As election season descends on the United Nations headquarters in New York, the most notable vote is for non-permanent membership of the UN Security Council for 2021–2022. Membership of the council, the paramount body for multilateral crisis management, is prestigious and it’s fiercely contested by member states. Opportunities are limited.

While the UN Charter confers permanent membership on the privileged ‘P5’ (China, France, Russia, the UK and the US), the remaining 188 members have to jockey to fill the 10 non-permanent seats for two-year terms. And while the Covid-19 pandemic has forced candidates to mount virtual campaigns and changed the mode of balloting, the global interest in council membership remains a constant.

Seven members have nominated for the five available seats and voting is set to begin on Wednesday (New York time). The successful candidates will join the P5 on the council, together with elected members Estonia, Niger, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Tunisia and Vietnam, which will continue their two-year terms in 2021. The non-permanent seats are distributed across regional groups to achieve equitable geographic representation. Three non-permanent seats are allocated to Africa, one of which is subject to election every even calendar year and the other two every odd calendar year.

This year, Djibouti and Kenya are contesting the one African seat. Canada, Ireland and Norway are contesting the two ‘Western European and others group’ seat. The WEOG seats are subject to election every even calendar year. India is running unopposed for the one Asia–Pacific group seat. Mexico is also unopposed for election to the one seat for the Latin American and Caribbean group. The Eastern European group seat is elected every second year and is held by Estonia until the end of 2021.

Unusually, the African group is presenting a contest. It typically manages a rotation scheme whereby candidates are endorsed by the African Union to allow a ‘clean slate’ for election by the UN membership. However, this year Djibouti has challenged the African Union’s endorsement of Kenya.

In WEOG, contests are the norm. There’s little appetite for a rotation scheme that would require some WEOG members to serve less frequently than they usually do.

Australia is part of WEOG, whose members share broadly similar political values and levels of economic development. Many are in the G20. WEOG is therefore important to Australia as a cohort for cooperation across the UN to project common positions. Australia will also be observing WEOG races closely to inform its own candidacy for the Security Council’s 2029–2030 term.

All candidates, even those unopposed in their regional groups, must be formally elected to the council, which requires the votes of at least two-thirds of the UN membership present. At least 129 votes are required if all 193 members vote. Candidates traditionally campaign to gather the requisite support. (See my 2017 special report for ASPI, Elections at the UN: Australia’s approach, for a look at the campaign process.)

The UN headquarters has been closed since mid-March. To ensure the election could take place in June, the General Assembly decided on a process that accommodates the restrictions on large gatherings. It means we’ll miss the typically dramatic backdrop of the election—the buzz of a full hall anticipating the contest, the energy of the delegations lobbying and the emotions when the results are announced.

This year, members will cast their ballots during allocated time slots in the hall. The assembly president will then circulate the results. If no candidate wins, the president will advise the date of a further secret ballot. The UN will broadcast the voting live.

Article 23 of the UN Charter stipulates that members should consider candidates’ contributions to the maintenance of international peace and security and other UN goals. Each candidate uses their campaign to highlights their achievements and priorities, reflected this year in the Security Council 2020 election debates and Security Council report. Those priorities not only align with the candidates’ foreign policy interests but also are designed to appeal to UN members.

As always, Australia has an interest in the outcome as it pursues a rules-based international system for setting norms to regulate states’ conduct. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade recently recommended that Australia strengthen its engagement with multilateral bodies, including the UN, for this purpose. Having like-minded countries on the Security Council helps reinforce the norms that Australia subscribes to, and having friends on the council offers opportunities for cooperation.

Undoubtedly, Australia would like to see Canada succeed in the WEOG ballot. Australia and New Zealand formally coordinate with Canada across the UN agenda in the ‘CANZ’ group, which recognises our largely compatible policy settings and expands our coverage of the broad UN agenda. Australia would benefit from greater input to Security Council deliberations and insights on its decision-making through Canada’s membership.

Australia would be comfortable with the election of either Norway or Ireland given our constructive bilateral relationships and common position on goals including peace and security, human rights and development. We would also have a conduit to the council through either country.

It’s unlikely that the changeover of five non-permanent members will cure the longstanding divisions among the P5, particularly the US and Russia and China. Those divisions have most recently and disturbingly prevented a council response to the pandemic, notwithstanding its implications for international peace and security.

But despite these dynamics, non-permanent members can still influence outcomes by building bridges to secure the P5’s agreement for initiatives that would otherwise fail because of the animus between P5 members. They can act as power brokers to secure buy-in from the broader membership to council decisions. And their votes for proposed council resolutions are integral for adoption.

