Tag Archive for: Donald Trump

The new year and the new populism

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Image courtesy of Pixabay user Pexels.

The word ‘populism’ was everywhere in 2016. Political leaders claiming to speak for the people have achieved significant victories in Europe, Asia, and, with the election of Donald Trump, the United States.

Populism first described the late-nineteenth-century protest by American farmers against banks and railroad monopolies. Now, the term describes the anger and resentment felt for privileged, powerful elites in the public and private sectors alike. In Italy, Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement takes on the ‘establishment,’ broadly defined to include everyone from journalists to industrialists and politicians. Likewise, in the US, Trump has promised to ‘drain the swamp.’

The new populism has more diffuse aims, and makes more sweeping claims, than its nineteenth-century predecessor. Today’s populist leaders are generous with their hatreds, but parsimonious with respect to specific policies. They tap into left- and right-wing politics, often simultaneously: Trump, for example, promises paid maternity leave and an increase in the minimum wage, together with tax cuts for the rich and financial and environmental deregulation. Political orientation is unimportant in populism, because it does not deal in evidence or detailed proposals for change, but in the manipulation of feelings by charismatic leaders.

Unlike traditional conservative or socialist parties, the new populism does not appeal to socioeconomic class, but to identity and culture. Populists’ target audience is anyone who feels economically threatened by globalization, worries that immigrants are taking their jobs and changing the composition of society, or is simply unhappy with a perceived loss of status (a sentiment reflected in hostility, especially among white men, to ‘political correctness’).

Economists can argue that living standards have improved, or that the wealth gap in many developed countries is not widening. But they cannot counter the unhappiness of people who feel marginalized, undervalued, and scorned.

Previous protest movements, such as the Suffragettes and the early socialists, often furnished ideas and leaders that eventually became part of the political mainstream. The new populism is different, because it categorically denies the establishment’s legitimacy and rejects the rules of the game. Nigel Farage, the leader of the UK Independence Party, is a true populist; Senator Bernie Sanders, the former US presidential candidate who campaigned for Hillary Clinton after losing his battle for the Democratic Party’s nomination, is not.

In the new populism’s moralistic worldview, the righteous ‘people’ are fighting against the wicked ‘elites.’ But it is not entirely clear who belongs to which group, because populist language is so emotive and imprecise. The people are the ‘silent majority’: Trump’s ‘good, ordinary Americans’ or ‘the little people,’ as Farage and French far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen put it. In my own city of Toronto, they are the ‘Ford Nation’—salt-of-the-earth suburbanites who did not mind that their mayor, the late Rob Ford, was a chauvinistic, crack-smoking bully.

By claiming to define ‘the people,’ populists assume the power to exclude. ‘Elites’ who are out of touch with the people’s needs are naturally outside the populists’ charmed circle. But so, too, is anyone whose views run counter to the people’s will, including approximately half of American voters who chose Hillary Clinton, or the 48% of Britons who voted to keep the United Kingdom in the European Union.

Nominally left- and right-wing populists differ primarily in their choice of which ‘others’ to exclude and attack, with the former singling out big corporations and oligarchs, and the latter targeting ethnic or religious minorities. Once enemies have been identified, they can be blamed when ‘the people’s’ will is frustrated. Just as Trump targets Mexicans and Muslims, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Hugo Chávez’s hapless and incompetent successor, blames a malign foreign power, the US, for his country’s deepening crisis.

A strident nationalism and talk of gaining back sovereignty are key components of the populist appeal. So is history—or, more accurately, nostalgia for an idealized past. ‘Make America Great Again,’ as Trump would have it. In Europe, populist leaders such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Dutch Party for Freedom leader Geert Wilders depict a Christian Europe besieged by Muslim hordes, even though ever-fewer Europeans attend church. During the Brexit campaign, the ‘Leave’ camp invoked the 1940 Battle of Dunkirk, when the British fought alone against the German-led Axis.

To be sure, much has gone wrong for a great many people. Globalization and automation are eliminating jobs in developed countries; powerful corporations and wealthy individuals in too many countries are getting a greater share of the wealth and paying fewer taxes, and living conditions continue to deteriorate for people in the US Rust Belt or Northeast England and Wales.

But populist leaders do not offer thoughtful solutions, only fantasies. Trump’s proposals to build a ‘big, beautiful’ wall on the Mexican border, ban Muslim immigrants, reopen coal mines, and impose tariffs on China are not only unworkable; they would likely spark a trade war, making matters far worse for his economically struggling supporters.

Populism’s appeal increases when political and economic systems seem to be failing, which explains the rise of the Jacobins in the early stages of the French Revolution, the Know-Nothings in mid-nineteenth-century America, the Fascists in Mussolini’s Italy, and the Nazis in Hitler’s Germany. All of these groups claimed to possess moral purity, and promised to sweep away the corrupt old system in the name of ‘the people.’

Today’s populist politics, with its claim to have a monopoly on truth, is also profoundly undemocratic. In Hungary, Poland, and Turkey, we can already see that when populists gain power they will use the levers they have at hand, including the state, to destroy democratic institutions.

This form of populism poses a serious domestic and international threat in 2017. We must prepare for the worst; but we can hope that these new, outsider political forces will compel complacent traditional parties to adopt sorely needed reforms, as Sanders sought to do during the Democratic primary. Perhaps then our existing structures will be strong enough to withstand the onslaught of those who promise salvation and deliver chaos.

