Introduction

The rise of China has complicated the strategic relationship between Australia and the US, prompted difficult questions about potential adjustments to the alliance, and created a special form of collaborative and conflictive trilateralism of the US, China and Australia. Hugh White has raised doubts about the future primacy of the US in East Asia and the Pacific. White argues that the inspired strategic diplomacy of Nixon and Kissinger in recognizing China in exchange for a reduction in anti-US rhetoric and the halting of China’s export of communism to the region led to a 40-year period of peace in Asia. Small and medium-sized Asian states benefited from US leadership, but White claims that Australia, which shares similar values to those of the US, gained the most from the arrangement.