The important point about this personal experience was that it provided Rudd with a remarkable insight into the complexity, or duality of China...There was a tendency for many Labor sympathisers to assume that Rudd was completely sympathetic to the aims of Beijing. This was not correct.

The previous column posited what became a tacit Rudd era scenario for China's trajectory: 'Many in Canberra have accepted a rough power relativity timetable that is part prediction and part assumption. This holds that, barring a myriad of possible disasters and disjunctions, the direction we're heading produces a China as World Number One by 2020 (PPP) and the same demotion of the US on the exchange rate measures around 2030.'

For Australia, China is delivering on the trend line with the best terms of trade since the middle of the last century. For Rudd, though, geo-economic gold sometimes translated into geostrategic gloom.

His leadership offerings on China were bookended by significant speeches, two years apart, in Beijing and Canberra. The Beijing University speech in April, 2008, four months after taking office, was the opening, hopeful effort to dance with China. The 70th Morrison lecture in Canberra in April, 2010, was delivered two months before Rudd was cut down by caucus, and bore the wounds of experience.

In Beijing, Rudd offered honest criticism in Mandarin and sought to speak as a zhengyou, a true friend who 'offers unflinching advice and counsels restraint' to engage in principled dialogue about matters of contention. Two years later, in Canberra, Rudd offered three dark scenarios: (1) China as threat; (2) China as direct competitor with the US for control of the international system; or (3) China as self-absorbed mercantilist bully. Dark days, indeed.

The Beijing and Canberra speeches and the military issues the Defence White Paper mentioned (but did not confront) were all moments of candour that risked retribution. And China delivered. The diplomatic warfare Beijing waged against Rudd threw up one other notable document: the terms of the ceasefire negotiated in the Australia-China joint statement of October, 2009.

The ceasefire embraced a 'comprehensive relationship', acknowledged 'differences of one type or another' and pledged to 'properly handle differences and sensitive issues in accordance with the principles of mutual respect, non-interference and equality...' This binding of wounds was joined to a statement of geopolitical truth that is obvious yet pregnant with different possibilities: 'The two sides agreed that China and Australia share important common interests in promoting peace, stability and development in the Asia-Pacific region.'

Rudd's Asia Pacific Community/community effort was an attempt to frame his own China questions in regional terms that reached towards the nature of the international system. So was his creation of the Australian Centre on China in the World.

It will be a shame if Rudd's musings on China are remembered solely in terms of a moment of tired anger at the Copenhagen climate change disaster. Surely the Rudd reference to Chinese ratf***rs was a reference to the Year of the Rat in the Chinese horoscope?

Rudd's China experience sets the context for an important new contribution to be published next week: Hugh White’s Quarterly Essay, 'Power Shift: Australia's Future between Washington and Beijing'. The Essay hits the news-stands next week (with an extract in this weekend's Australian) and the next Canberra Column will offer its own account.

Photo by Flickr user Dramagirl, used under a Creative Commons license.

Back in 2003, the Howard Government's second foreign policy white paper (Advancing the National Interest) was firmly camped in the US exchange rate camp:

No country in Asia will supplant Japan's importance to Australia's prosperity for at least another decade. Japan is the world's second-largest economy and the largest in Asia by several magnitudes.

But the trade figures with China were starting to fizz, so the bubbles quickly popped from that bit of exchange rate orthodoxy. By 2006, Treasury was using PPP to re-arrange the map of Asia, awarding the number two spot to China. In May 2006, your correspondent reported the Treasury's demotion of Japan:

One other element in the budget papers is a re-ordering of the biggest league table of all – the economic order, where size is all that matters. And in this hierarchy, Japan has just been demoted. The Treasury uses Purchasing Power Parity – not the old exchange rate measure – to create new world rankings, in which China's economy has surpassed Japan. On that parity model, the US is still the largest economy, but China steps up to number two, and India becomes the fourth largest economy. The analysis argues that the growth of China and India will have the most far-reaching consequences for the global economy, and that move to China and India means a shift away from Europe and Japan. It's plausible, according to Treasury, that China will go past the United States within 15 years to have the world's largest economy.

Treasury argued that PPP should be the 'preferred basis for comparing the relative size of economies because it uses a conceptually appropriate approach to estimating prices in both the traded and non-traded sectors of the economies, in contrast to comparisons based on market exchange rates.' If Treasury says it is so, perhaps it could be so.

By 2008, Kevin Rudd was laying down the parameters for Defence in his much studied RSL speech in Townsville and PPP was called to support a central proposition:

China will be the most dynamic major economy in the first half of this century — followed by India. According to some estimates, by 2020 China will replace the United States as the world's largest economy. China's economic growth will change the way it sees its own role in the world.

No surprise then that the Defence White Paper followed its fearful description of the US as 'preoccupied and stretched' in coming decades with a PPP sentence: 'By some measures, China has the potential to overtake the US as the world's largest economy around 2020.'

The growing use of PPP over the decade was one element in Australia's attempts to envisage the changes being effected by China. Many in Canberra have accepted a rough power relativity timetable that is part prediction and part assumption. This holds that, barring a myriad of possible disasters and disjunctions, the direction we're heading produces a China as World Number One by 2020 (PPP) and the same demotion of the US on the exchange rate measures around 2030.

Choosing new predictive tools can mean choosing new conclusions. See Lowy's Power and Choice: Asian Security Futures for a masterful presentation of changing power relativities using both PPP and exchange measures.

Photo by Flickr user brotherM, used under a Creative Commons license.

The terrorism discussion then shifted to cyber security as 'the issue of the 21st century'. As discussed in a previous column, Australia's Defence computer networks are attacked, on average, 6.5 times a day by hackers, spies, tech-heads or industrial snoopers. Irvine said Australia faced constant attacks by state-sponsored and non-state hackers.

In such discussions, it's always interesting to see how close the politician or official can go to naming that important country which starts with C and ends with A (hint: not Cuba, not Canada). As a former ambassador to Beijing, David Irvine can be relied on to give the C***a danger a wide berth.

But he did offer one thought on the cyberwar end of the scale which is all about the contest between nuclear superpowers: 'Cyber attack has the potential to reduce the conventional and nuclear weapons advantage of a county. It can reduce or sidestep kinetic advantage.'

The problem for the spooks, spy catchers and electronic eavesdroppers is that, in cyberspace, the line between state and non-state actors is getting ever fuzzier. So is geography: the domestic merges and melds with the foreign. As the US has shown, electronic eavesdropping on foreigners can take you quickly onto your own turf. And the overseas-internal distinction isn't just a question of analysis or definition, it is a crucial bureaucratic and legal issue for Australia's $4 billion national security complex.

In grappling with a cyber world that stretches from identity threat to nuclear warfare, Australia's national security complex has to challenge its own culture. Irvine, by the way, calls it the 'national security community'; the 'community' metaphor is significant because much of the national security effort in recent years has focused on being able to talk to each other.

Irvine said that when Canberra had six intelligence silos, information was shared on a strict 'need to know' basis. Need-to-know was an excellent way to protect information, he said, but today silos are out and community is in. Canberra is shifting from a 'need to know' mindset to a 'need to share' model. Irvine said the need to share is being enforced as a 'responsibility'. Just as the cyber world breaks down all sorts of barriers and distinctions, it fosters new relationships in the national security complex.

During questions, Irvine pointed to how the cyber challenge is causing ASIO and the Defence Signals Directorate to mesh their specialist capabilities and also offer more help to business and industry through the Attorney-General's Computer Emergency Response Team. ASIO teaming up with DSD is certainly breaking down the silos – and also opening a wonderful new dimension for even more ornate conspiracy theories.

The dire duo of globalisation is only just taking up joint residence at the top of the threat hierarchy. Canberra is going to have to do a lot more explaining to sell the idea that 'cyber security is now a core national security priority.' That is the starting point for this ASPI paper by the founding director of the Australian High Tech Crime Centre, Alastair MacGibbon.

For ASIO, the new world still has some of the old problems. In the Irvine presentation, ASIO is assailed using the bumbling spy stereotype, but can be equally attacked for failing to be omniscient. The one flash of the wry Irvine persona came at this point: 'I'm bumbling, but I don't think I'm a spy stereotype.'

Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

John Howard initiated the custom of the Prime Minister going to the funerals of serving diggers. Rudd and Gillard have followed. The TV images ask muted questions that must now be confronted in the Parliament.

The debate Australia is embarking on will need to look back as well as forward. The rear view will ask hard questions of the major parties, on both Iraq and Afghanistan. And the argument will reach well beyond Afghanistan to force some contemplation of the alliance with the United States.

