While there was much to commend in Paul Keating's speech on Australia's China policy on Monday it would be foolhardy for any government to swallow his arguments hook, line and sinker.
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Although, for example, the former Labor PM was correct in stating China will outstrip India in all areas for decades to come, it would be unwise to pin all our economic and diplomatic hopes on the communist superpower at the expense of the world's largest democracy.
Mr Keating was keen to quote the former US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, whose strategies appear to being implemented at least in part by the Trump White House and who made a surprise appearance at the recent state dinner for Scott Morrison in Washington, on China's successful marriage of "modern characteristics" with its Confucian legacy.
He was less ready to endorse Kissinger's oft repeated proposition the US, and by implication other industrialised Western democracies such as Australia, should support nations with similar values to their own.
Mr Keating was also critical of America's shift away from a Woodrow Wilsonian policy of US "exceptionalism" based on ideology and the pursuit of altruistic virtue for virtue's sake in favour of a return to the "realpolitik" approach to foreign affairs practised with such success by Teddy Roosevelt in the first decade of the 20th century.
"As someone said, President Trump is restoring America as a selfish state among selfish states," Mr Keating remarked.
Kissinger, whose endorsement of the national interest as a significant factor in US diplomacy during the Nixon and Ford years contributed to extricating America from Vietnam, opening diplomatic relations with Red China and kickstarting the Middle Eastern peace process, foreshadowed the need for America to move even further in this direction in his 1994 book Diplomacy.
It would be remiss of the Australian media if it failed to report such matters.
He warned that as China rose, America's position as the sole superpower following the dissolution of the Soviet Union would be eroded and it would need to turn to "balance of power" diplomacy to maintain its influence on global events. That has been happening for the last 20 years or more.
Where Mr Keating errs most is in his condemnation of criticisms of China over the implications of the Middle Kingdom's rise by Australian political leaders and by the Australian media.
"The whispered word "communism" of old is now being replaced with the word "China"," he said. "...foreign policy and the elasticity of diplomacy are being supplanted by the phobias of a group of national security agencies... ".
When there is incontrovertible evidence Chinese agents are interfering in our political processes and that Chinese spies are hacking strategically significant computer networks, including Parliament House, it would be remiss of our security agencies if they did not speak up. It would be equally remiss of the Australian media if it failed to report on such matters.
Surely Mr Keating is across the events involving Sam Dastyari and the more recent revelations that have emerged from the NSW ICAC investigation into the alleged Chinese donation of $100,000 to the ALP.
Yes, we need to work on rebuilding our relationship with China which is at its lowest ebb for decades.
But, that said, we need to back our own values and to push back when they, and our institutions, are attacked by a foreign power. The alternative is to risk becoming an economic vassal to a state whose long term objectives are manifestly different to our own.
