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Anwar Ibrahim would not be the first political dissident who has struggled with the transition from opposition to incumbency. In office, his grasp of complex policy issues, such as the South China Sea, has sometimes lacked depth, while his rhetoric often appears overblown.

Since he became prime minister, in November 2022, Anwar has recast Malaysia’s non-aligned, hedged foreign policy with his repeated embrace of neutrality as his preferred setting for Malaysia, his reluctance to say anything but positive things about China and his visceral reactions to the Israel–Hamas conflict.

This matters to Australia because Malaysia is one of its longest-standing traditional security partners in Southeast Asia and facilitates Australian Defence Force access into the sub-region. Anwar’s apparent anti-Western and pro-China leanings will very probably make Malaysia harder to work with while he is in office. The country may be unreliable if there is a major regional security crisis involving China.

So far, Anwar has not changed Malaysia’s official defence and security settings. And members of Malaysia’s armed forces generally prize their inter-personal and training ties with Western counterparts, including Australia.

Also, outsiders had qualms about some of Malaysia’s foreign policy proclivities under Anwar’s predecessors. During former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad’s long tenure (1981 to 2003, and 2018 to 2020), Malaysia often supported pan-Asianist and pan-Islamic initiatives and sentiments, while also sharply criticising the policies of Western governments. Still, Kuala Lumpur maintained close, if low-profile military links to the United States while also husbanding its residual Commonwealth security ties, including its position in the Five Power Defence Arrangements (FPDA) with Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Britain.

There is a further domestic political context to some of Anwar’s foreign policy positioning. Nevertheless, doubts about Malaysia’s trajectory have notably risen under his leadership.

One obvious change factor is that the war in the Middle East has galvanised Anwar’s heartfelt attachment to the Palestinian cause, leading him to lionise leaders of Hamas as ‘freedom fighters’ and to mourn its political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, as a ‘dear friend’ after his assassination by Israel. This intemperate tone, and Anwar’s vitriolic outbursts against US support for Israel, will make it difficult for him to move closer to Washington for the remainder of his time in office, regardless of who wins the US presidential election in November.

Another hallmark of Malaysia’s foreign policy under Anwar has been the prevalence of pro-China sentiments voiced by him and his cabinet, including on Taiwan and the South China Sea. Beijing’s openly aggressive treatment of the Philippines and the near-permanent Chinese physical presence in Malaysia’s exclusive economic zone are overlooked.

On 19 June, during a visit of Chinese Premier Li Qiang to Malaysia, a joint statement by the two countries said, ‘Malaysia recognizes that Taiwan is an inalienable territory of the People’s Republic of China, in order for China to achieve national reunification and thus will not support any call for the independence of Taiwan.’ This unambiguous siding with Beijing prompted a protest by Taipei’s foreign ministry.

Anwar said in June that Malaysia had applied through Russia (in its current capacity as chair) to join the BRICS grouping, another signal of Kuala Lumpur’s willingness to align with China and Russia on the international stage. China’s state media has unsurprisingly welcomed the application. BRICS has notably failed to attract prominent new members, such as Argentina or Indonesia, and is now widely seen as a moribund forum, which even India, a founder member, has downgraded in its foreign policy.

Malaysian Foreign Minister Mohamad Hasan’s statement at the July ASEAN meeting of foreign ministers in Laos was a concerning precursor to what might be coming next year as Kuala Lumpur takes the reins as ASEAN’s rotating chair. In what was widely seen as a rebuke of the Philippines’ diplomatic efforts to enlist international support for its stand against China’s encroachment in the South China Sea, Hasan said, ‘If any ASEAN member … attempts to bring in external influence to solve its problems, it will lead to uncertainty in the Southeast Asian region.’

Malaysia’s desire to exclude other countries, such as Australia, Japan and the United States, from South China Sea disputes aligns with China’s preferences. It also helps China’s behind-the-scenes efforts to influence negotiations with ASEAN on a code of conduct for the South China Sea. It is particularly concerning that Anwar’s foreign minister explicitly equated the exclusion of countries apart from ASEAN members and China with the concept of ASEAN centrality.

Malaysia’s foreign policy tilt under Anwar naturally raises questions about its long-term value as a bilateral and multilateral security partner to Australia. Along with other ambivalent signals from ASEAN capitals, it should prompt an honest reappraisal of the Australian government’s determination to accord Southeast Asia a general priority within foreign policy. The Philippines and Vietnam aside, it’s not clear that beyond the ritual airing of ASEAN-centric bromides there is a collective vision or prize on offer to justify the ongoing level of diplomatic investment.