The angst in the argument will be the lack of clear answers. Andrew Wilkie has won for himself an unusual status in looking at what Australia has done in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Most immediate attention has been given to Wilkie’s ‘great lie’ comment, that ‘a lie told by both the Labor Party and the Liberal Party, is that we have to be there [Afghanistan] to fight terrorists for Australia's national security’.

As the debate grows, equal attention will be paid to his more nuanced point. Pulling out quickly from Afghanistan will confront Australia with excruciating choices:

It is clear that on one hand there needs to be foreign forces in Afghanistan to create the stability to allow the government to establish itself but on the other hand it’s the very presence of those forces which is fuelling this ongoing war, mostly by nationalists not by terrorists. Ultimately, we have to get out as quickly as we can and let Afghanistan find its own natural political level and a lot of people will die in the process.

Photo by Flickr user Christopher Chan, used under a Creative Commons license.

Working as a correspondent in Tokyo for a few short stints, I quickly came to appreciate the comforts and advantages bequeathed by the MacArthur shogunate after World War II. From English street signs to newspapers to English-speaking spokesmen to the picture menus that required no language at all, the MacArthur veneer was just one more layer of Japanese politeness to manage outsiders. It worked with the West. Now Japan must attempt the same trick with Asia, operating from the subsidiary, not the leading, position.

Japan's questions about itself and its future should draw more attention from Australia. We, after all, are undergoing similar agonies about the meaning of the China era.

In a column on Australia's Asia Pacific community discussion, I commented on the great gap between Canberra and Tokyo over competing visions for an Asia Community. Australia and Japan were as one in creating APEC. Twenty years later, it was as though the two capitals hardly talked, much less shared thoughts on regional architecture. The two sides do talk constantly, so the divide was notable. It's more than just the disruption caused by whales.

I still find it hard to grapple with the idea that Japan is ready to start operating like an Asian middle power, lining up in the same league with Australia, South Korea and ASEAN. Tobias Hatch explains Japan as a middle power here.

The middle power vision gives some context for what I found the most surprising presentation at last week's annual conference in Canberra by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. It was by Ambassador Yoshiji Nogami, the president of the Japan Institute of International Affairs. Nogami confessed to a 'sense of resignation' at China passing Japan on the league table, then gave what he correctly described as 'the gloomiest presentation' of the conference.

Gloomy, yes, and a huge departure from what is normally offered by senior representatives of Japan Inc. Over the decades, I've listened and reported on hundreds of speeches, presentations and pressers by Japanese leaders, ministers, diplomats, bureaucrats, business executives and academics. The line from Japan Inc. is remarkably consistent. That is why the downbeat assessment from Nogami was so striking.

The former vice minister for the Foreign Ministry and adviser to Cabinet said there is not much public discussion in Japan of the shift in power relativities: 'The reason why there is no public discourse — this is about our relations with US and how we see China, and ultimately this is about where we are going, what Japan is heading toward. This subject is like a Damocles sword hanging there, hanging there always, but hard to address.'

For Nogami, the realities of Japanese politics make it virtually impossible to confront Japan's myriad challenges, describing a huge chasm between reality and what ought to be done. It's hard to do long-term planning, he said, when Japan 'changes the prime minister every nine months.' And why talk about change when Japan's people and polity are so happy with much of the status quo?

Photo by lickr user Mr Ush, used under a Creative Commons license.

As always, the cartoonists had a great election. Many wonderful bits, but loved this Nicholson take on our leaders putting any discussion of an Australian republic on death watch: only to be discussed after the Queen carks it.

The foreign legion award for visions of Oz from afar goes to The Economist for two efforts. One was two weeks into the campaign when it marked the Tony Abbott surge with this marvellous headline: 'Down underdog bites back.' The Economist surged to victory without going to preferences with an editorial that compared the campaign to a strange episode of Neighbours, and dubbed Oz the (Un)lucky country because of the choice being offered:

The campaign rows, party intrigue and sniping could serve nicely as a plot for yet another antipodean soap opera. However, the main reason to lament the campaign’s end is for what follows: either Julia Gillard, Labor’s uninspiring candidate, or Tony Abbott, the opposition’s unappealing one, will get to run the “lucky” country.

As for TV coverage which was intentionally funny as well as informative, it was a tight race between The Chaser's 'Yes We Canberra!' and The Gruen Nation. Give victory to Gruen for not just poking a stick at the pollies but deconstructing some of the tricks. As the Gruen newsletter commented:

Deep breath...and another...okay, now, where were we? Oh, that's right. In the Weirdest. Election. Ever. When we first went to the ABC with the idea for Gruen Nation, Kevin Rudd was Prime Minister and Malcolm Turnbull leader of the opposition. How long ago that seems. How different the election would have been...

People keep saying this election is boring. Boring!?! Scriptwriters couldn't come up with this stuff!

You could argue it's uninspiring, but calling it boring is a complete misreading. As we speak, past PMs and party leaders are wandering the landscape like drunken zombies, butting into each other, dropping gaffes into every conversation. One side is behaving as if it's already won and the other as if it doesn't know what winning is. The spin has spun way out of control. We may never see the like again...

Ain't that the truth.

Enjoy the vote. And as the results roll in, remember the immortal words of Dick Tuck after being defeated in his run for the California State Senate: 'The people have spoken, the bastards.'

The previous column lamented the lack of campaign discussion of the Afghanistan war. It's not a claim that could be made of the previous three federal elections, which each had significant international elements, even tinges of khaki. In 2001, the Howard Government surged to victory in the wake of the September 11 attacks and the Tampa crisis. In 2004, the Government again did well out of the alliance, attacking Mark Latham for his promise to have the troops home from Iraq by Christmas. By 2007, Iraq was part of the lead weighing down Howard and lifting Labor to victory.

You have to go back to the Vietnam era to get a similar international/khaki trifecta: 1966 was the big alliance-flavoured victory for the Coalition; by 1969 the anti-Vietnam tide helped deliver a big swing to Labor; and in 1972, the Vietnam failure was part of the It's Time sentiment that gave victory to Labor.

Such history offers the serious side to the throwaway thought about the fortunate fate of a nation that doesn't have to think too far beyond its own suburbs. The intrusions from the outside world in the election have come from areas not always taught in the international relations canon: border protection and population.

The two issues have morphed into a strange concoction. The scene was well set back in July when Immigration Minister, Chris Evans, spilled his thoughts on the 'toxic' nature of the immigration debate, which was 'killing the government'.

It is simplifying a complex mixture to see this merely as an expression of a dark space in the soul of Oz. This column is looking on the bright side, so instead, call it the electorate playing back distorted echoes of the messages it is getting from its leaders and the national security complex.

For a discussion of the growth of 'border protection', consider this piece by Peter Chambers on the complex effects of Australia's efforts, many of them unanticipated. Chambers suggests that Australia's interdiction policy can actually generate more boat people. He argues that interdiction almost guarantees safe passage to detention and is thus a strong selling point for those running the trade:

Formerly, smugglers required older, experienced fishermen with extensive knowledge of the waters, currents and other hazards between Java and north-western Australia, on the presumption that any boat that departed Indonesia would, plausibly, make it all the way to Christmas Island or even the north-west coast of the Australian mainland. But, in practice, with interdiction undertaken from the moment a vessel suspected of carrying people suspected of not having visas enters the Exclusive Economic Zone, passengers and pilot and crew can reasonably assume that they will be picked up long before they get into serious trouble on the high seas.

Too much complexity there for poor pols out tramping the streets and tripping over TV cables in shopping centres.

Photo by Flickr user wollongonger, used under a Creative Commons license.

When the Australian discussion gets a push along it is always delivered from the US. Thus, the phrase 'conditions-based' is causing some faint echo here, even during the final days of the campaign. The Obama Administration renamed the Global War on Terrorism the 'Overseas Contingency Operation', and General David Petraeus has underlined the 'contingent' part. 

GEN. PETRAEUS: It could be as little as a couple of thousand troopers who go home next July. Again, that remains to be seen, and it would be premature to have any kind of assessment at this juncture about what we may or may not be able to transition. What the president very much wants from me, and, and what we talked about in the Oval Office is the responsibility of a military commander on the ground to provide as best professional military advice, leave the politics to him. Certainly I’m aware of the context within which I offer that advice, but that just informs the advice, it doesn’t drive it. The situation on the ground drives it. That’s what he wants, that’s what he, he told me to provide, and that’s what I will provide....

QUESTION:  But you’ll take a hard look at this, and you’ll make a determination about when America’s footprint should be diminished, when that’s appropriate?

GEN. PETRAEUS:  Absolutely. Yeah. And again, as he has said, as NATO officials have said, conditions-based, and that’s a real key element of this.

