Prime Minister Julia Gillard passes the PLA honour guard during the welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing last week.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard passes the PLA honour guard during the welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing last week. Photo: Andrew Meares
And maps can really point to places
Where life is evil now:
Nanking; Dachau.
- W.H. Auden's In Time of War, XVI Sonnet

In 1938, W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood were commissioned to travel to China as war correspondents covering the Sino-Japanese conflict. They subsequently published a book of prose and poetry called Journey to a War.
Will future generations look back on the events unfolding today as missteps on a journey to another Sino-Japanese war?
A series of dangerous exchanges have taken place over disputed islands in the South China Sea. Nationalism's return to favour in both China and Japan adds to the likelihood that neither will make the concessions necessary to peacefully resolve their territorial disputes. What lessons from the past would help avoid a calamitous war that will surely implicate Australia?
Australian commentators on international affairs have, until recently, dismissed the possibility that growing tensions between China and Japan could lead to full-scale conflict. One reason for their confidence has been the close economic interdependence of the two east Asian nations and the growing economic integration of the entire region.
Confidence in the remedial qualities of economic interdependence draws heavily on thinkers such as Immanuel Kant, who wrote in his 1795 essay Perpetual Peace that ''the spirit of commerce … sooner or later takes hold of every nation, and is incompatible with war''. Economic interdependence certainly increases the costs of conflict, but it does not guarantee peace, let alone stability.
In the years preceding the Sino-Japanese War to which Auden and Isherwood were witness, China was Japan's second largest trading partner after the United States. Domestic political realities, ideological fervour, and the cravings for territorial expansion have all, many times in the past, overwhelmed the demands of economic reason.
What is certain is that conflict in Asia will have a ruinous economic, as well as a calamitous human, effect. In Journey to a War, Isherwood described a scene where he looked down on war ''as a bird might - seeing only a kind of sinister agriculture or anti-agriculture''. Isherwood described how '' … immediately below us peasants were digging in the fertile, productive plain. Further on there would be more peasants in uniform, also digging - the unproductive, sterile, trench.'' What an apt metaphor for war and its inherently unproductive, wasteful character.
The ever-growing prosperity we enjoy in Australia would be immediately interrupted if a major conflict were to occur in Asia, as would the economic health of all nations throughout the region, including those of the potential protagonists. Over half of China's GDP comes directly from trade, and Japan's dependency on foreign trade is even more overwhelming. Shipping lanes indispensable to this trade would be compromised if a miscalculated or irrational act was committed by either party to defend national territorial integrity or pride.
By the time Isherwood and Auden left England in January 1938, Asia was already at war. As the correspondents travelled by steamboat from Hong Kong to the mainland, they passed a Japanese gunboat. Isherwood described the crew as ''self-quarantined in their hatred''. ''Absorbed in their duties,'' he wrote ''they scarcely gave us a glance - and this seemed the strangest, most unnatural of all. That is what War is, I thought: two ships pass each other, and nobody waves his hand.''
Australia and Japan, as key allies of the United States, have been engaged in high-level military co-operation and dialogue for some time. Australia and China have taken steps recently to build confidence between their respective armed forces. In 2010, the Royal Australian Navy and the People's Liberation Army Navy conducted live-fire training exercises for the first time. A bilateral exercise focused on disaster relief was concluded in December 2011 and last year, a series of low-level military exercises were conducted with the Chinese navy. Further exchanges were negotiated during Prime Minister Julia Gillard's recent visit to China.
These are sensible, constructive measures worthy of productive relationship between a creative middle power and a traditional regional leader. When Chinese and Australian ships pass each other, someone will wave. The possibility of miscommunication at sea, where territorial ambiguity narrows the margin for error, has been reduced.
Such exercises have not, however, been conducted between China and Japan. In 2009, then Japanese prime minister Yukio Hatoyama announced plans (subsequently cancelled) to hold the first joint military exercise between the two countries. Confidence has recently been further eroded by the official language used by states seemingly ''self-quarantined in hatred''. Language conducive to the diplomatic resolution of problems has been supplanted. Diplomacy has been devalued as a legitimate instrument to achieve national interests. Preserving peace, however, should be in every nation's interest.
Journey to a War features a sonnet sequence by W.H. Auden, In Time of War. Auden, who later won a Pulitzer prize for poetry in 1948, understood the importance of language and its application to international relations. In the 19th sonnet, Auden proposed:
Far off, no matter what good they intended,
The armies waited for verbal error
With all the instruments for causing pain:

For over four decades now, no major Asian power has attacked another. Given the growing regional tensions, the continuation of this extraordinary period of peace depends heavily on the skill of the region's diplomats, and the desire of their respective leaders to return diplomacy to the front line of international relations. The 19th sonnet continues:
And on the issue of their charm depended
A land laid waste, with all its young men slain
The women weeping, and the towns in terror.

The alternative to a regional commitment to diplomacy is to indulge those who see the threat of military force, complemented by unambiguous or inflammatory official language, as the primary instrument to resolve conflicts. If the art of diplomacy is neglected, the armies of Asia will remain ready for ''…verbal error, with all the instruments for causing pain''. Verbal error will one day surely come.
The instruments of war are now far more sophisticated than in 1938 and capable of causing pain on a considerably greater scale - although it is unlikely that any future war will match the barbarity of the Sino-Japanese War. The rise of China, the long economic stagnation of Japan, and inevitable relative decline in American influence suggests that a new balance of powers will eventually re-emerge in Asia. The situation is very different to that of the 1930s, when China was weak and divided, and Japan was a confident and expanding empire. China is no longer fraught with division, as it was during the Sino-Japanese War. Calculated aggression against China today would be a highly irrational act. China, simply, is too strong to be kicked around.
Balances of powers in Asia have preserved peace for centuries in the past.
If active diplomacy, economic engagement and exchange were to work in symphony with a balanced regime of mutual deterrence, a concert or community of powers could again emerge.
While the potential for conflict is real, the nations of Asia have a common interest to build confidence and resolve tensions. It is likely that another major east Asian war would involve Australia. All the instruments for preserving peace open to a creative middle power such as Australia should be employed to ensure that such a horrific event is avoided.
Andrew Hunter is chairman of the Australian Fabians.