When the going gets tough…

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…the tough get going—trite, perhaps, but appropriate in our current circumstances. 2016 ends in a much darker place than it started. The sense of reluctant resignation with which the year began has morphed into doubt and uncertainty, tinged with a level of global concern that borders on fear.

The refugee pressures on the borders of Europe at the beginning of the year may have abated, but the root problem—the humanitarian disasters attendant upon the civil wars in central and northern Africa and across the Middle East into Afghanistan—has intensified.

The Brexit vote not only initiated what will prove to be a significant decline in Britain’s strategic position in Europe but also, and more dangerously for Europe, encouraged separatists and populists on the left and especially the right to press more actively for the disintegration of the euro and eventually the EU. Russia, in the meantime, is strengthening its position on its southwestern and northwestern borders, and exploiting the political and economic uncertainty that is at the heart of Europe’s woes.

Then along comes President-elect Donald J. Trump with a raft of half-baked policies that are capricious where they are not downright dangerous.

His early foray into foreign policy exhilarated the Taiwanese government and left China’s bemused. Three and a half decades of painstaking diplomacy between the US and China now appears to be on the line, and to what strategic or diplomatic purpose? It’s difficult to see any strategic advantage to the US from challenging the ‘One China’ policy, while the strategic consequences for Japan and South Korea are all on the debit side.

Closer to home, developments in Southeast Asia don’t offer much joy. President Rodrigo Duterte continues to drive The Philippines’ domestic and international policy as if he were at the wheel of a runaway jeepney. The Christian governor of Jakarta, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, is facing court on charges of blasphemy against Allah. Malaysia continues to embed the kleptocratic authoritarianism of its Prime Minister, and Thailand contemplates a range of constitutional uncertainties following the death of King Bhumibol. And all the while, PNG teeters on the brink of political and economic collapse.

With so many of its basic assumptions overturned by events, Australia’s much-vaunted 2016 Defence White Paper is now dead in the water. The strategic fault lines in the Asia–Pacific region, to which I drew attention in an earlier post, are even more apparent than they were in February 2016. Events have also rendered the force structure changes minimalist, which will demand yet another review of the Defence Capability Plan. Given the precedents, that will take years.

But the gloomy entry to 2017 offers some surprising opportunities to the Australian government.

The best way to deal with doubt and uncertainty is to establish a plan and chart a course, establishing a measure of ambition to which others need to respond. For Australia to set down some policy markers, and, of course, the plans to implement them, would be a positive contribution to regional security and to the efforts of our neighbours to act in the collective interest in confusing times.

The forthcoming Foreign Affairs White Paper is a timely chance to do this.

The first policy marker it might consider is a structured regional approach to refugees, a policy issue that successive governments have handled abominably. Our international reputation for compassion and fairness has been trashed. Australia’s approach has been to incarcerate, without any respect to either the ancient principle of habeas corpus or humanitarian law, the victims of the criminals who conned them onto unsafe boats and simultaneously exploited their desperation and their hope. And our policy annihilates the latter. At its simplest, the regional refugee problem can’t be resolved unless the refugees’ problems are resolved.

A second policy marker that might lend additional credibility to a regional refugee initiative would be a concerted effort, with like-minded countries, to bring about negotiated settlements to the various civil wars that are the basic causes of the global refugee flows. Such action would certainly support Australia’s bid for membership of the Human Rights Council, though it would demand a decidedly more nuanced approach to our own involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a diplomatic rather than military approach to generating a settlement in Syria. Quite simply, ISIS is a symptom of the problem in Syria, not the cause of it.

A third policy marker that might contribute substantially to reducing regional tension is a carefully designed and articulated co-management and co-development mechanism that would bring the various South China Sea claimants to the negotiating table. To have any credibility in this, Australia might need to adopt a more cooperative and reasonable approach to East Timor’s claims to the Greater Sunrise gas fields, rather than await a determination by the Permanent Court of Arbitration.

A fourth initiative, given President-elect Trump’s intention to quash the Trans-Pacific Partnership, would be to press for an Asia–Pacific Free Trade Agreement—hopefully including the US—to mitigate the threat of trade wars resulting from resurgent protectionism. Australia’s economic outlook is even gloomier without an open regional trading system.

And, finally, the uncertainty surrounding future US engagement with Asia is the elephant in the room. DFAT’s White Paper should consider the pressing need for an Asia–Pacific security cooperation forum that looks at both security and cooperation in the broad. Such a body would both mitigate the consequences of US disengagement (if that were to occur) while simultaneously providing the US with a new avenue for regional participation. Perhaps the Foreign Affairs White Paper could consider building on an association such as The Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP) to establish a new type of integrated consultative mechanism that is less a hybrid ‘one and a half track’ dialogue than a way of investing whole-of-nation expertise in maintaining long-term regional security and prosperity.

Let’s hope that the forthcoming White Paper is able to transcend motherhood statements and provide some transformational regional leadership.

ASPI suggests

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Image courtesy of Pixabay user Unsplash.

For one last time in this cataclysmic year, welcome back to ASPI suggests.

‘Tis the season for lists, so here are a few good ‘uns that caught our eye this week. First, a dose of inspiration from Foreign Policy, with their 100 leading global thinkers of 2016. Second, a collection of some of The New York Times’ ‘most talked about’ debates of 2016 (some of which, it should be said, are akin to self-flagellation because #2016). And third, if like us you’re hankering for some good reads over the new year period, Foreign Affairs has you covered with their Best of Books 2016 (our humble pick: Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me).

