Never trust what you read in the papers: that was one of my first lessons as a trainee journalist on an Australian bush newspaper many years ago. It held true yesterday when I discovered an article in The Global Times, China's Communist Party tabloid. It appeared to be an opinion piece under my byline. In fact, it was no such thing.

Recently I met with two journalists from that paper, a publication well known for its highly-readable mix of nationalism, news and spin. We had a wide-ranging discussion about how Australia perceives the Asian strategic environment. We agreed it would be an on-the-record interview, that the journalists would be entitled to quote from that interview, and that they would confirm the quotes with me before publication.

In the absence of any further contact from the journalists – and certainly no attempt by them to seek confirmation of quotes – I was surprised this week to discover an article under my name on the Global Times website. I was in good company – other such pieces appeared under the names of a senior Australian Defence official and my colleague Hugh White (the article misspells his name as 'Huge White', perhaps a forgivable reflection of his prominence in Australia's strategic debates).

Now, to be fair, much of the text that appears under my name is a reasonably accurate rendering of a portion of what I said in the interview, and broadly reflects my assessments and views – whether about the 'uncertainty' factor in China's rise or the nature of Australia's hedging strategy. I was at pains to point out that a hedging strategy is an understandable reaction to a rising power, and not a manifestation of some imaginary 'China threat' theory.

But then I encountered this:

I am wary of strategic analysts and commentators who never change their minds. So I'm always on the lookout for a book on grand geopolitics that will help me see the world anew. Maybe I missed something, but for me nothing has really filled that void in the past year or so, and certainly not Robert Kaplan's wandering Indian Ocean voyage Monsoon — with lots of thunder but patchy rain — or Aaron Friedberg's brand new US-China rivalry-fest, A Contest for Supremacy. 

My most educational read this year was Richard McGregor's The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers. No non-specialist should write another word on Chinese external policy until they have read it.

My biggest reading indulgence was finally discovering the historical spy fiction of Alan Furst. The melancholic beauty and double-dealing statecraft of 1930s Europe was never so compelling. I have a lot of catching up to do.

A great surprise package was the memoir of Bangladeshi-born Sydney psychiatrist and columnist Tanveer Ahmed. The Exotic Rissole is a funny, sharp-eyed and just occasionally confronting book about many things, but most especially the challenges of growing up in an Australia coming to terms with its impressively unplanned multiculturalism.

Finally, two books on India. Aravind Adiga's new novel Last Man in Tower may not hit quite the same heights of darkly comic egalitarian ferocity as his first book The White Tiger. But it's still a powerful moral tale about the underside of the new India.

I finally found time to read Indian Summer by Alex von Tunzelmann. This book is a few years old now, but remains unsurpassed for its account of how a handful of individuals had such an impact on the stormy events shaping the birth of India and Pakistan. Drawing on much previously unreleased material, it is at one level a surprising, speculative and tragic love story about Nehru and Edwina Mountbatten. It is part biography, part epic history, and stunningly written, mixing political insight and poignancy with the good grace and humour of its protagonists.

On Sunday, the Australian Labor Party's national conference will take an important decision: whether to end its blanket prohibition on uranium exports to India's nuclear energy program.

Wherever you stand, a robust debate on the issue can only improve the chances of a sensible policy outcome. That's why I am pleased The Interpreter has hosted its own debate (click on this link to see every post in the debate thread) involving a powerful range of arguments on this issue.

I am a self-declared advocate of the Prime Minister's proposal to change Labor's policy at the party's national conference this weekend. As I noted in opening our blog debate, the longstanding arms control arguments for sticking with Labor's export ban need to be taken seriously. But as I argued in today's Melbourne Age, the three main non-proliferation criticisms are exaggerated and based on shaky logic. And if safeguarded Australian exports to India are proliferation neutral, then the case for a policy change to advance bilateral relations becomes more important.

Our debate has ranged from the views of some former diplomats who strongly oppose a policy change, to the assessments of others, also with significant arms control experience, who are persuaded that there are ways to export to India responsibly. It has been argued that Australia should have tried to extract greater concessions from India. Indian voices, too, have joined the discussion.

So Obama has left his mark on the Australia-US alliance: a whirlwind visit, an historic speech on Asia strategy, an important shift towards US military access, and a genuine message of thanks and support for Australia's men and women in uniform. But as a major public diplomacy opportunity to consolidate America's closest Asia Pacific alliance, it could have been done considerably better. 

I have argued in favour of the strategic logic behind Obama's Canberra address and I believe it will be remembered as an historic speech – the clearest presidential articulation yet of America's pivot to Indo-Pacific Asia, and its commitment to stay engaged in the region despite its economic troubles at home.

But the more I think about it, the more I am convinced that the Obama Administration and the Australian government failed fully to exploit the chance to give the Australian public a sense of ownership and identification with the big policy messages of this visit. Australia's reaction to the changing power balance in the region, especially the rise of China and India, is a complex one covering economic, strategic and societal dimensions. To adjust the US alliance to this new reality, Washington really needs to engage Australians beyond traditional policy elites.

What a week in Australian foreign policy.

Two days before President Obama's visit, which will likely mark a pivot to a truly Indo-Pacific strategic vision by Washington and Canberra, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has publicly declared her support for safeguarded uranium exports to India.