The Petraeus version of the conditional nature of the Contingency contraction is causing an intake of breath among Australian politicians who this week prefer to look inward. The Foreign Minister, Stephen Smith, adheres to the Labor formula about Australian handing over to Afghan forces by 2014, but has to allow that conditions might make that a less than firm date:

President Obama when he announced a surge, indicated that in an ideal circumstance if conditions allowed he'd be looking at the start of a draw down by the middle of next year. But that was always conditions based.  In some respects, more importantly, at the very important Afghan conference in Kabul, a month or so ago, the international community, including Australia, committed itself to the objective of handing over the security arrangements to Afghan by 2014, but again that's conditions-based. We can only hand it over if the Afghan army and the Afghan police are in a position to do so. I've only seen the reports of General Petraeus I haven't looked at the actual transcript, but what he's saying is not dissimilar to what we've been saying, what the Minister of Defence and what I've been saying is that the advice we have is that in two to four years, so in 2012, to 2014 we expect in Uruzgan Province that our training effort will enable the Afghan army and the security services to take responsibility in Uruzgan Province.

Smith is painfully conceding that things could change and the dates might slip. And if the Coalition wins on Saturday, Tony Abbott will be asked a lot of questions about the Lowy speech he gave back in April:

It's no secret that the Americans would like additional Australian forces in Afghanistan and have refrained from making a formal request only because they have been told that it would be unwelcome....If satisfied that the role made strategic sense and was compatible with our other military commitments, a Coalition  government would be prepared to consider doing more.

That Lowy speech does not rank as a campaign document, but it sits higher than an Abbott thought balloon. Perhaps it can be treated as conditions-based idea. In the campaign, the Abbott line on Afghanistan has become more circumspect. A week ago, Abbott was in no mood to embrace his own 'doing more' position.

QUESTION: You’ve said in the past, Mr Abbott, that you think that maybe Australia could increase its troop commitment to Afghanistan. Do you still think that’s the case?

ABBOTT: I fully support the existing commitment to Afghanistan and in any future decisions about Afghanistan I would be very much guided by the advice of the Defence Chiefs. Thanks very much.

Photo courtesy of the Department of Defence.

The man's output is negligible. He gets wound up around the detail, and loses the plot. You'd be concerned if a dep sec (deputy secretary) was working like this, but because he's PM, he can get away with it.

Or consider this from a Labor minister, not long after taking office, as the polls were still soaring. The minister complained that Rudd was 'a bloody perfectionist micro-manager' who, more seriously, 'couldn't give a rat's about what the party's policy actually is.' Then the minister paused for a long moment before concluding: 'Thank goodness he's no good at it; otherwise we'd really be up the creek.'

Stuart kicks of his account with two wonderful bits that serve as painful metaphors for Rudd's leadership. One is what became the empty talkfest of the 2020 Summit. The other is the ABC TV comedy series that became a must-see Canberra-in-Wonderland version of the Kevin world: The Hollowmen.

Stuart reflects that the show drew its title from the TS Eliot poem that ends in emptiness, 'not with a bang but a whimper'. The Hollowmen vision of Canberra's West Wing played for laughs merely by shifting reality a few degrees sideways:

The episodes show the prime minister's staff, shorn of any idealism or principle, shamelessly manipulating their way through daily events focussed on one simple objective: 'winning' the week. Their aim is simply to trump the opposition. Nothing exists for a moment longer than the current polling cycle. Only lip service is given to party values: principles are completely displaced by the desire to retain power. Being in government has become an end in itself.

Don't just take Stuart's word for the Canberra mood. Consider this line last Friday from Verona Burgess, who has spent more years than she wants to remember writing on the machinations and machinery of the Canberra public service: 'It is difficult to explain to people outside the capital just how loathed Kevin Rudd had become among large sections of the Australian Public Service (let alone the caucus) and why.'

Rudd's Way gives both the why and the how.

This list leads me to a correction/mea culpa. In previous posts, I'd listed Malaysia as lining up with Singapore in pushing the ASEAN-plus idea. It's always a dangerous presumption to predict that Kuala Lumpur will support anything coming out of Singapore, and clearly I was misinformed. Below, a rundown of the ASEAN debate before the Foreign Minister's decision, as described in the document.

Undecided:

• Brunei: Each modality has its own strengths and risks. ASEAN should conduct a careful study on the three modalities.
• Thailand: Still in listening mode and need to further study the modalities.

The four in favour of the expanded East Asia Summit:

• Indonesia: The US and Russia have fulfilled the three criteria of participation in the EAS. Expansion of the EAS would not create additional structure. Afraid that under the ASEAN-plus-8 mechanism, the Plus 8 countries will play the leading role in the regional process.
• Laos: Expansion of the EAS would not create any new framework. ASEAN can impose flexible moratorium to manage further expansion of the EAS after the inclusion of the US and Russia.
• Malaysia: ASEAN centrality is maintained. Both the US and Russia have fulfilled the criteria of participation in the EAS. The inclusion of the US and Russia will provide a balance of power in the regional architecture, which is currently deemed too dominated by China in both ASEAN-plus-3 and EAS. Expanding the EAS would not create a new framework, thus no additional burden to member states and no duplication of work and functions by the various regional mechanisms. ASEAN-plus-8 could potentially overshadow the more established ASEAN-plus-3 and EAS mechanism and Plus 8 countries will play the leading role in future.
• Vietnam: Will not add a new mechanism and will preserve ASEAN centrality.

The four in favour of ASEAN-plus-8:

• Cambodia: ASEAN-plus-8 would best maintain ASEAN centrality and give flexibility for ASEAN to manoeuvre. If the US and Russia is included in the EAS, ASEAN would have to accommodate similar request by the European Union.
• Burma: While the expansion of the EAS and ASEAN-plus-8 have its own advantages and disadvantages, it is more inclined to support the ASEAN-plus-8.
• The Philippines: No clear position, although it had earlier indicated its preference for the ASEAN-plus-8 during the 16th ASEAN-China Senior Officials' Meeting in Hue in April, 2010.
• Singapore: Strongly supports ASEAN-plus-8.

Singapore highlighted the downsides of the expansion of the EAS with these points:

• EAS is lagging behind ASEAN-plus- 3 (Plus 3: China, Japan South Korea).
• There is no guarantee that the expansion of the EAS will strengthen the forum. It may also slow down the forum.
• Inclusion of the US and Russia may complicate the efforts towards a region-wide Free Trade Agreement.
• Raises the question of the commitment of the US leaders in attending the forum.

And Singapore expressed the advantages of the ASEAN-plus-8:

• ASEAN centrality is maintained.
• The US and Russia's leaders are not obliged to attend the meeting annually.
• ASEAN-plus-8 will give more focus on political and strategic issues.

The record shows that Singapore forcefully articulated the ASEAN-plus idea that it had developed, but could get only lukewarm support even from those backing the position. By contrast, some strong players – Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam — lined up behind the EAS. With a little push from the US, that decided the argument.

Photo by Flickr user michaels photo album, used under a Creative Commons license.

The voters may worry about boat people and a Big Australia, but presumably the focus groups still find that Australians look out at the world around them with interest, hope and generosity. Taking that generosity as a political and policy constant, Labor and the Coalition are thinking about how to handle the annual gold mountain as it doubles in size.

The Labor approach is set out here. Labor is looking at the best means to deliver aid, via an inquiry into the way AusAID uses advisers and consultants. And Labor has pushed AusAID a bit beyond DFAT's orbit by making it an executive agency reporting directly to the Foreign Minister.

The Coalition pockets all that and takes the next logical step, promising the creation of a Minister for International Development. Back in March, this column argued for some big bang solutions, such as the creation of the Aid Minister and even putting AusAID in the Prime Minister's Department to give it real independence. (On the shift of aid to PM&C, the usual Canberra response comes from a great Australian movie: 'Tell him he's dreaming!')

As the gold mountain grows, though, so grows the logic of having an Aid Minister rather than a Parliamentary Secretary. The aid program has increased in size by 42 per cent since 2004-5, and needs to double in the next five years to kick that big M goal. An annual stash of cash of $8 to $10 billion deserves a Minister. That amount of gold means AusAID has to be more than the automatic teller machine for PM&C, DFAT, Defence and other big Canberra carnivores.

Here is the Liberal promise on the Minister for International Development:

Given the size and significance of our foreign aid budget, the Coalition will appoint a Minister for International Development to work with the Minister for Foreign Affairs to oversee our aid budget and to have responsibility for AusAid and the delivery of aid through non-government channels. The Australian National Audit Office raised serious concerns about AusAid’s ability to effectively manage the large increases in aid required to meet the 0.5 per cent target. There have been criticisms of Ausaid’s over-reliance on technical assistance, questionable priorities, waste and mismanagement. The new Minister for International Development will immediately institute an independent inquiry into Australia’s foreign aid program to investigate the allegations of waste and mismanagement and will be asked to provide clear recommendations on how to increase effectiveness and transparency in our aid delivery.

