Hardly an inducement: tourism from China gets up Palau’s nose

China might want to think again about its use of tourism as a means of influencing Palau. The people of the little Western Pacific country believe they’d be better off without swarms of tourists from China on their islands, causing environmental damage and spending their money mostly with Chinese businesses.

Other ill-effects include upward pressure on prices and the locking up of land in China-linked real estate investments, Palauan officials and people involved in tourism said in interviews.

In a leaked letter this year, the president of the country of 18,000 people, Surangel Whipps Jr, told an unidentified US senator that China had offered to ‘fill every hotel room’ and build as many more as Palau wanted.

To Palauans, that sounds more like a threat than a promise. A senior official sums up the general assessment of tourism from China: ‘The negative impacts [are] more than the value of the tourism itself.’

China has already put Palau through a cycle of what it thought was economic inducement and punishment. Last decade, it ramped up tourism numbers to the country but then knocked them down again by revoking Palau’s status as an approved destination, punishing it for continued diplomatic recognition of Taiwan. Arrivals from China peaked at 90,000 in 2015 and slumped to 28,000 in 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic crushed tourism globally.

Now tourism from China is rising again: 8000 visitors from the country arrived in the five months to May.

There is a sense in Palau that it is just the beginning of resurgence. Businesses and investors connected with China have begun refurbishing Chinese restaurants and hotels in anticipation of a new surge in visitors. In what looked like a deliberate reminder of China’s economic importance ahead of Palauan general elections on 5 November, direct flights from Hong Kong resumed just five weeks ago.

When Americans, Australians and people from most other countries travel to Palau, they stay in Palauan-owned hotels, eat at Palauan restaurants, hire Palauan tour guides and contribute to the Palauan economy.

When tourists from China come, ‘they have these charter flights coming in, where a Chinese company owns a hotel in Palau, owns a tour company in Palau, owns the airplane that’s bringing them into Palau, so all this money that is being made from these tours is not trickling down to the local economy,’ says a former Palauan tour guide who, like other people interviewed for this report, asked not to be named.

One of the interviewees adds, ‘Chinese tour companies bought out entire hotels,’ leading managers to cancel reservations for other tourists. That ‘destroyed the market overnight’ for tourism from elsewhere.

This person also says that when tourists began arriving last decade, Chinese companies began acquiring long leases on prime real estate. (Foreigners can’t buy land outright.)

The senior Palauan official says, ‘One of their methods is they’ll lease property for 99 years and they don’t do anything to it, so they’re basically stalling development for Palau. That’s one of their tactics’ to gain economic and political influence. The result is diminished opportunity for locals to build businesses on suitable land.

Palauans have seen tourism drive inflation and expect that a renewed surge in arrivals from China will do the same again. ‘This kind of mass tourism will tend to push up the price of mass produce and local resources…,’ says the senior official. The price of giant coconut crabs, for example, was US$7 per pound before last decade’s tourism surge, the official says. Now it is US$60 per pound.

While tourists from any country will always include some who care little for protecting the natural environment, Palauans have found that the problem is unusually serious with groups from China.

The former tour guide recalls damage that tourists from China caused to one beautiful attraction, Jellyfish Lake. Some stole protected jellyfish from the lake to eat in their hotel rooms, using drawers as cutting boards. Hotels were forced to replace furniture and remove utensils that could be used for cooking.

Palauans often hear of tourists from China stealing animals from native habitats and bribing guides to look the other way. One interviewee describes instances of people from China taking giant clams for consumption directly from a reef. Another says tourists paid fishermen to bring them turtles, clams, shark fins and even dugongs, all of which are protected.

Then there’s infrastructure and business disruption. During the initial surge ‘they [came] in such big numbers, it overwhelms our sewer systems,’ the former tour guide said. ‘It overwhelms our stores. It overwhelms our tour services.’

Palau’s government has been trying hard to diversify tourism sources. Two weeks ago, Palau signed a deal with Japan for direct flights from Tokyo in 2025. Three days later, Australian airline Qantas agreed to take over direct flights from Brisbane from Air Nauru, aiming to increase frequency.

Palau’s people will welcome that.

Beijing has presumably imagined they would instead welcome another wave of tourism from China. But the behaviour of many of its tourists, the disruption caused by their arrival surges, and the cornering of their spending by operators and hotels connected to China—all these have only helped to galvanise Palauans against Beijing.

Don’t give a free pass to Beijing for its aggressive behaviour

The whole point of the post-World War II system of international rules and norms was that large countries, great powers, could not just do whatever they wanted.

The post-War order is meant to provide a check on the untrammelled power of the powerful, whether through military invasions or more subtle ways of bending the will of other countries—methods such as interference, coercion and malicious cyber intrusions.

Yet when asked recently how Australia would address China’s influence in the Pacific, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said, ‘China’s doing what great powers do, and great powers try to lift their influence and expand their influence in the region that they wish.’

To be sure, foreign policy is tough. Every country in the region and many beyond it are trying to navigate this most tricky of relationships—a great power flexing its muscle aggressively but with whom we are all deeply economically entwined. Yet that does not mean we should minimise or excuse China’s behaviour when it bulldozes rules and norms so carefully established to maintain stability and security.

This is not a case of picking one’s battles. China is waging its hybrid warfare on all fronts and setting precedents through our silence—Beijing’s overreaction to a statement on human rights by an Australian official in the UN in the past fortnight shows that Beijing hasn’t budged an inch in the past two years.

It is a calculated strategy to make Australia pull any punches at a higher level on something like human rights abuses in Xinjiang. This isn’t stabilisation—it’s Beijing saying that Australia will toe the line or else.

