Tag Archive for: Bilateral Relations

Franco-Australian relations: vers un partenariat stratégique?

Australia’s foreign policy and defence white papers, launched over the past 18 months, are notable in describing a complex and uncertain global environment and our commitment to the values of the rule of law, human rights and democracy, and working collaboratively with partners.

These foundation documents sit comfortably with the evolving bilateral relationship between Australia and France—two liberal democratic countries with global outlooks and a shared sense of global responsibility. We’re also neighbours, with maritime borders in the Coral Sea and the Southern Ocean.

In our focus on what is closest and most urgent, however, it’s often challenging for Canberra and Paris to find an opportunity to explore the relationship more deeply. Though we’re involved in complementary activities and neighbouring regions, there’s rarely a need to manage bilateral issues or focus particular attention on each other.

Last year’s announcement that Australia would partner with French company DCNS—now Naval Group—to develop Australia’s future submarine capability caused many in both countries to look with renewed focus at the bilateral relationship. Modern military capability is about much more than ‘cutting steel’—it’s about collaborating on weapons, communications and intelligence and putting those capabilities into practice through exercises and operations.

With that in mind, ASPI’s new Strategy report, More than submarines: new dimensions in the Australia–France strategic partnership, aims to enhance our understanding of this valuable and productive bilateral relationship and assist in navigating the way forward.

Bringing together views from Australian and French officials, academics and practitioners, the report explores Australia–France ties through the key dimensions of history, international security, defence and geography.

Graeme Dobell looks at the tension in mutual comprehension that provided the backdrop to relations in the Pacific until the 1990s, while Theodore Ell observes that the welcome rapprochement of recent years nonetheless requires investment on both sides in developing and delivering a shared strategic approach to managing the relationship.

In affirming the common world view of the two countries, Nicolas Regaud argues for increased understanding of those commonalities across Australian and French societies. He underscores the excellent work already undertaken on security issues and the opportunities to reinforce commitments by both countries to balance security with freedom.

Lisa Sharland and I continue with that theme, calling for closer collaboration and joint leadership on global security matters, championing multilateralism and utilising each other as regional experts on shared global problems. There’s also a note of caution: 2017’s ‘Joint statement of enhanced strategic partnership between Australia and France’ recognises shared interests but has an ambitious program of activity requiring an equally strong commitment to implementation.

Rupert Hoskin and Virginie Saliou demonstrate that military cooperation—from disaster relief and maritime law enforcement in the Pacific to joint action and mutual assistance in the Iraq–Syria conflict and future capability—is the area of greatest bilateral activity. Their analysis shows that the strength of the bond in this area goes beyond a shared world view to a readiness to engage with operational and tactical risk.

There’s a need for careful management, however, in the area where Australia’s and France’s interests are closest: the Indo-Pacific. Paul Soyez and Denise Fisher make a compelling case for the two countries to look beyond the known shared interests and take the time to truly understand each other’s intentions and develop complementary approaches to promoting stability and security in the region. France’s engagement in the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific—including multilateral forums—is overwhelmingly beneficial for the future of these regions, and it’s in Australia’s interest to ensure that it continues.

What emerges from this exploration of the Australia–France relationship is a rich and complex picture of two vibrant and activist countries, each grappling with complex problems but determined to contribute to making a safer and more just world.

It’s also clear that maximising the benefits of the bilateral relationship requires both a long-term strategic plan and a practical commitment to getting things done. To do otherwise risks being caught in the limitations of language, geography, different legal systems and different operational and security cultures and practices.

At a time when the international order appears to be under threat, the willingness of our two countries to continue to commit to the global rule of law and strengthening the liberal order and respect for human rights is both heartening and vital.

The future of the Jakarta Centre for Law Enforcement Cooperation

Image courtesy of Flickr user Edward Kimmel.

ASEAN’s various high-level commitments to cooperation on counterterrorism and transnational organised crime have proven difficult to operationalise into police-to-police action. There’s been no shortage of rhetoric from senior ASEAN officials and politicians supporting regional cooperation and collaboration. Unfortunately there are a number of significant cultural barriers to transforming this commitment into tangible action, not least of which is trust—or, rather, the mistrust that permeates many corners of ASEAN’s law enforcement communities.

Since 1981 the ASEAN Chiefs of Police have tried to ‘harmonise and standardise coordination and communication mechanisms amongst ASEAN police institutions.’ Unfortunately, ASEANAPOL’s rate of progress towards these goals has been glacial. In 2008, after 27 years of deliberation, ASEANAPOL established a permanent secretariat. Behind closed doors, some senior law enforcement critics are quick to point out that the group’s done very little to promote regional cooperation.

ASEANAPOL’s failure to drive action has as much to do with the region’s police culture as it does with political will. Police culture is one concerned with hard facts and operational investigations; organisational success is measured by seizures and arrests, not the delivery of policy intent. In this culture, there’s little incentive for operational police to share information that may result in a lost opportunity to arrest an offender or seize an illicit commodity.

Let’s not forget that ASEAN police forces’ operational activity, like that of the Australian Federal Police, is geographically limited in terms of legal jurisdictions. While that’s a convenient excuse for limiting cooperation, there should be no doubt that ASEAN member states have a strong aversion to interfering in each other’s domestic affairs. Such distaste hardly promotes an environment conducive for police-to-police information sharing.

For 13 years, the Jakarta Centre for Law Enforcement Cooperation (JCLEC) has served as a regional rallying point for much-needed CT capacity development and cooperation. Since its inception in 2004, with strong bilateral support from the Australian government, JCLEC’s operating and donor environments have evolved considerably. The strong relationship between the Indonesian National Police (POLRI) and AFP that has raised and sustained JCLEC is in a state of decline. But JCLEC, with donor country support, continues to nurture the much needed interpersonal relationships between ASEAN police forces.