The Audit Office is one of those Canberra treasures that speaks truth about power by following the money trail. Its report last year said AusAID confronted considerable management challenges: a shortfall of expertise; country programs that don't have an agreed aid strategy; an inability to break away from traditional ways of delivering aid; and the agency had 'to make the delivery of aid more manageable and effective.'

The new golden consensus on aid can only be maintained if the gold is seen to be doing good.

Photo by Flickr user covilha, used under a Creative Commons license. 

The election message is about the need to repair the damage to key bilateral relationships after three untidy Labor years. The philosophy on offer, boiled down, is an Animal Farm chant: bilateralism good, multilateralism bad. This is not the most comfortable chant for Liberals at the damper end of the scale. But it is an accurate reflection of Howardism as channelled by Tony Abbott, with just a slight spice of the US neo-con world-view stirred in. (Bishop at one point felt the need to state that the Liberals were not actually arguing that Australia should withdraw from the UN.)

The strongest multilateral element in the Liberal world-view is the commitment to the Millennium Development Goals, and even that will be driven by Australia's bilateral aid program.

Bishop, in her opening statement, offered an implicit hierarchy of bilateral relationships. The US came first and Japan was mentioned second. China came third. The promise on China was to do a better job of handling differences and to restore consistency and trust. Indonesia was listed fourth, with references to regional security, terrorism, people smuggling and freer trade. Fifth spot went to India, with a restated Liberal promise to sell uranium.

For the Government, Stephen Smith reached for a world-view grounded solidly in the universe of Kevin Rudd. In his first year as Foreign Minister, Smith chanted the three pillars mantra, and he returned to the pillars structure in his opening statement. The point about the three pillars is that they may be founded in Labor history, but the term was dreamed up, defined and inserted into Labor's official policy by Rudd. And importantly, Rudd ordered the pillars: the US alliance is first, the UN and multilateral institutions constitute the second pillar, and engagement with the Asia Pacific comes third.

It was the second pillar that gave Smith his strongest opening lines. Only multilateral responses could deal with the global financial crisis, terrorism, climate change and transnational crime. And Smith claimed the elevation of the G20 as Australia's most significant achievement since the creation of APEC.

In questions, both Smith and Bishop tip-toed around China. Radio Australia's Linda Mottram posed the 'rise of China' question, calling in support from Rory's post on China's core interests claim in the South China Sea. Smith said it was the first China question he'd got all campaign. The Foreign Minister said Australia had raised its interactions with China to the strategic dialogue level and Australia did worry about the potential for clashes in the South China Sea.

The two combatants both come from Western Australia. So perhaps it was natural that Bishop's China answer quickly shifted to a discussion of Labor's mining tax and its impact on Chinese perceptions of Oz. In the West, particularly, China is now a domestic issue (jobs, investment) as well as a traditional foreign policy concern. Bishop ended with the claim that Labor's Defence White Paper was built on the fear that 'the greatest military threat is conventional war with China.' Smith denied this interpretation but did not debate it.

The best South Pacific exchange was on Fiji. Smith said Labor had essentially continued the Howard Government's approach to Fiji’s military regime. And in a low-key expression of the common Pacific refrain about the difficulty of getting any sort of agreement with Frank Bainimarama, Smith commented dryly: 'It's difficult to have a conversation with a person who wants to have a one-way dialogue.'

The one idea Bishop could offer to break the deadlock with Fiji was that Australia, New Zealand and the rest of the Forum would be prepared to help Fiji's Supremo carry out electoral reform. 

Photo by Flickr user Jargon, used under a Creative Commons license.

One of Dorling's unusual achievements is to have had his home twice raided by the Federal Police looking for leaked documents – one swoop at the direction of a Coalition Government (September, 2000) and the other ransack ordered by a Labor Government (September, 2008). 

Philip Dorling pronounced on the Rudd-Downer-Brereton dance with a piece that carried its own comment line beneath the headline: 'Player Rudd knew the game: there's no evidence of the former PM being a double agents, but in his early days as an MP, he wasn't backward in coming forward.' (Not online; p. 25, Canberra Times, August 7, 2010.)

Dorling recounts how Brereton changed Labor policy towards Indonesia by pushing for self-determination for East Timor. This produced lots of not-so-friendly fire from Labor's Indonesia lobby, especially Gough Whitlam and Paul Keating.

Rudd stood with the Indonesia lobby and argued against Brereton. It was this pot that Downer stirred. In 1999, Indonesia barred Brereton from visiting East Timor, but apparently a visit by Rudd was acceptable. Dorling sees the hand of Downer behind the Indonesian invitation:

Brereton was first informed of Rudd's plan to visit East Timor a few hours before the backbencher got on the plane. The source of the information was Downer's media adviser who was busy briefing journalists in the press gallery that Rudd was travelling to East Timor and running the line that this showed Brereton was marginalised in regard to the issue. Only an hour later did Rudd ring Brereton forewarning of his plans. After hasty consultations between Brereton and Beazley, the Labor leader called Rudd and directed him to abandon the trip.

Ah, foreign policy — where the diplomacy merges into the politics, only to be overtaken by the personal.

One other personal aside from Dorling: 'After Labor’s 2001 election defeat, Brereton privately warned Labor leader Simon Crean not to appoint Rudd to the foreign affairs portfolio. Crean didn't take this advice and ultimately had his own difficulties with Rudd over Labor's attitude towards the invasion of Iraq, as did Mark Latham.'

Irony corner: Rudd eventually implemented Crean's policy, pulling Australian troops out of Iraq. And Downer eventually tried the Brereton prescription for East Timor.

Image ('Brutus and the ghost of Caesar') courtesy of Wikipedia.

In his January speech, Faulkner said cyber intrusions on government, critical infrastructure and other information networks are a real threat to Australia's national security and national interests: 'Already we have evidence of sophisticated cyber intrusions onto networks in Australia, both government and private. Not all are successful, but some have been – on a range of networks.'

Canberra knows it is being threatened and has tried to respond in ways that reach from the dark arts of Defence to the business secrets of Australian industry. At the heart of this effort is the considerable computer muscle of CSOC, inside the Defence Signals Directorate, just across the road from the new ASIO HQ.

CSOC provides the firepower for the Computer Emergency service, CERT, which the Attorney Generals' Department offers to all Australian companies and networks. CERT and DSD's Cyber Centre can give Australian businesses and other organisations a matrix of mitigation strategies, ranked by effectiveness, to detect and prevent targeted electronic intrusions. The offer to business comes with this counsel:

At least 70 per cent of the targeted cyber intrusions that the Defence Signals Directorate responded to in 2009 could have been prevented if organisations had implemented the first four mitigation strategies.

In this maze of mirrors, where does cyber snooping cross the line to attack? The US is still pondering what can be attacked and what should be off limits in a cyberwar. For instance, what about an international agreement by nations not to target banks and electricity grids?

The cyber security speech the other day by ex-CIA chief Michael Hayden sought to draw some distinctions between state and non-state purposes. China, he said, was not waging war, in that it had not destroyed data, harmed physical facilities or cost lives.

The Financial Times quoted Hayden's view that China is a formidable force in the contest for superiority on the internet. 'As an intelligence professional, I stand back in absolute awe and wonder,' he said of the Chinese campaign to wrest industrial and defence secrets from major Western companies. 'It is magnificent in its depth, its breadth and its persistence.'

That necessary coolness points to a fact that isn't always mentioned when the cyber threat bogey is running around scaring people and boosting budgets. Certainly, the threat is real and growing. But just as certainly, the West has been in this game longer than anybody else and has formidable intellectual and technical resources to throw into the contest. Remember that if electronic eavesdropping and computer snooping were Olympic sports, the Chinese would face tough competition to take the gold.

Photo by Flickr user formalfallacy, used under a Creative Commons license.

The result of the interview popped out in the glossiest of formats last Friday in the Financial Review's monthly magazine, under the heading, 'State of Security'. No doubt the interview happened long before the election was called, but it matters not, because the real subject was the ravening growth of the security complex since 2001 and what consolidation might look like.