By limiting all but the most unavoidable criticisms of China to statements delivered by officials rather than ministers, Australia has been offering Beijing a compromise. Instead of taking that as a win, China continues to bite back hard. Fortunately this should serve only to highlight that no such compromises should be made.

The type of influence China exercises is not something we can accept as simply ‘what great powers do’. It launched a cyber attack on the Pacific Islands Forum, spreads online disinformation in the Pacific to undermine democracies and weaken Pacific partnerships, sought security agreements that lack public transparency, and undertaken various other malicious activities—such as hybrid and grey zone operations.

And that’s just in the Pacific—China is carrying out this malicious activity globally, not to mention being the main supporter enabling Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Of course, other significant powers seek influence, but responsible nations don’t behave like this. The United States for instance, as the longstanding international superpower, has built enormous global influence. But—notwithstanding its share of mistakes—it has done so overwhelmingly by cultivating alliances and genuine partnerships based on shared values and a common desire to improve conditions in the world and to the benefit of the citizens of their partner nations.

Think about it: the US has dozens of genuine friends around the world. China doesn’t have friends; it has subordinates, captive debtors, vassals.

We should remember that the trend in international politics has been to curb the kind of crass and predatory political behaviour we see from Beijing. Until about a century back, colonialism and conquests of other states were considered normal. But ideas of what constitutes acceptable international behaviour have changed dramatically, as seen through the development of international institutions, laws and norms. They don’t always work, but the international community should strive to do better, not revert to letting great powers engage in behaviour reminiscent of an earlier age.

The climate of peace and commerce that has resulted from multinational cooperation has benefited few countries as much as China with its stellar growth over recent decades. There have been continuous efforts in recent times by Indo-Pacific powers to strengthen the rules-based order and prevent it from eroding, including through the use of international law to adjudicate disputes, as the Philippines did in 2016 when it used international arbitration to resolve its dispute with China—which Beijing went on to ignore.

China’s behaviour has been completely at odds to this trend. Its worldview is based on dividing the international community into big and small powers—in which small powers should know their place in the international hierarchy. This world view does not permit peaceful settlement of disputes. Instead, the strong push their way through. Such a view should be opposed and called out, not rationalised.

Wong went on to say that the Pacific is now the field for a ‘permanent contest’. That much is true, but we cannot regard it through a false equivalence. The work that Australia does as a partner of choice, and the support we get from friends including the US, are worlds apart from the malign influence that China seeks to wield.

It is possible that at some stage, China will become so strong, and the relative balance of power so skewed, that others will not be able to push back. At that stage, countries in the region would have to find some other modus vivendi with China. But as long as they are able to, it is perfectly natural for them to push back.

Indeed, what would be unnatural would be for countries in the region to simply throw up their hands and accept Chinese hegemony. In international politics, aggressive behaviour must be countered, not explained away.

The 2024 US Elections and the Pax Americana

Under a new US president, will the United States stand by Ukraine, potentially risking war with Russia? Will it stand by its NATO treaty obligations? Will it support Israel to properly defend itself, potentially risking war with Iran? Will it prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, including by using force, if necessary? Will it defend Taiwan, should China seek to use force to annex that democratic society? Will it defend the Philippines, or Japan, or other Indo-Pacific treaty allies in the event of their being attacked by China? Will it defend South Korea were it to be attacked? Will it continue to shield its non-nuclear allies under the protection of extended nuclear deterrence? Will it continue to protect the world’s sea lanes? Closer to home, will it honour its commitment to supply nuclear-powered attack submarines to Australia, as doubts swirl around its industrial capacity to meet US Navy requirements?

These and other similar questions will be on the agenda over the course of the coming presidential term, irrespective of who wins on 5 November. While these questions are vitally important in their own right, what is of greater interest is how the result of the election might affect the future shape and structure of world order which, since the end of the Second World War, has been underpinned by the ‘Pax Americana’—the ‘American peace’ which links and frames all of these issues, and more besides. This ‘peace’ has meant the avoidance of a catastrophic nuclear war. It has not meant the absence of confrontation, conflict, or war otherwise.

Without the assertion and projection by the United States of its stupendous economic and military power after the Second World War, a Eurasian hegemon would have emerged in the strategic heartland of the world. Since 1948, when it broke the Berlin blockade, the United States has been the crucial actor in the prevention of the emergence of such a hegemonic power in Eurasia. Were it ever to emerge, such a power, with strategic and military dominion over the population, resources, and economic might of Eurasia, would be the leading global power, and today we would be dealing with entirely different questions.

By the end of the coming presidential term in 2028, the future world order will be clearer in three crucial respects—namely, will the United States have the wherewithal, whether on its own or in partnership with others, to continue to counter the rise of such a power; will it have the interest and inclination to do so; and will the Pax Americana hold?

A Eurasian hegemon would itself not have the wherewithal, initially perhaps, to subjugate the United States, which would be secure in its hemispheric citadel, protected by the geographical barrier of great oceans, a vast arsenal of nuclear weapons, and advanced defensive shields to deal with missile, cyber, and space attacks. Such a United States would, from its citadel, project power selectively and only in relation to strictly defined interests and narrowly couched objectives. It would have few, if any, alliances. It would still be a powerful economic actor, fuelled by a massive domestic market, deep sources of private wealth, leading edge innovation, healthy population growth, and the enduring role of the US dollar as a favoured store of value. A Eurasian hegemon would be satisfied with such a world order, pleased that a materially-focused United States, which was more interested in making money than waging war, would not be an obstacle to its strategic designs, unless it were to be threatened directly.

