tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/asia-pacific-region-26444/articlesAsia-Pacific region – The Conversation2023-07-31T20:00:31Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2098542023-07-31T20:00:31Z2023-07-31T20:00:31ZAustralian foreign policy is traditionally hitched to the US – but the rise of China requires a middle path for a middle power<p>Few nation-states have been shaped by their underlying physical geography and location in the world quite as much as Australia. </p>
<p>Since notional foreign policy independence was uneasily embraced during the second world war, Australia’s policymaking elites have had trouble deciding whether it was a curse or a blessing to be in possession of an entire continent and a long way from potential sources of conflict. This is still considered a defining challenge.</p>
<p>The traditional way Australia’s leaders have dealt with the pervasive sense of vulnerability that geographic isolation engendered was to ingratiate themselves with “great and powerful friends”. Not much has changed in this regard either, although our current notional protector – the United States – is neither as reliable nor as powerful as policymakers in the US or this country seem to believe. </p>
<p>Even more alarmingly for Canberra’s cognoscenti, part of the reason for America’s relative decline is the reemergence of China as the most powerful economic and strategic actor in our immediate neighbourhood. </p>
<p>Dealing with an Asian “great power” adds another layer of complexity for policymakers who instinctively cleave to traditional allies, as the recently agreed AUKUS security pact demonstrates.</p>
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<p><em>Review: Pacific Power Paradox: American Statecraft and the Fate of the Asian Peace – Van Jackson (Yale University Press); Engaging China: How Australia can lead the way again – edited by Jamie Reilly and Jingdong Yuan (Sydney University Press).</em></p>
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<p>Aspects of this awkward reality are directly or indirectly analysed in the two books under review here. </p>
<p>Although Van Jackson’s outstanding, historically informed analysis of US statecraft in the Asia-Pacific deals with Australia only in passing, <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300257281/pacific-power-paradox/">Pacific Power Paradox</a> is an essential guide to the regional geopolitics upon which our national peace and prosperity overwhelmingly depend. </p>
<p><a href="https://sydneyuniversitypress.com.au/products/222075">Engaging China</a>, edited by Jamie Reilly and Jingdong Yuan, looks at what this rapidly evolving and increasingly unpredictable environment means for Australia’s relations with the People’s Republic. </p>
<p>One hopes these books will be the proverbial “must reads” for our strategic and economic elites, and that their important lessons will be absorbed and even acted upon. To judge by recent events, however, nothing seems less likely. The contentious decisions to acquire nuclear-powered submarines and <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/hugely-significant-australia-to-manufacture-and-export-missiles-to-us-20230728-p5ds5e.html">manufacture US missiles</a>
have only entrenched Australia in America’s anti-China alliance.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-aukus-pact-born-in-secrecy-will-have-huge-implications-for-australia-and-the-region-168065">The AUKUS pact, born in secrecy, will have huge implications for Australia and the region</a>
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<h2>Regionalism with American characteristics</h2>
<p>One of the most noteworthy and optimistic facts about the Asia-Pacific – or the more fashionable Indo-Pacific, for that matter – is that it has generally been peaceful. </p>
<p>This is more of a surprise than it seems, given that generations of US policymakers and strategic commentators have predicted chaos and mayhem in the region, especially in the absence of America’s supposedly benign, selfless and stabilising influence. Many still do, especially because of the “rise of China”.</p>
<p>A couple of points are worth making at the outset, however. China has not been an aggressive power hitherto, and it is far from certain it is going to be in the future. The US, by contrast, has been at war with someone somewhere for more than 90% of its history as an independent nation. </p>
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<p>When Asia’s peace has been upended, it has been because of American intervention. The Vietnam War remains the quintessential example of a catastrophic, unnecessary “war of choice”. Jackson describes this direct mode of US intervention in Asian affairs as the actions of an “imperious superpower”. </p>
<p>This is not the only way the US acts in Asia, however, nor is military intervention the sole determinant of peace or war in the region. At times, Jackson argues, America acts as an “aloof hegemon”, whose actions are “incidental to the course of events”.</p>
<p>At other times – and this is plainly the preferred narrative as far as US policymakers and allies are concerned – the US has acted as a “vital bulwark”, deterring intra-regional conflict, and fostering the development of Asian security.</p>
<p>These three contrasting faces of US foreign and strategic policy are at the heart of what Jackson calls the “Pacific power paradox”. It is possible to mount arguments in favour of all of these positions at times, which is what makes the US such a contradictory and protean presence in the region. Consequently, Jackson argues we have little to gain from separating the economic, institutional and localised rationales of US power.</p>
<p>To develop this argument, Jackson examines the impact of US power in Asia, considering the policies of each president since Richard Nixon’s rapprochement with China, which began in 1972. Jackson considers this development “the crucial founding moment for the Asian peace”. </p>
<p>As the so-called “Asian miracle” demonstrated, regional stability also paved the way for widespread, state-led economic development, which eventually included China. </p>
<p>Despite a good deal of talk about “Asian engagement”, Australia’s role in regional affairs has displayed a striking continuity. “In what amounted to strategic outsourcing,” writes Jackson, “US officials made clear that Australia was a valued ally not least because it could serve as a proxy for US interests in Oceania.”</p>
<p>Many of Australia’s neighbours, by contrast, have tried to make the best of growing strategic and economic competition between the US and China. They have done so through what Jackson calls a “dual hierarchy”. Individual Asian states have “hedged by heavily engaging China economically because US security commitments in the region alleviated the need to worry too much about China’s growing power”. </p>
<p>This response could be considered instructive, but Australian policymakers have generally remained wedded to a conception of the region that is predicated on the US as a “vital bulwark”. They still see China as more of a threat than an opportunity. The potentially egregious consequences of this judgement are increasingly clear.</p>
<h2>(Not) coming to terms with China</h2>
<p>The rather optimistic subtitle of Engaging China is “How Australia can lead the way again”. Sceptics may be forgiven for asking: when was the first time Australia played a leadership role in regional affairs? </p>
<p>Nevertheless, the editors are to be applauded for producing a much-needed “full-throated defence of engagement” and a “collective counter to the worrisome ‘China panic’ that has swept across Australia in recent years”. </p>
<p>To accomplish this task, a knowledgeable group of China-literate scholars has been assembled to analyse three key areas of Australia’s relationship with China: foreign and security relations; economy; and media, education and culture. </p>
<p>As a former ambassador to China, Geoff Raby, observes, what is needed – and what this book provides – is an explanation of </p>
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<p>how a failure of Australian diplomacy brought the relationship to its present nadir by not recognising that the changed world order necessitated different diplomatic responses and positioning than simply doubling down on the US alliance.</p>
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<p>The potential risks of continuing to go “all the way with the USA” are spelled out in an essay by Brendon O'Connor, Lloyd Cox and Danny Cooper. The authors note that America’s growing domestic problems mean “we may be only one presidential election away from a return to and a deepening of the isolationism and ambivalence towards allies that marked the previous Trump presidency”.</p>
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<p>While the benefits of globalisation and trade interdependence may have been overstated at times, there is no doubt Australia has benefited from its economic relationship with China. Consequently, James Laurenceson and Weihuan Zhou argue that “deploying public policy to reduce trade exposure to China struggles as a coherent strategy”. Indeed, China’s supposedly bad international behaviour has largely been driven by “the actions taken by other key players, particularly the US abuse of economic sanctions on security grounds”.</p>
<p>Wei Li and Hans Hendrischke detail the similarly pernicious impact of geopolitics on Chinese investment in Australia, which has “transitioned from commercially driven investment cooperation to cooperation constrained by security concerns”. </p>
<p>Likewise, Glenda Korporaal points out that diplomacy and trade promotion “have the potential to create goodwill across a broad range of sectors and significantly reduce the chances of military conflict for a fraction of the cost of defence spending”.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-is-southeast-asia-so-concerned-about-aukus-and-australias-plans-for-nuclear-submarines-168260">Why is southeast Asia so concerned about AUKUS and Australia's plans for nuclear submarines?</a>
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<h2>Cold War journalism 2.0</h2>
<p>Given the obvious economic costs, the consequences for the education sector, not to mention the adverse impact of the anti-China discourse on Australia’s growing Chinese community – all of which are detailed by other contributors – the counterproductive policies of both major political parties in this country take some explaining.</p>
<p>Part of that explanation is what Wanning Sun calls “Cold War journalism 2.0”. She argues that because China is seen as a hostile nation, “the ritual of reporting, which usually requires an attempt at balance and the provision of evidence, is no longer necessary”. </p>
<p>There has, indeed, been no shortage of irresponsible, evidence-free “red alerts” suggesting that a “direct attack on our mainland” could happen within three years. </p>
<p>And yet there is an even more alarming explanation for the complete absence of real debate amongst Australia’s policymaking elites. Stephen Fitzgerald, another former ambassador and one of the shrewdest observers of relations with China, points out that the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has been</p>
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<p>totally sidelined in Canberra, losing out to the weight of advice and opinion from the intelligence and security agencies. These agencies, known to harbour nationalistic and xenophobic views, have been driving the policy[…]</p>
<p>[…]the deeper reason for the extremity and obduracy of the Australian anti-China stand, therefore, lies not so much in the behaviour of the PRC but here, in Australia, in the mindset and the attitudes and prejudices of those directing foreign policy and of the politicians they advised.</p>
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<p>Leaders who are prepared to spend (at least) <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/what-a-368-billion-submarine-price-tag-means-for-the-budget-20230314-p5crtr.html">A$368 billion on nuclear submarines</a> to demonstrate their commitment to an international order that looks increasingly fragile and anachronistic are unlikely to be swayed by academic arguments from “outsiders”. </p>
<p>Australia’s distinctive “strategic culture” has been decades in the making. Its foundational assumptions are unchallengeable, self-evident truths – for those who believe them, at least. The fact that a growing number of people are not persuaded by the conventional strategic wisdom is unlikely to change the thinking within Canberra’s strategic bubble, no matter how much evidence accumulates about its perverse social and economic impacts. </p>
<p>Even plausible strategic counter-arguments are likely to remain unheeded, despite the widely noted opportunity costs that flow from proposed defence outlays and the prospect that they are unlikely to influence China’s behaviour. </p>
<p>By contrast, some of the proposals in Engaging China just might. </p>
<h2>Changing course and re-engaging?</h2>
<p>Ironically enough, it may take the return of Donald Trump to finally encourage some rethinking – even some genuinely independent thinking – that more accurately reflects Australia’s strategic and geographic circumstances. As Jackson, a former Pentagon insider, ruefully observes:</p>
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<p>A world where American politics can yield far-right authoritarian demagogues is a world in which it makes no sense to simply count on America to keep things pacific, uphold pacifying international commitments indefinitely, or even remain pacific itself.</p>
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<p>Quite so. And yet, in theory if not practice, the logic of “strategic outsourcing” cuts both ways. Australian policymakers still assume that the US is a reliable partner who will come to our aid in the unlikely event it is actually needed. Significantly, even some Canberra insiders now recognise the dangers of being strategically isolated as a consequence of our reflexive fealty to the US. </p>
<p>Compromising our independence and resolutely hitching our collective future to the frailties and pathologies of the US system is unwise at the best of times. When it occurs at the expense of our relationship with our principal trade partner, and in the midst of an intensifying great power competition we can do little to influence, it looks foolish and unthinking. </p>
<p>Surely, there is scope for a truly independent middle power to navigate a middle path. This might be facilitated, as Jamie Reilly and Jingdong Yuan argue, by “promoting an emerging new order based on multilateralism and regional institutions, with binding norms and rules on all players, including both the United States and the PRC”. </p>
<p>After all, that is what the much invoked but seldom seen rules-based international order is supposed to be about, isn’t it?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209854/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Beeson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Australia’s decision to manufacture US missiles highlights tensions between our foreign policy stance and our trading interests. Two new books throw light the problem.Mark Beeson, Adjunct professor, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1826252022-05-10T14:49:49Z2022-05-10T14:49:49ZJapan’s doubling of its defence budget will make the world a more dangerous place – here’s why<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461950/original/file-20220509-19-vv5kwj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C6%2C4594%2C3055&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">PX Media via Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Japan is proposing to <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/japan-looks-to-double-defence-budget-as-threats-intensify-m8nkg7dgl">double its defence budget</a> to around £86 billion, or 2% of its GDP. This move – like recent pledges by Germany to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/germany-hike-defense-spending-scholz-says-further-policy-shift-2022-02-27/">massively increase its military spending</a> in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – brings the country full circle since it was militarily neutered following defeat in the second world war.</p>
<p>Japan’s Liberal Democrat government said the decision, which it announced at the end of April, had been prompted by the conflict in Ukraine, but also reflected growing regional pressure from China, North Korea and Russia. Defence minister Nobuo Kishi said the increase in spending was designed to give Japan “counterstrike capabilities” to defend against aggression in the region.</p>
<p>The US has been pressuring Japan for some time to increase its defence spending to share the security bill in the Asia-Pacific region. Doubling its defence budget brings Japan in line with the <a href="https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/Indo-Pacific/Abe-leads-charge-for-Japan-to-boost-defense-spending-to-2-of-GDP">benchmark for Nato countries’ military spending</a> and positions Japan increasingly more as a genuine ally, rather than dependent, of the US in the region – a position it has held since American occupation forces drafted a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1191827">“pacifist” constitution</a> to prevent any recurrence of Japanese imperial ambitions.</p>
<p>The constitution prohibited the use of force and the maintenance of armed forces, despite the later creation of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces (JSDF). This was thereafter combined with a notional 1% of GDP cap on defence spending, as well as three <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23613093?seq=1">non-nuclear principles</a> banning nuclear weapons being “produced, possessed or permitted entry”. </p>
<p>To this day, the constitution and its anti-militarist Article 9 remain unchanged. But Japan is <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00396338.2018.1542803?journalCode=tsur20">pacifist in name only</a>. The process of <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9780203450284/militarisation-demilitarisation-contemporary-japan-glenn-hook">Japan’s remilitarisation</a> has been going on since the immediate postwar period. But the timing and rationale behind this latest move are significant.</p>
<p>Since its rise to international prominence after the Meiji Restoration and victory in the first Sino-Japanese war (1895), Japan has gone through a series of foreign policy shifts. These have fluctuated dramatically, from imperial aggressor (1930s) to pacifist (1950s) and <a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/abs/10.3316/informit.374504107945014">middle power</a> (2000s). </p>
<p>In the current era, relations with Washington have been paramount. But with America seemingly overstretched and in decline, Tokyo’s move to strengthen its military and <a href="https://www.usar.army.mil/News/News-Display/Article/2887496/joint-command-post-exercise-between-the-japan-ground-self-defense-force-jgsdf-a/">deepen the alliance</a> poses questions about Japan’s security identity. It also raises concerns of entrapment into American proxy wars and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-defence-budget-idUSKBN1O7048">increasing economic involvement</a> in the US “military-industrial complex”, the system by which the defence sector encourages arms spending and war. </p>
<h2>Dubious motives</h2>
<p>The latest rise in defence spending is combined with deepening <a href="https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/2917535/airborne-22-us-japan-test-interoperability/">interoperability</a> between US military units and the JSDF. It also paves the way for Japan to contribute billions of dollars to an arms and <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-the-worlds-defence-giants-are-quietly-making-billions-from-the-war-178806">security infrastructure industry that is booming</a> in the wake of Russia’s invasion into Ukraine.</p>
<p>All this while Article 9 of the constitution remains unaltered in Japanese law. On paper this supposedly maintains a so-called “cap in the bottle” of militarisation. But since changes to the constitution’s <a href="https://ilr.law.uiowa.edu/print/volume-101-issue-3/japans-reinterpretation-of-article-9-a-pyrrhic-victor%5Dy-for-american-foreign-policy/">interpretation ratified in 2015</a>, Japan’s foreign policy has increasingly resembled that of a <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-stress-test-japan-in-an-era-of-great-power-competition/">great power</a>. </p>
