RUDD ARTICLE REJECTED, ELEMENTS RECYCLED IN OTHER SPEECH'S-WHAT ELSE IS RUDD RECYCLING?

Spiked! The essay that never went to print

Daniel Flitton
September 5, 2009 - 12:00AM

KEVIN Rudd has felt the sting almost every author must at some point endure - his article of carefully clipped commentary dumped by an editor into the waste paper basket, never to grace a page.

Until now. The Age has obtained an essay penned by the Prime Minister earlier this year and posted for consideration to the prestigious American journal Foreign Affairs, only to have it rejected.

''For some, this may seem a pointless theoretical discussion of political taxonomies,'' Mr Rudd writes. Maybe the editor agreed. Mr Rudd has had published a number of longer magazine essays and newspaper opinion articles. Perhaps the problem this time lay with his dense descriptions. Was it the threat from ''incremental bifurcation'' in the Asia-Pacific region between China and the United States?

Or the call to ''remain vigilant against the possibility of alternative contingencies'' while accepting the ''need to work with the extant political vocabulary within China's national discourse''?

The run of cliches might also have brought him undone: ''China is the elephant in the living room that can no longer be ignored'', he writes, one that ''stands in a league of its own'' and ''needs a seat at the main table''.

The 28-page essay, dated March 12 and obtained under Freedom of Information laws, touches on a raft of contemporary challenges, ranging from climate change to the economic downturn, and managing ties between the US and China.

But Mr Rudd mostly laments the weakness of global political forums to spur the international co-operation needed to tackle such problems.

''The core challenge here is that the current edifice of global institutions is not strong enough to carry the weight of the challenges we face,'' he writes. ''There is a yawning gap between the capacity of existing global institutions designed to deal with the challenges of the past, but insufficiently mandated, resourced or representative of emerging power realities to deal with the challenges of the future.''

He champions a central role for the G20 meeting of the world's leading economies - including Australia - and for his pet project, an Asia Pacific Community to deal with growing regional security and economic threats.

It is also clear Mr Rudd has learnt the hard lesson for every writer: nothing written is ever wasted; try, and try again.

Phrases recycled from his failed entry to Foreign Affairs peppered a major speech he delivered in May to a regional strategic forum in Singapore.

He also draws on material similar to an earlier essay he published this year in The Monthly magazine.

James Hoge, the editor of Foreign Affairs, was not available to discuss the substance of Mr Rudd's submission, which the Prime Minister notes was prepared with help from Peter Varghese, then head of Australia's top intelligence agency, the Office of National Assessments, and Geremie Barme, a Chinese history professor at ANU.

In the essay, Mr Rudd variously describes the G20 as an ''incubator of global initiatives'', ''an enabling agency'' and ''a brokering mechanism'' for international action.

''In short, the G20 should act as the lightning rod for global leadership: articulating principles, defining broad objectives and crafting political consensus.''

G20 leaders will meet again this month in Pittsburgh.

He admits there is little appetite for a new organisation covering the Asia-Pacific, despite what he calls a ''strategic hotchpotch'' in the region.

But he maintains an Asia Pacific Community is needed to prevent tension between the US and China, and to draw a rising India closer to the region.

Read the essay here.

This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/national/spiked-the-essay-that-never-went-to-print-20090904-fbfz.html