David Irvine knows a lot about shadow play and puppets, having authored a well-regarded book on Indonesia’s wayang tradition. The Irvine day job in recent times has had more to do with spooks. First he headed Australia's overseas spy agency, ASIS, now he sits atop the spy-catchers at ASIO. In his interview with the Fin, Irvine assumes the review and reform of the intelligence community must come, and he wants to get it done calmly, not amid some future crisis:

We have got to avoid what has clearly happened in the United States and Britain, where reform of the community occurs only after some terrible disaster. We have to work out carefully what we think we need. We have to ask what capabilities we are looking for; how the intelligence world is going to change in the next 10 years. Because, crikey, if it is going to change as much as it did in the last 10 years, we have got to keep adapting our capabilities to cope with that.

Amen to such a noble aim. Because the greatly expanded security complex we now have is a product of the same crisis response that gripped the US and Britain. Like its allies, Australia pumped great surges of cash into existing institutions, then tried to make them work better with each other.

David Irvine has one answer ready for the review. He argues that all the extra cash merely demonstrates 'how naked we were in a number of ways'. This will be the line of both attack and defence. September 11, 2001, and the Bali bombing of October, 2002, were the wakeup calls, alerting us to the fact that we weren't spending enough money on national security. Canberra has just been playing catch-up.

Similar sentiments will be needed to explain the huge new ASIO headquarters – the Lubyanka on the Lake. ASIO's current headquarters is tucked out of the way at the other end of Russell – so modest of mien that it has less street impact than the child care centre next door.

The new HQ has the dubious distinction of being the biggest Canberra build since the new Parliament. Even ASIO's chief is a bit worried that the new building is a too exuberant an expression of the victories of the national security complex. The Irvine interview contained an explicit acknowledgment that the huge ASIO complex growing on the other side of the lake from Parliament is a PR disaster: 'The site makes it looks enormous,' Irvine told the Fin. 'Even I am horrified.'

The hope is that trees and landscaping will mute the bureaucratic boast being expressed in concrete. They'll need to be big trees because the image politics of the Lubyanka – the message of the monstrosity — is a lousy look.

Disclosure: ASIO is a corporate member of the Lowy Institute.

Since kicking off 15 months ago, Banyan has tried to paint the Asian big picture. As with so many correspondents, often the effect is achieved by columns on individual countries that make up the mosaic.

As the initial Banyan has handed over the weekly task to another hack, the farewell column made a stab at the biggest trend of all. The argument is that Asia does exist. Banyan concludes that Asia is not a geographical accident nor merely a Western construct.

My version of this in a long ago trend piece is that Asia is more than a diverse pack of geopolitical all-sorts. No great federation project is in sight — USA will never stand for the United States of Asia. Ask Kevin Rudd about the search for Community or community.

Starting from that reality, Banyan picked this big Asian trend:

No serious project for integration is close to existing. It is inconceivable that South Korea or the Philippines would have cheered, say, Bangladesh in the World Cup, as most of Africa roared for Ghana.

What a huge chunk of Asia does have in common is a joint adventure, namely the pursuit of materialism based on rapid economic development. The optimism is striking. Tomorrow may look different from today, but everyone agrees that it is likely to be better.

All true. Banyan then picks up the ‘horizontal Asia’ insight crystallised by Anthony Bubalo and Malcolm Cook here and here.

The Asian economic miracle used to cling to the coasts, to be close to the shipping containers. Now Asia is going inland. Increasingly, Asia will be linked together from the inside, by roads, rail and pipelines. All this trend spotting led me to contemplate a few of the currents that have been flowing through The Interpreter in recent days.

The Asia thought offered by various pieces has been that China’s soft power is hitting hard times. The US is back in the game, whether stepping up to help in the tough times in Korea or securing its proper place at the new top table, the East Asia Summit.

The US had a good time at the ASEAN meeting in Hanoi last week but China was grumpy. China has been less than its harmonious-rising self in its narkiness about the US joining the EAS. Beijing’s tetchiness is merely another reminder of why Asia doesn’t want to be left home alone with China.

Asia joins with China in not wanting to be bullied by the US. Equally Asia (minus China) dreads being deserted by the US.

Photo by Flickr user Chris Taleye, used under a Creative Commons licence.

Before the reset discussion, though, pause to enjoy Michael's reporting of the description of North Korea as China's 'rogue ally'. This is phrase-making to savour. Rogue ally is both elegant and exact.

The base working hypothesis about South Korea over the last decade is that it would be the ally that slowly drifted away from the US.

Japan’s trajectory is to become the Asian version of Britain, the island ally sitting beside the continent. Stretch the analogy further. If Japan plays the role of Britain, then South Korea becomes France – the US ally that seldom acts like an ally and often doesn't even talk like a friend.

Push any analogy too far, of course, and you fall over the cliff. France can play around and provoke the US because it is finally at peace with the old enemy, Germany. South Korea has to live with the schizophrenic brother with violent tendencies.

The US has made it much easier for Seoul to respond to China's gravitational pull. Washington's attention has been elsewhere. The inability of the US polity to sign off on the free trade deal the Bush administration negotiated with South Korea is a symptom of the wider problem. The US has been away, and China's soft power has been free to play.

There are some obvious problems with the theory of an inexorable shift from US ally to Chinese client. The biggest is the Korean character. Living next door to China has bred steel deep into the Korean soul, just as it has with Vietnam. Over the centuries, when China has been strong, Korea and Vietnam have come to accommodations with the giant. But they've never had to be happy about it.

With the US back in town and China refusing to lay a hand on North Korea, perhaps it's time to ponder a reset moment. The unprecedented joint visit to the DMZ by Secretary of State Clinton and Defence Secretary Gates was a powerful reminder to South Korea of US friendship. Check out this great news photo of Clinton and Gates standing on the line being eyeballed through the window by a North Korean soldier.

The significance of this image can be read in many ways. One interpretation might be that this is the moment when South Korea steps back from its drift towards China. Before hitting the reset button, though, ponder the role of leadership.

For all his problems since becoming president, Lee Myug-bak's leadership has achieved a marked turn towards the more traditional alliance ties with the US. The question is whether this is a change to the underlying trend line or merely the passing effect of a particular leader.

By the time Junichiro Koizumi completed his five years in office in Japan, I was poised to hit the reset button on my understanding of Japan's traditionally passive strategic and diplomatic trajectory. That was premature. Since Koizumi departed, Japan has turned over four prime ministers in less than five years, and the fifth leader isn't looking much better. No reset needed there.

In the Korean case, the direction of the trend line is now an issue for China as much as for South Korea.

If Beijing can do no better for Seoul than it has since the sinking of the Cheonan, we may be at the moment when China's gravitational pull has reached its limits, or even started to recede.

Photo by Flickr user snorski, used under a Creative Commons licence.

As an example, here is Clinton in Hanoi talking the ASEAN talk, while ticking every box from the US side.

Over the last 18 months we have signed the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, announced our intention to open a mission and name an ambassador to ASEAN in Jakarta, and held the first U.S.-ASEAN summit. And we have pursued new sub-regional efforts like our new Mekong Delta partnership. To build on that progress I conveyed to my colleagues our interest in engaging with the East Asia Summit as it plays an increasing role in the challenges of our time. And I announced that President Obama had asked me to represent the United States in an appropriate capacity at this year's EAS in Hanoi to continue a process of consultations with a view toward full American participation at the presidential level in 2011. Through these consultations we will be working with EAS members to encourage its development into a foundational security and political institution for Asia in this century. The President also looks forward to hosting the second U.S.-ASEAN leaders meeting in the United States this coming autumn.

The key Clinton phrase is her anointing of the EAS as a 'foundational security and political institution for Asia'. As part of the deal, evidently, she has promised that President Obama will attend the EAS summit in Indonesia next year. At last, Jakarta finds a way to get that Obama visit to actually happen.

Part of the deal the US has struck is a promise to embrace the EAS as an annual leaders' summit. The US president is going to have to come to Asia annually, not merely when APEC happens to be on the Asian side of the Pacific.

It's fascinating how the issue of presidential travel nearly derailed the obvious need for the EAS to embrace the US. Almost up to the last moment, Singapore and Malaysia were arguing that the US should be given a different prize — an ASEAN-plus-8 summit that would convene every three years. This would place less strain on US presidential travel plans and exclude the US from the EAS. Without the US complication, the EAS would be the natural basis for an Asian free trade zone. 

As I have previously noted, the Singapore approach would have created two top tables — the ASEAN plus 8 (with the US in) while maintaining the present EAS (with the US out). The US decided it wanted one top table (the whole loaf). So, the EAS is expanding and the ASEAN-plus-eight fades as a concept that might never have existed.

Singapore's George Yeo says the possibility of a free trade agreement which binds the existing EAS members 'will be retained', even if the US can't touch the idea at the moment:

I think the Americans would be interested in the long term, but the trouble is, in the nearer term, Congress has no stomach for it. So we have got to play this: firstly, preserve what we have, but at the same time keep open the possibility of their joining us in the future.