<p>Today, Japan is fervently supporting the Biden administration’s package of punitive sanctions against Russia and increased aid to Ukraine. This includes further <a href="https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14602026#:%7E:text=Japan%20will%20provide%20Ukraine%20with,how%20many%20will%20be%20offered.">attempts to justify</a> what already seemingly amount to violations of Article 9. </p>
<p>Japan’s military spending (already the <a href="https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/military-spending-by-country">ninth highest on the planet</a>) itself evidently contradicts the clause. Remarkably, the JSDF also now has permanent operations bases as far away as the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14799855.2017.1355303">Horn of Africa</a>. And the Japanese defence ministry is effectively <a href="https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-polytics/3461253-japan-to-provide-ukraine-with-drones-nbc-suits.html">supplying logistical materials</a> to Ukrainian forces in a combat zone.</p>
<h2>Regional relations and US alliance</h2>
<p>The key point of concern here is that Article 9, the 1% GDP defence budget cap and non-nuclear principles combined to allay the fears of regional powers that Japan might attempt to return to its colonial past. <a href="https://www.cfr.org/japan-constitution/public-attitudes-on-revision">Domestic debate</a> over whether the clause should be reformed or scrapped has intensified, but Japan’s former Asian conquests, including China, resolutely <a href="https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2014/07/27/china-responds-to-japans-constitutional-reinterpretation/">oppose constitutional reform</a>. </p>
<p>Article 9’s malleable reinterpretation therefore reflects Japan’s tricky position between Asia and the US. This is compounded by the political capriciousness of prime minister, Fumio Kishida. Touted as a liberal, his foreign policy has become <a href="https://www.tokyoreview.net/2021/10/japans-new-prime-minister-from-china-dove-to-china-hawk/">almost as hawkish</a> as his conservative predecessors. And he now leans towards a relationship so close to the US that it risks <a href="https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2015/12/14/commentary/japan-commentary/japans-u-s-entanglement/">entanglement</a> in overseas conflicts.</p>
<p>Tokyo’s increasingly well-funded military, backed by a <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9781137385550?noAccess=true">coastguard</a> that rivals many national navies, leaves no doubt as to the robust transformation of Japanese forces in material terms. But the question remains as to whether China’s rise and North Korea’s sabre rattling really amount to the <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ia/article-abstract/94/4/711/5039995?redirectedFrom=fulltext">“dangerous” and “dynamic” security environment</a> being used to justify these changes. </p>
<h2>National identity</h2>
<p>This is a question of identity as well as practicality. Japan should be clear about its regional and global roles. It has the third largest economy, the ninth most expensive military and significant influence across many leading <a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.188.7883&rep=rep1&type=pdf">international institutions</a>, such as the UN and IMF. Yet almost half the Japanese public are against revising Article 9. They are proud of Japan’s peaceful society and certainly do not seek expansion or entanglement in American wars.</p>
<p>That was, at least, until now. By invoking suffering in Ukraine, Japan’s government and mainstream media appear to have hit upon a means by which to <a href="https://thediplomat.com/2022/03/japan-resets-its-role-in-europe-in-the-wake-of-ukraine-war/">transform sympathy into action</a> backed by popular support. Tokyo has ramped up <a href="https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/04/01/national/ukraine-refugees-japan/">refugee intakes</a> to unprecedented numbers, donations to Ukraine have dramatically increased and military spending has reached a level comparable to western allies. </p>
<p>Intuitively, this may seem like a positive indicator for how Japan would respond to a contingency closer to home, such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/china-and-taiwan-why-the-war-of-words-is-unlikely-to-lead-to-military-conflict-for-now-at-least-169746">Chinese aggression directed towards Taiwan</a>. In reality, however, this shift in Japan’s foreign policy should be cause for concern, for it risks stoking future conflicts. As Beijing stalks Taipei in the wake of Moscow invading Ukraine, Japan should be thinking earnestly about restoring its pacifist identity before the faded pages of its ageing constitution are torn up altogether.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182625/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ra Mason does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>More gunboats and weapons in the Asia-Pacific region will not enhance regional or global security.Ra Mason, Lecturer in International Relations and Japanese Foreign Policy, University of East AngliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1656702021-08-31T20:01:59Z2021-08-31T20:01:59ZThe ANZUS treaty does not make Australia safer. Rather, it fuels a fear of perpetual military threat<p>In June 2020, the Australian federal government announced a new, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-30/australia-unveils-10-year-defence-strategy/12408232">A$270 billion defence strategy</a>. Part of this entailed spending $800 million on new AGM-158C long-range anti-ship missiles from the United States. </p>
<p>The new spend formed part of a long tradition of Australian defence procurement from the US. In 2017, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-28/us-weapons-spend-tops-billion-dollar/9287170">the Australian National Audit Office estimated</a> the Australian Defence Force (ADF) had spent an eye-watering $10 billion on American weapons and equipment in the previous four years alone. </p>
<p>This trend looks set to continue. This May, for example, the ADF announced the establishment of a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/may/19/australian-military-to-set-up-space-division-with-7bn-budget">$7 billion space division</a>, which will inevitably deepen Australia’s security and economic ties with the US.</p>
<p>And as the Biden administration focuses more attention on “the Quad” — the quadrilateral security arrangement between the US, Australia, Japan and India — to counter Chinese influence in the Asia-Pacific region, Australia will most <a href="https://www.defensenews.com/global/asia-pacific/2021/04/30/india-australia-cleared-to-buy-43-billion-in-us-military-gear/">likely purchase even more</a> American weapons and military equipment. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="The Quad leaders meet virtually." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418546/original/file-20210831-23-1rclyie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418546/original/file-20210831-23-1rclyie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418546/original/file-20210831-23-1rclyie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418546/original/file-20210831-23-1rclyie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418546/original/file-20210831-23-1rclyie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418546/original/file-20210831-23-1rclyie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418546/original/file-20210831-23-1rclyie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Quad leaders meet virtually in March to discuss Indo-Pacific security.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ryohei Moriya/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>ANZUS is no security guarantee</h2>
<p>These close security linkages reflect the broader consensus underpinning the <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Joint/Completed_Inquiries/jfadt/usrelations/appendixb">Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty (ANZUS)</a>, which marks its 70th birthday today. </p>
<p>This consensus – shared not just by US and Australian governments, but also by the broader foreign policy and media establishments in both countries – is that ANZUS makes Australia, and the world, safer. </p>
<p>The belief is the treaty — and the deep friendship between our two countries — gives Australia special access to advanced American military technology that we need (although not at a discount). </p>
<p>And, more importantly, that it keeps us under an American security umbrella. Australians can rely, in the <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-26/mike-pezzullo-home-affairs-war-defence-force/100096418">recent words of one senior bureaucrat</a>, on the “protection afforded” by ANZUS. </p>
<p>This assumption rests specifically on Article IV of the treaty, in which each party “declares that it would act to meet the common danger”. This language is widely assumed to constitute a security guarantee from the US. However, the reality is, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-08/does-anzus-commit-us-to-come-to-australias-aid-fact-check/5559288?nw=0">it does not</a>. </p>
<p>President Harry Truman, who oversaw the birth of the treaty, was never willing to provide that, nor has any administration since. A commitment to “act” in the face of “common danger” could, after all, mean absolutely anything. </p>
<p>ANZUS does not provide Australia with a security guarantee, and it never will. And, perhaps more importantly, even if it did, it does not make us safer. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/defence-update-in-an-increasingly-dangerous-neighbourhood-australia-needs-a-stronger-security-system-141771">Defence update: in an increasingly dangerous neighbourhood, Australia needs a stronger security system</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Reinforcing a perception of perpetual military threat</h2>
<p>Why is this? One reason is the treaty (and Australia’s relationship with the US more broadly) reinforces and perpetuates a belief that Australia faces a perpetual military threat. </p>
<p>It also reinforces the idea that military might is needed to meet that threat. The purchase of more American weapons, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-30/australia-unveils-10-year-defence-strategy/12408232">in the words of Prime Minister Scott Morrison</a>, has the effect of “deterring an attack on Australia and helping to prevent war”. </p>
<p>Even putting <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/14/nuclear-deterrence-myth-lethal-david-barash">the questionable basis of this assumption</a> aside, this focus on military threat at the expense of all else has had significant consequences for both Australia and our region. Other genuine threats, such as climate change, are always treated as peripheral to the core of Australia’s relationship with the US. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1278099151578755072"}"></div></p>
<p>It was perhaps telling that as Australian officials were negotiating the purchase of more American weaponry last year, they weren’t using our uniquely close relationship to secure priority access to something that would actually make Australians safer: American vaccines. </p>
<p>When Morrison announced the country’s new defence strategy, he justified both the spending and aggressive posturing on the basis a post-COVID world will be “<a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-30/australia-unveils-10-year-defence-strategy/12408232">poorer, more dangerous and more disorderly</a>”. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1278111541078798337"}"></div></p>
<p>As I argue in my new book, <a href="https://www.hardiegrant.com/au/publishing/bookfinder/book/our-exceptional-friend-by-emma-shortis/9781743797839">Our Exceptional Friend: Australia’s Fatal Alliance with the United States</a>, ANZUS reinforces this way of seeing the world. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418547/original/file-20210831-27-1l4ldf5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418547/original/file-20210831-27-1l4ldf5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418547/original/file-20210831-27-1l4ldf5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418547/original/file-20210831-27-1l4ldf5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418547/original/file-20210831-27-1l4ldf5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418547/original/file-20210831-27-1l4ldf5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418547/original/file-20210831-27-1l4ldf5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Hardie Grant Publishing</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Instead of viewing our region with empathy and generosity — or partnering with the US to prevent the world from becoming poorer, more dangerous or more disorderly — the Australian government seeks to arm itself. </p>
<p>In the process, it serves only to perpetuate a world in which conflict becomes ever more likely, and economic, racial and environmental inequality <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/17/australia-pfizer-purchase-from-vaccine-sharing-covax-stockpile-under-fire">more entrenched</a>. </p>
<h2>A shift in mentality is needed</h2>
<p>ANZUS was born out of a shared experience of war in the 1950s, and particularly Australian perceptions of ongoing, existential threats from non-white neighbours. These perceptions, based on deep racism and fear, were <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/binaries/library/pubs/bp/1992/92bp06.pdf">wrong then</a>, and they are wrong now. </p>
<p>Yet, the current US-Australia strategic relationship still requires an enemy – a “common danger”. As a result, the US and Australia will always find one, together. </p>
<p>The only way to change this is through a deep, honest reckoning with the origins of Australia’s security alliance with the US — and its consequences. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/anzus-at-70-together-for-decades-us-australia-new-zealand-now-face-different-challenges-from-china-163546">ANZUS at 70: Together for decades, US, Australia, New Zealand now face different challenges from China</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>This doesn’t mean scrapping ANZUS. Even if that were possible, the structures that exist around it and the ideas that inform Australian foreign policy would endure.</p>
<p>It does mean, however, trying to find different ways for Australia to manoeuvre within those structures, stepping back from a fear-mongering, military threat mentality, and forging genuine relationships with our neighbours. </p>
<p>It means trying to forge a relationship with the United States that is not, <a href="https://www.defense.gov/Explore/News/Article/Article/1173955/shared-risk-blood-cement-us-australian-ties-trump-says/">in the words of a former US president</a>, “sealed with … blood”.</p>
<p>Yet, even as the recent events in Afghanistan make the consequences of our unquestioning security alliance so glaringly obvious, there is no indication Australia will do anything other than double down on it. </p>
<p>The mindset that has led successive Australian governments to follow the US will not change, no matter what Washington does or who is in charge. The position of the current government is to strengthen the treaty, rather than try to dismantle it. </p>
<p>That’s dangerous for us and the world. Happy birthday, ANZUS. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Emma Shortis’s new book, <a href="https://www.hardiegrant.com/au/publishing/bookfinder/book/our-exceptional-friend-by-emma-shortis/9781743797839">Our Exceptional Friend: Australia’s Fatal Alliance with the United States</a>, was published last month by Hardie Grant Books.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165670/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emma Shortis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The current US-Australia strategic relationship requires an enemy – a “common danger”. As a result, Australia doesn’t seek cooperation with the Asia-Pacific region, it arms itself instead.Emma Shortis, Research Fellow, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1163732019-05-02T20:13:36Z2019-05-02T20:13:36ZPacific countries score well in media freedom index, but reality is far worse<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272117/original/file-20190501-117601-nw93mo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=570%2C214%2C4528%2C3363&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Threats, censorship and a climate of self-censorship are commonplace for journalists in the Pacific region.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">from www.shutterstock.com</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When Pacific countries reflect on the state of their media today, marking <a href="https://www.un.org/en/events/pressfreedomday/">World Press Freedom Day</a>, they know the reality is much worse than the ticks they got from a global media freedom watchdog last month.</p>
<p>Five of the seven Oceania nations scoped in the Asia-Pacific region scored with apparently significant improvements in the 2019 Reporters Without Borders (<a href="https://rsf.org/en">RSF</a>) <a href="https://rsf.org/en/ranking/2019">World Press Freedom index</a>. Papua New Guinea rose by 15 points to 38th in the global table of 180 countries. </p>
<p>But media freedom advocates know the rankings can be deceptive.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/press-freedom-under-attack-why-filipino-journalist-maria-ressas-arrest-should-matter-to-all-of-us-112056">Press freedom under attack: why Filipino journalist Maria Ressa's arrest should matter to all of us</a>
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</p>
<hr>
<h2>Threats of media regulation</h2>
<p>New Zealand rose one place to seventh (to remain in the top 10) and Australia dropped two places to 21st, just one spot above Samoa, which was unchanged but described as “losing its status as a regional press freedom model”. Fiji (52), Timor-Leste (84) and Tonga (45) all “improved”. </p>
<p>West Papua is the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01296612.2017.1379812">worst situation in the Pacific</a>, but this Melanesian territory is hidden within the Indonesian statistics. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272153/original/file-20190502-103071-um7d0n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272153/original/file-20190502-103071-um7d0n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272153/original/file-20190502-103071-um7d0n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272153/original/file-20190502-103071-um7d0n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272153/original/file-20190502-103071-um7d0n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272153/original/file-20190502-103071-um7d0n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272153/original/file-20190502-103071-um7d0n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Media freedom in West Papua: a controversial issue in Indonesia but a major concern in the Pacific.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">David Robie/Pacific Media Centre</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The RSF index has a <a href="https://ojs.aut.ac.nz/pacific-journalism-review/article/view/297">robust methodology</a>, and the algorithms reflect that global media freedom has been declining, with growing hostility towards journalists since the last index survey. The situation in the Pacific has also been deteriorating.</p>
<p>While there might not be assassinations, murders, gagging, torture and “disappearances” of journalists in Pacific island states, threats, censorship and a climate of self-censorship are commonplace.</p>
<p>Take Papua New Guinea as an example again. Last week, amid what appeared to be the <a href="https://www.afr.com/business/energy/gas/move-to-roll-png-pm-threatens-16-billion-lng-deal-20190430-p51imr">unravelling of Prime Minister Peter O’Neill’s coalition government</a>, described by many critics as a <a href="https://www.radionz.co.nz/international/programmes/datelinepacific/audio/2018678842/png-opposition-eyes-chance-to-remove-pm">de facto “dictatorship”</a>, an opposition leader made an <a href="https://asiapacificreport.nz/2019/04/27/well-deal-to-you-namah-threat-to-png-daily-newspapers/">extraordinary threat</a> against the country’s two foreign-owned newspapers.</p>