This was the experience when Australia, Jordan and Luxembourg banded together as fellow non-permanent members in 2013 to secure consensus for Security Council resolution 2118 addressing the humanitarian crisis in Syria.

It pays to have friends on the council and DFAT will be eagerly awaiting the election results.

Were fascism to ascend again in Europe, international security would be menaced and the liberal international order be even more imperilled. However, Europe’s current far-right parties fail to meet the minimum fascist criteria.

Just as the taxonomy of European far-right parties is not settled, there is no unanimously agreed definition of 1930s fascism. Differences over generic fascism or a recognisable fascist ideology punctuate the scholarly literature.

Even the two fascist exemplars, Mussolini’s Italy and Nazi Germany, had important differences as well as similarities. However, the fascist movements that arose after 1918 and their shallow imitators—like Franco’s Spain and the Romanian Iron Guard—can be distinguished from today’s far-right movements.

Prominent writings on fascism point to political religion, the myth of regeneration, and the idea of the ‘new man’. In their historical setting these concepts merged and produced the violent revolutionary interwar fascist alternative to liberalism, socialism and conservatism.

Scholars detect in fascism a secular political religion. Mussolini’s The doctrine of fascism (1932) is suffused with a sense of transcendent spirituality and the sacredness of the fascist political mission. Mussolini believed that by subordinating the individual to the nation and its generations, fascism leads to ‘a life free from the limitations of time and space, in which the individual, by self-sacrifice, the renunciation of self-interest, by death itself, can achieve that purely spiritual existence in which his value as a man consists’.

Mussolini ‘sought the revolutionary and ultimate objective of commencing time anew, with the intent of creating a novel type of civilisation and human being based on the collectivity and the state’. He believed that, ‘From beneath the ruins of liberal, socialist, and democratic doctrines, fascism extracts those elements which are still vital.’

The myth of the 20th century (1930) by Alfred Rosenberg, the chief ideologist of the National Socialists, was as influential in Nazi thought as Mein Kampf. His misogynist, anti-Semitic and distorted work on the metaphysical superiority of Nordic blood proclaims that the fascist mission is ‘to create a new human type out of a new view of life’. To succeed, Hitler’s 1933 revolution must aspire to the ‘highest value, around which all remaining commandment of life must be grouped, [and which] must correspond to the innermost essence of the people’.

Roger Griffin describes fascism ‘as a revolutionary form of ultra-nationalism that attempts to realize the myth of the regenerated nation’. And it is a myth that, ‘applied in practice[,] creates a totalitarian movement or regime engaged in combating cultural, ethnic and even biological (“dysgenic”) decadence and engineering a new sort of “man” in an alternative socio-political and cultural modernity to liberal capitalism’. Central to fascism’s allure in the 20th century was the promise of ‘comprehensive renewal (“palingenesis”)’ and a longing for ‘a new (political) religion, a cause worthy of sacrifice’.

As morally distorted, murderous and calamitous as the fascist era was, it was a movement initially grounded in a spiritual and transformative metaphysics that informed a political, social and aesthetic revolution. The populist, xenophobic, anti-immigration, Islamophobic, white supremacist and Eurosceptic political parties and groups scattered across the European Union today might adopt some of the superficial paraphernalia and symbolism of the fascist past but lack the missionary fanaticism that united fascists.

Today’s right-wing groups are dangerous and passionate about their issues. Some advocate political violence. But what passes for their ideology was described recently as ‘rather vague and inconcrete’ and as a mixture of ‘political isolationism, protectionism, racism, white nationalism, anti-Semitism and populism’.

Perhaps immigration is the loose connecting tissue between the far-right parties’ supporters. Research also points to a split between support for extremists associated with ‘economic insecurity’ and a ‘cultural backlash’ with populists voters. Others point to the consequences of the time of shedding and cold rocks and subsequent rising unemployment.

The ideology of Europe’s current far right lack’s the depth and breadth of the interwar fascists. The genuine fascists were responding to the widespread sense that democracy was responsible for all that was wrong with Western Europe after the First World War. Democracy, they believed, had ‘exacerbated class tensions, cowardice, selfishness, materialism, and, above all, “decadence”’.

Good policy begins with understanding the issue irrespective of one’s objectives towards it. Mistaken or unjustified beliefs can lead to over- or underestimating the risks and perverse outcomes. In Europe, liberal and centrist politicians and media are still perplexed by the emergence of far-right political parties and are unsure how best to respond.