To glean the future of the Pax Americana, it would be helpful to consider its development and evolution. Initially, in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, the United States appeared to be willing to place its faith in the dual promise of the United Nations and the new economic architecture that became known as the Bretton Woods system. While the yearning for a universal order that would see the prevention of war seemed to be within reach, after the horrors of 1914-45, it became soon apparent to the Truman administration that the possibility of Soviet Russia achieving hegemonic mastery in Eurasia would both stymie this noble vision, and be detrimental to the interests of the United States.

Under Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy (two Democrats and a Republican), the United States countered Soviet Russia, to the point of risking nuclear war, in October 1962.  Under Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter (two Democrats and two Republicans), the United States chose the path of co-existence and eventually détente with Soviet Russia, while contesting it in proxy struggles around the world. Under Reagan, there was a marked departure in US policy. The United States began to act on the radical policy premise that a state of confrontation with Soviet Russia, which carried with it the risk of global nuclear war, need not be accepted as a permanent condition. Then with the collapse of Soviet Russia, Bush senior, Clinton, and Bush the younger (two Republicans and a Democrat) sought to refashion global security arrangements, including by bringing post-Soviet Russia and Communist China into a globally integrated economy, where greater trade and investment flows, and reformed multilateral institutions, would engender a more peaceful world.

With the global financial crisis of 2008, and the onset of war weariness in the United States under Obama, Trump, and Biden (two Democrats and one Republican), strategic restraint became increasingly the organising principle of US policy. This has not been without benefit in terms of the struggle for mastery in Eurasia. Allies have been challenged to do more, which has seen a degree of strategic awakening in Europe and in the Indo-Pacific. In Europe, modest rearmament and mobilisation is underway, especially in the wake of Putin’s illegal invasions of Ukraine in 2014 and 2022. NATO has become more active and re-engaged on its core mission, after years of searching for relevance after the demise of Soviet Russia. In the Indo-Pacific, which lacks the organising structure of NATO, the ‘latticework’ of US-centred alliances and security partnerships is being steadily strengthened, including by way of the basing of US combat forces in northern Australia.

The United States is unlikely to ever again play the role of preponderant power, as it did in the period 1948-62. For analytical purposes, there are interesting questions to examine, such as the nature, dimensions, and actuality or otherwise of ‘US primacy’; the relative power balance between the United States and China; and the lessons of historical patterns of how ‘rising’ and ‘declining’ powers compete with, and confront, one another. For policy, the more relevant question is this: will the United States leverage its own power (however measured in absolute and relative terms), and that of allies and partners, to ensure that no globally powerful, hegemonic power can establish itself in Eurasia, while at the same time ensuring that the Pax Americana endures.

The United States has always ‘pivoted’ in accordance with its interests and capacities, and its resolve. There is nothing new in that. For instance, in July 1969, Nixon made clear at Guam that the United States had a different—and more restrained—sense of its obligations in terms of security assurances in Asia, as compared with its iron resolve to deter a Soviet attack on Western Europe, and to wage war on Soviet Russia if necessary.

What is different today is the advent of the formidable Axis of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, which presents the United States with a choice: knowing that it cannot hold the entire strategic perimeter of Eurasia without leveraging the significant military and economic resources of the European Union, Japan, India, Australia, South Korea, and others, does it seek to reset the burden sharing parameters of the Pax Americana—including by demanding that allies and partners increase defence spending to at least 3 percent of GDP, and possibly more—while still leading in countering the emergence of a Eurasian hegemon, or does it commence the process of withdrawing into its citadel?

Preferably, we will see continued US leadership, with greater contributions from its allies and partners. However, a weary and divided United States, which was concerned with its strategic solvency—where it was spending more on the cost of servicing its federal debt than on defence—might well recalculate its interests, taking a dim view of those who consume US security without contributing meaningfully. The United States might well decide to revert to what it did for the first 170 years of the republic—pursuing abundance at home, and restraint abroad. Could one blame the United States for pursuing such a course if those whom it seeks to protect refuse to make greater sacrifices in order to better defend themselves, having grown accustomed to the protection of the Pax Americana? Unless US allies and partners, Australia included, do more for themselves, this might be more than an academic question.

Trick or treat? China comes a-knocking at Indonesia’s front door

China is testing Prabowo Subianto’s new administration, with three successive incursions by China Coast Guard vessels into Indonesia’s exclusive maritime jurisdiction—the first occurring on the new president’s inaugural day in office.

Jakarta urgently needs to recalibrate its South China Sea diplomacy and to revisit its basic assumptions about China. China’s move south should also be a wake-up call to Canberra that its pursuit of supposed bilateral ‘stabilisation’ with Beijing is irrelevant to China’s strategic intentions.

These incursions are more than a test of Prabowo’s mettle. They are hard evidence that the economics-first, neutrality-based approach of Prabowo’s predecessor, Joko Widodo, fundamentally failed to temper China’s maritime expansionism in the southernmost reaches of the South China Sea. China is making it crystal clear to Prabowo that it still claims ownership over all waters and seabed resources within the dashed-line claim, including part of Indonesia’s continental shelf and exclusive economic zone (EEZ) around the Natuna Islands.

This is despite Jakarta’s longstanding official position that it has no jurisdictional dispute with China, given the legally baseless nature of the Chinese ambit claim. However, under Prabowo, Indonesia’s maritime authorities appear to be implementing greater transparency about China’s activities near the Natuna Islands, quickly releasing video and audio of the Chinese Coast Guard’s challenges to Indonesian vessels in the area.