<p>Vanimo-Green MP Belden Namah, leader of the PNG Party which is one of two major groups in the opposition, put the Australian-owned Post-Courier and Malaysian-owned National newspapers “on notice” that an incoming new government would “<a href="https://postcourier.com.pg/namah-puts-newspapers-notice/">deal</a>” to the media.</p>
<p>Angered by the two dailies for not running his news conference stories, he threatened to regulate the print media should a new government be installed after the vote of no-confidence due on May 7.</p>
<h2>Pressure on journalists</h2>
<p>Last November, one of Papua New Guinea’s leading journalists, EMTV’s award-winning Lae bureau chief Scott Waide, was <a href="https://www.radionz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/376853/png-journalist-s-suspension-shows-board-ignorance-media-council">suspended</a> by his company. It had been under pressure from the O’Neill government to have him sacked.</p>
<p>Why? Because he exposed the “inside story” of a <a href="https://asopa.typepad.com/asopa_people/2018/11/the-inside-story-of-chinas-tantrum-diplomacy-at-apec.html">diplomatic Chinese tantrum</a> and a scandal over the purchase of luxury Maserati cars during the Asia Pacific Economic Forum (<a href="https://www.apec.org/">APEC</a>) hosted by Port Moresby.</p>
<p>Columnist Vincent Moses <a href="https://asiapacificreport.nz/2018/11/25/emtv-suspends-senior-journalist-scott-waide-over-maserati-news-story/">wrote on Pacific Media Watch</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Peter O’Neill is acting like another Chinese dictator in Papua New Guinea by exerting control over both state-owned and private media to not report truths and facts that expose his government and their corrupt acts to PNG and the world. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The strong condemnation that followed forced EMTV to reverse its decision and the network reinstated Waide.</p>
<h2>Chiefs demand expulsion of journalist</h2>
<p>In the North Pacific, a <a href="https://www.pacificislandtimes.com/single-post/2019/04/19/Holding-the-line-in-support-of-Joyce-McClure">Pacific Island Times</a> magazine editorial last week blasted traditional chiefs on Yap in the Federated States of Micronesia for demanding the expulsion of a probing US reporter. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272092/original/file-20190501-113855-1igc9kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272092/original/file-20190501-113855-1igc9kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=744&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272092/original/file-20190501-113855-1igc9kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=744&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272092/original/file-20190501-113855-1igc9kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=744&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272092/original/file-20190501-113855-1igc9kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=935&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272092/original/file-20190501-113855-1igc9kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=935&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272092/original/file-20190501-113855-1igc9kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=935&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Joyce McClure, Yap correspondent for the Pacific Island Times, under fire from traditional chiefs for her reporting.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Joyce McClure/Pacific Media Centre</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The magazine’s editor-in-chief, Mar-Vic Cagurangan, strongly defended her Yap correspondent, Joyce McClure, who has been living on the island for the past three years. She said declaring the correspondent a persona non grata would set a “dangerous precedent”.</p>
<p>Joyce McClure’s reporting provided transparency, which was “vital to every democratic society”, Cagurangan wrote.</p>
<p>Cagurangan has had to defend her team’s journalism before. Last September, she <a href="https://www.pacificislandtimes.com/single-post/2018/09/07/Free-press-and-public-discussion">wrote an editorial</a> stressing the tough times Pacific publishers and editors of small publications face dealing with threats from advertisers in tiny markets.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Given the small market, where there is a thin line between business and government, operating a media outlet is much more challenging locally.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Media intimidated in Fiji</h2>
<p>In Fiji, the independent New Zealand website <a href="https://www.newsroom.co.nz/">Newsroom</a> last month <a href="https://www.newsroom.co.nz/@investigations/2019/04/13/535742/thats-why-you-need-journalism">investigated a major environmental development disaster</a> inflicted by the Chinese company Freesoul Real Estate on the remote tourism island of Malolo. The website exposed how Fijian news media had been effectively gagged by 13 years of draconian media legislation and a climate of fear since the 2006 military coup.</p>
<p>Although democracy has returned and two post-coup elections have been held in 2014 and last year, journalists are often <a href="http://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p337333/pdf/ch052.pdf">intimidated into silence</a>.</p>
<p>Opposition leader Sitiveni Rabuka, the man who staged Fiji’s first two coups in 1987, said the “rot and culture of fear” in the civil service and the “intimidated and cowed media” were now so ingrained in the country that it had taken foreign journalists to break the story.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/nz-journalists-arrested-in-fiji-have-been-released-but-a-new-era-of-press-freedom-is-yet-to-arrive-115117">NZ journalists arrested in Fiji have been released but a new era of press freedom is yet to arrive</a>
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<p>The RSF media watchdog warned in its <a href="https://rsf.org/en/2019-rsf-index-asia-pacific-press-freedom-impacted-political-change">2019 report</a> about totalitarian propaganda, censorship, intimidation, physical violence and cyber-harassment in the Asia-Pacific region. The pressures meant it now took a “lot of courage … to work independently as a journalist” in the region where democracies were struggling to resist various forms of disinformation.</p>
<p>The watchdog singled out China and Vietnam, which both dropped one place to 177th and 178th respectively on the global list of 180 countries, as the worst culprits.</p>
<p>About 30 journalists and media workers are detained in Vietnam, with nearly twice as many being detained in China. The latter country is of <a href="https://asiapacificreport.nz/2018/11/22/rsf-condemns-chinese-exclusion-of-journalists-at-apec-side-events/">major concern to the Pacific</a> in view of its growing economic, aid, trade and strategic influence in the region.</p>
<p>The report says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>China’s anti-democratic model, based on Orwellian high-tech information surveillance and manipulation, is all the more alarming because Beijing is now promoting its adoption internationally.</p>
</blockquote>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/new-zealands-pacific-reset-strategic-anxieties-about-rising-china-97174">New Zealand's Pacific reset: strategic anxieties about rising China</a>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272106/original/file-20190501-117607-u8j55a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272106/original/file-20190501-117607-u8j55a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272106/original/file-20190501-117607-u8j55a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272106/original/file-20190501-117607-u8j55a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272106/original/file-20190501-117607-u8j55a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272106/original/file-20190501-117607-u8j55a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272106/original/file-20190501-117607-u8j55a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Mar-Vic Cagurangan, chief editor of the Pacific Island Times.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pacific Island Times/Pacific Media Centre</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
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<p>China has embarked on <a href="http://www.pmc.aut.ac.nz/pacific-media-watch/nz-hearts-and-minds-how-new-media-cold-war-soft-power-impacts-10305">“soft power”</a> strategies of seducing key journalists in the Pacific region with junkets to Beijing where they can be introduced to <a href="https://asiapacificreport.nz/2018/04/26/chinas-media-control-threatens-asia-pacific-democracies-says-rsf/">Chinese media manipulation</a>.</p>
<p>The RSF index sees the growing raft of cyberlaws in the Pacific as an example of this <a href="https://asiapacificreport.nz/2018/04/26/chinas-media-control-threatens-asia-pacific-democracies-says-rsf/">Chinese-inspired media manipulation</a>.</p>
<p>In spite of the pressures, Pacific journalists and publishers like Mar-Vic Cagurangan vow to fight on.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We will continue telling the story and exploring the truth. We are not your enemy. We are your neighbours committed to upholding the principles of democracy.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116373/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dr David Robie is convenor of the AUT Pacific Media Centre's Pacific Media Watch freedom project and a correspondent of the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) media watchdog. </span></em></p>Along with growing hostility towards journalists globally, the media climate in the Pacific has also been deteriorating.David Robie, Professor of Pacific Journalism, Director of the Pacific Media Centre, Auckland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/970892018-06-05T20:07:21Z2018-06-05T20:07:21ZDespite strong words, the US has few options left to reverse China’s gains in the South China Sea<p>At a top regional security forum on Saturday, US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis <a href="https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript-View/Article/1538599/remarks-by-secretary-mattis-at-plenary-session-of-the-2018-shangri-la-dialogue/">said</a> China’s recent militarisation efforts in the disputed South China Sea were intended to intimidate and coerce regional countries. </p>
<p>Mattis told the Shangri-La Dialogue that China’s actions stood in “stark contrast with the openness of [the US] strategy,” and warned of “much larger consequences” if China continued its current approach.</p>
<p>As an “initial response”, China’s navy has been <a href="https://news.usni.org/2018/05/23/china-disinvited-participating-2018-rimpac-exercise">disinvited</a> by the US from the upcoming <a href="http://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=105789">2018 Rim of the Pacific Exercise</a>, the world’s largest international naval exercise.</p>
<p>It is important to understand the context of the current tensions, and the strategic stakes for both China and the US.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/is-china-playing-a-long-game-in-the-south-china-sea-42625">Is China playing a long game in the South China Sea?</a>
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<p>In recent years, China has sought to bolster its control over the South China Sea, where a number of claimants have overlapping territorial claims with China, including Vietnam, the Philippines and Taiwan.</p>
<p>China’s efforts have continued unabated, despite rising tensions and international protests. Just recently, China <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/china-lands-bomber-on-south-china-sea-island-for-the-first-time-20180520-p4zgdj.html">landed a long-range heavy bomber</a> for the first time on an island in the disputed Paracels, and <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-04/us-warns-china-after-new-missiles-placed-in-south-china-sea/9726208">deployed anti-ship and anti-air missile systems </a> to its outposts in the Spratly Islands. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"997386306660384768"}"></div></p>
<p>China’s air force has also stepped up its <a href="http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2138792/chinese-air-force-jets-bombers-drill-over-south-china">drills and patrols</a> in the skies over the South China Sea. </p>
<p>While China is not the only claimant militarising the disputed region, no one else comes remotely close to the ambition, scale and speed of China’s efforts.</p>
<h2>China’s strategy</h2>
<p>The South China Sea has long been coveted by China (and others) due to its strategic importance for trade and military power, as well as its abundant resources. According to one estimate, <a href="https://chinapower.csis.org/much-trade-transits-south-china-sea/">US$3.4 trillion</a> in trade passed through the South China Sea in 2016, representing 21% of the global total. </p>
<p>China’s goal in the South China Sea can be summarised with one word: control. </p>
<p>In order to achieve this, China is undertaking a coordinated, long-term effort to assert its dominance in the region, including the building of artificial islands, civil and military infrastructure, and the deployment of military ships and aircraft to the region.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-are-the-legal-implications-of-the-south-china-sea-ruling-62421">Explainer: what are the legal implications of the South China Sea ruling?</a>
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<p>While politicians of other countries such as the US, Philippines and Australia <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/australia-won-t-bite-its-tongue-defence-minister-warns-in-clear-signal-to-china-20180601-p4zixj.html">espouse fiery rhetoric</a> to protest China’s actions, Beijing is focusing on actively transforming the physical and power geography of the South China Sea.</p>
<p>In fact, <a href="https://www.news.com.au/world/us-admiral-warns-only-war-can-now-stop-beijing-controlling-the-south-china-sea/news-story/0f8f99c3fb4492366cec09d234937ab2">according</a> to the new commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, Admiral Philip Davidson, China’s efforts have been so successful that it “is now capable of controlling the South China Sea in all scenarios short of war with the US”. </p>
<h2>America’s declining relevance</h2>
<p>China’s efforts are hard to counter because it has employed an incremental approach to cementing its control in the South China Sea. None of its actions would individually justify a US military response that could escalate to war. In any case, the human and economic cost of such a conflict would be immense.</p>
<p>The inability of the US to respond effectively to China’s moves has eroded its credibility in the region. It has also <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/05/12/the-united-states-is-losing-asia-to-china/">fed a narrative</a> that the US is not “here to stay” in Asia. If the US is serious about countering China, then Mattis’ rhetoric must be followed by action. </p>
<p>First, the US should clearly articulate its red lines to China and others on the kinds of activities that are unacceptable in the South China Sea. Then it must be willing to enforce such red lines, while being mindful of the risks. </p>
<p>Second, the US needs to renew its efforts to cooperate with allies in the region to build capacity and demonstrate a coordinated commitment to stand in the face of China’s challenge. </p>
<p>Third, the US needs to deploy military capabilities in the Indo-Pacific region, such as advanced missile systems, which would reduce the military advantages gained by China through the militarisation of the South China Sea features.</p>
<h2>Long-term consequences</h2>
<p>China’s tightening control over the South China Sea is worrying for a number of regional countries. For many, the shipping routes that run through the South China Sea are the bloodlines of their economies. </p>
<p>Moreover, the shifting balance of power will enable Beijing to settle its territorial disputes in the region for good. Without a doubt, China is willing to use its new-found power to change the status quo in its favour, even at the expense of its weaker neighbours.</p>
<p>Control of the South China Sea also allows Beijing to better project its military power across South-East Asia, the western Pacific and parts of Oceania. This would make it more costly for the US and its allies to take action against China, for example, in scenarios involving Taiwan. </p>
<p>On a higher level, China’s assertive approach to the South China Sea demonstrates Beijing’s increasing confidence and its willingness to flaunt international norms that it considers inconvenient or contrary to its interests.</p>
<p>There is little doubt China is becoming the new dominant power in Asia. Its rise has benefited millions in the region and should be welcomed. But we should also be wary of Beijing’s approach to territorial disputes and grievances if it employs military and economic intimidation and coercion.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/chinas-quest-for-techno-military-supremacy-91840">China's quest for techno-military supremacy</a>
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<p>If we want to live in a “<a href="https://www.pm.gov.au/media/keynote-address-16th-iiss-asia-security-summit-shangri-la-dialogue">world where big fish neither eat nor intimidate the small</a>”, then there must be consequences for countries, including China, when they flaunt international norms and seek to settle disagreements with force.</p>
<p>It may be too late to turn the tide in the South China Sea and reverse China’s gains. No one would run such a risk. But it is not too late to impose penalties on China for further destabilising the region through its actions in the South China Sea.</p>
<p>The challenge is to figure out how to do that, and what we would be willing to risk to achieve it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97089/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Ni does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>China has taken an incremental approach to cementing its control over the disputed waters, making the US and its allies powerless to stop it.Adam Ni, Researcher, Strategic and Defense Studies Centre, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/973702018-06-03T20:23:45Z2018-06-03T20:23:45ZAustralia needs to reset the relationship with China and stay cool<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/221294/original/file-20180601-69493-pi0fsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In happier times: Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the 2017 APEC summit in Vietnam.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/STR</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Let’s call it the “China syndrome”. This describes a condition that is a bit compulsive and not always rational.</p>
<p>Australia’s response to China’s continuing rise mixes anxiety, even a touch of paranoia, with anticipation of the riches that derive from the sale of vast quantities of commodities.</p>
<p>Economic dependence on China is two-edged and potentially policy-distorting.</p>
<p>To put this in perspective: <a href="https://www.austrade.gov.au/News/Economic-analysis/australias-export-performance-in-fy2017">Australian exports of goods and services to China</a> in 2016-17 were worth $110.4 billion. That accounts for nearly 30% of total exports. This compares with $20.8 billion for the US, or 5.16% of total exports. The EU (including the United Kingdom) accounted for $30.5 billion, or 9.8%.</p>
<p>In other words, nearly one-third of Australian goods and services trade is hinged to the China market. Putting it mildly, such a level of dependence on a single market is not ideal.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/megaphone-diplomacy-is-good-for-selling-papers-but-harmful-for-australia-china-relations-97076">Megaphone diplomacy is good for selling papers, but harmful for Australia-China relations</a>
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<p>No other country, relatively speaking, has benefited to quite the same extent from China’s extraordinary development since it began opening for business to the outside world after the <a href="http://en.people.cn/90002/95589/6512371.html">Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of 1978 of the Chinese Communist Party (CCCP)</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.austrade.gov.au/News/Economic-analysis/australia-has-experienced-the-longest-economic-growth-among-major-developed-world">In 2017, Australia registered</a> the longest uninterrupted stretch of economic growth in modern history. This surpassed previous record holder the Netherlands with 103 uninterrupted quarters.</p>
