Asia
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We must not join Trump’s cold war (AFR 25.6.2019)
Scott Morrison should spell out Australia’s opposition to Washington’s futile attempts to contain China. Continue reading »
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MICHAEL PASCOE. War with Iran could break the American alliance and force Australia to become independent (The New Daily, 23 June 2019)
I’m writing this at 10,000 metres, a dangerous place to write. There’s something about thin air on a plane and a couple of glasses of wine that moves the bladder closer to the eye. Continue reading »
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RICHARD WOOLCOTT. If the US treats China like an enemy, then it will become one.
It is time for Australia to accept the reality of the rise of China and a resurgence of Russia. Continue reading »
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MARK BEESON. The US Lobby and Australian Defence Policy, Vince Scappatura, Monash Publishing (a review)
One of the most enduring features of Australia’s foreign and strategic policies is the close relationship between this country and the United States. A number of other countries such as Britain and Japan also claim to have a ‘special relationship’ with the US, but no country has worked more assiduously to turn that rhetoric into Continue reading »
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DENNIS ARGALL. Absenting Ourselves From the World.
This is mainly about China, but more. We have excluded ourselves in many ways from the engines of modernity in Asia and more widely by our recalcitrance on so many issues and our unwillingness to engage with the new. We are not of such weight for others to care. We demonstrate an incapacity to maintain Continue reading »
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CHAS FREEMAN. The Sino-American Split and its Consequences
To be able to compete effectively with rising powers like China and resurgent nations like Russia; to be able to do so with the confident optimism our country has always embodied, we must fix not only our diplomacy but the domestic policies and practices that now divide and weaken us. We have a constitutional democracy Continue reading »
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CONOR FOWLER. Singapore and China Move to Enhance Defence Relations (Future Directions)
On 29 May, Chinese Defence Minister Wei Fenghe met with his Singaporean counterpart, Ng Eng Hen, and announced the revision of the Agreement on Defence Exchanges and Security Co-operation (ADESC), which was first signed in 2008. The revision is designed to deepen military ties between the two countries. The two ministers met in Singapore ahead Continue reading »
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TONY WALKER. Australia has a China problem and we can’t leave it to faceless spooks (Sydney Morning Herald, 16 June 2019)
Australia has a China problem. It’s not in Beijing. It’s not on the streets of Hong Kong. It’s in Canberra. China policy is in flux, under stress and confused. Australia’s meek response to the pro-democracy mass demonstrations in Hong Kong contrasts with attitudes in its own security establishment that are redolent of a Cold War era. Continue reading »
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TREVOR WATSON. Hong Kong and Beijing – two cities, one fearful regime.
Millions of students, blue collar workers and professionals poured into the streets of Hong Kong in protest over proposed legislation that would allow people to be extradited for trial in China. Continue reading »
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MACK WILLIAMS . North Korea : The tangled web becomes more so !
That the past few months have seen no real progress towards the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula is not all that surprising given the swirling global environment demanding priority attention for President Trump and other key stakeholders. Post mortems of the failed Hanoi Summit have revealed some significant divisions within both sides. Trump persists in Continue reading »
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KISHORE MAHBUBANI. A ‘yellow peril’ revival fuelling Western fears of China’s rise (East Asia Forum)
Do we arrive at geopolitical judgements from only cool, hard-headed, rational analysis? If emotions influence our judgements, are these conscious emotions or do they operate at the level of our subterranean subconscious? Any honest answer to these questions would admit that non-rational factors always play a role. This is why it was wrong for Western Continue reading »
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GEOFF RABY. What a Morrison Government could do on China.
