Australia must step up diplomatic efforts to “avert the horror of great power conflict” and reduce the risk of being dragged into a war between the US and China, according to 50 prominent Australians.
The group, who include the former foreign ministers Bob Carr and Gareth Evans, is urging the Albanese government to play an “activist middle power” role to reduce tensions between Australia’s top security ally and its biggest trading partner.
In a statement published on Wednesday, the prominent Australians said they were “apprehensive these tensions may lead to direct military conflict, which would risk dragging Australia into war”.
“We support a balance of power in the Indo-Pacific region in which the United States and China respect and recognise each other as equals,” said the group, who also include the Nobel laureate Peter Doherty and the former Liberal ministers Fred Chaney and Ian Macphee.
“A commitment from both sides to cooperative security, in which neither side demands absolute primacy – a new detente – is the key to reducing threats to both regional and global peace and prosperity.”
This detente – an easing of hostility or strained relations – “would be comparable to the accommodation negotiated in the 1970s between the United States and the USSR by Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev”, the group said.
The signatories to Wednesday’s statement include the former South Australian premier Mike Rann, the former Western Australia premier Carmen Lawrence, the former Greens leader Bob Brown and the social justice advocate Tim Costello.
They argued the proposal was “not about pacifism or appeasement” but “a sensible effort to ensure peace and prosperity in our region” in cooperation with other countries.
They acknowledged, however, that such an outcome would “not be easily or immediately achievable in the current climate”.
“Australia can contribute to changing that environment by renewing our commitment to an activist middle power diplomacy, conducted in close consultation with our key Indo-Pacific neighbours, which advocates respect for international law and universal human rights, focuses on risk reduction, and strongly discourages the use of force in resolving territorial and other international disputes,” they said.
Others appealing for detente include the publishing figure Louise Adler, former Socceroo Craig Foster, the English-Australian actor Miriam Margolyes and the legal academic Larissa Behrendt.
They said potential benefits of a US-China detente included “relaxation of general political and military tensions with the opportunity to sharply reduce military spending through arms control agreements – and to enable a return to mutually beneficial free and open trade”.
The statement also advocated “de-escalation of tensions over Taiwan with acceptance by both sides of the need for open-ended commitment to the cross-strait status quo”.
Taiwan remains one of the most sensitive issues in the relationship between the US and China, with Beijing declaring the self-governed democracy is an inherent part of its territory.
The Chinese Communist party has repeatedly refused to rule out the use of force to achieve its long-held goal of “reunification”.
The US and allies, including Australia, have warned against any threat or use of force to change the status quo across the Taiwan Strait.
The Albanese government, while working to “stabilise” the relationship with China, has repeatedly said Australia faces the most challenging set of strategic circumstances since the second world war.
Australia is pushing ahead with plans to acquire nuclear-powered submarines under the Aukus pact with the US and the UK, in part in response to China’s own rapid military buildup.
Carr, the foreign minister from 2012 to 2013 and an outspoken critic of Aukus, said it was “not possible to continue to play war games with the Americans and trade games with China and hope to live on in blissful prosperity”.
Evans, who was foreign minister from 1988 to 1996, said Australia “should strive to create an environment in which the two superpowers can cooperate on regional and global geopolitical problems such as climate change, the war in Ukraine, conflict in the Middle East, nuclear arms control, counter-terrorism, and cyber regulation”.
“Lasting peace is always best achieved with others, not against them,” Evans said.
“Of course we have to prepare for worst-case scenarios, but it is in Australia’s interests to bring diplomacy back to centre stage, resist policies of containment and confrontation of China, and promote a political accord between the United States and China that could help ease tensions in the South China Sea and over Taiwan and the Korean peninsula.”