<p>That expansion continues. Australia’s commodities exports, driven by Chinese demand, sustain unparalleled growth.</p>
<p>This is the context in which Australia might do a better job managing relations with its cornerstone trading partner and, arguably, its most important bilateral relationship.</p>
<p>This latter observation requires a leap beyond assumptions that security ties with the US mean there is no relationship more critical to Australia’s wellbeing.</p>
<p>That is changing fast as China’s economic might continues to expand and its ability to project military power in the Asia-Pacific grows in leaps and bounds.</p>
<p>None of this is to say that Australia’s security arrangements with the US versus China’s rise represent a zero-sum game. You could argue that security ties to the US have become more important as a consequence. It is simply to acknowledge the world has changed. It is sprinting ahead of the ability of policymakers to keep up.</p>
<p>Take the 2017 <a href="https://www.fpwhitepaper.gov.au/">Foreign Policy White Paper</a>, for example. Formulated over the period 2016-2017, the paper asserted the need for Australia to bolster its relationship with the US to take account of China’s rise.</p>
<p>On the other hand, and unavoidably, it acknowledged that the Asia Pacific is no longer uncontested space.</p>
<p>As the paper puts it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Powerful drivers are converging in a way that is reshaping the international order and challenging Australia’s interests. The United States has been the dominant power in our region throughout Australia’s post-second world history. China is challenging America’s position.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Those “powerful drivers” have become more powerful since publication of the white paper.</p>
<p>At the same time, Australian policy towards Beijing has become more ragged, driven by worries about the impetus of China’s rise, concerns about America as a reliable ally under an “America First” Trump administration, and fears about <a href="https://theconversation.com/when-it-comes-to-chinas-influence-on-australia-beware-of-sweeping-statements-and-conflated-ideas-94496">Chinese influence in Australia</a> itself.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s response to the latter became enmeshed in domestic politics, leaving the impression the new laws to forestall foreign interference in Australian democratic processes were aimed at China alone.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/australianoutlook/australia-china-bilateral-relations/">Between December 7 and 9, 2017, Turnbull said</a> on three separate occasions Australia had “stood up” against outside attempts to interfere in its internal affairs. This was a pointed and, as it turned out, unwise use of the phrase.</p>
<p>On the last occasion, he said it in Chinese, adding offence to Beijing where such phraseology – “the Chinese people have stood up” – has sacred meaning in Chinese Communist Party history. This was the expression Mao Zedong used when proclaiming the People’s Republic in 1949, after decades of foreign interference, including the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Chinese at the hands of the Japanese.</p>
<p>Turnbull’s intervention raises questions about the quality of China policy advice from his own office.</p>
<p>Foreign Minister Julie Bishop had, in any case, irritated Beijing in a <a href="https://foreignminister.gov.au/speeches/Pages/2017/jb_sp_170313a.aspx">speech delivered in Singapore in March, 2017</a>, in which she questioned China’s political model.</p>
<p>While non-democracies such as China can thrive while participating in the present system, an essential pillar of our preferred order is democratic community.</p>
<p>Bishop might have phrased her remarks aimed at “non-democracies such as China” more judiciously, while conveying a similar message.</p>
<p>What is lacking in Australia’s approach to its relationship with China is consistency, so the government speaks with one voice and, where possible, separates domestic politics from the conduct of China policy.</p>
<p>Beijing values consistency. It may not like forthrightness in defence of Australia’s legitimate interests in maintaining its own sovereignty and its own security, but it respects firmness.</p>
<p>Canberra should not shy away from articulating its concerns about China’s continued militarisation of facilities in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-are-the-legal-implications-of-the-south-china-sea-ruling-62421">South China Sea</a>. It should be on guard in withstanding Chinese efforts to interfere in domestic politics.</p>
<p>Policymakers should bear in mind a simple rule of thumb in dealing with China. It will seek to get away with what it can. That includes bullying and bluster.</p>
<p>Peter Drysdale, emeritus professor of economics at the Australian National University and author of a study of the <a href="http://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/report-outlines-future-of-australia-china-ties">Australian-Chinese economic relationship</a>, told me the government needs to assert its “control of the China agenda”. This has been pushed off course in the recent past.</p>
<p>Drysdale perceives a “structural problems” embedded in the Australia-China relationship arising from “accelerated complications” in US-China relations. At the same time, Washington’s security establishment is pushing an alarmist viewpoint about China’s regional ambitions. </p>
<p>No reasonable observer pretends China’s impulses are benign. The question is how to manage, in a way that is not counter-productive, China’s attempts to spread its influence.</p>
<p>In Drysdale’s view, the greatest risk for Australia is that an erratic Trump administration will undermine a rules-based international order critical to Australian security.</p>
<p>Canberra’s diplomatic efforts over many years have been aimed at drawing Beijing into a rules-based system, promoting certainty in China’s behaviour as a <a href="https://www.ncuscr.org/content/robert-zoellicks-responsible-stakeholder-speech">“responsible stakeholder”</a>.</p>
<p>That longstanding impulse of Australian foreign policy is now under stress.</p>
<p>However, what also needs to be kept in mind is that <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/sitecore/content/Home/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/Publications_Archive/CIB/CIB9697/97cib23">relations between Canberra and Beijing have had their ups and downs over the years</a>. These blips have come and gone.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-chinas-debt-book-diplomacy-in-the-pacific-shouldnt-ring-alarm-bells-just-yet-96709">Why China's 'debt-book diplomacy' in the Pacific shouldn't ring alarm bells just yet</a>
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<p>The question is whether these latest tensions are more serious and lasting than others such as the chill that occurred after the 1989 <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2013/09/15/world/asia/tiananmen-square-fast-facts/index.html">Tiananmen Square massacre</a>. Or frictions that accompanied Australia’s support in <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1998/06/21/us-and-china-nearly-came-to-blows-in-96/926d105f-1fd8-404c-9995-90984f86a613/?utm_term=.6997b237520c">1996 for the dispatch of US naval forces into the Taiwan Straits</a> after Chinese missile tests during the Taiwanese election.</p>
<p>The Australian government needs a reset of the relationship that would move the two countries past a difficult stage caused by a combination of misunderstanding and loose talk.</p>
<p>Australian officials also need to bear in mind that, in a region in flux, Australia’s Asian neighbours are accommodating themselves to new realities at warp speed. Old certainties such as the validity of US security guarantees are being questioned.</p>
<p>The Turnbull government is operating in a much-changed environment. Stakes are high. Levels of anxiety about China’s rise are unlikely to fall. Australia needs to keep its cool and avoid falling prey to a China syndrome characterised by unsteadiness and poor judgement.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97370/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tony Walker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Anxiety about China’s rise is unlikely to abate any time soon – Australia needs to remain calm and realise the region is changing rapidly.Tony Walker, Adjunct Professor, School of Communications, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/950532018-04-25T19:14:16Z2018-04-25T19:14:16ZAs a new defence chief comes in, Australia must focus its attention on its neighbours<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215870/original/file-20180423-75126-t0obxl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The incoming head of the Australian Defence Force, Lt-Gen Angus Campbell (left), understands the importance of Australia's relations with its nearest neighbours.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Andrew Taylor</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On Anzac Day, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull commemorated the centenary of the battle at Villers-Brettoneux, where Australian soldiers defended against the German spring offensive of 1918. The <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/australia-s-100m-monash-centre-opens">opening of the Sir John Monash Centre</a> honoured the <a href="https://johnmonash.com/john-monash">celebrated commander</a> of the Australian Corps in France at the tail end of the first world war. </p>
<p>So you would be forgiven if it appeared the Australian Defence Force was still orientated towards all things European. Indeed, in recent times, Australian forces have fought alongside many of those with whom we will commemorate the events at the Monash centre. France, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the United States, among others, have been close partners in operations in Afghanistan and Iraq for the past two decades.</p>
<p>But the geostrategic context Australia faces in 2018 has changed markedly since 1918, let alone 2001, when Australian forces were committed into action in Afghanistan in the so-called <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/iraq-and-the-global-war-on-terrorism/">global war on terror</a>.</p>
<p>Australia increasingly is having to engage closely not just with close and trusted partners but with its own neighbours.</p>
<h2>A new defence chief, major challenges</h2>
<p>The current Chief of Army, Lieutenant General Angus Campbell <a href="https://theconversation.com/angus-campbell-to-head-australian-defence-force-95058">was announced</a> last week as the next Chief of Defence Force. Campbell has vast experience in military operations, including as a commander with the United Nations in East Timor and commander of Australian forces on operations in the Middle East.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/media-reporting-on-women-in-the-military-is-preserving-a-male-dominated-culture-94499">Media reporting on women in the military is preserving a male dominated culture</a>
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<p>His time as the senior officer running <a href="http://osb.homeaffairs.gov.au/">Operation Sovereign Borders</a> earned him some controversy for efficiently and effectively implementing the government’s “stop the boats” policy.</p>
<p>But the experience helped reinforce to him the significance of Australia’s relations with its immediate neighbours, most notably Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. Campbell understands that operations far away tend to be ones of choice, while those closer to shore potentially present greater challenges for the nation. </p>
<h2>The challenges ahead</h2>
<p>Later this year, the ADF will assist with the APEC Forum in Port Moresby. Elements of the army, navy and air force will be assigned to provide critical security and other support for the smooth running of the forum, and to counter any potential crisis.</p>
<p>Beyond that, the <a href="http://www.defence.gov.au/ADC/Publications/documents/IndoPac/2015/Woodbury_jan15.pdf">Bougainville referendum</a> is expected to be held in 2019. This was a date set 20 years ago, picked as a means to defuse tensions and postpone the inevitable question of autonomy or independence for the people of Bougainville. It is a particularly sensitive issue for Papua New Guinea, and managing bilateral relations over this could prove problematic. </p>
<p>In the Philippines and other parts of Southeast Asia, concerns about regional terrorist initiatives and a possible repeat of the circumstances that led to the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-23/philippines-troops-find-dozens-dead-as-warawi-siege-ends/9077096">battle of Marawi</a> have prompted the ADF to look to engage more closely with counterparts in the armed forces of Australia’s neighbours.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.defence.gov.au/annualreports/15-16/Features/20-DefenceCooperation.asp">Defence Cooperation Program</a> activities are on the increase. These include partner exercises, training programs, ship visits, exchanges and various educational and training forums.</p>
<p>Across the Pacific, the prospect of human-generated or other environmental crises or disasters will continue to demand close attention from the ADF and Australian aid agencies.</p>
<p>Beyond such environmental challenges, the prospect of increased power contestation is focusing the minds of security policymakers on the importance of bolstering ties in places like Vanuatu, Tonga and Fiji. Partly in response, the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-12/australia-donates-patrol-boats-to-pacific-islands/8800886">Pacific patrol boat program</a> is being revamped. Australia is supplying a fleet of new patrol boats with associated training, logistics and other related support included.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/angus-campbell-to-head-australian-defence-force-95058">Angus Campbell to head Australian Defence Force</a>
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<p>The “Pacific Quad” also is emerging as a significant and growing force. This grouping includes French forces in New Caledonia, working on occasion alongside US, New Zealand and Australian forces, in anticipation of growing environmental and other security challenges where cooperation will be vital.</p>
<p>Another <a href="http://perthusasia.edu.au/the-quad-security-cooperation">“Quad”</a>, involving Australia, the United States, Japan and India, will likely attract attention as well. It may emerge as a significant body in shaping how to respond to the dramatic, rapid and unprecedented build-up of Chinese military force projection capabilities. This build-up includes modernised and expanded navies, air forces and human-constructed islands.</p>
<p>The spectrum of non-traditional and conventional security concerns in and around the Indo-Pacific suggests Campbell’s focus will be on managing relations with counterparts in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. At the same time, Australia’s legacy of involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan means that an enduring but carefully calibrated military footprint can be expected in both those countries.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, key challenges will revolve around managing security concerns in Papua New Guinea, terrorism-related concerns in Southeast Asia, a potential unravelling on the Korean Peninsula and contestation in the East and South China Seas. There will also be the seasonal, expected, but still devastating natural disasters in the Pacific.</p>
<p>With so much of concern nearby, a substantial military commitment alongside allies in Syria is unlikely. A peacekeeping force contribution is possible, though, if a political solution is ever reached.</p>
<p>Ties with the United States can be expected to remain wide, deep, intimate, strong and enduring. Indeed, while not willing to say so publicly, most of Australia’s neighbours remain uneasy about China’s military assertiveness and look to Australia to remain closely engaged with the United States.</p>
<p>Despite the tweets emanating from the White House, insiders in Canberra see a significant and enduring overlap of interests and concerns with Washington. That is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future, and Angus Campbell knows this well.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95053/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Blaxland received funding from the Minerva Research Initiative (US Dept of Defence) which funded research on views of the great powers in Southeast Asia</span></em></p>The incoming Chief of the Defence Force, Angus Campbell, will need to focus his attentions on an array of conventional and non-conventional security concerns in the Indo-Pacific.John Blaxland, Professor, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/906942018-01-25T19:12:55Z2018-01-25T19:12:55Z11 billion pieces of plastic bring disease threat to coral reefs<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203389/original/file-20180125-107967-k398f2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A plastic bottle trapped on a coral reef.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tane Sinclair-Taylor</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There are more than 11 billion pieces of plastic debris on coral reefs across the Asia-Pacific, according to our new research, which also found that contact with plastic can make corals more than 20 times more susceptible to disease.</p>
<p>In our study, <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi/10.1126/science.aar3320">published today in Science</a>, we examined more than 124,000 reef-building corals and found that 89% of corals with trapped plastic had visual signs of disease - a marked increase from the 4% chance of a coral having disease without plastic.</p>
<p>Globally, more than 275 million people live within 30km of coral reefs, relying on them for food, coastal protection, tourism income, and cultural value.</p>
<p>With coral reefs already under pressure from climate change and mass <a href="https://theconversation.com/back-to-back-bleaching-has-now-hit-two-thirds-of-the-great-barrier-reef-76092">bleaching events</a>, our findings reveal another significant threat to the world’s corals and the ecosystems and livelihoods they support. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/this-south-pacific-island-of-rubbish-shows-why-we-need-to-quit-our-plastic-habit-77860">This South Pacific island of rubbish shows why we need to quit our plastic habit</a>
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<p>In collaboration with numerous experts and underwater surveyors across Indonesia, Myanmar, Thailand and Australia, we collected data from 159 coral reefs between 2010 and 2014. In so doing, we collected one of the most extensive datasets of coral health in this region and plastic waste levels on coral reefs globally.</p>
<p>There is a huge disparity between global estimates of plastic waste <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/347/6223/768">entering the oceans</a> and the amount that <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/114/23/6052.abstract">washes up on beaches</a> or is found <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/111/28/10239.full">floating on the surface</a>.</p>
<p>Our research provides one of the most comprehensive estimates of plastic waste on the seafloor, and its impact on one of the world’s most important ecosystems. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203376/original/file-20180125-107974-cglsk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203376/original/file-20180125-107974-cglsk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203376/original/file-20180125-107974-cglsk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203376/original/file-20180125-107974-cglsk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203376/original/file-20180125-107974-cglsk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203376/original/file-20180125-107974-cglsk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203376/original/file-20180125-107974-cglsk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203376/original/file-20180125-107974-cglsk5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Plastic litter in a fishing village in Myanmar.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kathryn Berry</span></span>