During his short sabbatical in Sydney earlier in the year, NYT columnist Roger Cohen penned a piece on ‘Australia’s Offshore Cruelty’. Unless you’ve been living under a rock/not on Twitter, you might have missed Act II, ‘Broken Men In Paradise’, out late last week. It’s an important piece, so worth re-upping here. Australia’s refugee policies have increasingly come under the Grey Lady’s gaze this year—editorials and op-eds abound, including one this week by the photographer who accompanied Cohen to Manus. And with a Sydney Times’ bureau in the works, there’ll likely be more of the same in 2017.

Four choice picks this week for fresh new research: first up, some snappy pessimism from RSiS on what the fall of Raqqa and Mosul means for the decentralised threat Daesh poses to Southeast Asian security. Sticking with the region, the latest release from the Perth USAsia Centre’s Indo–Pacific Insights Series (PDF) outlines 10 policies that Australia should follow to engage Indonesia in the Trump era. A new briefing book (featuring the thoughts of ASPI’s Peter Jennings) from the Asia Society Policy Institute offers a strategic roadmap for the new US administration to follow as it navigates relationships, priorities and motivations in the Asia–Pacific. And from CNAS comes a stellar effort on intelligence collection and surveillance policy reform in the US in the face of an exceedingly diverse array of threats.

And finally,  Jeffrey Herbst, CEO of DC’s fantastic Newseum, puts the scourge of fake news under the microscope. Pointing the finger at tech companies for ‘giving consumers exactly what they want’, Herbst calls on social media executives, journalists and academics to counter the effects of online innuendo. Although Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey might have a hard time holding up his end of that bargain—Twitter was left out in the cold in Wednesday’s meeting between tech execs and Trump, due to its refusal to create an emoji version of viral hashtag #CrookedHillary. A strange move from The Donald, who’s famously used the social media platform to propagate mistruths. But hey, there’s always next year.

Podcasts

Occasional Strategist contributor Tom Switzer has continued to roll through 2016 with his successful and entertaining fortnightly podcast effort, Between the Lines. We’re not much for resolutions, but if you’re not a listener, get on board here. You can also check out Tom’s recommended reads each week, just over here.

Since unveiling the first episode in Foreign Affairs’ ‘The Power of Populism’ series, Americans went to the polls and elected the first US president to take office with zero experience in government. In the latest episode (21 mins), Gideon Rose, Carlo Accetti and Shannon O’Neill sit down to discuss the election wash up and what it means for both US foreign policy and populism worldwide.

Video

This one’s for you, capability wonks: in the latest video out of Defense News, Lockheed’s VP for F-35 business development and strategy discusses the dawning of a new era of military-to-military relations between the United States and Israel, with the delivery of the first two of 50 F-35 stealth jets ordered by Tel-Aviv from the US. Check out the interview here (7 mins).

Events

World: New Year’s Eve. Have a good one, thanks for reading The Strategist and see you in 2017!

Why is assurance in trouble?

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US allies around the globe have begun to contemplate a future in which America plays a more restrained role. Here in Australia, we’re acutely conscious of the recent surge of interest in the future of ANZUS. But media reports also tell of a sudden interest among some German commentators in the possibility of an independent European nuclear arsenal, or even an indigenous German one. And northeast Asian allies are contemplating both possible reductions in US forces stationed in their countries and the withdrawal of the US nuclear umbrella.

In short, US assurance policies are struggling. To see why, let’s step back to think about what assurance is. It’s the confidence that an ally will provide assistance when serious national interests are threatened. So there are two factors that contribute to that level of confidence: the assuring state’s capability to provide actual assistance, and its resolve to do so when needed. If we wanted to represent assurance as a mathematical equation, it would be written as A = C x R, (Assurance equals Capabilities multiplied by Resolve). The equation is one of multiplication rather than addition because if either of the variables is zero, so is assurance.

Of course, assurance—like deterrence—is in the eye of the beholder. And typically the beholder’s interested not merely in some level of capability, but in a margin of superiority over a potential adversary. Similarly, the beholder’s interested not merely in some level of resolve, but in that level of resolve which suggests that vital national interests can be safely entrusted to the hands of a foreign power. So we might rewrite the equation as A = PMC x PHR (Assurance equals the Perceived Margin of Capability multiplied by Perceived High-level Resolve).

And here’s where the problems start to become clearer. As other great powers have risen, and are developing and modernising their military capabilities and unfolding anti-access and area denial plans for their immediate environs, it’s become harder for the US to retail a story about its margin of capability over potential adversaries. Over the past decade the need to tell that story has forced the US into its Air-Sea Battle doctrine and, subsequently, the Third Offset. Neither are especially convincing, so on the capabilities side of the equation the overall assessment is one of relative US slippage. The upshot is that US allies proximate to potentially hostile great powers are more anxious about Washington’s ability to save them.

There’s a particular wrinkle on that side of the equation in relation to nuclear weapons. The American determination to decrease the profile of nuclear weapons in its own strategic posture has increased anxieties among its allies covered by the US nuclear umbrella. That’s because the margin of conventional superiority of US forces seems to be narrowing over time, as other great powers modernise their militaries. But it’s also because some traditionally-constrained actors, like North Korea, are moving closer to a point where they could use nuclear weapons against the US homeland if Washington was to intervene on its ally’s behalf. (That’s one factor driving US and allied interest in ballistic missile defences.)