Regional partners and donors are now considering JCLEC’s future. There are some big decisions to be made, the most pressing of which is whether JCLEC should become a truly regional body or an institution of the Indonesian government.

Deciding on JCLEC’s future is without doubt time critical. The regional terrorism and organised crime threat picture is rather bleak. There are more terrorist attacks now globally than in 2001. There are multiple active terrorist groups across ASEAN, and Indonesia is once again dealing with an increasing terrorist threat from domestic groups encouraged by al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.

Transnational serious and organised crime groups are operating with near impunity in Myanmar and Laos. These groups are increasingly globally integrated and responsive to law enforcement. Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs” isn’t disrupting high-level transnational organsied crime as much as it’s displacing it to the more far-flung corners of the region. ASEAN’s organised crime problem has become increasingly transnational, making the need for multijurisdictional investigations more commonplace.

ASEAN member states, and their global stakeholders, now face a security environment that’s more uncertain and more in need of international cooperation than ever before. The path that’s been laid by JCLEC to approach multijurisdictional crimes could be taken further in a quest to keep regional law enforcement cooperation in step with a rapidly changing Asia–Pacific.

JCLEC is far too valuable to ASEAN law enforcement and CT to be allowed to wither. To remain relevant to Indonesia, other ASEAN states and donor countries, JCLEC needs to change. In an ASPI report released today I argue on that JCLEC needs to be regionalised. I offer six recommendations to achieve that:

  1. The JCLEC board of patrons should consult ASEANAPOL and each ASEAN member’s national law enforcement representatives on the future of the Centre, with a view to producing a five-year strategy.
  2. The JCLEC board of patrons should implement measures that promote greater ASEAN and ASEANAPOL engagement in the Centre’s management and operation.
  3. JCLEC’s stakeholders should work together to achieve greater certainty on long-term resourcing.
  4. The board of patrons should commission an independent regional training needs analysis, which should focus on identifying capability gaps in existing national law enforcement training programs and emerging capability requirements.
  5. The board of patrons should consider further expanding the scope of JCLEC’s law enforcement focus to include a wider selection of stakeholders from the region’s criminal justice sector.
  6. The board of patrons should develop JCLEC’s human resource capacity so that the Centre’s staff can deliver as well as coordinate training.

ASEAN member states now face a security environment that’s more uncertain and more in need of international cooperation than ever before. Regional law enforcement cooperation at both the bilateral and the multilateral levels still has a long way to go. The next stage in JCLEC’s evolution should be a decisive step towards further regionalisation to ensure that benefits are shared across ASEAN.

The slipperiness of ‘soft power’

Image courtesy of Flickr user Shena Tschofen.

The spate of recent decisions on Chinese investment in Australia and the revelations associated with Senator Sam Dastyari stepping down from his shadow ministerial position have been accompanied by a sharp rise in the media’s use of the term ‘soft power’. The term seems to be intended to encompass things like making discreet donations to political parties, picking up the odd bill that a politician has incurred and arranging comfortable overseas trips that can reasonably be called ‘study visits’ in addition to at least some of the familiar investments in real estate, infrastructure, manufacturing and the like.

The use of that term, however, seems to be quite misleading. It’s true, of course, that hard power carries the threat of violence and none of the activities in question do that. And if it’s not hard power, then it must be soft. But ‘soft power’ also has positive connotations: it’s an attribute or a skill. Soft power is also a quality that a state exhibits inadvertently. It may stem from the attractiveness of a society’s popular culture or the loftiness of its political aspirations and how honestly it aspires to achieve them. But it’s intangible and doesn’t derive directly from real or latent threats of economic, political or military pain. The US has long had a pronounced edge over other states in the generation of soft power. It also hemorrhaged that quality most alarmingly during the George W. Bush administration which provides further insights into the nature of the phenomena.

None of the activities preoccupying the Australian media have this quality. The instigators—individuals of Chinese origin—may aspire to no more than subtly improve the probability of a decision or judgement favourable to their interests. But the bottom line is that their activities seek to ingratiate, to compromise and, in the extreme, to bribe.

In a number of Asian cultures that’s normal or expected behavior, even though more overt versions of the same behaviour are acknowledged as bribery and corruption. In western democracies, which give more prominence to transparency and accountability, the sense of bribery and corruption kicks in much earlier, making it at least a predictable irritant in international relationships: Asians offend when they use these practices in western countries, and westerners offend by not doing so in Asian countries.

There’s another reason to prefer not to see activities that are at least borderline bribery and corruption characterised as ‘soft power’. In the business of international relations, the notion of ‘soft power’ is an identified analytical tool, even though its precise meaning and, especially, its measurement is the subject of much debate.

Soft power is a dimension of persuasive capacity first identified by the American analyst Joseph S. Nye, Jr. Nye characterised soft power as the capacity to persuade other states to share or to follow a course that they wouldn’t necessarily take of their own volition. In other words, it’s a measure of how compelling a state can be as an international leader. The core ingredients of soft power are the quality of the idea or the objective being proposed, and  the attractiveness and perceived integrity of the political and the social processes within the state seeking to lead. Soft power multiplies or enhances  the comprehensive power that the presumptive leader can bring to bear to achieve the objective. This is another way of saying that soft power needs hard power in order to work its magic.

Soft power is powerful but fragile. Rather obviously, if you have a great idea but there are reservations about the integrity of governance in your state, or there are doubts as to whether you have the overall brawn to pull it off, your aspirations to leadership will probably founder. Equally, there comes a point where sheer muscle will overshadow both ideas and integrity—although people would spoil the party by calling that ‘winning ugly’.