If Jakarta thought it had obtained a diplomatic modus vivendi with Beijing despite their differences in the South China Sea, China’s leadership clearly has other ideas. One prominent Indonesian analyst has argued that Philippines-China relations deteriorated because Manila’s diplomacy was out of kilter with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) holistic and non-confrontational approach towards Beijing. In fact, China’s incursions near the Natuna Islands should prompt Jakarta to question its own diplomatic settings towards China, ASEAN and the South China Sea. By failing to support the Philippines diplomatically, the previous Indonesian administration only emboldened China’s divide-and-conquer tactics, now seen on Indonesia’s maritime doorstep.

Under Widodo, Jakarta prioritised economic benefits in its relations with Beijing, contributing to China becoming Indonesia’s largest source of inward investment. Indonesia remained party to the intractable negotiations between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations for a code of conduct in the South China Sea. But it did not invest real energy behind the effort, with the result that the process has drifted aimlessly from one ASEAN chairmanship to another, weakening the organisation’s collective resolve.

Indonesia must now belatedly put its full weight behind those negotiations, either to secure a meaningful outcome or terminate the talks if Beijing continues to stall. Jakarta should meanwhile muster diplomatic support within Southeast Asia for the Philippines, a fellow ASEAN founder member facing a clear external threat, as Indonesia did for Thailand in the 1980s. Southeast Asia’s collective security must come ahead of any single member’s economic benefit, in conformity with ASEAN’s foundational spirit and diplomatic purpose.

China has unfortunately received the message that Southeast Asia can easily be splintered by working bilaterally and exploiting its greater leverage relative to any one of the countries. Malaysia’s supplicatory position towards China under Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has only fanned Beijing’s confidence that it can divide-and-rule ASEAN with ease.

One of China’s follow-up objectives is to persuade Indonesia that it should ‘properly handle maritime issues’, contingent on broader factors in their relationship. Jakarta should be alert to China’s bad-faith intentions, including offers of dialogue, and double down instead on the code-of-conduct negotiations. In doing so, it would return to its traditional leading-from-behind role within ASEAN.

Indonesia must vocally support the Philippines and Vietnam whenever they face Chinese aggression in the South China Sea. Jakarta should prioritise efforts to reach an EEZ boundary agreement with Vietnam, building on Indonesia’s successful maritime boundary delimitation with the Philippines. This will make it harder for Beijing to exploit differences among the Southeast Asian littoral states. Prabowo’s decision to send military assets to assist the Philippines as part of a four-nation ASEAN disaster relief mission was a commendable signal of solidarity and good will.

China may justifiably feel that Southeast Asia is tipping its way overall, and that the Philippines appears isolated within ASEAN. But poking Indonesia is never an advisable strategy. By overbearingly doing so, China reveals its hubris.

Prabowo may be a mercurial figure, but he’s unlikely to be a pushover. An axis of cooperation among Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam could still obstruct Beijing’s path towards dominance in the South China Sea. But Jakarta must draw its own clear-eyed conclusions about China’s strategic intent from first principles.

Australia should take note. Beijing’s direct challenge to Indonesia’s maritime sovereign rights, despite years of favourable treatment by Widodo, calls into question the meaning of what Canberra is calling ‘stabilisation’ with China.

Beijing’s strategic behaviour continues to be deeply inimical to Australia’s security within the immediate region. China is steadily marching south, while Australia’s government seemingly obsesses over lobsters and wine exports.

Stepping out of the shadows: ASIS asks publicly, ‘Do you want in on the secret?’

It’s not often that the Australian government’s most secretive agency steps out of the shadows. But that’s what happened on Tuesday night when Kerri Hartland, director-general of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS), gave a speech in Canberra exploring the psychology and mechanics of Australian human-intelligence (humint) operations.

That Hartland, who became ASIS’s first female director-general early last year, gave a public speech is itself novel. ASIS (and its ministers) have traditionally been allergic to publicity, even by the standards of such national intelligence community stablemates as the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation and Australian Signals Directorate. This is, after all, an agency that existed for a quarter of a century without being publicly acknowledged, and that only came under an act of Parliament in 2001. It’s also an agency for which secrecy, albeit suitably purposeful secrecy, is a critical enabler.

Public remarks by an ASIS director-general are not wholly unprecedented. The public address in 2012 by Nick Warner, director-general at the time, was a first. His immediate successor, Paul Symon, addressed a variety of forums in the lead-up to his retirement at the end of 2022 and in earlier interviews to ASPI. While Bill Burns and Richard Moore, chiefs of the CIA and MI6 respectively (agencies credited by Hartland as ‘two of our closest partners’), appeared together publicly last month to talk about how they’re handling threats posed by Russia and China.

Hartland’s speech on 30 October was unusual for being unconnected to anniversaries or valedictories. It’s also the first time there’s been a public articulation of the fundamentals of how ASIS spies for Australia, namely the identification, recruitment and running of foreigners with access to secrets Australia wants and cannot otherwise obtain.

It’s worth noting that ASIS is itself unusual. Everyone spies but not everyone has a dedicated foreign humint service. Within the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, for example, ASIS’s existence makes Australia more similar to its US and UK partners than to New Zealand and Canada (which have security services like ASIO and signals intelligence agencies like ASD but have not taken this step).

ASIS has existed for 72 years and governments—from that of Menzies to Hawke and, yes, Keating to Albanese—have found it a valuable tool. This says something about Australia’s national intelligence culture and gives a realistic sense of the country’s interests and place in the world. And it belies some more rose-tinted historical accounts of Australian foreign policy.