So, the capabilities factor of the equation has its problems. But with Donald Trump’s election as US president, we now have a new bout of allied anxiety about the resolve factor as well. Trump campaigned on the notion of ‘America first’. He weakened US declaratory policy about alliances, portraying US commitments as optional, and depicting security partnerships as protection rackets. He ruminated about whether it might be better for Japan and South Korea to build their own nuclear weapons, rather than rely upon US extended nuclear deterrence. Nationalism and unilateralism trumped internationalism and consultation.

So allies now worry not only about a shrinking margin of US capability, but also about the US commitment to protect their vital interests in a world of contested multipolarity. And that’s driving those allies to consider a range of strategic options that weren’t even on the table in earlier days.

Is there a path back to the earlier condition of robust assurance? Possibly, but the incoming administration’s going to have its work cut out on both factors in the assurance equation. Restoring US declaratory policy probably involves telling a new ordering story about the US role in the world during an age of contested multipolarity and domestic priorities. That’s a big ask. Restoring a US margin of capability over potential adversaries might be an even bigger one.

The obvious answer is that US allies are going to have to bring more to the party, and to depend less upon Washington to safeguard their interests. Their doing so would help to encourage the US to stick around—after all, assurance is a two-way street. But a set of gamechanger strategic policies in Asia might well lie down that path.. We should brace ourselves for a roller-coaster rise ahead.

Trump, Taiwan and what it means for Australia

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Image courtesy of Flickr user tsaiian.

President-elect Donald Trump’s stunning phone call with Taiwan’s president Tsai Ing-wen has overturned decades of US diplomatic protocol when it comes to the thorny cross-Strait issue. The reaction of many analysts and media commentators has been negative, pointing to the risks of upsetting the US-Sino relationship, undoubtedly the most consequential for stability in the Asia–Pacific. But before canvassing some of the risks, it’s important to see the Trump-Tsai conversation as a turn that could actually deliver positive results for cross-Strait stability as well as broader regional security.

In recent years, US ‘strategic ambiguity’ over the Taiwan issue—leaving open the question of whether it would defend the island in the event of an unprovoked Chinese military attack—has arguably failed to stymie Beijing’s policies to strategically suffocate Taipei. Instead, Beijing’s growing capacity to pose a conventional military challenge to US forces in a future Taiwan Strait contingency, in combination with Taiwan’s economic dependence on mainland China, led to growing concerns about whether the US might abandon Taiwan sooner or later. Moreover, since Tsai’s election in January 2016 Beijing has attempted to further limit Taiwan’s international breathing space to coerce her government into formally accepting the ‘1992 Consensus’ as a basis for cross-Strait cooperation, despite the fact that she implicitly recognised it.

As I’ve argued in a co-authored ASPI report earlier this year, amid changing power dynamics, cross-Strait stability increasingly depends on a more visible US commitment to assisting Taiwan against Chinese coercion. That’s particularly the case since Taiwan’s democratic consolidation makes a unification on Beijing’s terms ever more unlikely, potentially raising the risk for escalation. Trump’s calculated move is likely to cause greater uncertainty in the minds of China’s decision-makers about America’s reaction to efforts to forcefully unite with Taiwan. If so, that’s a good thing since Chinese restraint over Taiwan is the key element for cross-Strait stability.

Trump’s call could also signal a greater willingness to push back more generally against China’s assertive behaviour in the South China Sea and East China Sea. Arguably, the US ‘rebalance’ has lost some of its momentum and certainly hasn’t stopped Beijing’s advances in eroding the maritime rules-based order. Trump’s senior advisors on Asia–Pacific security—including Alexander Gray and Peter Navarro—reflect a different school of thought than the one exemplified by the White House over the past eight years: in order to maintain its leadership position the US needs to resolutely push back against China’s assertiveness within a ‘peace through strength’ framework. Again, if China moderates its behaviour in the face of a more determined Trump administration, regional stability could be enhanced rather than weakened.

However, there are considerable risks involved in Trump’s approach. The first is that upon taking office in January next year, President Trump will sacrifice the broader strategic objectives in the US–Sino relationship for his strong support for Taipei. China will certainly test his resolve on Taiwan and a failure to follow-through would send a bad signal to the region about America’s credibility. Likewise, Trump’s ongoing enthusiasm for Taiwan could prove a double-edged sword for Taipei if he publicly offers too much diplomatic and military support. After all, Taiwan has a delicate relationship with China which it doesn’t want to see derailed.

The second major risk is that the Trump administration fails to develop a coherent and effective grand strategy for the Asia–Pacific, and particularly for dealing with China and America’s allies. If the conversation with Tsai was the start of a rather erratic display of unilateralism smacking of efforts to ‘contain’ China, the region is indeed in for a very rocky ride. It’s likely that even America’s closest allies, including Australia, would have great difficulty supporting such an approach. China isn’t the Soviet Union, and regional countries would prefer Washington to continue the delicate balance between competition and cooperation with Beijing. It’s thus imperative that the Trump administration speak to allies and partners about its vision for regional stability, and to seek an early buy-in.

Trump’s Taiwan gambit also potentially has significant implications for Australia. Canberra takes a key interest in the future of US–China relations, not least since our close alliance with the US would raise serious questions about commitments in the event of a direct conflict between Washington and Beijing. It’s entirely possible that Trump’s administration will seek to strengthen its relationship with Taiwan and that it’ll encourage allies such as Australia to also increase their engagement.