In the lexicon of Japan’s diplomacy, there is a phrase, ‘China magic’.

Both Japan and Australia seem to be absorbed by this magical power and obsessed with making efforts not to displease their Chinese counterparts. If they are not careful, Beijing will exploit this excessive enthusiasm for good relations, as it has in the past.

When the Quad foreign ministers meet on 29 July in Tokyo, the public agenda and remarks are likely to be largely positive—but don’t let that distract from the reality that the private talks will be largely dominated by China.

Just one example of Beijing’s recent undiplomatic and provocative statements came in May when the Chinese Ambassador to Japan, Wu Jianghao, said, in front of Japanese politicians and media, that ‘the Japanese people would be brought into fire’ if Japan should support the independence of Taiwan.

‘Fire’ means the use of force by China, which it doesn’t rule out using to achieve its proclaimed objective of ‘reunification with Taiwan’. So the remarks, taken literally, meant that the Peoples’ Liberation Army of China would not hesitate to kill Japanese citizens if Japan adopted a particular political position.

This is a preposterous statement to be made by a diplomat, who is expected to work hard to keep peace and improve the bilateral relationship between Japan and China.

What puzzled many Japanese people even more was the rather timid reaction by the Japanese government against such inflammatory language. This was the second time the ambassador had made such a provocative statement, yet Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) made only a muted protest, delivered by telephone and not in the traditional and formal way of summoning the ambassador to the ministry.

This reminds many observers of the weak and meek protests made by the then vice minister of foreign affairs after China launched five ballistic missiles into Japan’s exclusive economic zone in response to the visit to Taipei by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2021.

Australian analysts might see some parallels here. The recent visit to Australia by Chinese Premiere Li Qiang ended with smiles all round despite the reality that China’s economic coercion against Australia is yet to be fully lifted and Australian navy and air force personnel have been subjected to unprofessional, reckless and dangerous behavior by Chinese counterparts.

Why so? One commonality between Tokyo and Canberra seems to be the urge on the part of their political leaders to proclaim that they are doing better than their predecessors in dealing with China.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is eager to claim his improvement on China relations over predecessors Shinzo Abe and Yoshihide Suga. For their part, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong are promoting their approach of ‘stabilising’ the relationship and claiming superior diplomatic management compared with the previous Coalition government.

This is not the way diplomacy should be conducted. Consistency and continuity ought to be a guiding principle.

Many seasoned diplomats and clear-eyed observers would agree that the recent charm offensive by China would not have been possible without a solid and steadfast resistance by Australia against the massive economic coercion for the past few years.

Both Japan and Australia must be prepared for an urgent policy response in the event that China takes some kind of dramatic, escalatory action, such as firing on their their military aircraft or warships in an act of miscalculation. It is no use pretending that this is not a credible contingency for both our countries.

Even pro-Beijing commentators should know that China’s switch from ‘wolf warrior diplomacy’ to the new charm offensive needs to be taken with a grain of salt. As a case in point, the behaviour of the Chinese armed forces in the South China Sea and East China Sea has not improved tangibly whatsoever.

While it might not sound pleasant to some Australians, China’s recent approach could be taken as a sign that it sees Australia as the weakest link among Quad members.

History should be kind enough to remember that Australia has stood tall and dignified under the unprecedented waves of trade measures that disrupted and blocked the flow of many Australian exports to Chinese markets. In facing such adversity, far-sighted leadership galvanised the nation and refused to make unprincipled concessions for the sake of immediate economic gains.

Australia was most innovative in coming up with the brilliant initiative of AUKUS. For that, it has won international admiration and respect. Our mates in Australia must fully understand the importance of cherishing such a reputation and credentials.

Now is not the time to talk partisan politics, but rather to strengthen our two countries’ stances across their respective political divides against any possible attempt by our adversaries to drive a wedge between parties and weaken our position to deal with an authoritarian state.

Japan has some bitter memories. When the international community came up with strong sanctions in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, China thought Japan was the weak link among democratic nations. Then Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen boasted in his memoir that China succeeded in using Japan to weaken the international sanctions regime. He even admitted that Beijing took full advantage of the Japanese emperor’s visit to China at the time for just that purpose.

Australia’s modern leaders need to be wary that excessive exuberance while receiving Chinese leaders such as Premier Li—either in private or public—might leave Beijing with the impression they might use Australia in future just as they did Japan back then.

Despite India’s ardent wish, the world is nowhere close to becoming a multipolar system with India as one of the poles, or centres of power. Instead, today’s global system is best described as partially unipolar and nearing bipolar, with US influence waning and China arriving.

