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Tag Archive for: China
Tag Archive for: China
ASPI suggests: Asia Pacific edition
Welcome back for another instalment of ASPI suggests from Washington DC. I’ve found our region’s experts have a lot to offer our American colleagues when it comes to understanding the Asia Pacific, especially Southeast Asia. This week’s instalment showcases this regional expertise.
In time for PM Abbott’s visit to Batam this week, ANU’s Jacqueline Baker asks, can Australia avoid making the same old mistakes with Indonesia? She explains, even though Indonesia is now a democracy, that doesn’t make things any easier: ‘With Indonesia’s democratisation, suddenly the political terrain got a whole lot more complicated and Australia just doesn’t have the political skills, let alone the white paper to manage it.’ Read her recommendations here.
Meanwhile, Arif Havas Oegreseno says there’s much South China Sea claimants can learn from the recent Indonesia–Philippines maritime agreement (PDF). Former Indonesian Ambassador to Belgium, Luxembourg and the EU, Oegreseno highlights the centrality of UNCLOS and the need to find cooperation on public goods where there are no maritime boundaries. Read more
Obama after West Point
President Obama’s explanation of his foreign policy has come and gone, but he has won few converts. True, he tells a credible story about continuing US leadership, exceptionalism, and the intermeshing of unilateral and multilateral approaches. But that’s largely a story about mechanics—about how the US acts in the world. And it’s a story told at a time when allies and partners aren’t just anxious about the how, they’re also worried about the when, where, and why.
Obama’s presentation shows he’s someone who fits naturally in the Joseph Nye-John Ikenberry school of international relations. No surprises there. He doesn’t rush to use of hard power, he accepts unilateral use of force is justified in defence of core interests, and he’s interested in using multilateral institutions and regimes as a means of promoting and extending US leadership.
He didn’t just talk about his academic settings, though, but his emotional ones as well, presenting himself as a figure ‘haunted’ by the deaths and injuries of US soldiers in wars. The Obama of 2014 is a less assured figure than the Obama of 2008, and it comes across even in the style of his speeches: the oratory is less sweeping, the practical limitations on grand designs are more pronounced. (As an oratorical exercise, Obama’s commencement speech at West Point can’t hold a candle to this one.) Read more
Asian security doctrines (2): the biggest question
The biggest question facing Asia is becoming even starker because leaders are giving such different answers. The leaders of the US, China and Japan have just illustrated the conundrum that Rod Lyon outlined in his piece on Asia’s fraying order. Simply stated, the biggest question is: who rules? Or, in slightly expanded form, it asks: what is the Asian security system and how will it run?
Mind you, Asia is lucky that it has graduated to the point where this is the major security quandary it faces. In recent memory, the problems were even bigger: will the new nations of Asia form and unite? Can Asia modernise and deliver a better life for its people? Read more
Hard power: little power, hard to use
Peter Jennings picks up a theme that has been working its way through the Western security community for some years now, and quite explicitly so since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: hard power is back.
That’s welcome news for many who are attracted to security studies precisely because the discipline deals with the real questions of military force, not long-term ephemeral wishes about change. But before we don our Machiavellian robes, we should look at just how much ‘power’ this recent spate of hard power use has achieved. Read more
F-35B JSF for the ADF—a viable option in the 2015 White Paper? (Part 2)
In my last post, I considered the operational and technical challenges of Australia acquiring F-35B STOVL Joint Strike Fighters and operating them from the Canberra class LHDs. In an ideal budget environment, were the decision to acquire the F-35B in the 2015 Defence White Paper to be made, the Abbott Government would also acquire two or three dedicated aviation support vessels to support them, and leave the LHDs purely for undertaking amphibious operations. But as the May 2014 budget has made clear, Australia doesn’t live within an ‘ideal budgetary environment’ and it seems unlikely additional ships will be forthcoming. If Australia does acquire the F-35B, they’ll have to operate from the LHDs (with all the technical and operational challenges that that would involve) or from forward land-bases as part of an expeditionary operation. Read more
A fraying Asian security order?
The Asian security architecture has long been defined by two sets of arrangements: a US-centred set of alliance arrangements, and an ASEAN-centred set of institutions. The conundrum of the modern Asian security environment is that both sets of arrangements—devised during an era of relatively weak Asian powers—are struggling for leverage in an era of stronger Asian powers.