Hartland’s speech was framed around the themes of mythology, technology and psychology. She also generally emphasised collaboration: intelligence as a team sport; the importance of back room capabilities; and the variety of perspectives, skills and other aspects required to undertake successful espionage in the 21st century.

This collaborative dimension is itself a clue to why ASIS is making this public pitch now. It is increasingly evident that there is a need for collaboration to enable future intelligence work—whether it’s collection, analysis or other functions—and that this includes collaboration inside and outside of government. This is a development that should be highlighted when the government finally gets around to releasing the public version of the 2024 Independent Intelligence Review.

Hartland’s remarks underscore how collaboration is particularly important to the humint business. That collaboration encompasses people (the recruits and skills ASIS needs, hence the speech’s subtitle: ‘Do you want in on the secret?’), technological solutions to defeat operational threats in this digital age (through partnerships with sovereign industry and research) or society (in terms of the social licence underpinning the necessary risk that accompanies intelligence operations). It also means different forms of intelligence working together and a whole-of-government effort for national effect.

Hartland also made a clear attempt at myth-busting about how ASIS works and what its officers look like, embraced ethics and clearly rejected use of coercion towards ASIS’s sources and prospective sources. Nature abhors a vacuum, and the absence of official commentary has at times opened up all manner of myth-making about ASIS (and about Australian intelligence more broadly) in the public square—most notoriously in the 1970s.

The speech also offered insights into the purpose and use of the ‘secret intelligence’ that is ASIS’s ultimate contribution—including Hartland highlighting its value in the context of Australia’s challenging strategic circumstances. On her account, the secrets obtained ‘give Australia and our allies an advantage and help disrupt threats’. What’s more, she set out her case for the continuing value of humint: ‘To get to the true actions and intentions of people and groups overseas, it still takes a human sitting down with another human’.

The Australian public hearing directly from those officials who act covertly in their name is a very welcome development and should be encouraged. Secrecy might remain essential in the field but collaboration (including with the public and with the private sector) is increasingly key to winning the 21st century intelligence contest.

Under Prabowo, military-security apparatus will have more say in foreign policy

As Jakarta geared up for the Indonesian armed forces’ 79th anniversary on 5 October, there seemed to be an added frisson in the air. Amid the martial scene of massed military equipment in central Jakarta and with the 20 October inauguration of Prabowo Subianto approaching, it felt like Indonesia was on the cusp of something new—yet also familiar.

Key ministerial appointments and machinery of government changes to date suggest Prabowo’s approach to governance is reminiscent of the Suharto era, characterised by greater political centrality and policy influence for the military-security apparatus. That includes foreign policy.

Prabowo served in the armed forces from 1970 to 1998, when the power of Indonesia’s military-security apparatus was at its apex. This system, known as hankam, embodied a range of defence, intelligence and security functions focused chiefly on suppression of internal dissent and separatist insurgencies.

The former power of the hankam apparatus was anchored in the military’s dual socio-political role, dwifungsi. This doctrine legitimated a sweeping role for the armed forces across Indonesian society and all levels of government.

Concerningly, a drift back towards a dwifungsi-type paradigm has been seen in the development of Indonesia’s civil-military relations, especially over the last five years of Joko Widodo’s presidency. It showed up in proposed revisions to a law governing the armed forces, for example. Scholars have noted a pattern of democratic regression in Widodo’s second term.

The exact link between policy, the military’s rising political influence and the loyalties and motivations of military officers may not be immediately clear. However, shifts in the balance of Indonesia’s civil-military relations have historically had broader implications for good governance and policy implementation.

Prabowo has appointed Sugiono—a legislator, Kopassus first lieutenant and former official of the new president’s Gerindra Party—as foreign minister, replacing well-regarded career diplomat Retno Marsudi. This may bookend a 26-year reform journey for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

This journey began with Indonesia’s democratic political transition in 1998. Sweeping legislative and policy reforms ended the Suharto-era practice of reserving foreign affairs leadership positions and priority ambassadorial posts for military officers. Democratic consolidation in the early 2000s further empowered civilian foreign-policy actors and democratic norms were internalised within Indonesia’s foreign policy.

To be fair, Sugiono is no longer an active military officer, but he has clearly remained a loyal adjutant to Prabowo through his previous Kopassus military service and Prabowo’s patronage of him in the Gerindra Party. In fact, Sugiono’s appointment is a departure from even Suharto-era diplomatic traditions. Suharto, himself a former general and one of Asia’s wiliest and most enduring political leaders, preferred career diplomats over military men as foreign ministers.

Prabowo’s ministerial appointments are clearly driven by a need to dispense political rewards. But his foreign affairs, defence and political-security portfolio picks—Sugiono, former Kopassus officer Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin, and Budi Gunawan, respectively—reflect the importance of loyalty and personalised chains of command.

While the Prabowo-Sugiono team is unlikely to make wholesale changes to Indonesia’s foreign-policy principle of non-alignment, expect some more creative reinterpretations of it. In Prabowo’s Indonesia, non-alignment now includes biennial exercises with the Russian navy in Indonesian waters and resumption of military exercises with the People’s Liberation Army.

Sugiono’s first days as foreign minister already signal a departure from the foreign ministry’s cautious instincts. His announcement that Indonesia would seek full BRICs membership, despite the ministry’s earlier reticence, reveals he has been tasked with implementing Prabowo’s bolder foreign policy agenda, probably without question.

This policy agenda aims to expand Indonesia’s diplomatic influence on the global stage while boosting the country’s hard power. Defence spending is to increase from 0.7 to 1.5 percent of GDP.