India’s best bet lies in embracing this bipolar competition and cultivating deeper ties with the US.

At a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) this month, Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar reiterated that the world was moving closer to ‘real multipolarity’. But this is an unrealistic proposition. Organisations put in place by non-Western countries to constrain US power and encourage multipolarity are weakening as rifts among member states widen. Examples include the SCO and the BRICS mechanism for cooperation by Brazil, Russia, India, China, South African and, more recently, other countries.

Indian policymakers believe multipolarity could serve their country’s interests better, but they are wrong.

The US and China are the poles in the international system, as leading states that hold a disproportionate share of economic strength and military capabilities. The US economy was worth US$27 trillion in 2022, while China’s reached US$18 trillion. In third place, far behind those two, was Germany, with US$4.5 trillion. India’s economy had the fifth spot, with US$3.5 trillion.

In 2022, military spending was US$877 billion in the US and US$292 billion in China. The next 38 states spent around US$923 billion combined. While India’s defence budget was the fourth largest, at US$81.4 billion, just below Russia’s US$86.4 billion, it hardly compared with the leading two.

In other areas too, no other state has capabilities comparable to the United States’ or China’s. Both are technologically strong, and Washington has a huge alliance network.

India’s proclivity for multipolarity intensified after the dissolution of the USSR in the 1990s. In 1998, then Russian foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov proposed the Russia-India-China (RIC) alignment to constrain US hegemony. Relations were to be strengthened between emerging centres of power. India followed this proposal.

Then in 2006, dissatisfaction with US unilateralism in global governance paved the way for the formation of BRICS. The BRICS states used their distinctiveness and coalition building to construct a soft balancing mechanism for facilitating the rise of emerging powers (mostly themselves) and restricting US dominance. In 2017, India also became a formal member of SCO, a non-Western regional security grouping in Central Asia.

Success of these arrangements depended on rifts between members not getting in the way. But they are getting in the way, especially for India.

Beijing’s New Asian Security concept, unveiled in 2014, contradicts the underlying objective of these groupings not just to shift the power balance away from Washington but to distribute it more evenly. Instead, China intends to be a peer competitor to the US and covets Asian hegemony. This harms India’s regional primacy in South Asia and Russia’s assumption of sharing great power status with China.

India faces a severe Chinese threat along its borders. Its long-term friendship with Russia is weakening due to the latter’s shifting allegiance to China. Beijing has become a more valuable partner to Moscow in circumventing the West’s support for Ukraine. Moscow taking India’s side in a future contest over the border with China is now wishful thinking. Indeed, the likelihood of Russia positively backing China may be rising.

Ruptures in India’s bilateral relationships are threatening multilateral cohesion. Prime Minister Narendra Modi skipped this year’s SCO summit in Kazakhstan. Instead, Jaishankar attended and met Chinese Foreign MInister Wang Yi on the sidelines to form mechanisms to end the border stalemate. At last year’s summit, when India was the host, Modi expressed his waning interest in SCO by convening the meeting online rather than in person.

Previously, SCO meetings presided over by Russia facilitated gatherings of defence and foreign ministers from India and China after fighting broke out on their disputed border in 2020. But more recent Russian attempts through SCO and BRICS to mitigate bilateral tensions have been futile. Tensions thawed at the 2019 BRICS and RIC meetings after a 2017 Himalayan stand-off between India and China, but recurring border tension since then suggests the rupture between the two countries is irrepairable.

The assumption that BRICS countries differ markedly with the United States on global governance is also eroding. Research has found that, out of 47 cooperation areas between them, BRICS members differed from US preferences in only four: cross-border financial transaction, de-dollarisation, conventions on counter-terrorism, and energy security. This alignment indicates that it may be possible to reconcile India’s interests with America’s, as Russia’s influence wanes and China becomes more adversarial.

India needs to accept that the world is dominated by competition between the US and China. And India’s desire to become one of several poles cannot be fulfilled if China’s bid for hegemony in Asia succeeds, so it needs US support. As the US has similar concerns regarding China, India must leverage this to cultivate deeper military and technological ties with America. That is how it can strengthen its position on the world stage.

The Crowdstrike software outage disrupted airlines, banks, supermarkets and other major services—causing significant inconvenience for millions of people worldwide.  

It has prompted many to marvel that so many global operations and organisations rely on so few cybersecurity companies—and hence a bungle at a single firm means blue screens, grounded flights and frozen financial transactions across the world.  

Yet the well-meaning calls to have a wider range of cybersecurity providers to avoid single points of failure overlook the fact that there aren’t a lot of truly trusted firms out there.   