In reporting on the recent Chemnitz protests in Germany, the Swedish election, Russian politics and the Ukrainian far right, the terms nationalist, fascist and neo-Nazi are interchangeable. However, fascism is more than giving Nazi salutes, dressing up and protesting against Islamic or African migrants—even when accompanied by violence. Griffin has observed that ‘the term “fascism” continues to be bandied about by those clearly more interested in its seemingly inexhaustible polemical force than in anything resembling historical or political fact’.

It is hard to conceive that there was any alternative to the terrible war that eliminated the threat of early 20th century fascism. The fascist regimes were implacably hostile and fanatically antagonistic towards the very existence of liberal democracies. But the contemporary right creates a domestic political and policy issue, not an international or a strategic one; and not one requiring the application of military force.

Reforming political and government institutions, strengthening democratic accountability, introducing new policies that address inequalities in wealth, improving access to justice and services, and paying serious attention to minority rights will suffice to cut the ground from under support for the far right.

Of course, these remedies would not suffice in the face of genuine fascism.

I’ve previously written about how elections consist of both the procedural and technical processes to collect and tally votes, and the arena of ideas where policies, platforms and promises are debated and discussed.

Of the two, I don’t worry too much about the security of vote tallying procedures and infrastructure. The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) is the body responsible for the elections and it understands the importance of maintaining the integrity of the process.

Australia’s paper-based voting system is also an advantage—the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has recommended using a voter-verified paper trail in US elections—and the AEC can afford to be conservative in incorporating new technology to speed vote counting.

That’s no reason for complacency, of course, and the AEC must be resourced to deliver secure elections. But at least a responsible authority oversees this half of the election security equation, and the risks to election processes can be managed.

I worry much more about the arena of ideas. That public information space consists of a vast array of information producers and consumers, including citizens, traditional and new media organisations, advertisers, content aggregators (such as Facebook and Twitter), politicians and journalists.

Australia has a very strong interest in ensuring a robust public debate that results in the electorate being informed. Yet in this arena of ideas there’s no single stakeholder—or even an assemblage of players—with the incentives, responsibility and authority to ensure that the kind of public discourse that contributes to a healthy democratic election takes place.

Many politicians appear to want to win more than they want to maintain a healthy democracy.

We’ve seen much more public information about how the information space around elections is manipulated. For example, there’s been the public indictment of Russian nationals and the Internet Research Agency (IRA) from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election.

The Russians used fake personas, created hundreds of social media accounts, created and manipulated thematic groups on social media, used bots to amplify messages on social media, bought divisive political ads, manufactured political rallies and paid stunt actors, and created and spread fake news and disinformation.

Most recently, there’s the continuing fallout around Cambridge Analytica, a shady political consulting firm. Cambridge Analytica portrayed itself as a secretive organisation capable of data science wizardry that could swing elections by manipulating social media to prey on people’s hopes and fears. In addition, Cambridge Analytica’s CEO, Alexander Nix, claimed to be capable of organising covert operations to entrap opposition candidates.

Most concerning is that the vast majority of what Cambridge Analytica and the Russians did to influence the 2016 US election was legal and could be employed in future elections (both in the US and in Australia).

Using social media data to manipulate people’s emotions is entirely legal. Politicians trade in hope and fear as a matter of course, and it’s no surprise that they’re searching for technological solutions to boost their campaigns.

In fact, the Russians did only two things that were illegal. The first was to steal email from Hillary Clinton’s campaign and spread it on Wikileaks. The second was to be Russian. If they’d been US citizens, almost everything in their influence campaign would’ve been legal.

I’m not convinced that Cambridge Analytica or the Russian influence campaign made a huge difference to how Americans voted in 2016, but the vagaries of the Electoral College and the small margin in key states make it possible that they did swing the outcome in Trump’s favour.

Regardless of the magnitude of the effect, however, social media is playing an ever‑larger role in our public information space and in our elections. Some of the applications of social media and related technologies seem entirely benign—direct engagement between politicians and voters, for example. But there’s definitely a spectrum of uses, and some of those we’ve seen used by the Russians look to me to be universally unacceptable.

So influence operations and techniques that can be highly divisive—and hence corrosive—in a democracy, and that can be employed for political advantage, are not only legal, but are also difficult to identify at first glance. It would be easy for an unscrupulous political party to use these techniques through third parties to maintain plausible deniability.