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<p>The number of plastic items entangled on the reefs varied immensely among the different regions we surveyed - with the lowest levels found in Australia and the highest in Indonesia. </p>
<p>An estimated 80% of marine plastic debris originates from land. The variation of plastic we observed on reefs during our surveys corresponded to the estimated levels of plastic litter entering the ocean from the nearest coast. One-third of the reefs we surveyed had no derelict plastic waste, however others had up 26 pieces of plastic debris per 100 square metres.</p>
<p>We estimate that there are roughly 11.1 billion plastic items on coral reefs across the Asia-Pacific. What’s more, we forecast that this will increase 40% in the next seven years – equating to an estimated 15.7 billion plastic items by 2025. </p>
<p>This increase is set to happen much faster in developing countries than industrialised ones. According to our projections, between 2010 and 2025 the amount of plastic debris on Australian coral reefs will increase by only about 1%, whereas for Myanmar it will almost double.</p>
<h2>How can plastic waste cause disease?</h2>
<p>Although the mechanisms are not yet clear, the influence of plastic debris on disease development may differ among the three main global diseases we observed to increase when plastic was present. </p>
<p>Plastic debris can open wounds in coral tissues, potentially letting in pathogens such as <em>Halofolliculina corallasia</em>, the microbe that causes skeletal eroding band disease. </p>
<p>Plastic debris could also introduce pathogens directly. Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) – a very common plastic used in children’s toys, building materials like pipes, and many other products – have been found carrying a family of bacteria called Rhodobacterales, which are associated with a suite of coral diseases. </p>
<p>Similarly, polypropylene – which is used to make bottle caps and toothbrushes – can be colonised by <em>Vibrio</em>, a potential pathogen linked to a globally devastating group of coral diseases known as white syndromes.</p>
<p>Finally, plastic debris overtopping corals can block out light and create low-oxygen conditions that favour the growth of microorganisms linked to black band disease. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203378/original/file-20180125-107950-1ko3ghv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203378/original/file-20180125-107950-1ko3ghv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/203378/original/file-20180125-107950-1ko3ghv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203378/original/file-20180125-107950-1ko3ghv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203378/original/file-20180125-107950-1ko3ghv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203378/original/file-20180125-107950-1ko3ghv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203378/original/file-20180125-107950-1ko3ghv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/203378/original/file-20180125-107950-1ko3ghv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Plastic debris floating over corals.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kathryn Berry</span></span>
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<p>Structurally complex corals are eight times more likely to be affected by plastic, particularly branching and tabular species. This has potentially dire implications for the numerous marine species that shelter under or within these corals, and in turn the fisheries that depend on them.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/eight-million-tonnes-of-plastic-are-going-into-the-ocean-each-year-37521">Eight million tonnes of plastic are going into the ocean each year</a>
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<p>Our study shows that reducing the amount of plastic debris entering the ocean can directly prevent disease and death among corals.</p>
<p>Once corals are already infected, it is logistically difficult to treat the resulting diseases. By far the easiest way to tackle the problem is by reducing the amount of mismanaged plastic on land that finds its way into the ocean.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90694/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joleah Lamb does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Coral reefs in the Asia-Pacific have been deluged with an estimated 11.1 billion pieces of plastic waste, increasing the risk of coral disease more than 20-fold.Joleah Lamb, Research fellow, Cornell UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/867722017-11-02T07:37:41Z2017-11-02T07:37:41ZTrump’s tour of Asia-Pacific is vital for the stability of the region<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192980/original/file-20171102-26456-1aglqyh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">From an Australian perspective, Donald's Trump Asian tour could hardly be more important.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Yuri Gripas</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Not for several presidential cycles, and perhaps not since Richard Nixon’s visit to China to initial the Shanghai Communique in 1972, has a visit to Asia assumed such significance – and one that is potentially fraught.</p>
<p>US President Donald Trump leaves Washington late this week for a 13-day tour of Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam for APEC, and the Philippines before returning home via Hawaii.</p>
<p>In these two weeks, Trump will be exposed to an Asia-Pacific – or Indo-Pacific – that is undergoing a wrenching transformation against a background of risks to a “long peace”. It is one that has survived more or less intact since the end of Korean War, leaving aside Vietnam.</p>
<p>From an Australian perspective, the Trump Asian tour could hardly be more important, given Canberra’s challenge of balancing its security and economic interests.</p>
<p>An American wrecking ball in the region is the last thing Australia needs, especially one that risks mishandling a North Korean nuclear threat to regional security.</p>
<p>In this regard, Trump’s every utterance, including his contributions to social media, will be scrutinised over the next two weeks by a nervous region.</p>
<p>What is striking about this latest period is the velocity of a geoeconomic shift that is challenging long-held assumptions about US authority in the regional power balance.</p>
<p>Seemingly, the Asia-Pacific region can no longer take for granted a US stabilising role.</p>
<p>As China’s power rises, so does US leverage ebb. This is not a zero-sum game.</p>
<p>The question is how pieces of a kaleidoscope will settle, if indeed they do.</p>
<p>Trump’s Asia tour will enable an assessment of the extent to which the US will remain a reliable regional security partner and a participant in various regional forums.</p>
<p>Former president Barack Obama talked about a “Pacific Century”, involving as it did a US “pivot” to the Asia-Pacific. Trump has not used such terminology.</p>
<p>Indeed, one of his first executive acts was to undo work that had been put into US participation in a region-wide trade initiative – the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) – aimed partly at countering China’s geoeconomic dominance.</p>
<p>This was a hasty, ill-considered decision that sent all the wrong signals about US commitment to building an Asia-Pacific trading and security architecture.</p>
<p>The other 11 TPP signatories, including Australia, are pressing on with attempts to finalise the trade liberalising protocol, but US absence significantly lessens its weight.</p>
<p>It may be unrealistic – given Trump’s bellicose “America First” pronouncements on trade – but Washington would do its regional credibility no harm if it reversed itself on TPP.</p>
<p>On a visit to Australia last month to launch the first volume of his memoir – Not For The Faint-Hearted – former prime minister Kevin Rudd warned of the risks of the end of a period of relative stability.</p>
<p>His warnings were based on a paper produced by the Asia Society Policy Institute – <a href="http://asiasociety.org/policy-institute/preserving-long-peace-asia">Preserving the Long Peace in Asia</a> – of which he is president.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2017/10/19/can-we-preserve-asias-long-peace/">In a contribution to the East Asia Forum</a>, Rudd asked the question: how can we save Asia’s “long peace” in light of North Korea’s attempts to develop a ballistic missile nuclear capability?</p>
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<p>This has been a crisis long in the making, beginning with the Soviet training of North Korean nuclear scientists and engineers after the second world war, the north’s expulsion of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors in 2002, and the subsequent series of ballistic and nuclear weapons tests.</p>
<p>The uncomfortable truth is that for the last quarter of a century, the international community has simply been kicking the can down the road. And now, at one minute to midnight, everyone is scrambling on what to do about it.</p>
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<p>In Rudd’s view, the Asia-Pacific needs to develop a security understanding – like the Helsinki Accords in Europe – to deal with security challenges, including North Korea and, more broadly, territorial disputes that threaten regional stability.</p>
<p>His preferred option is to bolster the East Asia Summit (EAS) as a regional forum to promote peace and stability. He makes the valid point the EAS has, potentially, the regional heft to undertake such a stabilising role.</p>
<p>Disappointingly, Trump is not planning to stay in the Philippines an extra day for this year’s EAS gathering. It might have been time well spent.</p>
<p>Membership, including the ten nations of the Association of South East Asian Nations, plus China, South Korea, Japan, India, Australia, New Zealand, Russia and the US, means all the main Indo-Pacific players are participants.</p>
<p>This is how Rudd puts it:</p>
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<p>The EAS has the mandate to expand its activities in the security domain. The Kuala Lumpur Declaration of 2005 is clear about this. Furthermore, members of the EAS have all signed the Treaty of Amity and Co-operation, which commits partners to peaceful dispute resolution. Moreover, the EAS uniquely has all necessary players around the table.</p>
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<p>What is required in all of this is American leadership, but as things stand there is little sign of Washington possessing an overarching vision of where it might take the region in the next stage as China continues to expand its power and influence.</p>
<p>In this regard it is hard to disagree with a Lowy Institute paper – <a href="https://www.lowyinstitute.org/publications/autopilot-east-asia-policy-under-trump">East Asia Policy under Trump</a>. It identified a serious case of drift in American engagement with the region under a president whose knowledge of – and interest in – the Asia-Pacific appears limited at best.</p>
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<p>US policy on East Asia is thus on autopilot, which presents two distinct risks. First that of a crisis, whether created by the president or events. </p>
<p>The US faces challenges to its economic leadership from Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, a program of massive infrastructure investment that will enmesh the economies of China and its Asian neighbours, challenges from Chinese attempts to shape regional institutions to its advantage, and to shape a narrative of the region’s future that puts Beijing at its centre. </p>
<p>It also faces challenges from an increasingly capable Chinese military. All this in a region that is becoming increasingly illiberal – and doubtful of US staying power.</p>
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<p>This is a fairly bleak assessment of a US ability to engage the Asia-Pacific constructively in this latest period. In fairness to Trump, he remains on a steep learning curve. How all this will play out is anyone’s guess.</p>
<p>What is the case is there is no more important stop of Trump’s itinerary than his visit this coming week to China to engage the newly reinforced ruler Xi Jinping.</p>
<p>The China talks, in the lead-up to APEC in Vietnam, are the linchpin of Trump’s Asian foray. The two leaders exchanged a visit in April this year when Xi visited Trump in Mar-a-Lago.</p>
<p>On that occasion, a novice American president was feeling out his main rival for global leadership. This was a getting-to-know-you opportunity.</p>
<p>However, on this occasion more will be expected of a Trump-Xi encounter on issues like North Korea, concerns over China’s mercantilist behaviour, and its assertiveness in the South China and East China Seas.</p>
<p>While it would be unrealistic to expect a “grand bargain” to emerge between the leaders of a new bipolar world, what is needed is some clear guidance about US priorities amid the confusion that has accompanied Trump’s nine months in the White House.</p>
<p>Laying out some sort of vision for US engagement in the region should be a minimum requirement at a time of considerable uncertainty.</p>
<p>Elizabeth Economy of the Council on Foreign Relations put it this way in a <a href="https://www.google.com.au/search?q=cfr+donald+trump%27s+sia+adventure+show+me+love&oq=cfr+donald+trump%27s+sia+adventure+show+me+love&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i64.19333j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8">CFR blogpost</a>:</p>
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<p>The president can allay regional fears that the United States is commitment-phobic, by reinforcing at each step Washington’s allies and partners are the cornerstone of US engagement in the region. Reiterating the US commitment to freedom of navigation, free trade, and political freedoms will also reassure regional actors that it still makes sense to buy into a regional order underpinned by a US alliance system. Of course, this trip is only the first step in putting the United States on firmer ground in Asia, after many months of confusing signaling and disruptive initiatives.</p>
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<p>Expectations for Trump’s engagement with the region may be low, but the same could not be said for the stakes at a time of considerable uncertainty and risk.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86772/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Expectations for Trump’s engagement with the region may be low, but the same could not be said for the stakes at a time of considerable uncertainty and risk.Tony Walker, Adjunct Professor, School of Communications, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/755602017-05-18T13:04:22Z2017-05-18T13:04:22ZHigh-tech China-US arms race threatens to destabilise East Asia<p>After <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-south-koreas-election-might-mean-for-the-long-peace-in-east-asia-76845">decades of peace</a>, East Asia is racked with tension – and its two dominant military powers are jostling for supremacy in an extremely alarming way.</p>
<p>The US and China are accumulating increasingly advanced military systems to enable and enhance the assets they already have. With the Trump administration’s foreign policy <a href="http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/in-asia-gnawing-uncertainty-over-trumps-next-100-days">still unclear</a> and China’s aspirations to regional supremacy as <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-southchinasea-china-idUSKCN18D0ER">ambitious as ever</a>, they are racing to <a href="http://www.defense.gov/Transcripts/Transcript.aspx?TranscriptID=5432">deny</a> each other the upper hand by rolling out new military assets. </p>
<p>The result is a dangerous spiral of destabilisation and escalation. If there’s a major conflict or crisis in the region – whether over North Korea, the South China Sea, or something else – this obsession will give both sides an incentive to strike first so as to <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2005_12/DEC-CVR">protect</a> their vulnerable battlefield assets.</p>
<p>This is especially true on the Chinese side. While there’s been plenty of coverage of China’s traditional warfighting capabilities, including its “carrier killer” <a href="https://theconversation.com/chinas-anti-ship-missiles-threaten-an-arms-race-in-the-western-pacific-73081">anti-ship missiles</a>, far less ink has been spilt examining Chinese thinking on the high-tech <a href="http://www.northropgrumman.com/Capabilities/C4ISR/Pages/default.aspx">systems</a> that enable and enhance these advanced weapons. </p>
<p>These systems expand the range, accuracy, and lethality of Beijing’s military power projection. This <a href="https://www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2016%20China%20Military%20Power%20Report.pdf">warfighting toolkit</a> includes long-range precision strike missiles for use in early and preemptive strikes; stealth jet fighters to bypass enemy air defences and destroy its command and control centres; anti-satellite missiles to take out critical <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/29/space-arms-race-as-russia-china-emerge-as-rapidly-growing-threats-to-us.html">space-based</a> intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems; and other <a href="http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/get-ready-chinas-laser-weapons-arsenal-20138?page=show">emerging technologies</a> such as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eObepuHvYAw">railguns</a>, “stealth-defeating” <a href="http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a22996/china-quantum-stealth-radar/">quantum radar</a>, and <a href="http://thediplomat.com/2016/09/is-china-really-building-missiles-with-artificial-intelligence/">autonomous systems</a>.</p>
<p>If China can integrate these cutting-edge technologies with the conventional forces it already has, it could fundamentally alter the regional military balance – which is already rapidly moving in Beijing’s favour. </p>
<p>According to one Chinese <a href="http://news.abs-cbn.com/overseas/03/20/17/chineses-military-dominance-in-s-china-sea-complete-report">military magazine</a>, China must be prepared to fight to safeguard and secure its “central leadership” in the South China Sea. </p>
<p>It remains to be seen whether the People’s Liberation Army can overcome its deep-seated inter-service factionalism, endemic bureaucratic problems, and minimal combat experience with modern military hardware. But if it can, it could prove highly effective in a future amphibious assault on the contested <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/05/china-v-japan-new-global-flashpoint-senkaku-islands-ishigaki">Senkaku Islands</a>, a blockade against Taiwan, or an action to control critical trading sea lanes in the <a href="http://news.abs-cbn.com/overseas/03/20/17/chineses-military-dominance-in-s-china-sea-complete-report">South China Sea</a> – and China’s neighbours probably couldn’t do much to resist.</p>
<h2>The first ‘quantum power’?</h2>
<p>In 2016, China launched the world’s first quantum satellite, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-37091833">Micius</a>. Its communications experiments will showcase China’s rapid advances in quantum information science. Beijing clearly understands the <a href="https://jamestown.org/program/quantum-leap-part-2-strategic-implications-quantum-technologies/">strategic implications</a> quantum technologies hold for future warfare. Indeed, some Chinese analysts have even compared the strategic impact of quantum power with <a href="http://www.caixinglobal.com/2015-02-06/101012695.html">nuclear weapons</a>.</p>
<p>Worryingly for the Pentagon, Chinese strategists seem confident that their quantum communications capabilities are already fit to deploy in hypothetical “local wars”. If China can leapfrog the US to become the world’s first “quantum power”, it will pose a serious challenge to American military-technological superiority, especially in military stealth and intelligence-gathering capabilities.</p>