For Australia (and the rest of the region), Trump’s Asia–Pacific policy promises to be less acquiescent vis-à-vis China’s attempts to increase its regional influence through coercive means. That carries both opportunities and risks for Australia. We have a fundamental interest in preserving the rules-based order in the region, and absent US leadership, that objective becomes enormously difficult to achieve given China’s growing power. However, an overtly aggressive, unilateral US China policy would not only slowly erode the alliance, it would probably also be self-defeating.

Australia, ANZUS and regional order

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Image courtesy of Flickr user __db_

Since Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election last month, the volume of discussion about Australia’s relationship with the US and our region has increased sharply. Politicians, officials, think-tankers and journalists have all weighed in. Much of the debate has turned upon the future status of the ANZUS treaty, with the Prime Minister keen to paint Senator Penny Wong’s thoughtful op-ed piece as a breakdown of the previously bipartisan commitment to the alliance. Meanwhile, Paul Keating has argued that Australia should put an end to its ‘tag-along foreign policy’—although the alliance’s defenders say that no such subordination is involved.

I’d like to move the discussion to a more abstract level, by canvassing what Australia wants in terms of grand strategic outcomes. Too often that question goes unasked. At least since the days of Coral Bell’s book, Dependent Ally, commentators have leapt to the conclusion that Australia deliberately wallows in a comfortable dependency. In the final analysis, though, we’re not a member of ANZUS because of a blind attachment to great powers. We’re in the alliance for strategic reasons. ANZUS ties us not simply to the region’s predominant military power but to its predominant order-builder.

And that matters because what Australia wants is a stable, liberal, prosperous order in Asia. It’s drawn to Washington because the US has been the principal architect of such an order. Indeed, among the existing great powers, the US has played a unique order-building role. Russia’s too Eurocentric to shape the Asian security environment; Japan’s been—since World War 2—too withdrawn to articulate an independent strategic agenda; China seems to want a return to the Sinocentric Asia (and deferential neighbours) of yesteryear; and India’s been too under-developed and too geographically remote from the Asia–Pacific’s centre of gravity to do much order-building.

So, ANZUS is our link to the order-builder. But it’s only our link. The regional order doesn’t run solely through ANZUS. Indeed, we’re merely the distant southern anchor of US alliance commitments in a region where the large, lumpy bits of power—and the key strategic relationships—are still found in the northern hemisphere. Moreover, our alliance is exceptionally close. It’s built on ties of blood and culture, and not just shared interest. As far as we know, Trump likes Australia. So it’s entirely possible that the ANZUS alliance will survive, but that the broader regional order—what Ron Huisken calls the ‘confidence that tomorrow is going to be very much like today’—won’t.

And that would be bad news for Australia. In some ways the order’s more important to us than the alliance. Just as a thought experiment, think about which one’s more expendable. An Asia that’s stable, liberal and prosperous, but in which ANZUS doesn’t exist, is probably preferable to one that’s unstable, authoritarian, and poor, but in which ANZUS does exist. I’m not saying we should be indifferent to ANZUS’s future. Obviously we’d prefer to keep the alliance around, both as a mechanism for order-building in good times and a security guarantor in bad. Still, if the thought experiment’s right, we need to think about looming geopolitical discontinuities in the broad rather than the narrow. The central question shouldn’t be whether Donald Trump likes Skippy.

Let’s turn, then, to those broader discontinuities. Japan’s security policy has long been a subset of Washington’s, which means that Japanese policymakers have typically been more sensitive than their Australian counterparts to the potential marginalisation of their strategic interests in Washington. It’s no surprise that Prime Minister Abe was the first foreign leader to meet with Trump—Abe’s actions speak louder than his words in signalling Tokyo’s high-level strategic concern about Trump’s nationalism and unilateralism.

South Korea’s harder to read, because its president has been fighting for her political life. But North Korea’s pushing ahead with its nuclear arsenal and President Obama’s policy of ‘strategic patience’ is all but dead in the water. So Trump’s campaign ruminations about the possibility of both South Korea and Japan building their own nuclear weapons can only have magnified Seoul’s concerns that Washington’s increasingly sensitive to the potentially costly contests associated with extended nuclear deterrence in Northeast Asia. Putting the judgment in its starkest form, I think the prospects for nuclear proliferation in Northeast Asia are higher now than they’ve ever been.

Worries about the future are most intense in Northeast Asia, but are felt elsewhere as well. Since the days of the Vietnam War, Southeast Asia has become accustomed to being a second-order priority in Washington. The Obama administration, articulating a policy of rebalancing not only to Asia but within it, had begun to shift that perception. But the subregion must now wonder again about its relative priority on Washington’s agenda. What’s worse, that uncertainty’s increasing at a time when China’s maintaining its assertive posture in the South China Sea.

By all means, Canberra should be talking to the incoming administration about the ANZUS relationship. But we shouldn’t be fooled into thinking that’s our sole, or even our primary, concern. Our grand strategic objective is a stable, liberal, prosperous order in Asia. What we need to think about is how to achieve that objective in a more uncertain future, especially if the lynch-pin of the current order fails in Northeast Asia.

ANZUS in the age of Trump

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Image courtesy of Flickr user darwin Bell.

In the unsettled weeks since Donald Trump’s election, many prominent voices in Australia’s strategic policy community—including Kim Beazley , Dennis Richardson, Angus Houston and of course Malcolm Turnbull—have rushed to answer the question whether Mr Trump’s victory means we should step back from our alliance with the United States.

They have all said that we shouldn’t, and of course they are right. Australia’s alliance with America is a great national asset, which has provided immense strategic benefits at very little cost. We should hang on to it as long as we can.