Photo by Flickr user blurradial, used under a Creative Commons licence.

See the Graham Davis piece in The Australian today for more examples of these rules in action. Frank Bainimarama accuses Australia of 'siding with the bad guys in Fiji'. Further, according to Frank, it's all Australia's fault that its ambassador has again been tossed out of Suva. See rule three, too, for the Supremo's take on his threat to close down The Fiji Times, owned by Australia's News Ltd. The Times had failed to toe the line', so really it was the Australian management team that should be held responsible for the closure of the 140 year-old paper.

The Supremo also applies rule one to other Island leaders who see merit in Australia's position on Fiji. Thus, he describes Samoa's Prime Minister as a 'lackey' and a 'mouthpiece' of Australia and New Zealand. Frank's version of the Pacific Way is anything but pacific.

The Supremo's trumpeting of the effect of his 'Engagement with the Pacific' summit ironically adds weight to the argument Australia made to the Islands about the dangers of allowing him to host a full summit of the Melanesian Spearhead Group. Despite Bainimarama's protestations of benign intent, the Supremo aims to inflict as much damage as possible on the Forum for having the temerity to challenge him. Ultimately, Australia would choose the integrity and preservation of the Pacific Islands Forum over the relationship with Fiji. Ideally, Australia would want both. But if the choice had to made, the regional institution would win over the military regime.

Robin Nair repeats the line now coming out of Suva that the military regime is considering withdrawing from the Pacific Islands Forum and the Commonwealth. If the Supremo does perform this giant dummy spit, the Suva logic is that this will be the fault of that bully, Australia (see rule three). Given that Fiji is presently suspended from both the Forum and the Commonwealth, the threat is reminiscent of the cartoon of the burglar, cornered by the police. The burglar holds a gun to his own head and says, 'Don't move, or I'll shoot!'

If Bainimarama withdraws from the Forum – and/or seeks to evict the Forum secretariat based in Suva – he will be trying to bring down the pre-eminent regional institution. That is exactly the case Australia has been arguing. The Forum is Fiji's greatest diplomatic construction. Yet the Supremo would rip up that achievement because he is angry at interference by Australia and New Zealand? Rule three again.

The Supremo no longer thinks of himself as 'interim' Prime Minister. He seeks to make permanent changes to Fiji, building on every decree he issues. Implicit in all Bainimarama does is an assumption about his right to a permanent role in Fiji's future. The promised election in 2014 is all in the gift of the Supremo. And if a vote does take place, the Army will retain reserve powers amounting to a continuing right of political veto.

Anyone inside Fiji silly enough to voice such thoughts is liable to be compelled to visit the military barracks above Suva. And no rule of law or customary civility reaches there, the HQ of the real bully of Fiji.

Photo by Flickr user UN Photo, used under a Creative Commons license.

The closest the Professor got to Canberra controversies, new or old, was to outline his theory of Sandgroper dominance of Australian diplomacy. As a true son of the west, Garnaut is proud of the fact that, until Geoff Raby took over in Beijing, Western Australia was the birthplace for Australia's ambassadors to Beijing.

The driest anecdote of the conference followed a comment from one of the visiting Chinese professors that Shanghai now has a resident population of 500,000 Taiwanese. Garnaut recalled a visit he made to Taiwan when researching his 1989 report, 'Australia and the Northeast Asian Ascendancy', for the Hawke Government. (Here's an excellent piece from Peter Hartcher showing why Ascendancy is usually described as seminal for its predictions about the China-Australia relationship.)

Garnaut recalled how Taiwan's Foreign Ministry arranged for him to talk to some of the first wave of Taiwanese businessmen investing in China:

The Foreign Ministry had kindly got together a group of pioneer businessmen. This was the first couple of years of China being opened up to Taiwan investment. There'd been a bit of a rush. And to the embarrassment of the Foreign Ministry officials, the businessmen declared that one of the special attractions of moving to Shanghai was going back to the old Chinese custom of One Country, Two Families.

Photo by Flickr user Steve Webel, used under a Creative Commons license.

Facing Tony Abbott as leader number five, the habits of Australian politics said the first term Labor Government should have pumped up its leader and ladled out the incumbency benefits for a stroll to the polls. Then Labor started to look at Kevin Rudd and ask a tremulous question in ever louder tones: surely he couldn't blow it from here? The fearful answer caused caucus to blow up its Prime Minister. Labor is thus on its third leader in less than four years. And beheading a Prime Minister is surely the equivalent of rolling over a couple of Opposition Leaders.

On the character front, huge question marks loom on both sides of the political ledger. Which side will the voters kick hardest for this level of personality uncertainty? Rudd as Prime Minister was also the über Foreign Minister, so decapitating 'The Kevin' meant Labor discarded the foreign policy advantage he held over Abbott and many of the benefits of incumbency.

As well as giving up the incumbent advantage in foreign affairs, Labor has done the same in defence. Two Defence Ministers in one term is not a good look. Defence exploded under Joel and John is departing exhausted. Defence becomes another incumbency vacuum for the Government. Over many years, the voters had got a rough fix on John Faulkner, the straight man with the Clark Kent jaw and glasses to match. Anyone who loved cricket as much as he loved the Labor Party obviously had a balanced view of life. 

So now, no über Foreign Minister and no incumbent Defence Minister.

In the political contest of the coming days, Labor has lost much of its personality dominance in foreign affairs and defence. That doesn't mean the Coalition will necessarily win the argument, but certainly the natural international policy advantages usually wielded by governments have evaporated.

Photo by Flickr user vfowler, used under a Creative Commons license.

The point here is that uppity, flyspeck, future dominions of Australia, such as Fiji, East Timor, PNG, Solomon Islands, China, etc, must be shown who, in fact, is the regional 'supremo', as you put it so poetically. Let me describe the situation to you in this way: if the entire Oceanic Continent were Fiji, then Australia would be Bainimarama, clad in brass armor, sitting atop a mighty throne of skulls with a crown of gold-plated diamonds.

Some nations in our immediate vicinity know not how to respect their betters. Witness brazen East Timor! Its parliament has the gall to refuse our magnanimous leader's generous gift of a squalid detention camp! Thankfully, our political masters have enough sense to casually dismiss this unanimous vote of a sovereign neigbour's parliament. The parliament is, of course, a meaningless organ if it does not prostrate itself before our will.

The East Timorese shall have their gift and they shall like it very much and they shall demonstrate monumental gratitude. Or else we will do to them what we have done to those other wretched fools daring to resist Canberra's dictats. We will force them to de-shoe at our airports leading to great national humiliation and magnificent shame! We will doggedly seek extradition of their Attorney General on decade-old charges of which he has already been acquitted!

All this and more is within our power. Let us be intoxicated by it and carelessly throw it about. Writings such as yours are a promising beginning towards this end. I applaud you and your interweb-log, sir.  

Yours,

Cecil Remington-Jones II

Armchair Diplomat

Ah, Cecil, what can I say? Australia has indeed had its blimpish moments in the South Pacific. But on this occasion, the proper target for mockery is in Suva, not Canberra. By actually listening to – and enlisting – the rest of the South Pacific, Australia has merely attempted to play the lousy hand dealt by Bainimarama.

No argument that Australia was forceful in telling the Melanesian Spearhead Group of the dangers of letting the Supremo hold his own version of a Forum summit built around the MSG. The diplomatic effort succeeded because the region saw no advantage in giving a win to Suva that would inflict real damage to the Pacific Islands Forum.

The case rests not just on ideas of regionalism, but the ideas the region now has about Fiji’s military ruler. One of Australia’s South Pacific sages said Bainimarama's 'big MSG miscalculation’ was to misunderstand how much he worries everybody: 'The truth is that the rest of the region doesn't like Fiji spoiling the Pacific brand for tourists, investors, and everyone else."

The Supremo has become used to issuing official edicts covering every aspect of Fiji life, but the South Pacific does not have to follow orders.

Photo by Flickr user psd, used under a Creative Commons license.

The diplomatic tug of war is not merely between Suva and Canberra. It is about visions of the region and the definition of regional norms. The ultimate prize in this contest is the ownership and direction of regional instruments. In this fight, Australia and the Pacific Islands Forum have just had a significant win. Granted, such wins are wounding and debilitating for the region: a few more wins like this and we'll all be ruined!

It suits Bainimarama to claim that he is being insulted and assaulted by Australia and New Zealand. The constant narrative from Suva is that Australia is bullying the rest of the Islands to make them stand against Fiji.

