Bishop's charge For all the delusional huffing and puffing about our role as a China-US go-between, our foreign affairs efforts have been ineffectual at best and, more often, counterproductive. It was the Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, who led the charge against joining the AIIB. In a rational world, states realise that trade is a win-win business, but the economic reality is that Australia needs China and China doesn't need Australia. It's nice for us to have a fat trade surplus with China, but China doesn't much care. For a little while there, before iron ore production went through the roof, China did indeed need to be confident of access to our ore, but now its wants are easily met by global markets. It matters more to us that we sell services and stuff to them than it matters to China where it comes from. Thus Prime Minister Turnbull's pitch in China was primarily that of a mendicant, Australia trying to get money from China one way or another.

Xi Jinping wasn't begging for anything from Australia. It's rather strange then for the mendicant to be lecturing about military escalation when the mendicant has been a particularly willing party to starting the escalation. Ties to America We are collectively conditioned by history, culture, language, shared values, media ownership and, dare I suggest it, ethnicity to toe the American line against China. The pivot declaration still amounted to a shot across China's bows. It's no wonder China responded. One reason for the force of Paul Keating's warning against encirclement the week after Obama's November 2011 "pivot" speech was the rarity of a major political figure, even a major former political figure, being prepared to so publicly question American strategy.

So locked-in are we to the American view of China that Australia's political class and commentariat seem unable to consider the sources of conflict from China's perspective. Try wearing Chinese shoes for a while and think what the "pivot to Asia" looked like. Border disputes in the South China Sea are old and ongoing – we should have a little understanding given our inability to sort out our border with East Timor as priority is given to securing oil and gas at the expense of one of the world's poorest nations. But amidst the usual border tensions of a big power elbowing its smaller neighbours, suddenly an overwhelmingly superior military force says it's turning its focus away from the Middle East to concentrate on you, the Middle Kingdom. Show across China's bows "Pivot" is well short of George Bush's disastrous "Axis of Evil" name calling, but how did that pan out? It presaged escalating tensions and the Iraq war with all its unintended consequences. The pivot declaration and the escalated diplomatic and military policies that followed still amounted to a shot across China's bows. It's no wonder China responded.