Buckle up: The Prime Minister prepares his body armour as he flies to a recognition ceremony in Tarin Kowt in Afghanistan in October. Credit:Andrew Meares Abbott returned from his trip humbled and empty-handed. While the episode had been a disaster, he was spared the full embarrassment. A still-fawning press bought the distracting spin. Meanwhile, the previous government's PNG solution began working, allowing Abbott to quietly backtrack from his commitments while taking credit for fewer boats. Abbott's second diplomatic imbroglio is likely to have more far-reaching consequences. It was to announce a one-year deadline on reaching a free trade agreement with China. On the surface, this might seem sensible. The government has been explicit about upgrading the role of economic diplomacy in Australian foreign policy. A deadline was intended to convey the government's commitment to that goal and to building economic relations with China at a time when political relations are set to become increasingly difficult. In fact, announcing a deadline was a blunder of the first order. Trade deals are among the most exacting form of diplomacy. They involve painstaking negotiations for market access, often over technicalities and in the face of opposition from influential constituencies. More than anything, they demand time and patience. With China, our biggest trade partner and the world's most valuable emerging market, it has always been more important to get the agreement right than just finished. To that end, Abbott's deadline has complicated the job. By injecting artificial urgency, the Prime Minister has pulled the rug from under his own trade negotiators and handed China a massive bargaining advantage. Abbott can't back out of the deal or the deadline, except at significant political cost to himself, and the Chinese know it. Beijing will almost certainly now take its foot off the pedal. By drawing out the next year of negotiations, it stands to secure major concessions at Australia's expense as the self-imposed deadline draws near. For a government determined to put ''economic diplomacy first'', this was a rookie error, indeed.

Illustration: John Spooner. The government's most serious foreign policy mistake so far, however, has been its embrace of schoolyard diplomacy. Both Abbott and Bishop have repeatedly, and unnecessarily, gone out of their way to describe Japan as ''Australia's best friend in Asia''. At one level, this just sounds a bit desperate. Announcing hierarchies in our diplomatic relationships serves little purpose beyond aggravating China by highlighting its subordinate place in Australian thinking. It's also inaccurate. Indeed, if friendship is a two-way street, and if Japan really is our best friend in Asia, why has Tokyo not publicly reciprocated the sentiment? The more concerning aspect about this kind of language, however, is what it portends in future. Open declarations of affection for Japan appear intended to soften the ground for the resurrection of one of two unfinished Howard-era initiatives: a more comprehensive defence alliance with Japan, or participation in an alliance of democracies. Neither would serve Australia's interests. Both are thinly veiled attempts at edging Australia into a more confrontational posture towards China, which is the the exact opposite of what we should be doing. Such policies would be especially misguided given the current regional security environment. Today, Japan and China are facing off over disputed islands in the East China Sea. China's strategy aims to exhaust Japan through low-level air and maritime intrusions. Japan's is to tempt China into an overreaction that triggers a regional backlash against Beijing. The risk of war is steadily growing. As it does, the imperative for Australia should be to avoid entanglement to the greatest possible extent in the north-east Asian conflict.

By cuddling up to Japan, the Abbott government is pre-emptively forfeiting that opportunity. It is divesting much needed diplomatic flexibility and instead seeking to lock Australia into unnecessarily rigid strategic arrangements. Australians should be aware of the risks. An alliance with Japan, whether bilateral or multilateral, would all but guarantee our involvement in at best a dangerous and escalating rivalry with China, and at worst an avoidable major power war. Raoul Heinrichs is a Sir Arthur Tange scholar at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University. Throughout 2007, he worked on foreign and security policy in the office of then Opposition Leader, Kevin Rudd. An earlier version of this article failed to mention this.