Trade Commerce and Security Challenges in the Asia Pacific Region

Y K Gera, Y K Gera

• Publisher: VIJ Books (India) Pty Ltd
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9789382573678
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Geopolitics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Asia Pacific region is a dynamic but complex area where much of the history of the 21st Century will be scripted. Although the strategic and economic importance of the region continues to grow, challenges of reconciling national interests with regional and global interests continue. Security architectures during the Cold War were based primarily on military alliances. However the need today is to base these architectures on shared values, interests and challenges. We need not only define but believe in these universal values. This book brings out this important aspect of this region and explains them briefly.

SESSION - III

PANEL- 1

FUTURE SECURITY CHALLENGES AND
OPPORTUNITIES

Chairman	Major General Dato’ Pahlawan Dr. William R. Stevenson.
First Paper	Prof. Richard Rigby and Dr. Brendan Taylor.
Second Paper	Prof Swaran Singh.
Third Paper	Sr Col (Ms) Do Mai Khanh.
Fourth Paper	Dr. Satoru Nagao.

PANEL-2

Chairman	Air Chief Marshal SP Tyagi, PVSM, AVSM, VM (Retd).
First Paper	Dr. Daesung Song.
Second Paper	Dr. Elichi Kathara.
Third Paper	Major General BK Sharma, SM** (Retd).
Fourth Paper	Dr. Tuan Yao Cheng.
Discussion
Concluding Remarks

Session -III

Panel -1

Chairperson

Major General Dato’ Pahlawan Dr William R. Stevenson

Today’s topic is “Future Security Challenges and Opportunities” in the Asia-Pacific. The rise of powers in international arena has led to complex security challenges. To talk about this issue we have five distinguished scholars. The first paper will be presented jointly by Prof Richard Rigby and Dr. Brendon Taylor, both from Australian National University (ANU), Australia. Prof. Swaran Singh who is a Professor in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), India will be the next. The third paper will be by Sr. Col (Ms.) Do Mai Khanh from IDIR, Vietnam and finally by Dr Satoru Nagao from OPRF, Japan.

I welcome Prof Richard Rigby to present the paper to be followed by Dr. Brendon Taylor.

Session-III

Panel-1

First Paper

Prof. Richard Rigby and Dr. Brendan Taylor

The Indo-Pacific As a Strategic System: An Australian
Perspective

The Indo-Pacific has become something of a catchphrase in Australian strategic policy circles. Defence Minister Stephen Smith, a prominent advocate of the term, has recently observed that the Indo-Pacific ‘will become the world’s strategic centre of gravity.’ In similar vein, current Australian High Commissioner to India and recently announced Secretary of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), Peter Varghese, has suggested that ‘today, it makes more sense to think of the Indo-Pacific, rather than the Asia Pacific, as the crucible of Australian security.’

Australian academics and think tanks have also embraced the term. In his award winning book, former director of the Lowy Institute for International Policy, Michael Wesley, refers to an ‘Indo-Pacific power highway [that] takes the pivot of world power away from the northern Pacific and northern Atlantic and shifts it to the southern and eastern coasts of the Asian landmass.’ Rory Medcalf, also of the Lowy Institute, argues that the ‘Indo-Pacific is a viable definition of the broad region of principal strategic and economic importance to Australia, now and in all likelihood well into this century.’ Academics Nick Bisley and Andrew Phillips go even further, asserting that the Indo-pacific is a key guiding strategic principle that has ‘arrived.’

Attraction for Australia

At least four factors can be seen to account for this burgeoning interest in the Indo-Pacific as a strategic construct. First and foremost, the Indo-Pacific appeals to Australian policy elites because it alleviates a longstanding apprehension of political and economic exclusion from Asia. The late Harvard Political Scientist, Samuel Huntington, famously referred to Australia as a ‘torn country’ that has traditionally faced an uphill battle in its efforts to engage with the Asian region due, in part, to its ‘otherness’ in the eyes of Asian elites. In his terms, ‘they have made it clear that if Australia wants to be part of Asia it must become truly Asian, which they think unlikely if not impossible.’ Australian fears of economic exclusion from Asia were heightened in the early 1990s with the introduction of Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir’s ‘East Asian Economic Caucus’ proposal. It resurfaced momentarily in the early 2000s, as ‘East Asian Community’ sentiment grew in popularity, until Australia’s 2005 admission to the East Asia Summit alleviated these concerns somewhat. From Canberra’s perspective, one of the benefits of the Indo-Pacific construct is that it essentially puts to bed these enduring questions of whether or not Australia is part of Asia.