The Accidental Morrison Government needs now to face up to Australia’s most important foreign policy challenge: how to restore relations with China. Under Turnbull/Bishop’s mismanagement, the relationship plumbed its lowest depth since diplomatic relations were established 47 years ago. Doing so won’t be easy and will require substantive policy changes, not merely a re-packaging of Continue reading »
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BOB CARR. Making a multilateral Belt and Road (East Asia Forum)
Between 2012 and 2030, China will add 850 million people to its middle class. This is unprecedented in human history, even exceeding the numbers of the European, North American and Japanese industrial revolutions. It is the biggest rolling back of poverty within any nation. China deserves to be taken seriously and have its international personality assessed Continue reading »
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MARTIN WOLF. The looming 100-year US-China conflict (The Financial Times)
Donald Trump’s unnecessary fight for domination is increasingly being framed as a zero-sum game. Continue reading »
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MURRAY SAYLE. On Tiananmen Square – June 1989
On May 13, with Gorbachev’s visit imminent, the students began a hunger strike in seven-day relays. How did the regime react? The People’s Liberation Army sent one thousand quilts; the Chinese Red Cross brought water, salt, and sugar for the hunger-strikers; and Mayor Chen’s own Beijing municipality set up portable toilets. Students were taken to Continue reading »
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KOICHI NAKANO. The Leader Who Was ‘Trump Before Trump’ (The New York Times)
Under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Japan has taken a decidedly authoritarian turn. Continue reading »
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Tiananmen anniversary revisited
Readers of my generation will recall the horror story told to the US Congressional Human Rights Caucus on 10 October 1990 by a 15-year old Kuwaiti girl. ‘Nayirah’ claimed to have witnessed invading Iraqi troops storming a Kuwaiti hospital, ripping 15 babies out of incubators and leaving them to die on the cold floor. On Continue reading »
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JONATHON MANTHORPE. Trump’s shambolic Japan visit and America’s decline (Asia Times)
The age of the United States dominating in Asia is drawing to a close, and the president is leading the way Continue reading »
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IAN JOHNSON. China’s ‘Black Week-end’ (New York Review of Books, 27 June 2019)
The Last Secret: The Final Documents from the June Fourth Crackdown edited by Bao Pu Hong Kong: New Century Press, 362 pp., HK$158.00 When Chinese law professor Xu Zhangrun began publishing articles last year criticizing the government’s turn toward a harsher variety of authoritarianism, it seemed inevitable that he would be swiftly silenced. Sure enough, Continue reading »
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ANTHONY PUN: The Battle of Huawei escalates with new fronts opening.
President Trump has upped the ante on the US-China trade war by opening several new fronts in the Battle of Huawei. These fronts are designed to kill Huawei off by banning Tech companies in supplying essential chip hardware. This has caused cancelling of software licences (Google Android) and non-purchase of Huawei equipment. With these new Continue reading »
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PETER DRYSDALE. Getting the Australia–China relationship right (East Asia Forum)
There’s no more important issue for Australia at this time in the history of its international economic and foreign affairs than to get the relationship with China right. It’s an issue that went through to the keeper during the election. But for the new Morrison government, forging a viable, credible strategy in its dealings with Continue reading »
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JAMES LAURENCESON, MICHAEL ZHOU. Small Grey Rhinos: Understanding Australia’s Economic Dependence on China (Australia-China Relations Institute)
Australia lives with an acute ‘fear of abandonment’. In security terms this fear has underpinned Australian foreign policy settings for decades. Recently, doubts about the reliability of the United States as Australia’s security guarantor have sent Australian government ministers on a mission to convince America that ongoing – and expanded – engagement with Australia’s Continue reading »
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STEPHEN ROACH. What comes next in the US–China trade war? (East Asia Forum)
The escalation of tit-for-tat tariffs between the United States and China is now in the danger zone. Surely, reason will ultimately prevail. At least that is the common refrain in the echo chamber, especially in light of the dark history of earlier trade wars. Continue reading »
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NATHAN GARDELS. “Huawei to Hell” recalls Toshiba threat. (The World Post 11.5.2019)
The US was able to coerce Japan on trade, but China will be much harder to coerce. Continue reading »
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CLIVE KESSLER. A Malay game of thrones (East Asia Forum)
As in earlier constitutional struggles in 1983 and 1993, Malaysia’s federal government under Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad is confronting the royal power and claimed prerogatives of the traditional rulers of the federation’s nine sultanate states. Continue reading »
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DUNCAN GRAHAM Hungry for a result in the Indonesian election?
The differences are stark. When Labor lost Bill Shorten quit and said: ‘Now that the contest is over, all of us have a responsibility to respect the result, respect the wishes of the Australian people and to bring our nation together.’ In Indonesia police are preparing for mass protests when the official results of the Continue reading »
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JOHN McCARTHY. Time to Focus on Foreign Policy for the Sake of Australia’s Future (Asialink).
Australians face a set of decisions in foreign policy arguably more important to us than any national decisions since the Second World War, writes John McCarthy, former ambassador to Washington, Tokyo, Jakarta and New Delhi. How we navigate them could even have existential implications. Continue reading »
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DAUD BATCHELOR. Sacrificing national interest in Australian Embassy move
In today’s geopolitics, Australia must balance relations with its largest trading partner China and key defence ally, the United States, at a time of spirited jousting. Maintaining good relations with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations also becomes essential with expanding Chinese power. Significantly, ASEAN has a dominant 67% majority Muslim population. Continue reading »
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JEFF KINGSTON. Filling the post-Heisei void (East Asia Forum)
Emperor Akihito is a tough act to follow. He is known as the people’s emperor because he brought the monarchy closer to the people by sharing the pain of those displaced by disaster and advocating on behalf of the vulnerable and marginalised. This included people suffering from Hansen’s disease as well as the mentally and Continue reading »
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BOB CARR. Australia could be the big loser in a US-China trade deal, not that Donald Trump seems to care (South China Morning Post)
Australia sticking its neck out for the US on the issue of Chinese telecoms giant Huawei will not stop America from striking a trade deal with China that could result in Australian exports suffering Continue reading »