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<p>To underline the gravity of this challenge, a White House official recently warned that the US’s information-centric ways of waging war are increasingly <a href="https://www.defense.gov/News/Article/Article/965196/defense-innovation-board-makes-interim-recommendations">under siege</a> from Chinese quantum technology. China has reportedly already developed a range of disruptive quantum technologies with military applications: “unhackable” quantum cryptography, sophisticated tools to decrypt military communications, and next generation stealth quantum radar.</p>
<p>Despite these challenges, the Pentagon has yet to commit meaningful resources to the development of quantum technologies. Apparently, the <a href="http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/air-space/air-force/2015/08/09/air-force-study-shows-potential-limits-quantum-technology-pentagon/31233467/">policy wonks</a> have concluded that these systems would not significantly enhance military communication security. Instead of tackling this challenge head-on, the evidence suggests that over the past five years, US funding for critical high-tech military technologies has actually decreased.</p>
<p>Conversely, even if China’s quantum technologies have only limited military utility, they could nonetheless radically and irreversibly shift the future military balance in Asia.</p>
<h2>First strike</h2>
<p>Washington’s main fear is that once Beijing overcomes various technical and organisational shortcomings, it will have lethally effective new tools to deploy in future preemptive and coercive missions in Asia. Specifically, it might be able to challenge US carrier strike groups and bases in the Western Pacific.</p>
<p>Equally worryingly, these capabilities could embolden Chinese leaders to behave more assertively and aggressively as they defend and expand their unresolved (and widely disputed) sovereignty claims – especially in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-at-stake-in-chinas-claims-to-the-south-china-sea-62472">South China Sea</a>.</p>
<p>As if further proof were needed, the Chinese Ministry of Defence <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-taiwan-defence-idUSKBN171173">responded to reports</a> that the Trump administration is crafting a new arms package for Taiwan by asserting it would be “futile” for Taiwan to use military force to avoid unification with mainland China – speaking with exactly the confidence and resolve one might expect from a government equipped with a newly formidable military force.</p>
<p>This is all extremely concerning. Washington and Beijing must find a way to temper these destabilising dynamics and eliminate the incentives to strike first; if they don’t, the implications for both their relationship and the stability of Asia will be huge. </p>
<p>As things stand, the Pacific’s two major powers are caught in a trap of <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09512748.2016.1239129">uncertainty, insecurity, and instability</a>. This is just the sort of climate in which defensive <a href="http://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/04/04/us-air-force-preparing-war-space.html">actions and rhetoric</a> are interpreted as aggressive; the result could be an arms race, and ultimately, full-blown conflict.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/75560/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Johnson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>China’s conventional military assets are intimidating enough, but its latest technological advances could transform the military balance in its neighbourhood.James Johnson, Geopolitical Risk & Defence Analyst, University of LeicesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/765612017-04-23T07:00:32Z2017-04-23T07:00:32ZPence visit reassures that the US remains committed to the Asia-Pacific<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166345/original/file-20170423-22929-1f9zqg3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mike Pence and Malcolm Turnbull meet at Admiralty House in Sydney.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Jason Reed</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Viewed through the lens of a traditional relationship between close allies, all might have seemed well as US Vice-President Mike Pence and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-22/trump-will-deal-with-north-korea-if-china-doesnt-pence-says/8463220">sprinkled emollient words</a> on a media contingent gathered on the lawns of Sydney’s Admiralty House.</p>
<p>Ferries traversed Sydney Harbour in the background, yachts tacked back and forth, and the sun shone. But that pastoral scene hardly shielded a troubled world beyond, and one that is weighing on the US alliance.</p>
<p>In the age of Donald Trump and “Trumpism” – defined by its unpredictability – Pence’s mission was to <a href="http://www.voanews.com/a/pence-turnbull-china-north-korea/3821177.html">reassure an alliance partner</a> the US remained committed to an Asia-Pacific presence, and America’s relationship with Australia in particular. Pence put it this way:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I trust that my visit here today on my very first trip the Asia-Pacific as vice-president of the United States and the president’s plans to travel to this region this fall are a strong sign of our enduring commitment to the historic alliance between the people of the United States of America and the people of Australia.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Importantly, from Turnbull’s perspective, Pence <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2017/04/22/pence-us-will-honour-manus-island-nauru-refugee-deal">put his imprimatur</a> on a refugee deal that would see asylum seekers on Nauru and Manus Island resettled in the US subject to severe vetting.</p>
<p>The plain vanilla former Indiana governor and long-term congressman – polar opposite of the flamboyant Trump – did a reasonable job in his efforts to calm concerns that might be held about a new administration’s commitment to the region.</p>
<p>His message was similar to those delivered on previous stops in Japan and South Korea. America would stay the course, and it would stand with its allies against threats to regional security. If anything, it would act more assertively in seeking to preserve Asia-Pacific peace and stability.</p>
<p>Pence made no reference to the previous administration’s “pivot” to Asia, or its commitment to broaden engagement in the region via diplomatic means. If there is a defining characteristic of the new White House in its early months, it is that the threatened projection of American power is back more overtly as a diplomatic tool.</p>
<p>Had former vice-president Joe Biden been standing on the Admiralty House lawns, his words of reassurance to an Asia-Pacific ally would not have been much different. But the context has shifted significantly – and so, too, has the rhetoric.</p>
<p>North Korea’s belligerence, its provocations, its prosecution of a potentially deadly game of bluff, its quirkiness, its threats to launch ballistic missiles against the west coast of the US and as far afield as Australia, all are hardly new. But what has changed are the players: or to put it more bluntly, one player in counterpoint to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.</p>
<p>Trump’s arrival in the White House has added a new layer of unpredictability to a set of circumstances North Korea’s neighbours have lived with for many years – that country’s development of a nuclear weapons capability.</p>
<p>The world might regard Kim as a cartoonish figure. But the reality is that he presides over a country whose firepower could leave swathes of the Korean peninsula in ruins.</p>
<p>More than half-a-century after the end of the Korean war, the Korean peninsula remains on a hair trigger. The South Korean capital, Seoul, is in split-second range of the north’s artillery and missile batteries.</p>
<p>If a response to Syria’s use of chemical weapons against its own citizens provided the first significant foreign policy challenge for a new administration, North Korea’s bombast represents a test of a different order.</p>
<p>No responsible public official can afford to ignore such threats, whatever judgements might be made about that country’s endless displays of brinkmanship.</p>
<p>Speaking of brinkmanship, America’s allies would be foolish not to recalibrate their own expectations of American behaviour under a Trump administration. In this regard Australia is – or should be – no exception.</p>
<p>While Turnbull might have emphasised his <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-22/trump-will-deal-with-north-korea-if-china-doesnt-pence-says/8463220">fealty to the alliance</a>, the reality is that the Asia-Pacific – or as Australian officials emphasise these days, the Indo-Pacific (to include India and the Indian Ocean that laps at our shores) – has to accept that regional security increasingly will depend on Chinese engagement, whether we like it or not.</p>
<p>Both Turnbull and Pence made it clear they were looking to Beijing to help lessen tensions on the Korean peninsula and bring North Korea to heel. China has proved reluctant to assert its influence over its neighbour, but indications now are the Chinese accept that it is in their interests to calm the situation.</p>
<p>China has taken several significant steps to put Pyongyang on notice, including turning back coal shipments.</p>
<p>If Chinese and US pressure proves able to calm current tensions – and even bring about a freeze on North Korea’s nuclear ambitions – this may come to be regarded as an historic moment in regional security. It may also be a possible forerunner to the development of more formalised regional security arrangements.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2017/04/22/world/asia/ap-as-pence-australia.html">American media reported</a> that Pence’s visit to Australia and other regional countries was prompted partly by concerns in Washington that relations needed to be smoothed to combat reservations about the Trump administration’s commitment to the region.</p>
<p>Trump’s decision to pull the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, his criticisms of China so-called “currency manipulation”, his threats to launch a trade war with China, his description of efforts to combat global warming as a “Chinese hoax”, and other intemperate statements have rattled traditional allies.</p>
<p>If the American embassy in Canberra had been paying attention to local media it would have reported back to Washington that there is a groundswell of opinion in Australia that would like to see the country reposition itself between its traditional ally and its most important economic partner.</p>
<p>Influential voices, including those of former foreign minister Gareth Evans, have been calling for less <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/the-most-illinformed-underprepared-and-psychologically-illequipped-president-in-us-history-20170412-gvk1tf.html">“reflexive”</a> support for US policies. Opinion polls indicate the majority of Australians have a poor regard for Trump.</p>
<p>Whatever Pence and Turnbull may have said on that sun-filled day on the shores of Sydney Harbour, the world is changing fast and with it the context within which Australia interacts with its security guarantor. And perhaps just as importantly, with its principal economic partner.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76561/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
The message from the US vice-president was that the US would stay the course and, if anything, act more assertively in preserving stability in the Asia-Pacific region.Tony Walker, Adjunct Professor, School of Communications, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/716142017-02-08T18:57:59Z2017-02-08T18:57:59ZDroughts and flooding rains already more likely as climate change plays havoc with Pacific weather<p>Global warming has already increased the risk of major disruptions to Pacific rainfall, according to our <a href="http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14368">research published today in Nature Communications</a>. The risk will continue to rise over coming decades, even if global warming during the 21st century is restricted to 2°C as agreed by the international community under the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-paris-climate-agreement-at-a-glance-50465">Paris Agreement</a>.</p>
<p>In recent times, major disruptions have occurred in 1997-98, when severe drought struck Papua New Guinea, Samoa and the Solomon Islands, and in 2010-11, when rainfall caused widespread flooding in eastern Australia and severe flooding in Samoa, and drought triggered a national emergency in Tuvalu.</p>
<p>These rainfall disruptions are primarily driven by the <a href="http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/history/ln-2010-12/ENSO-what.shtml">El Niño/La Niña cycle</a>, a naturally occurring phenomenon centred on the tropical Pacific. This climate variability can profoundly change rainfall patterns and intensity over the Pacific Ocean from year to year. </p>
<p>Rainfall belts can move hundreds and sometimes thousands of kilometres from their normal positions. This has major impacts on safety, health, livelihoods and ecosystems as a result of severe weather, drought and floods.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v5/n9/full/nclimate2743.html">Recent research</a> concluded that unabated growth in greenhouse gas emissions over the 21st century will increase the frequency of such disruptions to Pacific rainfall. </p>
<p>But our new research shows even the greenhouse cuts we have agreed to may not be enough to stop the risk of rainfall disruption from growing as the century unfolds.</p>
<h2>Changing climate</h2>
<p>In our study we used a large number of climate models from around the world to compare Pacific rainfall disruptions before the Industrial Revolution, during recent history, and in the future to 2100. We considered different scenarios for the 21st century. </p>
<p><a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-011-0152-3">One scenario</a> is based on stringent mitigation in which strong and sustained cuts are made to global greenhouse gas emissions. This includes in some cases the extraction of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.</p>
<p>In <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-011-0149-y">another scenario</a> emissions continue to grow, and remain very high throughout the 21st century. This high-emissions scenario results in global warming of 3.2-5.4°C by the end of the century (compared with the latter half of the 19th century).</p>
<p>The low-emissions scenario - despite the cuts in emissions - nevertheless results in 0.9-2.3°C of warming by the end of the century.</p>
<h2>Increasing risk</h2>
<p>Under the high-emissions scenario, the models project a 90% increase in the number of major Pacific rainfall disruptions by the early 21st century, and a 130% increase during the late 21st century, both relative to pre-industrial times. The latter means that major disruptions will tend to occur every four years on average, instead of every nine.</p>
<p>The increase in the frequency of rainfall disruption in the models arises from an increase in the frequency of El Niño and La Niña events in some models, and an <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v502/n7472/abs/nature12580.html">increase in rainfall variability</a> during these events as a result of global warming. This boost occurs even if the character of the sea-surface temperature variability arising from El Niño and La Niña events is unchanged from pre-industrial times.</p>
<p>Although heavy emissions cuts lead to a smaller increase in rainfall disruption, unfortunately even this scenario does not prevent some increase. Under this scenario, the risk of rainfall disruption is projected to be 56% higher during the next three decades, and to remain at least that high for the rest of the 21st century.</p>
<h2>The risk has already increased</h2>
<p>While changes to the frequency of major changes in Pacific rainfall appear likely in the future, is it possible that humans have already increased the risk of major disruption?</p>
<p>It seems that we have: the frequency of major rainfall disruptions in the climate models had already increased by around 30% relative to pre-industrial times prior to the year 2000. </p>
<p>As the risk of major disruption to Pacific rainfall had already increased by the end of the 20th century, some of the disruption actually witnessed in the real world may have been partially due to the human release of greenhouse gases. The 1982-83 super El Niño event, for example, might have been less severe if global greenhouse emissions had not risen since the Industrial Revolution.</p>
<p>Most small developing island states in the Pacific have a limited capacity to cope with major floods and droughts. Unfortunately, these vulnerable nations could be exposed more often to these events in future, even if global warming is restricted to 2°C.</p>
<p>These impacts will add to the other impacts of climate change, such as rising sea levels, ocean acidification and increasing temperature extremes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71614/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This research was supported by the National Environmental Science Programme and the Australian Climate Change Science Programme.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brad Murphy, Christine Chung, François Delage, and Hua Ye do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>New research shows that global warming has already begun to exacerbate extremes of rainfall in the Pacific region – with more to come.Scott Power, Head of Climate Research/International Development Manager, Australian Bureau of MeteorologyBrad Murphy, Manager, Climate Data Services, Australian Bureau of MeteorologyChristine Chung, Research Scientist, Australian Bureau of MeteorologyFrançois Delage, Assistant scientist, Australian Bureau of MeteorologyHua Ye, Climate IT Officer, Australian Bureau of MeteorologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/655512016-09-21T02:04:23Z2016-09-21T02:04:23ZHow the Asia-Pacific can lead the way on migrants and refugees<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138536/original/image-20160921-12475-14czfji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Asia is home to the world’s largest known stateless group, the Rohingya.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Rafiquar Rahman</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>September has seen a surge of international summits. First came <a href="https://theconversation.com/chinas-g20-summit-was-big-on-show-but-short-on-substance-64866">the G20</a> in Hangzhou, then <a href="https://www.pm.gov.au/media/2016-09-05/asean-australia-and-east-asia-summits">ASEAN and the East Asia Summit</a> in Vientiane, plus the <a href="https://pacifictradeinvest.com/events/47th-pacific-islands-forum-leaders-meetings/">Pacific Islands Forum</a> in Pohnpei.</p>
<p>And, on consecutive days this week, the United Nations in New York hosted a <a href="http://refugeesmigrants.un.org/summit">summit on refugees and migrants</a>, followed by US President Barack Obama’s <a href="http://www.state.gov/p/io/c71574.htm">special leaders’ summit on refugees</a>. Representatives from government, business and civil society gathered to decide how best to move the dial on unprecedented mass displacement.</p>
<p>It’s easy to be sceptical of talkfests, but the New York summits <a href="http://www.nst.com.my/news/2016/09/174536/forced-migration-still-big-problem-asia">carried special significance</a>. They show that forced migration has become a matter of high politics. And unless managed more effectively, forced migration will have permanent and intensifying negative impacts on countries across the globe.</p>
<h2>What happened at the summits?</h2>
<p>Obama’s summit generated new pledges – <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/australia-to-take-central-american-refugees-as-malcolm-turnbull-pledges-to-do-more-at-obama-summit-20160920-grkcq9.html">including from Australia</a> – for resettlement places and visa pathways, more funding for humanitarian agencies and low-cost financing for refugees, and new education and employment opportunities for those displaced. It was <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/09/20/fact-sheet-leaders-summit-refugees">attended</a> by 52 countries and key international organisations.</p>
<p>Obama also led a “<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/09/20/fact-sheet-white-house-announces-commitments-call-action-private-sector">Call to Action</a>” involving 51 companies across the US economy. This yielded US$650 million in pledges, including US$500 million from philanthropist George Soros to invest in ideas to benefit migrants “<a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-im-investing-500-million-in-migrants-1474344001">the world over</a>”.</p>