Second, and just as significantly, Australian attraction to the Indo-Pacific construct relates to the fact that it is consistent with America’s Asia strategy. At present, its usage thus serving as a useful vehicle through which to demonstrate alliance solidarity. In recent years a sharp public debate has been played out in Australia as to whether Canberra will ultimately be forced to make a choice between its leading trading partner (China) and its longstanding strategic ally (the United States). While serving and former politicians – including former Prime Minister Paul Keating – have weighed in on this debate suggesting that Australia will indeed be forced to make such a choice, that view appears to have gained little traction thus far in Australian policy circles. Speaking to the US Congress in March 2011, Prime Minister Julia Gillard pledged that ‘Australia is an ally for all the years to come.’ Reinforcing such sentiment, the Indo-Pacific construct is consistent with a number of more practical - albeit still rather symbolic –commitments that the Australian government has made in support of the US alliance over the past 12 months, including an agreement to rotate up to 2,500 marines annually through facilities in Northern Australia. The prospect of increased American Navy access to HMAS Sterling, which Defence Minister Smith describes as ‘Australia’s Indian Ocean port’, is likewise supportive of these trends.

Australian enthusiasm for the Indo-Pacific concept also stems from a desire to deepen strategic ties with India. For decades, security relations between Canberra and New Delhi have remained severely underdeveloped, dogged by issues relating to Australia’s alliance with the US – India’s nuclear weapons programme and, more recently, attacks on Indian nationals studying in Australia. As Wesley has noted, however, for the first time in recent history some convergence in Australia’s and India’s ‘strategic imaginations’ is emerging. This convergence is in part driven by mutual concerns regarding how rising China might use its growing power. For Australia, the Indian Ocean region has taken on a renewed significance in this context. Australia’s region has also taken on renewed strategic significance for New Delhi as it strives to deepen ties with Southeast Asian countries as part of its ‘Look East’ policy. The November 2009 Australia-India Security declaration, coupled with the Labor Party’s more recent decision to support the sale of Uranium to India, both reflect and serve to further facilitate this convergence in strategic mind-set. To be sure, it is a convergence that will not be without difficulties and limits. From Canberra’s perspective, however, the Indo-Pacific serves as a useful framework within which to strive to progress.

Last, but certainly not least, the Indo-Pacific construct is also consistent with a concomitant Australian desire to deepen its strategic relationship with Indonesia. Australia’s relationship with Indonesia has also historically been a troubled one, with Canberra caught between viewing Indonesia as a strategic asset and a strategic liability. The last decade in Australia-Indonesia relations has been something of a ‘golden period’, however, with cooperation between the Australian and Indonesian police forces forged out of the ashes of the October 2002 Bali Bombings – in which 88 Australian national were killed – serving as a catalyst for deeper security ties. This deepening in relations was reflected with the inauguration in March 2012 of a new two-plus-two dialogue between the foreign and defence ministers of Australia and Indonesia. Once again, this relationship is also not without its tensions, including most recently over the Australian banning of live cattle exports to Indonesia. However, as Indonesia’s growth continues to the point where respectable projections see it joining the ranks of the world’s top five economies by the year 2030, strategic policymakers are eager to shape a positive relationship with this rising power which, all going well, could potentially even offer Australia a degree of shelter from the great power machinations unfolding further North. Because Indonesia’s strategic geography - which also straddles the Indian and Pacific Oceans – renders it an Indo-Pacific power in every sense of the term, Australia’s use of this nomenclature thus needs to be viewed in this context.

Costs for Canberra

The Indo-Pacific construct is not without its detractors. One criticism that can be levelled at Canberra’s embrace of the term is that it is unduly provocative to Beijing. The Australia-China relationship has certainly been a testy one in recent times. Going back to 2009 – a year when former Australian Ambassador to China Geoff Raby, recently characterized as an ‘annus horribilis’ for the bilateral relationship – rifts have opened up over a raft of issues including references to China in the Australian Defence White Paper of 2009 and the decision of the Australian government during the same year to grant a visa to Uyghur human rights advocate, Rebiya Kadeer, allowing her to attend the Melbourne International Film festival. More recently, US President Barack Obama’s November 2011 announcement that up to 2,500 marines would be deployed to Darwin has reportedly generated further tensions in the relationship. While this latest development is arguably of marginal genuine strategic significance, for Beijing it is the thinking behind this initiative and the perception that it is part of a larger US-led strategy to ‘contain’ China’s rising power that is most objectionable. Because the Indo-Pacific construct aligns with America’s current rebalancing strategy, a case can be made that Canberra’s enthusiasm for the terminology will act as a further irritant in the Australia-China bilateral relationship.