But the Melanesian Spearhead Group has blown a giant raspberry at the Bainimarama version of regional reality. The MSG has stripped Fiji of its right to hold a summit in Nadi. The decision was announced by Vanuatu as chair of the MSG, but described as 'a collective decision of the leaders of Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, the FLNKS and Vanuatu'. The statement from Vanuatu’s Prime Minister, Edward Natapei, said the group had acted to resolve an 'impasse' over Fiji's chairmanship:

The potential long-term ramifications of allowing Fiji to chair the MSG this time cannot be ignored. There are basic, fundamental principles and values of democracy and good governance that our organisation is built on, and we must continue to uphold them.

Australia could not have said it better: 'basic, fundamental principles and values of democracy’. As the Fiji-born academic Professor Brij Lal dryly comments, Fiji's military regime 'will be taken aback by the robust language used in the communique'. Taken aback? Gobsmacked! Not only has Fiji been kicked out of the Pacific Islands Forum. Suva cannot even bend the MSG to its will.

Bainimarama sought to create a new regional power base for Fiji, inviting all members of the Forum apart from Australia and New Zealand to attend his Nadi summit. The MSG has refused to play.

Understand what this says about the erosion of Fiji's standing in the South Pacific under the Supremo. After the two coups in Fiji in 1987, the rest of the Islands lined up with Fiji against Australia and New Zealand. Back then, the Forum expressed more than understanding for Fiji. The region supported the Fiji military and the regime it installed after throwing out an elected government. No thought then of expelling Fiji from the Forum.

Bainimarama has managed to shred Fiji's role as the heart of regionalism in the South Pacific. This is an amazing bit of serial blundering.

Australia and New Zealand are not alone in mistrusting Bainimarama and what he has done. Canberra and Wellington are just more explicit than the rest of the Forum in expressing their distaste. Australia has played its hand with restraint: not cutting diplomatic links with Fiji, not imposing economic sanctions on Fiji, not cutting aid directed at average Fijians. The nasties have been aimed at Fiji's elite – travel bans on the regime's cronies and the ejection of Fiji from the regional club which has its secretariat in Suva.

It may not amount to masterful diplomacy, but it gives proper attention to the views of the rest of the South Pacific. Australia has not sought to crush Fiji's economy (Bainimarama is doing that by himself). Such diplomacy means that Australia and New Zealand can stand with the rest of the South Pacific in shunning the Supremo.

Too many Australians see this as weakness by Canberra or – the Gillard mistake again – a failure of Australia to properly assert its regional power. You can detect such assumptions in this comment by the chairman of News Ltd, John Hartigan, responding to the Supremo's move to strip the Fiji Times from News' ownership:

The Australian government has brought little pressure to bear on the military government to hold elections, restore democracy or re-establish the depleted power of Fiji's judiciary, apart from imposing travel bans on regime leaders.

It's easy enough to argue that Australia has been 'confused and contradictory' in dealing with Fiji. Let's not, though, confuse cause and effect. There has been a lot of strange, even bloody-minded behaviour on display, but most of it emanates from the Supremo. Whatever the limits of its power (or diplomacy), Australia can point to mounting evidence that it is closer to the rest of the South Pacific than Fiji. No wonder Bainimarama is angry.

The region agonises, but continues to insist that Fiji, one day, will have to confront its Army curse. Many countries have armies. A few unfortunate places are afflicted by armies which possess the country. Fiji is living that nightmare.

I part with Nick on the idea that Defence usually 'captures' its minister. Sometimes it crushes with paper and issues, yes; occasionally it infuriates, yes; but only a few ministers have been taken prisoner in recent times. John Howard heads the list. He loved Defence and the budget reflected his passion. Kim Beazley and Brendan Nelson could also be placed in the happy POW camp.

Joel Fitzgibbon, by contrast, is an example of how strained the relationship can become. Fitzgibbon, no doubt, still has strong affection for some bits of the sprawling Defence empire. And that's the point. Defence is such a diverse as well as complex beast, it is possible to love some parts and hate others.

Put that way, perhaps Defence and Kevin Rudd deserve each other. The man who never sleeps and thrives on every last detail could do battle with the bureaucracy that generates more detail than any other. The paper would fly. After all, the 2009 Defence White Paper belonged to Rudd more than his Defence Minister.

Having said all that, Rudd's natural home if Labor wins the election must surely be Foreign Affairs. Rudd was his own über Foreign Minister in the way that Howard was his own über Defence Minister.

Gillard's promise of a senior ministry after a successful election comes with an implied threat. Rudd must be on his absolute best behaviour between now and the day of the poll. Not a gripe. Not a grumble. Not a moment's bitterness. He must not have a 'drover's dog moment' if he wishes to get back to the front bench.

After stepping aside as leader for Bob Hawke in 1983 on the day the election was called, Bill Hayden famously remarked that 'a drover's dog could lead the Labor Party to victory at the present time'. Labor's strong affection and respect for Hayden meant that caustic judgement on his successor was no bar to Hayden's impressive resurrection as Foreign Minister. Rudd will get no such dispensation. He must love his leader in thought, deed and word. Anything less would be seen as destructive ill-discipline which would disqualify Rudd from any return to the ministry.

Gillard and Rudd both know how this game is played. Her promise of a top job has a hair trigger attached. One word out of place and his exile to the backbench becomes permanent. That would compound Rudd's misfortune and deny Australia the services of a politician of extraordinary talent who still has much to offer.

Photo by Flickr user juxtaposer1, used under a Creative Commons license.

Give the Prime Minister points for directly discussing the way these messages are framed. She accepts the truth that the boat people arrivals are a relative trickle – 'it would take about 20 years to fill the Melbourne Cricket Ground with boat people.'* But to worry about this is not to be one of those 'rednecks in marginal seats...expressing a desire for a clear and firm policy to deal with a very difficult problem does not make you a racist.' For Labor, the Tampa memories run deep.

The reaching out to East Timor and New Zealand is a fascinating moment in the new Prime Minister's understanding of the region. Reflect that Kevin Rudd's first big foreign policy adventure was to head off to Bali to sign the Kyoto Agreement. This was international policy played as triumph. Julia Gillard first foreign policy venture plays as a desperate domestic manoeuvre.

The overture to East Timor underlines the crucial relationship we have with what I’ve called Australia's Arc. Australia has given security guarantees — formal or de facto — to most of the countries in the Arc, running from East Timor into the South Pacific. East Timor is now confronting the Nauru truth. Sometimes the guarantor wants something back.

*The MCG is clearly established as an Australian means of measurement. For quite a while, the way of giving Australians an accurate understanding of the size of their Defence Force has been to make the point that the ADF's total strength would fill half the MCG.

Photo by Flickr user iwona_kellie, used under a Creative Commons license.

 

Prakash Mirchandani captures this shift in an excellent study of the impact of new media technologies: 'Reporting War, Waging Peace'. As he observes, the internet is al Qaeda's command and control centre:

If there is one example of the successful use of New Media technologies to achieve political and military aims, it has been Al Qaeda and its offshoots. Forced to use the technologies early because pressure drove their leadership into hiding, they have created strong, wide-ranging and convincing methods of using the Internet, from military training to enlisting suicide bombers.

Mirchandani has been reporting in the trenches of hackdom for decades, but his paper for the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre is really addressing the military. As you'd expect from a good journalist, he gives those in a hurry a quick 21-point summary at the top. Here's a taste of a couple:

The emergence of the image-as-truth is one of the critical parts of the current New Media usage. Audiences are learning to trust images and videos posted by specific individuals or organisations. These then become the modern ‘nodes of trust’...Traditional communication practices used by government are losing both trust and relevance...This requires government images to populate cyberspace on the basis of their acceptance as truth by informal popular online networks that constitute the‘broadcasting’ element of the new media.

Propaganda is dead. Truth rules. Who decides the truth is, as ever, intensely contested. And the decisive weapons in the truth-defining game aren't necessarily held by the state. Just ask the US military as they grapple with WikiLeaks or Al Jazeera.

Despite the media revolution, Mirchandani argues that independent eyewitnesses and journalists are being eliminated from battlefields, making reliable information about wars even harder to get. The controls imposed on independent observers in conflict zones are now harsher than ever before. Coalition forces insist on embedding journalists and keeping them away from any areas of dangerous battles. Insurgent forces target journalists, through kidnapping, torture and beheading, in an effort to ensure that only their own image-as-truth is projected.

The differences between the London Thunderer and the House of Gonzo is instructive on this point. William Russell reported by standing and watching the battle in the Crimea. By contrast, Michael Hastings' scoop in Rolling Stone came from the 'chateau correspondent' end of the scale: reporting what the general and his staff were saying about their civilian commanders back in Washington.

