreign policy will automatically translate into greater engagement or cooperation with our closest neighbouring states. Most obviously, in West Papua and Bougainville, distinct Indigenous societies lay claim to degrees of autonomy, or even independence, sometimes in direct conflict with contemporary states (Indonesia and Papua New Guinea) whose sovereignty is internationally recognised. Australian statecraft on these issues can be expected to remain guided overwhelmingly by caution and a privileging of the perspective from Jakarta and Port Moresby.

Further afield, were a First Nations foreign policy to be applied with absolute consistency, one may expect to see greater advocacy for the cultures and identities of Tibet and Xinjiang, tribal communities in India, or Indigenous communities across Southeast Asia. All of this would need to be handled with an exceptional—perhaps impossible—degree of sensitivity if Canberra wanted to maintain stable and constructive relations with key states in the region. Awkwardly, one of the role models for a contemporary and progressive democratic society that is beginning to recognise and cherish long-oppressed Indigenous communities is Taiwan, which Australia does not explicitly recognise as a sovereign state, and which is itself imperilled by the extreme survivalism of the Chinese Communist Party and a forceful territorial claim from Beijing (Harrison 2016). Respect for Indigenous communities in the face of colonial ideology and practice cannot be limited to those that are dealing with the legacies of past oppression; such an ethos should surely take into account the possibility of present and future colonialism too, whoever its perpetrators may be.

None of this challenge and complexity suggests that a First Nations foreign policy is not a viable or worthwhile ambition for Australia. A First Nations foreign policy can deliver substantial benefits to Australia’s interests in a contested international environment in more ways than one. It can project modern Australia, not as some colonial outpost but as authentically reconciled with the land’s custodians and neighbours alike. This carries the virtues not only of positively reflecting the nation’s journey (however imperfect) towards greater social justice and inclusion, but also of helping counter disinformation that authoritarian competitors may otherwise sow to strategic advantage; the January 2023 London speech by Foreign Minister Penny Wong, with its call for honesty on colonialism, can be seen in that light (Wong 2023). Second, a First Nations foreign policy can improve practical awareness of the relational nature of issues, for example treating environmental stewardship as integral to prosperity and security. While contemporary policymakers may still be struggling to translate this holistic ethos into practice, for First Nations peoples it was a statement of the obvious. Third, there may even be potential to draw upon Indigenous experiences of coexistence and conflict management to help inform future diplomatic practice.

Success or effectiveness in the endeavour of translating a First Nations foreign policy to tangible diplomatic advantage is not assured, and these are the earliest of days. To be credible and durable, the development and implementation of First Nations foreign policy will require a steady and principled pragmatism. Graham and Brigg are careful to explain that pragmatism does not ‘evoke the triumph of expediency over principle’ (2023, 596) but instead refers ‘to the philosophical tradition which suggests that thinking is a form of contingent and recursive doing that is in and of the world rather than apart from it’ (597). Throughout their lecture they suggest that Aboriginal relationalism can attend to complexity in flexible ways while retaining integrity borne of being grounded in landscape. Transparently acknowledging this complexity and the accompanying tensions will be necessary to explain why change will hasten, if not slowly, then unevenly.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rory Medcalf

Professor Rory Medcalf AM is Head of the National Security College at the Australian National University. His career spans diplomacy, academia, intelligence analysis, journalism and think tanks, including with the Lowy Institute. Professor Medcalf was a senior strategic analyst with the Office of National Assessments, Australia’s peak intelligence agency, and a diplomat with service in India, Japan and Papua New Guinea. He has played a lead role in Australia's informal diplomacy with India and a range of other countries. Professor Medcalf is recognised globally as a thought leader on the Indo-Pacific strategic concept, as articulated in his book Contest for the Indo-Pacific (published internationally as Indo-Pacific Empire). In June 2022 he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for significant service to international relations and tertiary education.