But they are answering the wrong question. The issue for Australia today isn’t whether we should step back from our alliance with America, but whether America is stepping back from its alliance with us. Or, to put it a little more precisely, the question is whether we can be sure that America will continue to play in future the same strategic role in supporting Asian security and Australia’s defence that it has played for the past few decades.

The question is worth asking because Australia’s defence and foreign policy today depends completely on the assumption that the answer is ‘yes’. In particular, and most importantly, that assumption underpins our entire approach to managing the strategic implications of China’s rise.

The more serious and overt China’s challenge to the regional order has become, the more Australian governments have relied to America to deal with it. They’ve assumed that Washington will find a way to contain China’s growing power and ambition that preserves the old US-led regional order without endangering our economic relations with China. And they’ve assumed that if that somehow fails, America will remain committed to ensuring Australia’s security in the more dangerous and contested Asia that would follow.

So we have a lot riding on the assumption that America is going to play the role we expect. Washington’s foreign and defence policy establishment have assured us it will. But can we take their word for it? If there is any serious doubt, we need to think again, and change our policy. And there are serious doubts, and not just because Mr Trump is to be President.

The more important reasons to doubt America’s future role in Asia have to do with the fundamental shift in the distribution of relative economic weight between America and China, America’s dwindling military advantage in maritime operations in the Western Pacific, China’s growing diplomatic weight in the region, Beijing’s evident determination to change the regional order in its favour, and the evident failure of the Obama Administration’s ‘rebalance’ policy to counteract all these trends and persuade China to back off.

That’s quite a list, and it would have confronted whoever won the election three weeks ago. But Mr Trump’s election is still significant because, unlike Hillary Clinton, he didn’t even try to convince the voters that that America could and would sustain its long-standing leadership role in Asia in light of these trends.

On the contrary, his ‘America First’ slogan sketched a perfectly credible new American strategic posture which abandoned the post-Cold War vision of US global leadership, defined US interests more narrowly and pursued the more effectively. Many American voters—Democrats who voted for Bernie Sanders as well as Republicans who voted for Trump—clearly want some kind of radical change to the foundations of US foreign policy. From their perspective they might well be right.

Nonetheless many people in Washington and Canberra are now hoping that in the Oval Office Mr Trump will revert to the old orthodoxies of US global leadership. The evidence of this year’s election is strongly against that kind of ‘business-as-usual’ assumption. But even if he did, could he make them work? He would find himself facing the same tough problems as his predecessor. Mr Trump can’t fix the faults in Mr Obama’s ‘rebalance’ simply by promising a bigger Navy or applying a bit more pressure.

So the issues here are much bigger than Mr Trump. We’re looking at real high-stakes power politics here. To face China down and reassert US leadership any President would have to be willing to accept big costs and risks, including the risks of a confrontation which could lead to conflict. Mr Trump doesn’t seem the person for that, but would Hillary Clinton have been any different? Would any future president?

Indeed, can we be confident that there’s any cause in Asia today which America would risk a major war with China over? For that matter, would we in Australia be willing to go to war against China to uphold US regional leadership? And if not, how can we expect America to do so? And how then can we be sure that America’s leadership in Asia, and its support for our security, will endure?

So it’s time to abandon our comfortable assumptions and instead consider two big questions. First, how can we help shape a new Asian order that could serve our interest best if the old one based on US leadership doesn’t survive? And how could we defend ourselves if we’re no longer sure America will do it for us?

Many of those who have rushed to defend the alliance seem to think there are no answers to these questions. They say that the alliance is simply indispensable, that we have no option but to cling to it, and no future without it. But one wonders whether they have ever really thought about what the alternatives might be.

If they did, they might perhaps find that they are selling our country a little short by assuming that there’s simply nothing we could do to secure Australia’s own place in Asia without US support. We just need to think a bit harder, and a bit more courageously, about what that might mean. And I think that was what Penny Wong was getting at when she said that Mr Trump’s election should nudge us towards fresh thinking.

Indonesia, Australia and the coming Trump challenge

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Image courtesy of Flickr user Swaradila Weesy.

Much of the speculation about the implications of a Trump presidency for Asia suggest at least some degree of US retrenchment from the region. Former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans captured that pervasive sense of unease in The Strategist. Australia ‘could no longer take coherent, smart American leadership for granted’, he argued. We should ‘assign much higher priority to building closer trade and security ties with Japan, South Korea and India, and especially Indonesia our huge near-neighbour.’

But how much can Australia realistically expect of Indonesia right now? With the uncertainties posed by the election of Donald Trump and Beijing’s divide et empera strategy with ASEAN states on the South China Sea proving increasingly effective, rarely has there been a time where Indonesia’s leadership in Southeast Asia has been so critical to managing tensions and the underlying flux in the regional distribution of power.

The problem is that Indonesia’s enduring de facto leadership of ASEAN, critical to the organisation’s ability to forge a consensus on South China Sea issues and moderate Chinese influence, appears to be on the wane.

More broadly, some of the core principles of Indonesia’s foreign policy seem to have weakened under the Jokowi government. Diplomacy is now more concentrated on Indonesia’s economic development and infrastructure priorities, and as a result, it’s more transactional in nature. Less obvious is Indonesia’s strong normative leadership and activism in Southeast Asia, a characteristic of the Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono presidency.