China’s rise lies at the heart of the problem. While scholars debate the extent to which Beijing even has a deliberate grand strategy, I think China currently pursues two distinct objectives. It seeks a culture of deference towards China’s interests among its neighbours, and a Great Wall at Sea to hold US naval power away from the Asian mainland. Those objectives are of course related: it’s easier for China to create a deferential regional hierarchy if a maritime buffer zone makes a US naval presence in the western Pacific less assured. The Great Wall at Sea pursues that goal of a weakened US presence in the maritime domain, and President Xi Jinping’s advocacy last week of a region free from US alliances is intended to pursue it on the land. Read more
Domestic politics as a game-changer in Asia
Rod Lyon recently argued that an interesting feature of geostrategic competition in Asia is the search for ‘game-changers’ in military technology. Regional governments’ search for such ‘force-multiplier-level enhancements’ is one source of the present moment’s strategic uncertainty. Another is the uncertainty surrounding the strategic trajectory of a number of pivotal actors in the Asia-Pacific. A major part of that story relates to China: what kind of place in the sun would the Chinese leadership be happy with? But there’s plenty of uncertainty to go around, and it’s often fuelled by domestic political forces.
Throughout its history, the United States has shown considerable capacity to alter its international persona. Beginning as 13 unassuming colonies, it marched across the American continent and out into the Western Pacific, overturning the pre-Columbian and European political orders. Then, quite abruptly, it altered course and settled into a pattern of shrewd selective engagement with the international system (sometimes mistakenly called isolationism). Upon being dragged into WWII, the US again changed orientations, becoming the global architect of Western security arrangements and the designer of Bretton Woods—becoming, essentially, a manager of world affairs and dispenser of public goods. Read more
Cyber wrap
The big cyber news out of the US this week was the Obama Administration’s release of the results of its three-month review into ‘big data’ and privacy. The report found that while big data can drive social progress, it can also be misappropriated to undermine civil rights and privacy protections. Check out this blog by John Podesta for a digestible breakdown of the review’s findings and recommendations. While reactions to the report have been mixed, it’s heartening to see the Administration continues to make moves to operate more effectively in the digital realm. On that note, a war-gaming exercise focused on cyber security was held in Washington DC last week to simulate the Capitol’s response to a cyber attack, which saw Congress and the White House pass a bare-bones cyber security bill to support industry—not a bad start.
The CeBit conference kicked off in Sydney this week. At the meeting on Monday, CSIRO took the opportunity to release its new report Enabling Australia’s Digital Future: Cyber Security Trends and Implications (PDF). The report observes the increasing digitisation of life in Australia and highlights the risk of being caught ill-equipped to deal with an evolving cyber threat landscape. CSIRO Futures Director, James Deverell, has called for cyber security to be reimagined, not as an IT-only issue but as a responsibility shared between ‘government, research organisations, industry and the public’. Here’s a quick run-down from Deverell over at The Conversation. The CSIRO report ties in nicely with the case being made by Jason Healey over at the Atlantic Council, which this week launched a report that highlights just how destructive future cyber threats will be for our digitally-dependent and interconnected world. Read more
China–Australia cyber relations: insights for a cooperative future
‘We build too many walls and not enough bridges’ – Sir Isaac Newton
Having spent the last week in Beijing meeting with a range of think tanks, government officials and academics, I was struck by the importance our hosts placed upon the relationship with Australia. The concept used most frequently by the Chinese in relation to Australia was as ‘the bridge’ between China and the US. The Chinese clearly perceive an important role for Australia in evolving great power relationships, as well as viewing Australia as a nation with a strong regional role. Important as it is to be cautious about Chinese intent—and Australia has previously been reluctant to be cast in the role of a bridge—such positive sentiments should offer opportunities for future cooperation.
Obviously, recent cooperation on the search for missing flight MH-370 has assisted in building ties between the two nations. There was also an advantage to arriving in the wake of Prime Minister Abbott’s visit to China, which had focused predominantly on strengthening economic and security ties, and which had included proposals for closer cooperation in countering cyber-security threats and encouraging more frequent defence exchanges. That visit had clearly left a positive impression upon the Beijing policy community. Read more
Portrait of a Minister: Julie Bishop’s economic diplomacy
One of the things that any new Minister for Foreign Affairs has to decide is where to focus his or her attention within an extensive portfolio. Foreign affairs spans a wide field including security, prosperity, international order and international aid.
Some past ministers have seemingly decided to cast themselves as ‘Minister for International Cooperation’, focusing their attention on the UN and multilateral institutions, while others have aligned closely with their defence counterpart, positioning themselves as ‘Minister for International Security’. In one case, Prime Minister Rudd acted like his own minister for foreign affairs, leaving the unlucky Stephen Smith as essentially ‘Minister for Whatever the Prime Minister Isn’t That Interested In’.
In Julie Bishop’s case, her first six months suggest that she’s focusing her energy as ‘Minister for Economic Diplomacy’, aligning her role closely with the efforts of the Minister for Trade and Investment and the government’s economic agenda. Read more