Many fellow hacks will be troubled by Prakash's suggestion that the concept of the embedded journalist should be taken a few steps further, and that soldiers should be trained to do the jobs of reporters. The freedom-of-the-press arguments are well rehearsed. But editors must also question their consciences about sending out untrained journalists and fixers to lose their lives. 

Read Mirchandani on the media and military, a vivid snapshot of connected worlds which are changing at warp speed.

Photo by Flickr user R.I.Pienaar, used under a Creative Commons license.

I would say on the big issues, we are almost in complete agreement. There is some question whether in the original proposal, ASEAN was central to it and we, ASEAN, were naturally worried about that. But that was quickly clarified and I think Australia's quite happy to leave ASEAN to discuss how that original configuration should evolve.

Gently put, given that the period when the Rudd initiative was being 'clarified' looked more like a sharp conflict. The outcome is clear — Australia is going to wait for ASEAN. And whatever ASEAN produces will be spun by Canberra as an excellent result which draws on the conversation generated by Rudd. In one of his first interviews as the combined Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister, Stephen Smith told Radio Australia's Linda Mottram that ASEAN is heading towards the objectives Rudd identified during the Community/community contest.

What we wanted to do was to ensure that our regional arrangements were set and correct for the Asia Pacific century as strategic and economic influenced moves in our direction; the rise of China, the rise of India, the rise of the ASEAN economies combined. And the real breakthrough came with the recent ASEAN leaders meeting in Hanoi, where leaders expressly requested the United States and Russia to become more formally integrated within the regional arrangements. And the ASEAN group is now having a conversation about whether the best way to effect that is by expanding the East Asia Summit by those two countries, or having a new group called ASEAN Plus 8. When that emerges, which we're confident it will, then we'll have all of the players sitting around the table at the same place at the same time able to have a conversation, not just about peace and security, but also about prosperity. So we think we are not too far away from achieving a very good practical outcome which meets our objectives.

So whatever ASEAN does will be hailed as meeting Australia's aims. To use the understated phrase of disagreement immortalised by Evelyn Waugh: up to a point, Minister, up to a point.

An earlier column outlined the Singapore approach to creating an ASEAN-plus-8 summit which would convene in the odd years that the US President manages to get to Asia for APEC. The East Asia Summit would continue as a yearly leaders' summit.

At one level, this is just a practical solution to the eternal problem of getting US Presidents to travel to Asia. ASEAN can't be sure that the President will make it to the EAS each year. But the design of an ASEAN-plus-8 separate from the EAS has some deeper architectural assumptions – and flaws.

The Singapore argument is that the EAS could eventually become the vehicle for an East Asia free trade grouping, covering the 10 ASEAN states, China, Japan and South Korea, with India, Australia and New Zealand being expected to opt in as well.

Doing free trade deals with the US is turning into a frustrating dead end for Asia. The US has not been able to legislate the free trade deal it completed with South Korea. Anything broader would be an even harder ask for the US Congress. So not having the US in the EAS makes Singapore's trade thinking easier to contemplate, even if it would be horrendously complicated to execute.

The whole point of the Rudd Community/community conversation was to have everybody at the one table to deal with all the big problems. US membership was central. Creating an ASEAN-plus-8 as well as the EAS would create two top tables, with the US absent from one of the forums.

If the two-table solution comes to pass it will look very different to what Kevin Rudd contemplated. But rest assured that whatever ASEAN decides will be embraced by Canberra. On the Community/community front, as in so many other post-Kevin areas, the Labor Government wants to dispose of the debris, claim victory and move on.

Photo by Flickr user Leonard John Matthews, used under a Creative Commons license. 

Rudd also extracted a major international win for Australia out of the global crisis. He was one of the main urgers who ensured that the G20 emerged as pre-eminent, pushing Europe's G7 down the ladder. Mark this as a virtuoso performance of Kevin-on-the-telephone persistence. Out in voter land, though, it tended to be a case of 'G-what?' rather than 'G-whizz!'

If the G20 achievement didn't gain the popular kudos it might, neither did the Prime Minister suffer much for the over-reach of the Asia Pacific Community initiative. The Community mutated into a lower case 'c' community discussion because neither China nor ASEAN were going to be led by Australia in building the Asian institutions for the Asian century.

Rudd was correct in his description of the challenges Asia faces. His delivery failed. Or more accurately, he could not get others to follow the course he wanted to steer from his diagnosis to his solution. As an exercise in regional diplomacy, it was a dismal bust. The Prime Minister of Australia set out to achieve something big for the Asia Pacific but was out-thought and out-fought by Singapore. The Asia Pacific Community/community idea will not detain Australia's first female leader for a moment.

Afghanistan is the legacy which will continue to trouble Julia Gillard. As a war-time leader, Rudd did as he promised. He withdrew Australia from Iraq without damaging the US alliance. And, as he pledged, Australia put extra resources into Afghanistan, but he refused to step up to take leadership from the Dutch in our part of Afghanistan. Australia will go no further than its present troop contribution.

Australia has its first left wing Labor Prime Minister in a lifetime, but one thing that will not change is Labor's adherence to the US alliance —Australia will go as soon as the US goes. The big leadership change on Afghanistan is not Rudd, but the dismissal of Stanley McChrystal.

Rudd delivered on his Millennium Goal promise to steadily lift foreign aid. In the South Pacific, Rudd announced a new era of partnership with the Islands. Bureaucratically, that is being built. Politically, this rates as another area of big promises but poor performance. Australia is the current chair of the Pacific Islands Forum, but when Duncan Kerr stepped down, the post of Parliamentary Secretary for the South Pacific died with him. The message for the Islands seems to be partnership but not much attention.

In a report card on Rudd's foreign policy at the start of this year, I gave him a B-plus, mainly for the G20 liberal multilateralist achievement. But the policy somersault on climate change takes the final mark to a straight B. Abandoning that policy meant ditching a crusade that defined Rudd. What did the Prime Minister believe in that was worth fighting for? Abandoning the climate issue deeply damaged Rudd's ability to tell a story to the voters, as opposed to the tough bilateralism of John Howard.

Musings on Rudd's bilateral achievements show the ups and downs involved. Rudd fostered two relationships that are powering along, even accelerating (South Korea and the US); one relationship that is ticking over relatively smoothly despite some big bumps on the road (Indonesia); but three that are running rough, perhaps even going backwards (China, Japan and India).

Little blame attaches to Rudd for the Japan problems. Tokyo has been changing its prime ministers even more rapidly than Canberra.

China will be the great unknowable about what Rudd could have achieved as a foreign policy prime minister. He confronted honestly and openly the challenge that China presents for Australia and the region. That public honesty cost him some deep wounds from the rulers in Beijing. China had become used to the reticent pragmatism of John Howard. Rudd calmly negotiated an honourable ceasefire in the diplomatic war declared and waged by China.

Perhaps the true future for Kevin Rudd on Australia's national stage is as our China seer, helping to steer our dealings with the gigantic question mark in Asia's future.

Photo by Flickr user United Nations Photo, used under a Creative Commons license.

As K Rudd has discovered, at this point ASEAN is the only concert-building vehicle in sight. That's why the Prime Minister has welcomed the invitation to the US and Russia to join up to whatever ASEAN decides is appropriate.

The problem for ASEAN is what to do with its victory. Here is where issues of structure and power run into political priorities and willingness to travel. The ASEANs are scratching their heads over the problem familiar to many a society hostess. Oh, the ignominy if they hold the party but the star doesn't attend. Fancy issuing the invite yet finding that the US president, at the last minute, can't fit it into the schedule.

Indonesia and Australia are becoming quite familiar with that 'sorry, can't make it now' call from the Obama White House. ASEAN wants a summit solution that avoids the embarrassment of a presidential no-show. That is why Singapore, backed by Malaysia, is pushing hard for an ASEAN-plus-eight summit, rather than admitting the US and Russia to the East Asia Summit.

The EAS is an established annual leaders' event. As now being proposed, the ASEAN-plus-eight summit would not be annual, but would convene only in those years when the APEC summit is in Asia. Linking ASEAN-plus to APEC would offer some hope that the US president could make it across the Pacific. The ASEAN-plus-eight mechanism will get its first run in Hanoi with a meeting of Defence Ministers in October.

Not all the ASEANs are immediately convinced by the ASEAN-plus-eight logic. Indonesia's Foreign Ministry still favours the view that the EAS must be paramount, and that is where the US president should be asked to sit.

The US is playing cool, if not fey. Washington is waiting patiently for ASEAN to decide what it wants. K Rudd – coming from a very different direction – has arrived at roughly the same place as Washington.

No Godot jokes, please. We're waiting for ASEAN.

Photo by Flickr user cynical pink, used under a Creative Commons license.