Australia’s response to Japan’s rhetoric has been framed as a test of loyalty, but the outrage is largely media-driven. Caution in foreign policy is not betrayal – it is a rational defence of national interest.

Fred Zhang

When Japan adjusts its strategic language and China responds, the region typically braces for a familiar diplomatic turbulence – sharp statements, historical weight, World War II war crimes, mostly predictable moves. Regional powers, including the United States, tend to sidestep these moments with ambiguity: a press secretary nod here, a communique there, nobody panics.

But in Australia, such episodes are swiftly re-scripted as Shakespearean trials of loyalty – and in the latest act, it’s Anthony Albanese in the dock, cast as the brooding traitor who failed to rise to his democratic duty.

All it took was a theatrical flourish from Japan’s former ambassador to Australia, Shingo Yamagami, who appeared on the pages of The Australian like a spurned friend at a dinner party, solemnly asking: “ Where is Australia in Japan’s moment of need?”

A follow-up article promptly featured Shadow Defence Minister Angus Taylor, and former Prime Minister Scott Morrison, accusing Labor of “ abandoning a key ally.” The sequence had the air of a well-rehearsed drama. The former diplomat issues the wounded lament, the Opposition delivers the rebuke, and News Corp, host of both, emerges as moral umpire. Everyone hits their lines. No notes.

And yet, with even the lightest scratch beneath the surface, the script starts to fray.

First, Australia is not Japan’s treaty ally. That honour goes to the United States. If anyone is structurally obliged to leap to Tokyo’s side, it’s Washington. So how did Washington respond when Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s remarks on Taiwan stirred the waters?

According to The Wall Street Journal – also News Corp, for those playing media bingo – Donald Trump privately advised Takaichi to dial it down. This happened after President Xi’s call with him. Trump, never known for subtlety or sacrifice, responded by defending what mattered most: soybean sales.

Here’s how Trump summarised it to The Journal:

“The United States relationship with China is very good, and that’s also very good for Japan, who is our dear and close ally… President Xi will be substantially upping his purchase of soybean and other farm products, and anything good for our farmers is good for me.”

So the United States – the treaty ally, the regional anchor, the strategic heavyweight, the chief sheriff – chose soybeans over symbolism. And somehow, it’s Australia, treaty-less and several notches down the security pecking order, that’s accused of betrayal.

Of course, this was never just about Japan. The real subplot is China – the ever-useful antagonist in News Corp’s editorial universe, onto whom all anxieties and insinuations can be projected. With China cast as the villain, Labor is framed as its enabling understudy. In this framing, Albanese isn’t cautious – he’s compromised. His diplomacy reads as deference, his silence as submission.

The coverage doesn’t analyse foreign policy so much as rehearse a script, one where China plays the threat and Labor plays the enabler. Every headline gestures to the same conclusion: soft on Beijing, suspect at home.

Meanwhile, the actual government representatives of Japan in Australia have remained notably less theatrical than its former envoy. No ambassador expulsions. No trade threats. No public scolding of Canberra. The fact that the loudest demands for an Australian response are coming not from Tokyo or Washington, but from Holt Street, might raise a few eyebrows.

This is a borrowed crisis. Imported, inflated, and deployed not to support a regional partner, but to box in a domestic opponent. The choreography is as familiar as it is tired: find a China-related dispute, strip it of history, inflate it into a moral test, and then accuse Labor of flunking it.

But Canberra’s caution isn’t cowardice. It’s competence. There is no alliance obligation – legal, strategic or otherwise – that requires us to issue statements the US wouldn’t. And there’s no reason to jeopardise hard-won economic gains just to prove a point in someone else’s performance.

Since taking office, the Albanese government has quietly stabilised relations with Beijing. Ministerial dialogue has resumed. Wine tariffs gone. Lobsters, barley, coal – flowing again. Tourists and students returning. None of this involved capitulation. It simply required diplomacy. Yet even mild de-escalation is enough to trigger the usual Pavlovian response: if Labor isn’t shouting at China, it must be kneeling.

This assumption – that Australia’s job is to be the loudest moral megaphone in the room – would be curious if it weren’t so costly. We are expected to scold more than Washington, posture more than Tokyo, and sacrifice more than any of our actual allies – all while managing our own economic survival in the region.

One might call this performative alliance politics – loyalty measured not by substance, but by decibel. But foreign policy isn’t a casting call for deputy sheriff. Canberra’s task is to act in the national interest, not to audition for sidekick roles in someone else’s regional drama.

That’s why this whole saga deserves to be seen for what it is: a domestic stunt in diplomatic costume. The real aim was never to support Japan. It was to bait Labor into reacting, then punish them for reacting the wrong way.

And if the United States – treaty-bound, strategically central, and allegedly on the front line – can de-escalate to protect soybeans, perhaps Australia can be forgiven for protecting, say, a third of its entire export economy.

It’s not that we’re doing nothing. It’s that we’re choosing not to do something exceptionally unwise. Or, in other words, behaving like a country, not a cheer squad.

https://johnmenadue.com/post/2025/12/the-manufactured-china-japan-crisis-australia-didnt-need/

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