These are all concerns that the Canadian government is taking seriously. Canadian intelligence agencies have produced reports with titles like Cyber threats to Canada’s democratic process and Who said what: the security challenges of modern disinformation. Canada’s Chief Electoral Officer has accepted responsibility for countering disinformation around how, when and where to vote. Its Treasury Board President, Scott Brison, has stated: ‘We also expect that social media platforms do everything they can and maintain a responsibility for defending the integrity of our electoral system.’

Relying on foreign social media companies seems a pretty weak thread on which to hang the security of our electoral system and of our democracy. It’s time for all Australian political parties take this threat seriously.

After one of the most tumultuous campaigns in Indonesian history, the incumbent governor of Jakarta, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (Ahok) was soundly defeated by former Education Minister and academic, Anies Baswedan, in the second round of the election held on 19 April. Most exit polls have Anies winning about 57% of the vote to Ahok’s 43%.

What made this election so significant was the role of race and faith in determining the final result. The open vilification of Ahok on religious and racial grounds has no precedent in any Indonesian election.

Eight months ago, the Jakarta election appeared to be following the familiar pattern of voting behaviour being driven by perceptions of the incumbent’s performance. A governor or mayor who was seen to having done a good job would usually be re-elected. In mid-2016, Ahok was strongly placed with opinion surveys recording some two-thirds of respondents regarding him as an effective governor who had managed the city well—most intended to vote for him, giving him a large lead over his opponents. His double minority status as a Chinese Christian didn’t greatly dent his popularity, despite the attempts of Islamist groups to discredit him.

Religion only became a powerful issue when Ahok asserted in late September 2016 that the Quran didn’t forbid Muslims from voting for non-Muslims. His remarks were seized on by Islamists and anti-Ahok politicians to mobilise massive demonstrations against him which effectively forced the government to charge him with blasphemy. His electoral support fell by half in November and December, though recovered somewhat in early 2017, allowing him to win a narrow 43% to 40% victory over Anies in the first round in February, and to eliminate from the gubernatorial race Agus Harimurti, the son of ex-president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who gained just 17%.

The outcome of the second round of the election now hinged largely on who Agus’ voters would support. First round exit polls showed that nearly all Agus’ voters intended to back Anies, though Ahok hoped he could attract enough of them to have a chance of winning. In the end, his hopes were dashed; nearly all of Agus’ voters supported Anies, leaving Ahok with roughly the same number of votes in April as he gained in February.

The lack of movement from Agus’ support base to Ahok is indicative of the depth of polarisation in the Jakarta electorate along religious and ethnic lines. For a large majority of Jakarta’s Muslim community—85% of the city’s population—Ahok was unelectable not because he’d been an incompetent governor but rather because they believed he’d insulted their faith and was also part of the economically dominant Chinese minority whose privileged position they had long resented. Interestingly, Anies is also from an ethnic minority, being of Arab descent, though this proved not to be a problem for him given that he’s from a well-known family of Muslim leaders.

Although the most scurrilous attacks came from fervent Islamists, many mainstream opponents of Ahok, including Anies himself and SBY, harnessed this antipathy for their political purposes, often using allusive sectarian or ethnic references to align themselves with the calumnising of Ahok.

Deservedly, commentators have directed much criticism towards those who have exploited Islamic and anti-Chinese sentiment for political gain. Such tactics have been largely absent from politics over the past half century and they have badly tainted Indonesian democracy.

But Ahok shouldn’t escape criticism. His advisors and supporters had long pleaded with him not to speak on sensitive Islamic issues, but he was heedless. In effect, he gave to his enemies the material they needed to defeat him politically. This points to a certain recklessness in his personality which is a serious liability for a minority politician presiding over a diverse and volatile electorate.

Ahok’s political career is probably finished but it’s likely that Jokowi will seek to appoint him to a key bureaucratic or executive position. The day after the election, prosecutors at Ahok’s trial, perhaps with the government’s blessing, made the surprise decision not to seek a jail term, paving the way for him to complete his gubernatorial term and pursue other senior positions.

Anies’ election is a setback for president Jokowi and his re-election plans. Having been sacked by Jokowi from the ministry in 2016, Anies bears little good will to the president. He can be expected to use the governorship to undermine Jokowi and hinder his preparations for the 2019 presidential election. Anies has his own presidential ambitions, though he’s more likely to be the running mate to Prabowo Subianto, his main backer and Jokowi’s 2014 rival, in the next presidential election.