Second, and elatedly, other Australian critics of the Indo-Pacific construct argue that, by explicitly seeking to amplify Australia’s strategic significance to the US, advocates of the term will significantly increase the costs of the American alliance to Canberra. Bisley and Phillips – two leading exponents of this line of thinking – argue their case in the following terms:

By making Australia more important to the United States, Canberra invites understandable expectations from Washington that it will do more, pay for more and assume a far more visible role in propping up American primacy, particularly in the Indian Ocean region. Leading-edge indicators of what additional commitments to a more Indo-Pacific-oriented ANZUS might entail include on-going discussions about increased US naval access to HMAS Sterling, as well as proposals to station a US drone base in the Coco Islands. Considered in isolation, such proposals are unlikely to invite concern. But seen through the lens of a United States increasingly keen to share the burden of maintaining regional order with ‘deputy sheriffs’ old and new, they potentially foreshadow a more demanding and obtrusive alliance.

A number of other respected analysts of Australian strategic policy have joined Bisley and Phillips in expressing similar caution, arguing that while their country has made politically and symbolically significant contributions to the American alliance over the sixty-plus years of its existence, Canberra has cleverly been able to achieve what amounts to a ‘free ride’ in this relationship – as reflected in the disproportionately small military contributions Australia has made to major operations in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. Invoking the Indo-Pacific construct, in their view, threatens to unnecessarily and unwisely break with a highly pragmatic and largely effective – if somewhat morally suspect – approach that Australia has thus far managed to get away with.

A third downside to employing the term is the sense of incoherence it creates in Australian foreign and security policy. Within the past half-decade alone, Australian policymakers have used a number of descriptors to characterize the Asian region. During his truncated time in office, for instance, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd famously referred to an ‘Asia-Pacific’ region, as epitomized by his ill-fated Asia-Pacific community proposal of June 2008. Partly in an effort to assert her foreign policy credentials at a time when Rudd’s subsequent activism as Foreign Minister was generating heightened speculation of his possible return to the Prime Ministership, Prime Minister Gillard in September 2011 commissioned an ‘Asian Century’ White Paper. His move to the backbench notwithstanding, Rudd has continued to employ the Asia-Pacific nomenclature in a number of high profile speeches pointing out the need for a new ‘Pax Pacifica’ that will enable the region to accommodate China’s rise. To be sure, a common thread running through these various descriptors is that they each include Australia as part of the region which, as Huntington’s aforementioned analysis highlights, has not always been assumed by Asian policy elites. That said the terms ‘Asia’, ‘Asia-Pacific’, ‘Pacific’ and ‘Indo-Pacific’ are clearly not synonymous. Hence, their concurrent usage by Australian policymakers is potentially confusing.

Finally, the term Indo-Pacific is problematic in that it remains ill-defined. Defence Minister Smith, for instance, has referred to the construct as an amalgam of ‘the Asia-Pacific and the Indian Ocean Rim.’ Varghese, by contrast, seems to adopt a much narrower formulation when he describes the Indo-Pacific construct as matching ‘neatly’ with the recently expanded East Asia Summit (EAS), in line with Wesley who sees that organization as providing ‘an institutional recognition of an Indo-Pacific dynamic’. Whether the Indo-Pacific presently constitutes, or is ever likely to constitute, a ‘strategic system’ in any genuine sense is also open to question. As Medcalf, one of the leading Australian advocates of the construct was recently forced to concede, ‘certainly there will be some important security dynamics that remain principally concentrated in one or other of these sub regions, such as Korean Peninsula tensions in North Asia or India-Pakistan relations on the subcontinent.’ Along with the ‘Taiwan problem’ – which falls into a similar category – the fact that these flashpoints are arguably Asia’s most dangerous suggests that this particular deficiency with the Indo-Pacific construct cannot be too readily dismissed.

Where to go from here?

These criticisms and shortcomings notwithstanding, Defence Minister Smith’s public pronouncements on the subject strongly suggest that the Indo-Pacific construct will be given prominence in the forthcoming 2013 Australian Defence White Paper. This is not altogether surprising. Australia’s foreign and strategic policy tradition has traditionally been one of pragmatic realism. For the near term at least, Canberra will likely continue its use of the term as a device for avoiding marginalization from the region, supporting continued US engagement in this part of the world, and deepening its strategic engagement with India and Indonesia.

Looking to the longer term, Australia’s continued attraction to the Indo-Pacific construct remains contingent upon how strategic relations between Asia’s great powers unfold. Should we be entering a period of deepening strategic competition between these powers – a scenario many Aust...