The political changes currently taking place in Indonesia are strongly reminiscent of the Suharto era. Prabowo’s election victory and major ministerial picks prolong a trajectory in civil-military relations that was strengthened during Widodo’s second term. Although much remains uncertain about the balance of Indonesia’s foreign policy interests, the resurgence of the hankam apparatus suggests the locus of foreign policy influence in Indonesia has now shifted.

The case for Taiwan: observer status at Interpol’s world congress

Interpol’s vision statement is ‘connecting police for a safer world’. Yet it isn’t connecting all police and is leaving some people less safe. Excluding Taiwan from Interpol observer status undermines international cooperation and hinders the development of an effective security network to address the challenges posed by modern crime.

Last week, outgoing Interpol secretary general Jurgen Stock said, ‘The world is confronted with a dramatic surge in international organised crime in a way that, definitely, I haven’t seen in my now long 45-year career.’

The escalation of transnational crime, fuelled by technological advancements, poses challenges that no single nation can effectively address alone. The complexities of modern criminal activity necessitate robust international collaboration. Yet, a crucial democratic player that has much experience to share in this security landscape remains sidelined: Taiwan.

As Interpol prepares for its upcoming World Congress in November 2024, the 196 member states—nations committed to collaboration despite ongoing conflicts and geopolitical tensions—must address a critical question: why is Taiwan, a proven champion of global safety, denied observer status? The exclusion undermines Interpol’s principles of international cooperation and its collective ability to combat transnational crime. It’s time for Interpol to rectify this oversight and include Taiwan as an observer in the conversation.

Let’s be clear: many international institutions do not require nation status for members or observers. Interpol is one of them. And Taiwanese society consistently ranks among the safest worldwide. As with the World Health Organization, the refusal to include Taiwan results from China blocking the decision and from other countries being fearful of upsetting it.

If these institutions claim that all that can be done is being done in the name of public health and safety, they’re uttering a known untruth.

Taiwan’s exclusion from Interpol hampers the island’s law enforcement agencies by denying them access to vital real-time intelligence that could enhance efforts to combat crime, domestic and transnational. Without Interpol observer status, Taiwan must rely on indirect information that often arrives too late.

The case of Lisa Lines, an Australian who fled to Taiwan in 2017 after allegedly arranging a violent attack on her ex-husband, illustrates how Tawain’s exclusion from Interpol helps criminals. Interpol issued a red notice—an international request to law enforcement agencies worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest an individual pending extradition. Australian authorities had to send the request through Interpol because Taiwan had (and has) no extradition treaty with Australia.

But Taiwan did not receive the red notice quickly enough. Lines was not arrested until 14 months later, when she travelled to Palau.

Taiwan’s law enforcement consistently demonstrates a commitment to tackling international crime, and Interpol has recognised this. The Interpol Stop Online Piracy initiative recognised Taiwanese police for their efforts against illegal broadcasting, illustrating their valuable insights and experiences.

A lack of observer status at Interpol also severely restricts Taiwan’s ability to contribute to important discussions and initiatives. And Interpol’s members miss out on the possibility of Taiwan providing timely intelligence on emerging criminal methods and alerting them to threats from criminal groups exploiting Taiwanese passports.

Beijing opposes Taiwan’s inclusion in health and safety bodies because it is wants to shift the view of the rest of the world on the status of Taiwan. It fears that Taiwanese participation in Interpol could weaken its attempts to advance its own claims over the self-ruled democracy.

Taiwan’s police can already cooperate directly with law enforcement agencies elsewhere. There is no good reason why it should not do so through Interpol, too.

Interpol was established to facilitate international police cooperation, not to serve as a tool of geopolitics or international relations. Its constitution emphasises the need for mutual assistance among police authorities, a fact that emphasises that its focus is on crime prevention and enforcement, not political manoeuvring.

Excluding Taiwan undermines this foundational principle and weakens the global network essential for addressing threats that cross borders. The 1984 Interpol General Assembly resolution that replaced Taipei with Beijing as the organisation’s representative of China does not preclude other participation by Taiwan. Interpol does in fact have both the authority as well as the responsibility to grant observer status to Taiwan.

As Interpol prepares for its 92nd General Assembly in Glasgow on 4 November, the moment for decisive action has arrived. It should welcome Taiwan as an observer, facilitating the island’s involvement in key meetings and initiatives that shape global policing efforts.

Australia should be a champion for Taiwan’s observer status. Recognising that a collaborative approach is essential for the security of all nations, we must ensure that Taiwan has a voice in global law enforcement dialogues. This is not just about Taiwan, and Interpol mustn’t allow itself to be a pawn in China’s pursuit of global power. It is about building a more effective security network that can adapt to the challenges of modern crime through international cooperation.

Trump’s meaning for America, win or lose

See Donald Trump as a symptom, not a cause.

Trump has a massive ego, the appetites of a supreme narcissist and the language of a fascist. But he has a finely tuned popular antenna that has again taken him to the gates of the White House. He is an extraordinary symptom of tectonic shifts in geopolitics and geoeconomics.

Win or lose on 5 November, Trump as a phenomenon tells us much about where the United States is heading as ‘the dysfunctional superpower’.

If he wins, Trump will have another four years to turn the popular mood into policy. In defeat, though, Trump is still a symptom that signposts the future. The trends he expresses will endure to shape the temperature and tone of US politics and foreign policy.