Jakarta itself is also likely to be worse off after this election. Anies, though decent and highly intelligent, hasn’t distinguished himself as a resolute leader possessed of the courage to tackle the city’s entrenched problems and confront its intimidating vested interests. Ahok had a devil-may-care attitude in cleaning up the city’s administration and forcing through long-overdue policy reforms. Anies is unlikely to follow suit.

The journalist questions in the Oz election debate on foreign policy started with the South China Sea and ended on China’s suppression of internal dissent.

As with the defence debate last week, China throbs.

In the National Press Club debate between Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, and Labor’s shadow Foreign Minister, Tanya Plibersek, China got more questions than the Middle East or foreign aid or the dangers of Britain exiting Europe.

The bipartisan tone of the defence debate echoed in foreign affairs. Plibersek pointed to the common ground between the major parties on what Labor calls the three pillars: the US alliance, international institutions and engagement with Asia, now rendered as the Indo–Pacific.

I’d stretch the metaphor to say China has become a tacit fourth column; it’s big and impressive and holds up much of Asia’s sky. And then there’s the fear that the fourth column also has some of the hostile or subversive characteristics of a fifth column.

Julie Bishop’s opening statement naturally enough emphasised the positives: ‘There’s huge opportunity for us in Asia where change is exponential. About 20 years ago, less than a fifth of the world’s middle class was in Asia. In ten years time, it’ll be two-thirds.’

Thanks, China, Long may the fourth column hold up the sky.

To get a quick read on the Oz foreign policy debate—such as it is in this election—look at these pieces for the Australian Institute of International Affairs by the Coalition, Labor and the Greens.

Along with the usual political biffo, Labor and the Coalition look at a similar world in familiar ways.

The Greens take you to a different place—and all power to their elbow. Which is one of many reasons why the big two elbow the Greens as much as possible.

The foreign policy debate was between the two sides reaching for government. On that basis, the Liberal and Labor parties can deny the Greens a seat on the stage— denying the Greens anything is another bit of bipartisanship.

Bishop’s piece for the AIIA was most explicit in picking over the danger of China going from fourth column to fifth column.

Asia’s strategic and economic blessings from the 1950s, Bishop wrote, rested on a liberal order ‘underwritten by the uncontested maritime power and reach of the United States.’

The big job now, she said, is to preserve that order. The ‘enormously important issue’ is to ‘ensure that an increasingly powerful China emerges as a responsible and constructive contributor to regional affairs, and eventually assume its rightful place as a regional leader within that order.’

We want that China column to support, not undermine.

The language about China as responsible and constructive and taking its rightful place is familiar; it’s now a few decades old. Yet these days the same words come through gritted teeth with just a hint of shrill desperation.

And so to the China salvos lobbed by the hacks at the Press Club.

As with the defence debate, the first question was about the South China Sea.

Last week, Labor’s Defence shadow, Stephen Conroy, was gung-ho about the need for Australia to sail in and fly over 12 mile zones to challenge China’s ‘absurd building of artificial islands on top of submerged reefs.’

By contrast, Labor’s Tanya Plibersek is more gentle with little gung. She said Labor’s national security committee backed the Conroy approach but the important thing is ‘not to talk these things up in a way to contribute to tension.’

Julie Bishop said Australia wouldn’t be provocative in its approach to China’s 12 mile zones. My translation: Australia’s Navy isn’t going to follow the the US inside those zones just yet.

As Bishop put it: ‘We will continue to traverse the water and the skies around the South China Sea as we have always done. Because for us to change operations now, I believe, would escalate tensions and that would not be in the interest of the claimant countries or our relationships with countries in the region.’

That drew this followup from the chair, Chris Uhlmann: ‘You would tell us if you got within 10 miles wouldn’t you?’

Bishop: ‘The boundary is 12 nautical miles, so if we are 12.1 nautical miles we are still within our standard operational procedure.’

The strongest words on China from the Foreign Minister were on Beijing’s statement that it won’t abide by the decision of the International Court of Justice on the South China Sea:

‘There will be enormous international pressure on China to abide by the findings of the international, rules-based order under which we all exist, that has provided so much stability and security for the globe. And there will be incredible pressure on China. It will do irreparable harm to its reputation if it thumbs its nose at the findings of the arbitration court.’

Lots of pressure in prospect for China.

The problem with a big and important column is that it’s very hard to shift.

Australia prides itself on the strength of its relationship with China and Canberra’s ability to speak directly to Beijing. The test is to be heard or heeded.