There’s no doubt the tensions surrounding China’s expansive South China Sea claims present a pressing policy dilemma for Indonesia. China’s intrusions into Indonesia’s territorial waters around the Natuna islands are an obvious threat to national security, just as they are to regional stability. And that all takes place amidst the broader challenge for Indonesia’s bilateral relationship with China—preserving a harmonious relationship that will continue to facilitate significant Chinese FDI and trade flows.

As a non-claimant state and honest broker in Southeast Asia’s maritime territorial disputes with China, Indonesia’s government had previously been circumspect about those confrontations. But the last two incidents in particular, where a China Coast Guard vessel rammed a Chinese fishing vessel to free it from being detained by Indonesia authorities in March and where an Indonesian Naval Corvette fired warning shots in the arrest of an illegal Chinese fishing vessel in June, resulted in a public backlash against Beijing.

Although, the Indonesian government seems determined to defend its maritime sovereignty against Chinese incursions, the question is whether the Jokowi administration will seek a bilateral modus vivendi with China over its Natuna waters for the sake of preserving the vital trade and investment relationship, and in doing so, neglect its larger leadership obligations in ASEAN.

Such concerns are shared by Indonesia’s foreign policy community. In July, a number of Indonesia’s prominent foreign policy intellectuals, journalists and practitioners put their names to a ‘Statement on the South China Sea ruling’. It was an expression of concern in response to the arbitral tribunal’s ruling on the Philippines’ legal complaints against China. The statement referred to ‘ASEAN’s Dimming Lights’ and its ‘growing marginalisation in managing the tension in the South China Sea.’

The signatories’ concerns about Indonesia’s lack of leadership on the South China Sea issue within ASEAN were made abundantly clear:

‘An independent and active foreign policy does not give Indonesia a free pass to watch a strategic turmoil unfolding in its environment from the sidelines. In fact, the active component in our bebas-aktif doctrine requires us to take the leadership mantle and contribute to regional peace.’

The statement can be understood as the manifestation of frustrations with Indonesia’s anodyne 130-word official response which one signatory described as ‘bland’.

Since ASEAN’s founding in the early years of the New Order regime, Indonesia has viewed its national resilience (ketahanan nasional) as inextricably linked to the stability and autonomy of Southeast Asia. Indonesia’s foreign policy elites had conceived of ASEAN as the soko guru (cornerstone) of Indonesia’s foreign policy. In contrast to previous governments, however, Indonesia’s current political leadership appears to place less emphasis on Indonesia’s traditional conception of the regional order and Indonesia’s leadership in it. It’s increasingly obvious that without Indonesia’s strong leadership in ASEAN, China can successfully co-opt smaller ‘client states’ Laos and Cambodia through economic leverage to ensure South China Sea concerns are downplayed in ASEAN meetings. In Indonesia itself, meanwhile, links between cabinet-level politicians and Chinese business interests haven’t escaped scrutiny.

To complicate things further, the Widodo-led government is preoccupied with worrying domestic political instability. Recent violence perpetrated by Islamists is made far more dangerous by its conflation with higher-level machinations among Jakarta’s political elites ahead of the 2017 Jakarta gubernatorial and 2019 presidential elections. With ‘coup’ rumours swirling, or at least suspicions that protestors might attempt to oust the president, the Jokowi government has good reason to be concerned about national cohesion.

Faced with the prospect of a diminution of US strategic primacy in Asia, it’s natural Australia would turn to Indonesia as a fellow middle power with commonalities in strategic outlook, as Evans suggests. But given Indonesia’s high stakes domestic politics and apparent disinterest in reclaiming ASEAN’s leadership mantle, Australia would do well not to expect too much of its near neighbour.

Donald Trump and coming scrutiny of ANZUS

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Image courtesy of Flickr user nathanmac87.

A constant in Donald Trump’s electoral pitch was that wealthy allies had for too long relied on America’s willingness to backstop their national security and harvested the long-term economic rewards of keeping their own military effort comparatively modest.

We’ve no real idea at this point where a Trump administration will see the balance of American interests on this issue. We have to be optimistic that the President-elect will recognise that the way he was inclined to frame this question when he was a candidate was simplistic and not especially helpful. Americans won’t want the US to be portrayed as a ‘gun for hire’, a mercenary power that charges what it thinks it will cost to sustain a military posture that will deter and, if necessary, defeat the opponents of an ally; if the ally doesn’t pay their full share, the deal is off.

In fact, the pact between allies is profound and quite remarkable—a willingness to accept that a nation’s most treasured asset, its sovereignty, should depend to some degree on another state and a willingness to risk a state’s most treasured resource, the lives of its citizens, to protect the sovereignty of another state. The considerations that each party brings into play to assess the merits of an alliance relationship are broad and intangible—not the sort of thing that anyone can readily put a dollar value on.

It’s also the case that for a long time now the US has told its allies that the willingness of Americans to sustain these arrangements would be more assured if there was a visible measure of burden-sharing. Most allies have responded positively. This will present Trump with a dilemma. He won’t want to portray the US as a ‘gun for hire’ but neither will he want a major plank of his electoral platform to be reduced to the mundane: marginally stronger enforcement of a well-established practice.

The current reality is that the network of US alliances is still widely perceived to be an important part of the fabric of security in key regions of the world—a complex tangle of interdependencies and positive and negative forces that yields confidence in a condition of order and stability. Put simply, it’s about confidence that tomorrow is going to be very much like today. That’s a tribute, above all, to US diligence and skill in managing these arrangements through all the trials that the passage of time and the tendency of nations of follow singular developmental paths could throw in their path. At any point in the past 70 years, Washington has been able to say of all these arrangements that both sides wanted it that way.