Trump revolutionised the Republican Party. America’s conservative party is transformed into a more rabid beast. Republican grandees shake their heads in woe and wonder. America’s trade policy is remade, even as US economic influence in Asia declines. The protectionist consensus is at its strongest in American politics since the Great Depression, nine decades ago. The economic instinct feeds an isolationist mood that will push at US strategy and alliances. The one international question that unites Washington is the new cold war with China.

Turn to a couple of Republican grandees to see how this shapes America’s future. The ‘dysfunctional superpower’ label is from Robert Gates, who served as defence secretary in both Republican and Democrat administrations (an unimaginable double in these fevered times).

Gates fears that a divided America has no long-term strategy to prevail in the struggle with Russia, China, North Korea and Iran. He judges that ‘dysfunction has made American power erratic and unreliable, practically inviting risk-prone autocrats to place dangerous bets—with potentially catastrophic effects.’

The diagnosis from Condoleezza Rice, national security adviser and secretary of state to president George W Bush, is that the ‘new four horsemen of the apocalypse—populism, nativism, isolationism, and protectionism—tend to ride together, and they are challenging the political centre.’

Rice says the US needs an internationalist president, explaining ‘what the world would be like without an active United States’. Looking beyond Cold War II, Rice sees analogies with today’s dilemmas in

the imperialism of the late nineteenth century and the zero-sum economies of the interwar period. Now, as then, revisionist powers are acquiring territory through force, and the international order is breaking down. But perhaps the most striking and worrying similarity is that today, as in the previous eras, the United States is tempted to turn inward.

Globalisation may not be dead, but the Trump symptom says it’s ailing. The US has given up on free trade. In the region that matters to Australia, the Indo-Pacific, the US has gone AWOL on trade issues since Trump withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership the day he became president in 2017.

Trump’s campaign promise this time is to boost tariffs on all US imports by 10 percent and increase tariffs on China by 60 percent. A Republican candidate who gets his history from television brandishes the beggar-thy-neighbour protectionism of the 1930s.

Asia wants the US to help achieve strategic balance, not deliver trade war. A rich new era of Asian commerce arrives, marked by the decline of US economic influence. As Asia trades with itself, China wins, trumping the US almost by default.

The ‘stark reality’ is that the US ‘will not be a partner in East Asian regionalism or show leadership on trade and global economic governance, for at least the next few presidential terms’, according to Peter Drysdale and Liam Gammon, writing in the East Asia Forum. The Democrats have offered no intellectual response to the slide into protectionism, Drysdale and Gammon observe, so Trump has defined the policy terrain:

The ‘America First’ trade policy has won a strategic victory over the past eight years, shifting the US bipartisan consensus towards the idea that globalisation was a lousy deal for Americans.

The Trump effect has pushed at Washington’s Blob in profound ways. The Blob was an Obama-era description of the settled outlook of the foreign policy establishment. Trumpism points to generational change in the Blob’s operation. This is one of the deep differences between Joe Biden and Trump.

In foreign policy, Biden has repaired alliances and delivered traditional sermons on America’s central role in the world. Yet he will be the last US president whose policy instincts are rooted in Cold War I. In contrast, one of Trump’s few consistent messages is that the US was stupid to spend all its blood and treasure overseas while allies got a free ride. ‘No more lousy deals,’ he proclaims.

The generation that is stepping into the top jobs in Washington was in high school or heading to university when Cold War I toppled with the Berlin wall in 1989. Their understandings are shaped by the 9/11 attacks, America’s longest war in Afghanistan and the Iraq morass. For 20 years, until the last American aircraft left Afghanistan in August 2021, US soldiers were at war.

Trump’s message is that the era of war and global responsibility is over. And that view will weigh on America’s course, even if Trump fails.

China sharpens the BRI with better risk management, ESG focus

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) for investment abroad has been revamped with a greater focus on risk management and governance, and it is on the cusp of winning important new members.

Brazil is expected to announce it will join the program when China’s President Xi Jinping makes a state visit to the country following a G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro in late November. Colombian officials, meanwhile, have confirmed their government’s intent to join.

US Trade Representative Katherine Tai warned last week that Brazil should be ‘objective’ about the risks of joining and consider how best to protect its economic resilience.  But Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has declared his interest in the scheme, as have several ministers.

Once Brazil and Colombia join, the only significant emerging nations outside the BRI will be Mexico, which would face a conflict with its trade agreement with the United States and Canada, and India, which has a difficult relationship with China and objects to the BRI project for a Pakistani economic corridor passing through contested territory in Kashmir.

The scheme’s membership of approximately 150 nations also includes several developed economies, including South Korea, Singapore, Saudi Arabia and 17 of the European Union’s 27 members. (G7 member Italy withdrew last December.)

China’s lending to developing countries now exceeds US$1.3 trillion (A$2 trillion). This makes it a larger official creditor to the developing world than the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund or the combined advanced nations, according to AidData, a research institute attached to the William & Mary university in the United States, which has the most comprehensive database of Chinese lending.

AidData says the scheme has significantly tightened its financial risk management and its environmental, society and governance (ESG) performance after its first five years of lending left at least 57 nations overdue on repayments or at risk of default.  There was also community and political backlash in many countries following poorly conceived and executed projects.

New lending reached a peak of US$142 billion in 2016 but had dived to US$74 billion by 2020. There was a small increase to US$79 billion in 2021.

The scheme has cut lending to the highest-risk countries and increasingly supports private rather than public projects. It is participating in syndicated loans with private lenders to spread risk and has begun lending to multilateral institutions, such as the African Export-Import Bank and the Africa Finance Corporation.  BRI loans now need to be backed with collateral, and they carry penalty interest rates for late payments. Most deals now have legally enforceable ESG safeguards.