Much like the 5G dilemma in the late 2010s—in which two Scandinavian firms were considered the only safe options—once you search beyond the big, mostly United States-based cyber security companies, many of the alternatives are unpalatable or even unthinkable, such as big Chinese providers. Diversification of cybersecurity services to spread the risk around isn’t so easy, at least immediately.  

Yes, more trusted providers would be ideal. But the emphasis must be on trust, not simply availability. Australia should continue to entrust our critical infrastructure, technology and services only to proven providers that don’t pose long-term and deeper risks than occasional mistakes causing outages.   

There is no perfect system or product. All require regular maintenance and will therefore have vulnerabilities. The risks are twofold: the first is unforced errors either through human failure or technical glitches, and the second is the threat from malign actors and malicious software. There are ways to mitigate both—but not to eliminate them altogether.  

A temporary outage should be seen as a known risk of our digital world, just as we accept that floods and fires are realities in the natural world. Inconvenience isn’t the same as catastrophe.  

Malign threats ultimately pose the bigger problem, and the best way to safeguard against those is to stick with trusted providers. To turn hastily to providers from high-risk countries–whether China or Russia given the shadowy connections of the US-banned Kaspersky–would amount to solving the reliability issue by creating an even worse security weakness. 

In 2018, allowing Chinese companies to supply Australia’s 5G infrastructure would have brought a degree of immediate convenience. But we, followed by many Western and partner nations, resolved that only Nokia and Ericsson could ensure long-term security and sovereignty.  

That episode was a wake-up call that, over time, we need industry policies, involving collaboration with friendly nations, to ensure we have resilient sectors across critical technologies and won’t ever be left with our only choice being Chinese or other high-risk vendors.  

And that goes for cybersecurity as well. Greater choice of trusted providers would of course be in the national interest, but that is a longer-term challenge.   

Trust is everything. This doesn’t just mean trust that nothing will go wrong–it means trust when something does go wrong. At no stage was there a security problem with Crowdstrike. There are, of course, flow-on safety effects, with criminals seeking to take advantage of people who are trying to get back online as quickly as possible.   

But the transparency Crowdstrike showed has helped mitigate these risks. We knew within minutes what the problem was, Crowdstrike produced a fix in under 80 minutes and its CEO posted a public apology for the disruption within hours.   

We couldn’t possibly expect such transparency from operators in countries like China.   

Compare the situation with the COVID outbreak; imagine the digital equivalent of Beijing’s cover up of the origins of the virus—even if it was a technical error and not a malicious action.  

Compare also the Crowdstrike disruption with another major event this year that exposed the world’s dependence on software—the XZ attack uncovered in late March. The China-based hacker who privately claimed responsibility spent two years infiltrating and infecting Linux compression tool XZ—software that is used by organisations globally, including by Australia’s intelligence agencies.   

The malicious infection would have spread across the world had it not been for a US-based engineer who, working in his private time, noticed that software relying on XZ was operating about half a second more slowly than it should, and reported the anomaly. His post meant the Five Eyes intelligence agencies were able to prevent the attack. Of course, the added irony is that if the public-spirited engineer had lived in China, he could never have made such a disclosure.  

While Crowdstrike was criticised for taking almost six hours to apologise for a fault, the XZ hijacker was only sorry that his plot to covertly infect hundreds of millions of computers was disrupted.  

Cybersecurity firms need to enjoy a special type of trust because they require privileged access to our computer networks to be effective. We let them in so they can protect us.   

Imagine if a cybersecurity company was controlled by a foreign state and could be compelled to insert or spread a malicious update.  

Beijing passed a law in 2021 that requires any business operating in China to report any coding flaws to a government agency before patching the vulnerability or revealing its existence publicly. A report from the Atlantic Council makes clear that the information about the bug is then shared with China’s state-sponsored hackers, who exploit them.  

Consistent with this, our own Australian Signals Directorate just this month led a group of allied intelligence agencies in declaring that China’s Ministry of State Security was behind major cyber attacks on Australian networks.  

Granted, it is hard to imagine a major Australian bank, airline or other critical infrastructure operator turning to a Chinese cybersecurity firm. But, as with 5G, many countries might see it as an acceptable alternative.  

For Australia, the lesson is that we must accept, for now, the risk of occasional widespread outages due to our reliance on a few trusted firms. Longer term, resilience can come from incentives to build and strengthen our own cybersecurity sectors. Facing a bushfire season, we would never turn to firebugs just because they know a thing or two about pyrology. Likewise, we mustn’t learn the wrong lessons from the Crowdstrike blackout. 