The core question is whether Donald Trump’s message is that America wants out. The most surprising thing about this question is why has it’s taken so long! At this point, however, we simply don’t know where the US will come out on this issue. That said, the simple fact that the question was so clearly raised in the recent US elections and so strongly, if not unambiguously, answered almost certainly means that it’s too late to go back to the status quo ante. These alliance relationships will be reviewed and recast in various ways and these processes will reverberate through the security structures around the globe.

ANZUS won’t escape scrutiny. We’re a cheap ally in the sense that we’ve not had and don’t have an acute and/or enduring threat to our national security. The Pentagon hasn’t had to factor possible contingencies in and around Australia into planning for the overall size of its armed forces or the balance of particular capabilities. On the other hand, Australia and Australians have never hesitated to acknowledge the deep sense of comfort we gain from knowing that the US is, for compelling reasons of its own, deeply committed to peace and stability in the vast Indo–Pacific arena and from the fact that we have a formal alliance with them.

Donald Trump hasn’t changed geopolitics. There’s a strong likelihood that America will remain a dependable force for order and stability in the Indo–Pacific. That’s what we should be aspiring to protect even as we join with like-minded regional powers to build new processes and structures to preserve the peace. We have a good story to tell on the alliance front and, to the extent it remains relevant, we should continue to tell it.

Above all, we shouldn’t panic and rush to the extremes. It’s quite silly to relish striking out on our own, as if ANZUS has been an unwelcome imposition. And if Beijing decides that the great rejuvenation of the Chinese people requires taking something that we or a close friend value highly, where do we find the countervailing power? Neither should we go to the other extreme and make silly promises to America that even Washington will see we mightn’t wish to keep, as some have already started to do. We must remember that alliances work so long as the participants remember that they are allies because they agree, not that they should agree because they are allies.

Cyber wrap

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The future of US cybersecurity policy remains uncertain as the Trump administration begins to take shape. On Friday Trump named Michael Flynn, previous director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, as his national security advisor in the White House. The retired Lieutenant General has strong views on bolstering US offensive cyber capabilities and has been described as a ‘cybersecurity hawk’. Meanwhile, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper handed in his resignation last week, effective from 20 January 2017, after six years in charge of the 17 different agencies that make up the US Intelligence Community. His intention to call it quits at the end of President Obama’s term was long expected but the announcement represents another significant opportunity for the president-elect to shape US posture in intelligence and cyber spheres. Concerns have also been raised by cyber policy and tech professionals in light of Trump’s campaign rhetoric foreshadowing increased barriers to digital trade.

Fortunately, US tech and policy development appears to have strong momentum. This week, Elon Musk proposed a network of satellites to provide global internet access and Microsoft announced a doubled investment in quantum computing research. The US is taking rapid steps to keep abreast of such changes. For example, the National Institute of Standards and Technology recently released a new cybersecurity framework for small businesses providing SMEs a step-by-step guide to protecting themselves online. The Federal Trade Commission has also just published a report on the ‘Sharing Economy’ of app-based services such as Airbnb and Uber.

Privacy concerns have prompted Facebook to stop collecting WhatsApp user data from its European customers. Last month 28 European data collection authorities sent an open letter to WhatsApp’s CEO urging the company to pause the flow of user information to its parent company. Germany has already ordered that WhatsApp cease the data flow, which Facebook was ostensibly collecting for marketing and advertising purposes, and the UK, France and Italy are conducting their own investigations. European regulators noted ‘serious concerns’ in their open letter over those changes to WhatsApp’s Terms of Service, highlighting its contradiction with previous public statements that affirmed no data would be shared between the two companies.

Google has also had a run-in with European regulators after they were accused of using the Android operating system to ‘crush rivals’ by blocking them in online search advertising. The European Commission has been investigating Google for six years after complaints from competitors, and CEO Sandar Pichai met last Friday with the EU’s Competition Commissioner and the European Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society to discuss the problem after the company issued a formal rejection of the European’s claims earlier this month.

Things are looking more positive between Chinese regulators and industry with two of the country’s biggest tech companies, Alibaba and Tencent, publically stating their support for China’s controversial new Cyber Security Law. Speaking at the 3rd World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, Alibaba’s Vice President noted that the company is working with law enforcement agencies to monitor content, and a Tencent executive stated that company has removed 80,000 videos from its site this year. President Xi also addressed the conference, calling for improved cooperation between states on internet governance and respect for cyber sovereignty. Both public and private sector leaders at the conference emphasised the security risks of cyber terrorism and the cited proliferation of false news during the US election as justification for tighter national and international control over the internet.

Security concerns over Chinese company Lenovo have surfaced after the ABC revealed that the Australian National University’s National Computational Infrastructure is planning to procure software and hardware from the company. ANU and Lenovo have both defended the plans, noting that the US government has approved Lenovo’s US acquisitions and the US Department of Defense has no restrictions on Lenovo products. The National Computational Infrastructure describes itself as ‘home to the Southern Hemisphere’s most highly-integrated supercomputer.’

And finally, a survey of 2,000 people in the US has found that 40% would prefer to skip sex for a year if it meant their personal information was protected from hackers. While this seems a bit surprising, the finding that 41% would give up their favourite food for a month rather than reset all their account passwords indicates that laziness is probably equal to privacy concerns in the driving force behind American attitudes to cybersecurity.