<p>The UN summit did not deliver an immediate result. Its key contribution, the <a href="http://refugeesmigrants.un.org/declaration">New York Declaration</a>, will kick-start two years of negotiations for separate global compacts – one on refugees, and the other on safe, orderly and regular migration.</p>
<p>Much of the discussion on migrants and refugees in New York focused on the situation in Europe and the Middle East. Given recent events and the scale of people movements in those regions, this is not surprising. But the risk is that summiteers have missed where the real action – and potential – lies for progress on forced migration: in the Asia-Pacific. </p>
<h2>Why the Asia-Pacific?</h2>
<p>Very few Asia-Pacific countries attended Obama’s summit; only Thailand, Bangladesh, Australia and China were there. No Asian country was among the co-hosts. </p>
<p>Disappointingly, Indonesia’s role as co-chair of the <a href="http://www.baliprocess.net/">Bali Process</a>, including stewardship of the seminal <a href="http://www.baliprocess.net/UserFiles/baliprocess/File/Bali%20Declaration%20on%20People%20Smuggling%20Trafficking%20in%20Persons%20and%20Related%20Transnational%20Crime%202016.pdf">Bali Ministerial Declaration</a> in March 2016, was <a href="http://www.nst.com.my/news/2016/09/174536/forced-migration-still-big-problem-asia">not deemed sufficient</a> to generate an invitation. </p>
<p>The co-hosts <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/09/20/joint-statement-leaders-summit-refugees">conceded</a> “no routine mechanism exists” yet for voluntary responsibility-sharing, and that new “tools and institutional structures” are required to tackle:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… the immediate and the long-term challenges of managing refugee flows effectively and comprehensively.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Limited attention on the Asia-Pacific need not obfuscate the reality that this region can be a critical node for more effective, dignified and durable action on migrants and refugees. Concerted progress in the region on trafficking, disaster preparedness and the new Bali Process consultation mechanism can be a catalyst for greater global ambition. </p>
<p>Asia has seen large forced migration flows in the past. But there has been a respite in the last year. Nevertheless, the continent is home to the world’s largest-known <a href="http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/myanmars-rohingya-refugees-are-the-worlds-largest-group-of-stateless-people/">stateless group</a>, the Rohingya.</p>
<p>Asia also <a href="http://www.iom.int/asia-and-pacific">hosts</a> the world’s largest group of undocumented labour migrants and the most refugees and displaced people of any region. It includes, in Afghanistan, the world’s <a href="http://www.unhcr.ie/about-unhcr/facts-and-figures-about-refugees">second-leading producer</a> of refugees and second-largest source of refugees into Europe. </p>
<p>The top-ten countries <a href="http://www.army.gov.au/Our-work/Speeches-and-transcripts/Chief-of-Army-opening-address-to-the-2016-Chief-of-Army-Exercise">most at risk</a> from sea-level rises and climate-induced displacement are in the corridor from India to the US. </p>
<p>The brief period of calm in Asia presents policymakers with the space to deal more effectively with human trafficking, asylum-seeker protection and refugee status determination, and to improve regional co-operation. They must take decisive action to deal with the issues at hand and prepare the region for what’s likely to come. </p>
<h2>What comes next?</h2>
<p>Creating a neutral space to discuss policy and operational options for countries and others grappling with complex forced migration issues in the Asia-Pacific has been the focus of the <a href="http://cpd.org.au/intergenerational-wellbeing/asia-dialogue-on-forced-migration/">Asia Dialogue on Forced Migration</a>. Its <a href="http://cpd.org.au/2016/09/thirdadfmmeeting/">third meeting</a> concluded earlier this month in Kuala Lumpur.</p>
<p>The dialogue’s initial objective was to open lines of communication and build trust and confidence. Once this was achieved, dialogue members began to identify areas of mutual interest and to develop more effective policy responses. </p>
<p>On the dialogue’s recommendation, the Bali Process is conducting a <a href="http://www.baliprocess.net/UserFiles/baliprocess/File/BPMC%20Co-chairs%20Ministerial%20Statement_with%20Bali%20Declaration%20attached%20-%2023%20March%202016_docx.pdf">formal review</a> of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-andaman-sea-refugee-crisis-a-year-on-is-the-region-now-better-prepared-59687">Andaman Sea crisis of May 2015</a>. This will consider how national, regional and sub-regional contingency planning and preparedness can be improved.</p>
<p>A particular focus will be how the new consultation mechanism can be developed to broker early understanding of situations of potential and actual displacement, and generate co-ordinated and effective responses. This may include leveraging core contact groups in affected countries and developing an early warning system to prevent and manage displacement. </p>
<p>At the third meeting, the dialogue made important progress in the examination of national security concerns arising from forced migration flows and the need for better regional information co-operation and national identification and registration systems. </p>
<p>It also considered how ASEAN can take a more constructive role in the interest of its member states – including by expanding its disaster-management activities to include mass displacement – and how the private sector could be strategically engaged. </p>
<p>The next dialogue meeting in Indonesia in March 2017 will focus on human trafficking networks. It will also consider how commitments to ensure crises like that in the Andaman Sea in 2015 do not happen again are stacking up. </p>
<p>So while New York may have been where the talk is, the Asia-Pacific may be where sustained action on forced migration is found over the next two years. For this to happen, all countries in the region must step up to the plate. </p>
<p>These countries must ensure their domestic approaches are in sync with regional action. This means turning away from short-term, unilateral responses on forced migration, to prioritise a regional system that allows countries to advance the welfare of their citizens and better protect the vulnerable migrants and refugees residing within them. </p>
<p>Several countries in the region have found that to be a challenge, at great human cost. They must be persuaded to change tack and make forced migration a core and constructive part of their agenda. The promised global compacts will be strengthened immeasurably if robust progress can be made in the Asia-Pacific before a further crisis ensues.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65551/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Travers McLeod is CEO of the Centre of Policy Development. The Asia Dialogue on Forced Migration is convened by CPD, the Institute for Strategic and International Studies (ISIS) Malaysia, Mahidol University’s Institute of Human Rights and Peace Studies in Thailand, and the Indonesian Institute of Sciences. The Dialogue has received funding or in-kind support from the Sidney Myer Fund, the Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation, the Planet Wheeler Foundation, Corrs Chambers Westgarth Lawyers, Qantas and individual donors.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Hughes is Fellow of the Centre for Policy Development.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sriprapha Petcharamesree, Steven Wong, and Tri Nuke Pudjiastuti do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Unless managed more effectively, forced migration will have permanent and intensifying negative impacts on countries across the globe.Travers McLeod, Honorary Fellow in the School of Social and Political Sciences, The University of MelbournePeter Hughes, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy and Visitor, Regnet School of Regulation and Global Governance, Australian National UniversitySriprapha Petcharamesree, Director of the International PhD Program in Human Rights and Peace Studies, Institute of Human Rights and Peace Studies, Mahidol UniversitySteven Wong, Deputy Chief Executive, Institute of Strategic and International StudiesTri Nuke Pudjiastuti, Researcher, Research Centre for Politics, Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/653542016-09-20T19:54:33Z2016-09-20T19:54:33ZCostly choices: how well will Trump or Clinton manage the Australia-US alliance?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137694/original/image-20160914-4980-169t9js.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Should Hillary Clinton win the White House the long evolution of Australia-US alliance should continue as normal.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Trade and security in the Asia-Pacific, including Australia, is at a crossroads. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton <a href="http://thediplomat.com/2015/04/what-might-a-hillary-clinton-presidency-mean-for-asia/">represents continuity</a> with more than 25 years of American regional engagement. But Republican nominee Donald Trump places the very foundation of the US security guarantee <a href="http://thediplomat.com/2015/09/donald-trumps-asia-policy-would-be-a-disaster/">under threat</a>.</p>
<p>So, if elected president, how well will either of these candidates manage the <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BriefingBook44p/AustUSDefence">Australia-US alliance</a>?</p>
<p>US presidents over the past 25 years have had varying views of the alliance. While none have questioned its value, commitment has not been even across the board.</p>
<h2>George H.W. Bush</h2>
<p>George H.W. Bush, arguably, is most responsible for the character of today’s alliance. </p>
<p>A <a href="http://ww2db.com/person_bio.php?person_id=354">second world war veteran</a>, Bush shared many personal experiences with Australians serving in the Pacific. He also had <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=EuqFg5dUmgQC&pg=PA161&lpg=PA161#v=onepage&q&f=false">close relationships</a> with Australian leaders, especially Bob Hawke. </p>
<p>When Bush’s Australia visit was first planned, Hawke was still prime minister. In the intervening months Paul Keating replaced Hawke. What was to be a reunion between two close friends did not quite work as intended.</p>
<p>Bush set the benchmark for Australian-US alliance. In 1992 <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=CUjVAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA17&lpg=PA17#v=onepage&q&f=false">he said</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We will not abandon the special responsibility we have to help further stability in this region.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vtOTxHKkmzM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Bob Hawke visits the White House in 1989.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Bill Clinton</h2>
<p>Before becoming president, former Arkansas governor Bill Clinton was a foreign policy amateur. </p>
<p>In 1993, the Australian-inspired Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) forum <a href="http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=46137">became a way</a> of bridging Clinton’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_the_economy,_stupid">economic focus</a> with international trade. Later, his 1996 visit to Australia met with tremendous success, aligning Australian and American visions for the Asia-Pacific. </p>
<p>Clinton’s relationship with the Keating government was mostly positive, but his relationship with the Howard government was less so. </p>
<p>In 1999 the Howard government <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20100923201217/http://www.abc.net.au/news/howardyears/content/s2422684.htm">fumbled its handling</a> of calling on the US to send troops into East Timor alongside Australia’s. The US made significant contributions to the Australian-led efforts, providing essential logistical and communication support. </p>
<p>By the end of his administration Clinton had built on the efforts of his predecessor and continued to strengthen the alliance.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ES8p4ozUcbM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Bill Clinton addresses federal parliament in 1996.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>George W. Bush</h2>
<p>It is hard to say what George W. Bush’s handling of the Australia-US alliance would have been like if the September 11 terror attacks had not happened. Would his father’s Australian experience have coloured his view? </p>
<p>There can be no doubt that, after September 11, Australia’s support of US-led conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq signalled the continuing deepening of the alliance. </p>
<p>Despite Bush’s unpopularity in Australia, his administration continued to see Australia as an important ally. Adding to the depth of the alliance was agreement on the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia%E2%80%93United_States_Free_Trade_Agreement">Australia-US Free Trade Agreement</a> and creation of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-3_visa">E3 visa</a> category for Australians. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137691/original/image-20160914-4936-11jxhn8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/137691/original/image-20160914-4936-11jxhn8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137691/original/image-20160914-4936-11jxhn8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137691/original/image-20160914-4936-11jxhn8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137691/original/image-20160914-4936-11jxhn8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137691/original/image-20160914-4936-11jxhn8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/137691/original/image-20160914-4936-11jxhn8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Bush administration saw Australia as an important ally.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Kevin Dietsch</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Barack Obama</h2>
<p>America’s first truly Asia-Pacific president is Barack Obama. </p>
<p>Obama was born in Hawaii and <a href="http://millercenter.org/president/biography/obama-life-before-the-presidency">lived in Indonesia</a> in his youth. The Obama-led “pivot” to Asia acknowledged the importance of the Asia-Pacific, both in economic and security terms, as he described in a <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/11/17/remarks-president-obama-australian-parliament">speech to the Australian parliament</a> in 2011. </p>
<p>Australia has a central place in the pivot. The George W. Bush-negotiated <a href="http://www.defence.gov.au/ustradetreaty/aboutthetreaty.asp">Defence Trade Co-operation Treaty</a> between the US and Australia was finally passed in the US Senate and signed into law by Obama in 2013. </p>
<p>Obama has built on the foundations in the alliance laid by his predecessors.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8_hSqLEtX_Y?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Barack Obama addresses federal parliament in 2011.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What might 2016 mean?</h2>
<p>Should Hillary Clinton win the White House the long evolution of alliance should continue as it has done since Bush senior’s presidency. </p>
<p>One of her most-trusted advisers, Kurt Campbell – <a href="http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2016/07/04/Book-review-The-Pivot-The-Future-of-American-Statecraft-in-Asia-by-Kurt-Campbell.aspx">the pivot’s architect</a> – might well become <a href="http://www.afr.com/opinion/columnists/hillary-clintons-tough-on-china-strategy-will-demand-more-of-australia-20160904-gr8mqe">secretary of state</a>. Under Clinton Australians would be in no doubt about the US position on the alliance in particular and America’s broader commitment to the Asia-Pacific.</p>
<p>A Trump victory signals ambiguity and insecurity. He has already <a href="https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/us-china-trade-reform">telegraphed his intention</a> to use trade tariffs against China in his campaign to protect American manufacturing. </p>
<p>His commitment to American security alliances is predicated upon each ally’s financial commitment to the particular alliance. Australia’s defence spending might protect it against a Trump presidency’s ire. But, then again, it might not. </p>
<p>Finally, Trump has <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-02/donald-trump-nuclear-fallout-analysis/7294358">expressed an indifferent view</a> on the continued growth of nuclear weapons in northeast Asia.</p>
<p>Unlike previous Republican candidates, Trump does not have a stable of ready political appointees to take up positions of responsibility. Even if he did, his congressional relations will be anything but cordial if the Democrats win the Senate. </p>
<p>Given the long experience of Republican congressional obstinacy to pass legislation, the Democrats might feel it is their time for payback. Should the Democrats win the Senate, which is distinctly possible, one can expect Trump nominees to have a very long and slow confirmation process. </p>
<p>A Trump presidency will likely seem to Australians like a very long four years. Under Clinton, time will pass at its normal pace.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65354/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alan Tidwell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>US presidents over the past 25 years have had varying views of the alliance with Australia. While none have questioned its value, commitment has not been even across the board.Alan Tidwell, Director, Center for Australian, New Zealand and Pacific Studies, Georgetown UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/575762016-04-27T04:03:02Z2016-04-27T04:03:02ZWill Habitat III defend the human right to the city?<p>Luar Batang, one of Jakarta’s oldest waterfront squatter areas, is being flattened. Residents and their homes <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-09/jakarta%27s-poorest-forced-to-leave-luar-batang-to-boost-tourism/7312888">will be removed</a> to free up flood-prone land and access to the city for tourists. Thousands of people will be evicted, disrupting if not destroying livelihoods, jobs, homes and long-established social networks.</p>
<p>Like the illegal settlements in <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-24/jakarta-demolition-of-kalijodo-leaves-hundreds-facing-eviction/7194330">Kalijodo</a> district, Luar Batang has received global attention for the heavy-handiness of the state-led intervention. Yet the decision to demolish a community built on a unique combination of circumstance, place and people is unlikely to be reversed.</p>
<p>The Luar Batang story is not exclusive to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakarta">Jakarta</a>. In many cities in the Asia-Pacific and developing countries, <a href="http://www.urbangateway.org/system/files/habitat-iii-issue-paper-22_informal-settlements-2.0.pdf">informal or unplanned settlements</a> continue to grow and are seen as a blight on city development. </p>
<p>These “parasites” of the city are on land that the formal planning system deemed unsuitable for development. Yet state and private developers now see them as a relatively easy land gain to reap higher financial returns. </p>
<p>Rather than engage in <a href="http://unhabitat.org/urban-themes/housing-slum-upgrading/">strategies to upgrade settlements</a>, some policymakers want them “out of sight, out of mind”. The settlements’ structure, people and image do not conform to middle-class and private developer views.</p>
<h2>Informal settlement isn’t the exception</h2>
