The Turnbull Government's foreign policy White Paper paints a picture of an uncertain future for our region, and a nation forced to reconsider our role and friendships. While the paper speaks about the need to hedge our bets by building stronger connections to emerging neighbouring powers, by wedding Australia to American and regional attempts to contain the rise of China it commits us to pursuing the impossible.
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China, as many commentators have already observed, cannot and will not be "contained". It appears increasingly likely that, over the coming decades, it will replace America as the dominant power in the Indo-Pacific region.
While that transition, which has been underway for more than a decade, will not be achieved overnight, it is a reality that will drop the curtain on a horrific two centuries for the Chinese people.
The Middle Kingdom, for so long the plaything of foreign imperialists including Russians, Germans, English, French, Americans and the Japanese, took control of its own destiny following the communist victory over the nationalists in 1949.
After a six-decade long ordeal by fire China is now one of the pre-eminent nations in the world. It is also Australia's largest trading partner for both imports and exports.
Australia, despite the relatively small size of our economy, is China's sixth largest trading partner overall. We are its fifth largest supplier of imports and its 10th largest customer for exports.
Trade between the two nations was valued at $155.2 billion in 2016, an increase of 3.7 per cent on the previous year.
While America, still identified as Australia's principal ally and the lynch pin of our national security in Thursday's White Paper, remains the world's largest economy with a nominal GDP of $19.4 trillion in 2017, that won't be the case forever.
China is expected to overtake the US as the world's largest economy by 2030. It has risen from the ashes of Japanese invasion and civil war to achieve a nominal GDP of $11.79 trillion in 2017.
With economists predicting China, India and Indonesia will be the three largest economies on earth by 2050 it is fair to say the American century is belatedly drawing to a close.
It is this reality that should be informing Australian foreign policy in 2017.
In 1942 John Curtin turned Australia away from Britain and towards America for protection "without any inhibitions of any kind". That decision, "free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom", was based on a clear understanding the world had changed.
The world has changed again. While the American alliance will remain vital for decades, we are at a point where we can no longer subordinate all of our foreign policy to it.
Given China is already vitally important to this country, and will only continue to become more so, we must learn to deal with that nation on our own terms, not as an American satellite.
President Trump's "twitter diplomacy" has been a timely reminder Australian and US interests won't, and don't, always coincide.
We need to maintain the best possible relations with both superpowers and, when required, act as a bridge between them.