There’s no end in sight to the nightmare of Russia’s assault on Ukraine. Scores were left dead and injured across Ukraine last week when Russian missiles struck Kyiv and other cities. One even tore through the country’s largest children’s hospital.

Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong called the attack abhorrent and condemned the ‘targeting of civilian infrastructure, including hospitals.’

It’s a laudable sentiment, but Wong’s fine words can’t conceal the massive China-shaped hole in Australia’s response to Russia’s brutality.

The Albanese government has said that ‘those who provide material support to Russia’s illegal and immoral war will face consequences.’ Australia has accordingly sanctioned a range of North Korean and Iranian entities and individuals supplying the Russian military.

Yet Canberra hasn’t fully followed through with its pledge to punish those who materially aid and abet Moscow. More than two years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Beijing continues to support Moscow diplomatically by amplifying Kremlin-friendly messages and undermining Kyiv’s negotiating position. China has also offered an economic lifeline to Russia in the form of surging bilateral trade.

But worse than all of that, China has backed Russia on the battlefield. Although China might not be sending lethal military assistance, its technology exports are critical to Russia’s ability to wage war against Ukraine and its people. According to analysis from Nathaniel Sher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, every month China supplies ‘over [US]$300 million worth of dual-use products identified … as “high priority” items necessary for Russia’s weapons production.’

These essential Chinese inputs to Russia’s defence industry include machine tools, microprocessors, navigation devices, optical equipment and other items. Chinese companies have also acted as intermediaries by transhipping foreign-made dual-use goods to Russia. Many of the Russian missiles, drones and tanks targeting Ukraine and its citizens depend on Chinese technology and supply chains to kill and maim.

It’s possible that Chinese companies even had a hand in the manufacture of the missile that slammed into the children’s hospital in Kyiv last week.

Despite the recent announcement of more Australian military assistance, Canberra could still be doing more to directly support Ukraine. Among other things, the Albanese government could reestablish the Australian embassy in Kyiv, deepen intelligence sharing with Ukraine and elevate the Ukrainian struggle in Australia’s regional diplomacy.

But the hard truth is that efforts to defend Ukraine and its people will be hamstrung without also tackling China’s support for Russia’s belligerence. As NATO’s Washington Summit Declaration plainly stated: China ‘has become a decisive enabler of Russia’s war against Ukraine through its so-called “no limits” partnership and its large-scale support for Russia’s defence industrial base.’

Some of Australia’s closest allies and partners have already acted to meet this challenge. The US, EU, Britain and Japan have all levelled sanctions against Chinese companies exporting dual-use products to Russia.

Although the Albanese government has been a prolific user of sanctions against Russia, Myanmar, North Korea, Iran and others, it still hasn’t moved against the Chinese companies supplying Russian defence industry.

Imposing such sanctions on Chinese companies wouldn’t be entirely risk free for Australia. Beijing could delay the expected removal of the final trade restrictions on live lobster and red meat if Canberra threw the hammer down on Chinese companies. China might even threaten to impose new coercive measures on other Australian exports or freeze some forms of diplomatic contact with Canberra.

But if China’s so-far fairly boilerplate rhetorical response to Japan’s recent sanctions is a reliable guide, then there’s every chance Beijing won’t retaliate.

And as unhappy as Beijing might be with Canberra for imposing such sanctions, China would still have many compelling reasons to keep ties with Australia broadly stable. China likely doesn’t want to reverse the last few years of ongoing relationship repair with Australia and again suffer the costs of excluding valuable Australian commodities from its market.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that sanctions will persuade China to stop supplying Russia with dual-use technology. The US, EU, British and Japanese sanctions on Chinese companies haven’t yet staunched the flow of the technological inputs that Russia’s defence industry needs. And the long history of sanctions points to their patchy record of changing targeted countries’ behaviour.

But if Australia really is ‘resolute in [its] support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,’ then it’s hard to see how the Albanese government can avoid imposing such sanctions.

To give China extra reason to wind back its support for Russia, Australia could also quietly encourage regional allies and partners like New Zealand, South Korea and Singapore to take similar measures. Beijing might not be swayed even if Canberra could build a coalition of regional capitals willing to act against the Chinese companies supplying Russia’s war machine. And yet such an approach still stands a better chance of changing China’s calculus than the verbal objections that the Albanese government has offered to date.

Speaking last month at the Summit on Peace in Ukraine, Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme Bill Shorten called for a world ‘where no country dominates and no country is dominated.’

This is a noble goal. But Australia can’t hope to build that kind of world if it isn’t willing to take concrete action against China’s material support for Russia’s invasion and occupation of Ukraine.