<p>Globally, informal settlements in urban areas are growing at an unprecedented rate. In 2016, <a href="http://unhabitat.org/about-us/">UN-Habitat</a> estimated that <a href="https://www.habitat3.org/pretoria">around one billion people live in slums</a> (an extreme type of informal settlement). That’s about <a href="http://www.urbangateway.org/system/files/habitat-iii-issue-paper-22_informal-settlements-2.0.pdf">one-quarter of the world’s urban population</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119591/original/image-20160421-8030-uv7g17.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119591/original/image-20160421-8030-uv7g17.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119591/original/image-20160421-8030-uv7g17.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=814&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119591/original/image-20160421-8030-uv7g17.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=814&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119591/original/image-20160421-8030-uv7g17.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=814&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119591/original/image-20160421-8030-uv7g17.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1023&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119591/original/image-20160421-8030-uv7g17.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1023&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119591/original/image-20160421-8030-uv7g17.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1023&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">About one-quarter of the world’s urban residents have created communities in slums.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paul Jones</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A United Nations report, <a href="http://www.unescap.org/sites/default/files/The%20State%20of%20Asian%20and%20Pacific%20Cities%202015.pdf">The State of Asian and Pacific Cities 2015</a>, noted that the Asia-Pacific region has gained a reputation as home to the world’s biggest and most populated slums and informal settlements. While the urban middle class has grown and good gains have been made in reducing urban disparities, including poverty, basic <a href="http://unhabitat.org/urban-themes/human-rights/">human rights</a> remain elusive for people in such settlements.</p>
<p>In October 2016, the <a href="https://www.habitat3.org/">UN Habitat III Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development</a> takes place in Quito, Ecuador. This global event happens only every 20 years.</p>
<p>Habitat III offers policymakers the chance to adopt a better-managed, more humane approach to the complexities of <a href="http://citiscope.org/habitatIII/commentary/2015/09/un-habitats-vision-sustainable-urbanization-good-not-enough">urbanisation</a>. <a href="http://unhabitat.org/regional-and-thematic-meetings/">Regional meetings and other laudable initiatives</a> have been taking place for the last 18 months. Government, civil society and other stakeholders have been working towards a <a href="https://www.habitat3.org/the-new-urban-agenda/">New Urban Agenda</a> to be debated and adopted at Habitat III.</p>
<p>With more than <a href="http://unhabitat.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Brochure-Habitat-III-.pdf">54% of the world’s population now urban</a>, informal settlements are burgeoning. The challenges are daunting. So where will informal settlements and the people who live in them be placed at Habitat III?</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119584/original/image-20160421-8003-ybw7rm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119584/original/image-20160421-8003-ybw7rm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119584/original/image-20160421-8003-ybw7rm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119584/original/image-20160421-8003-ybw7rm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119584/original/image-20160421-8003-ybw7rm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119584/original/image-20160421-8003-ybw7rm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119584/original/image-20160421-8003-ybw7rm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119584/original/image-20160421-8003-ybw7rm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How we view places like kampung Lebak Siliwangi in Bandung, Indonesia, largely determines how the people who live in them are treated.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paul Jones</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Seismic shift in attitudes is needed</h2>
<p>The emerging agenda is strongly centred on the Habitat III policy theme of the <a href="http://www.csb.gov.tr/db/habitat/editordosya/file/POLICY%20PAPER-SON/PU1-right%20to%20the%20city%20and%20cities%20for%20all.pdf">“Right to the City and Cities for All”</a>. The sociologist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_the_city">Henri Lefebvre</a> proposed the “Right to the City” in 1968. <a href="http://davidharvey.org/media/righttothecity.pdf">David Harvey</a> developed the concept in the new millennium as a means to reshape urbanisation by enhancing or extending access to human rights. </p>
<p>The Right to the City agenda requires a monumental shift in society attitudes. It requires us to reduce <a href="http://www.csb.gov.tr/db/habitat/editordosya/file/POLICY%20PAPER-SON/PU1-right%20to%20the%20city%20and%20cities%20for%20all.pdf">sociospatial injustices, achieve sociospatial inclusion, increase equity</a>, improve multi-level governance and, importantly, respect the sociocultural diversity that increasingly defines cities.</p>
<p>Therein lies a major hurdle. The <a href="http://www.alnap.org/resource/20567">rights of the people in informal settlements</a> are being taken away or withheld at many levels, such as access to safe water, sanitation and educational opportunities. As well, their non-compliance with the norms and values of prevailing formal planning – such as land tenure and where and how they build houses, construct spaces and undertake social activities – means they have reduced rights to a city.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119588/original/image-20160421-8007-krra2f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119588/original/image-20160421-8007-krra2f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119588/original/image-20160421-8007-krra2f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=705&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119588/original/image-20160421-8007-krra2f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=705&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119588/original/image-20160421-8007-krra2f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=705&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119588/original/image-20160421-8007-krra2f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119588/original/image-20160421-8007-krra2f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119588/original/image-20160421-8007-krra2f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Should residents of Lebak Siliwangi have any less right to housing, water and sanitation because of where they live?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paul Jones</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Right to the City idea challenges us first and foremost as individuals to decide what basic human rights – such as land, housing, water and sanitation – are “non-negotiable” and “must haves” in city development. Changing how informal settlements and the city are viewed requires a multi-scale and multi-institutional policy underpinned by a major coalition of support.</p>
<p>For teachers in the privileged position of educating university students who will one day be urban planners and designers in a multicultural world, for example, this requires major realignment of planning education. We need to integrate civic responsibility and the broader Right to the City into current approaches.</p>
<p><a href="http://sydney.edu.au/news/architecture/274.html?newsstoryid=14907">Initiatives by Australian universities</a> to work with tertiary institutions in <a href="http://portal.kemlu.go.id/sydney/Pages/Embassies.aspx?IDP=105&l=en">developing countries</a> and interested stakeholders are small but important steps. These opportunities to share ideas, work together in the field and experience everyday life in informal settlements let graduates see first-hand what the Right to the City means. This opens eyes to future international development opportunities. </p>
<p>As noted in a recent assessment of the <a href="https://www.academia.edu/12374166/Slums_Improvement_Program_Through_Cultural_And_Tourism_Planning_Supported_by_Public-Private_Partnership_The_Case_Study_of_Greater_Pulosari_Area_Bandung_West_Java_Indonesia">Pulosari kampung</a> (“village”) in Bandung, Indonesia, we need to “<a href="https://www.academia.edu/22615818/Paul_Jones_Unpacking_Informal_Urbanism_Cover_22_JAN">step outside our comfort zone on how we view and understand the city</a>”.</p>
<p>The “Right to the City” debate at Habitat III is important for Australia in how it positions itself working with developing countries and with the greater issue of human rights for the next 20 years as mainstreamed into the urban realm. </p>
<p>For example, recognising the role that informal settlements play in providing affordable housing – rather than seeing them as an aesthetic problem – is part of changing society’s blinkered view of an increasingly complex urban world. </p>
<p>With Habitat III looming as a landmark global event, will informal settlements be taken seriously as people seek a reasonable life in the city? What impact will this have on the urban divide?</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read other articles about Habitat III <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/habitat-iii-26850">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/57576/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Jones does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The world’s informal settlements are growing at an unprecedented rate, with about one in four urban dwellers living in slums. We need to rethink how we view and deal with these people and places.Paul Jones, Associate Professor, Urban & Regional Planning, Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/569882016-04-10T20:01:09Z2016-04-10T20:01:09ZHow ‘Asiavision’ could be a boon for cultural diplomacy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117932/original/image-20160408-23932-1fd0e62.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Australia's 2016 Eurovision contestant Dami Im performing with Conchita and Guy Sebastian in Sydney earlier this year.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">SBS</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>SBS’s deal with the European Broadcasting Union to <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/programs/eurovision/article/2016/03/21/sbs-secures-exclusive-option-develop-eurovision-song-contest-concept-asia">develop a Eurovision Song Contest equivalent in Asia</a> is a welcome chance for Australia to develop stronger ties with the Asia-Pacific region. </p>
<p>The development of an Asian Eurovision - an “Asiavision”, we might call it - is an exciting project for regional unity. In particular, it’s a chance for Australia to forge a stronger sense of belonging within the region through finding some common pop cultural ground.</p>
<p>The idealistic aim of the original Eurovision, was a “song to unite Europe” after the ravages of the Second World War. (Its more prosaic intention was to promote the European Broadcasting Union as a pan-European distribution network.) </p>
<p>Still, the political, cultural, and economic impact of the contest should not be underestimated. Despite Eurovision’s rule prohibiting overtly political statements and gestures, it has been an important stage for <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/eurovision/entries/18aa5cc2-0f94-3882-9c57-07fdec46dc5b">expressing both intercultural tensions and friendships</a>.</p>
<p>Several former contestants have even gone on to political careers. Ireland’s winner in 1970, Dana, became a member of European parliament in the late 1990s. The 2004 winner, Ukraine’s Ruslana, secured a seat in the Ukrainian parliament after backing the Orange Revolution.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117937/original/image-20160408-23938-1qad1i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117937/original/image-20160408-23938-1qad1i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117937/original/image-20160408-23938-1qad1i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117937/original/image-20160408-23938-1qad1i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117937/original/image-20160408-23938-1qad1i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117937/original/image-20160408-23938-1qad1i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117937/original/image-20160408-23938-1qad1i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ruslana addressing a protest rally in 2014.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Francois Lenoir/Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Tensions in Asia – stemming from the legacy of Japanese imperialism and the muscularity of China’s regional reassertion – will certainly add a political undercurrent to an Asian version of Eurovision. Still, “Asiavision”, which will start in 2017, appears to be an opportunity more for harmony than discord.</p>
<p>Historically, Australia’s relationship with Asia has been ambiguous at best. It has forged economic ties, but struggles with deeper acceptance. Former Singaporean Prime Minister <a href="http://www.afr.com/news/world/asia/lee-kuan-yew-was-australias-sharptongued-friend-in-asia-20150304-13upqq">Lee Kwan Yew</a> once famously said that Asian countries would continue to build useful links with Australia but, “<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Continental_Drift.html?id=tujY4nUQdtkC">we could never regard you as family</a>”. </p>
<p>Lee was not alone in this sentiment. Australia’s “outsider” status in Asia is also visible in its relationship with the Asian Football Confederation.</p>
<p>Despite emerging as a strong side, acceptance of Australia within the confederation has been tenuous. When asked in 2010 if he would support <a href="http://www.espnfc.com/story/849628/world-cup-2022-australia-bid-set-it-apart-from-asia">Australia’s bid for the 2018 FIFA World Cup</a>, former AFC president Mohammad Bin Hammam said, “You are considering Australia as an Asian country?” </p>
<p>Australia’s hosting of the 2015 Asian Football Cup may have gone some way to addressing this. Analysis suggests the Asian Cup resulted in a significant increase in <a href="https://theconversation.com/one-year-on-the-asian-cup-demonstrates-the-potential-for-sports-diplomacy-53487">Asian media coverage from Australia</a>. The stories foregrounded team performances but the backdrop was Australia as a safe, welcoming host for thousands of engaged Asian fans. As one Seoul editor replied when asked what topics he thought were associated with Australia: “Soccer – I had no idea there were so many Koreans there”.</p>
<p>It’s easy to imagine something similar arising out of Australia hosting a celebration of Asian pop music. </p>
<p>In fact, outside of football through the Asian Champions League, and perhaps other sporting events, it’s hard to imagine a better opportunity to increase attention from Asian populations and participation with Asian cultural industries.</p>
<p>With “Asiavision”, Australia is taking the initiative. This could work either for or against us. But SBS has laid the groundwork with its recent embrace of Asian pop culture programming, such as <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/popasia/">PopAsia</a> and <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/popasia/if-you-are-the-one-australia">If You Are The One</a>. </p>
<p>Asian Australian personalities have also been central to SBS’s Eurovision branding in recent years. Sam Pang, Lee Lin Chin, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUsJi8nKsj0">Jessica Mauboy</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0EhhZWXTng">Guy Sebastian</a>, and now 2016 Eurovision contestant <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/programs/eurovision/article/2016/03/11/presenting-australias-2016-eurovision-song-sound-silence-dami-im?cid=cxenseab_a">Dami Im</a> have all helped SBS to represent Australia as multicultural, but also as part of the Asian region.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117936/original/image-20160408-23901-57kou1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117936/original/image-20160408-23901-57kou1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1018&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117936/original/image-20160408-23901-57kou1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1018&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117936/original/image-20160408-23901-57kou1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1018&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117936/original/image-20160408-23901-57kou1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1279&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117936/original/image-20160408-23901-57kou1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1279&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117936/original/image-20160408-23901-57kou1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1279&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lee Lee Chin: a multicultural trailblazer.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tracey Nearmy/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop has already demonstrated a keen eye for exploiting pop cultural trends through “<a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/markdistefano/emoji-plomacy#.vrPMYx1Ky1">emoji diplomacy</a>”.</p>
<p>The potential benefits of Asiavision for Australian public diplomacy are such that she should perhaps consider throwing support behind SBS’s efforts. </p>
<p>The budgetary requirements for staging the event should be negligible, as it aims to be be profitable. But the government could provide support (DFAT and Austrade have some experience in this) and leverage the event into other areas of cooperative engagement and relationship building. It’s a low risk and minimal investment, with considerable conceivable benefits.</p>
<p>The key might be to get the big Asian acts, like Korea’s popular boy-band [BIGBANG](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang_(South_Korean_band), and their massive pan-Asian fan communities, involved as supporters and on-air talent. This would mean reaching out to the agencies that tightly control them. A second tactic could be to create opportunities for showcasing developing cultural industries from smaller countries. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117935/original/image-20160408-23932-es9kca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117935/original/image-20160408-23932-es9kca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117935/original/image-20160408-23932-es9kca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117935/original/image-20160408-23932-es9kca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117935/original/image-20160408-23932-es9kca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117935/original/image-20160408-23932-es9kca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117935/original/image-20160408-23932-es9kca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">BIGBANG’s G-dragon performing in 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kim Hee-Chul/EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Australia could also gather multicultural talent from around the region to host, judge, and generally promote the show. We’d suggest they could do worse than including Dami Im and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Hammington">Sam Hammington</a> (an Australian superstar celebrity in Korean television) in that roster.</p>
<p>Eurovision is not always just wind machines, costume reveals, and bearded drag queens (not to diminish the significant cultural and political impact of Conchita). </p>
<p>It has been an important stage for European nations to perform their national identities, and to debate issues about human rights and regional belonging.</p>
<p>“Asiavision” will be a similar opportunity for Australia and the Asian region to negotiate these questions. Failing that, we will at least be united by song.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/56988/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Australia has struggled to forge cultural ties with the Asia-Pacific region. But SBS’s deal to develop an Asian Eurovision could change this - there is more to the event than music, costume reveals and wind machines.Jess Carniel, Lecturer in Humanities, University of Southern QueenslandDamien Spry, Honorary Associate, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.