Rudd also disagreed with former prime minister Paul Keating’s long-standing assessment that the US was trying to contain China.
Former prime ministers Kevin Rudd and Paul Keating differ in their assessments of China.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
“I’ve got a lot of time for Paul – he and I are friends and colleagues and I respect so much of what he’s done for Australia,” Rudd said.
“But I think I would suggest that it’s important for us also to analyse how the strategic environment in Asia and the Indo-Pacific and, for that matter, globally is changing because of China’s own military rise.”
“Certainly, what drives I think Australian strategic thinking is how do we deter our friends in China from taking a premeditated, premeditated military action against Taiwan, which would then be a fundamental destabilisation of the strategic status quo.”