Motivated by the number of borrowers in financial difficulty, China has been providing emergency balance-of-payments lending, most of which is denominated in yuan rather than US dollars.

‘It is learning from its mistakes and becoming an increasingly adept international crisis manager,’ AidData researchers commented, arguing that Western critics had failed to understand the extent to which the BRI had been reworked, and risked devising policies to compete with a version of the BRI that no longer existed.

The West was slow to respond to the BRI.  It was only in 2021 that US President Joe Biden announced a program, initially branded as Build Back Better World but then renamed the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII), to combine G7 lending to developing countries.

The US contribution over a five-year period was to be US$200 billion, with a further US$400 billion to come from the other G7 members and the private sector. ‘We’re showing democracies can deliver,’ Biden said.

The PGII has a number of major projects, led by a transcontinental rail link from Angola’s Lobito port to the Katanga province in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Copperbelt in Zambia on the east of the continent.  A less advanced plan would develop a Trans-Caspian transport corridor linking central Asian nations with Europe, while plans for an India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor were announced in late 2023.

China was lending up to three times as much as the United States until recently, but the margin has narrowed. US loans to the developing world reached US$60 billion last year, compared with just under US$80 billion from China.

However, China still appears to be winning the hearts and minds of the governments, if not necessarily the people, of the emerging world.  According to an AidData study, governments of developing countries aligned their voting in the United Nations General Assembly with China 75 percent of the time and with the United States just 23 percent between 2000 and 2023.  A government that increases its UN voting alignment with China by 10 percentage points can expect to see a near-tripling of aid and credit flows.

How gender factors affect work to counter violent extremism

To improve its programs for countering violent extremism (CVE), the Australian government must better understand the gendered characteristics of extremism. And it needs to apply that knowledge to enhance the existing practices of CVE professionals who work with radicalised men.

While it is well established that a significant proportion of violent extremists are men, the underlying gendered factors driving male radicalisation remain poorly understood. This hampers the government’s ability to craft effective strategies in CVE.

Historically, CVE efforts have concentrated on individual risk assessments and community surveillance.  While this is important work, by overlooking the critical role of gender in radicalisation processes we are potentially missing ways to improve the effectiveness of CVE. Yet, gender-sensitising CVE efforts is no easy task.

In our 2021 research we interviewed Australian CVE practitioners, exploring how conventional understandings of masculinity—particularly hegemonic masculinity, which normalises men’s dominance over women and puts high value on traits like strength and control—played a pivotal role in shaping the self-identities and views of men susceptible to extremist ideologies. Many of their clients aligned themselves with notions of masculinity that endorse violence and superiority, especially when they perceived these ideals as being under threat.

Our research reveals new insights about the influence of gender in CVE intervention. CVE practitioners, often on the frontline of deradicalisation, spend much time building relationships with such men. Through discussions with a diverse range of Australian practitioners, we uncovered a complex interplay between masculine identity and the effectiveness of interventions. We discovered that the process of deradicalisation was deeply influenced by the client’s views on gender roles as well as the gender dynamics between practitioner and client.

Many practitioners reported that male clients expressed rigid views on gender roles, which could affect their behaviour and responses to treatment. These views had to be carefully negotiated. For instance, one practitioner noted that a client struggled with feelings of inadequacy regarding his masculinity, making interactions with traditional authority figures—such as police officers—particularly challenging.

Interestingly, several practitioners observed that male clients with misogynistic views often engaged more positively with female practitioners than with their male counterparts. This challenges the stereotype that strong traditionalist beliefs would preclude men from seeking advice and mentorship from women.

The interpersonal relationships developed in CVE settings are crucial staging grounds for different ways of defining and developing masculinity. Here, masculine identities are enacted and shaped by both clients and practitioners, often reflecting broader societal norms and expectations. While some practitioners use traits associated with hegemonic masculinity to build trust and rapport, this approach risks reinforcing the very stereotypes that contribute to radicalisation.

We believe such insights are vital for refining CVE practices. There is an urgent need for practitioners to reflect critically on whether they are challenging harmful gender stereotypes or inadvertently perpetuating them.

The complexity of CVE work necessitates a nuanced approach that accounts for the multifaceted nature of gendered power dynamics. Practitioners must consider gender dynamics not only between men and women but also among men, women, boys and girls. This level of introspection is essential, as it encourages practitioners to question their assumptions and adapt their strategies accordingly.

To make CVE initiatives more effective, the government must urge practitioners to engage with diverse theories and understandings of gender and masculinity. Once they recognise that gender identities are socially and culturally constructed, they may have a more comprehensive understanding of how these identities influence the behaviours and interactions of young men. Then they can foster a reflective practice that interrogates gender norms, and create more inclusive and effective interventions that truly address the roots of radicalisation.

To this end, training and professional development should focus on gender sensitivity and awareness, so that practitioners are equipped with the tools to navigate these complex dynamics. By creating spaces for dialogue about masculinity and radicalisation, the government can empower practitioners to share experiences and strategies, fostering a collaborative approach to CVE.

As the field of CVE evolves, it is crucial for practitioners to incorporate gender analysis into their work. This involves not only recognising diverse expressions of masculinity but also understanding how these expressions can affect relationships with clients. They can develop strategies that both deradicalise individuals and dismantle the harmful stereotypes that contribute to violent extremism.

Ultimately, a comprehensive approach to CVE that embraces a nuanced understanding of gender dynamics will help build more resilient communities that are better equipped to prevent various forms of radicalisation in the first place.