These two things are connected – not as some conspiracy (though some on the left will see the timing as suspicious), but rather because it is about time we sent a signal that we recognise an emerging India as a vital and trusted part of a stable Indo-Pacific regional order. To be sure, the eve-of-Obama timing was at least a bit clumsy. It would have been better if the Prime Minister's statement had come earlier. Australia is embracing India strictly for its own reasons, not Washington's.

But in any case, Gillard's move is welcome and overdue. It is high time the Australian Labor Party developed a contemporary policy allowing uranium exports to help India produce much-needed electricity.

I have seen both sides of this issue, first as an arms control diplomat and then as a diplomat on posting in India. In 1998 I was a junior official writing talking points condemning India for its nuclear tests. From 2000-2003 I worked in New Delhi, watching India's foreign and security policy evolution first-hand and trying to improve Australia-India relations after the damage from our failed, moralistic 1998 stance. From 2004 to February 2007 I monitored the changing Asian strategic order from inside Australia's peak intelligence agency.

Since my first opinion piece calling for a change of Labor policy on uranium in April 2007 I have been an open supporter of improved relations with India. And now I try to balance realistic assessments of the Asian nuclear and strategic order with my advocacy of a true strategic partnership with India as part of Australia's wider approach to an era of Chinese, Indian and sustained American power and influence. Part of this work involves close consultations with prominent Indians from across politics, media, diplomacy, business and journalism.

Does Australia have a strategy for dealing with the new Asia, especially the rise of China and India? This question is central to the Australian Government's recently-announced Asia policy review. Either we have a plan, in which the case the review can test, inform and refine it, or we don't, in which case the review is a logical first step to crafting one.

It is one thing for commentators and independent analysts to assert that Canberra has no real plan when it comes to navigating the strategic, economic and cultural shoals of an unfamiliar Indo-Pacific Asia. But what is more challenging is to provide an accompanying set of precise and realistic recommendations on what is to be done. Which is why it is a pity that not more of Australia's experienced and senior policy-makers (especially those recently out of government service) are willing or able to inject their insider perspectives into the public debate. 

One honourable exception is this thoughtful essay by Scott Dewar, a former adviser to Kevin Rudd and one of the nation's leading Asia policy experts. Also worth a read is some of the commentary beginning to emerge internationally about Australia's future choices, including this piece by Ernie Bower of CSIS that suggests the Australian debate so far is built on questionable assumptions about Chinese stability and governance. Those assumptions are definitely worth close examination – and not only because Australia's future may depend upon it.

It is refreshing to encounter some mildly positive news on US-China security relations. After a long cycle of pessimism about prospects for improved trust and dialogue between the two powers, it appears Washington and Beijing are quietly coordinating to ensure that the latest announcement of US arms sales to Taiwan does not completely derail the fragile process of talks and engagement between their militaries.

Central to an apparent deal is the US Administration's decision merely to upgrade Taipei's existing F-16 A/B fighter aircraft rather than replacing them with more advanced F-16 C/Ds. (And to those who might argue that this amounts to sacrificing the interests of Taiwan to prevent yet another US-China diplomatic spat, it is worth bearing in mind that even an F-16 C/D deal would have made little difference to the overall cross-Strait military balance.)

To be sure, there is plenty of huffing and puffing in the Chinese media anyway. After all, the previous round of military transfers to Taiwan was cited by Beijing as the reason for its yearlong suspension of mil-mil dialogue in 2010: the very time when, as our work on maritime confidence-building has shown, a rising occurrence of incidents at sea meant such communication was in everybody's interest.

It is becoming popular to use the word 'rivalry' when describing relations between China and India. Recent spats between the two powers over Indian oil exploration and an alleged maritime encounter in the South China Sea certainly highlight the potential for dangerous clashes of interests between Asia's two rising giants.

Indian Defence Minister AK Antony with China PLA Chief Chen Bingde in 2009. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

But is it something that can be called 'strategic competition'? Is it rivalry? These questions are worthy of deep examination. The answers will help us understand whether China-India relations are cause for alarm or whether they could be a point of relative stability in Indo-Pacific Asia's confusing and contested future. After all, China is now India's largest trading partner, and their differences in the South China Sea coincide with new moves to encourage closer investment and financial ties.

I spoke briefly on this at the Australia-India Institute conference in Melbourne yesterday, and will be exploring these matters further in Washington DC next week, including at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

As an opener, I would contend that we cannot hope to recognise rivalry between China and India until we have a clear understanding of what great-power rivalry is. I would argue it is a condition that engages, among other things, vital or core interests of the nations concerned, and which includes a willingness to risk war.

The big annual AUSMIN meeting, where Australia's defence and foreign ministers get together with their US counterparts, has just concluded in San Francisco. This year's talks marked the 60th anniversary of the Australia-US alliance, and the communiqué is rich birthday fare.

The document rewards close reading. Tightened cooperation on cyber security is being sold by both governments as the big deliverable, since the anticipated breakthroughs on US access or basing are still being negotiated. But that is just the icing. As with last year's communique, this cake has many layers. Here's a quick taste. 

Reaffirmation of the alliance

Goes without saying, one might think. But the language this year is exceptionally strong: 'an anchor of stability', 'shared values', 'proud and deep relationship', a 'storied tradition' (nice turn of phrase), 'adapting and innovating to face the challenges of the 21st century'. Whatever the dire prognostications of one school of commentary, the alliance is stronger than ever – and this is at least as much what Australia wants as what America needs.

China

We all know that very much of this is about China. But the language on China is sensible and balanced. There is a renewal of messages about seeking partnership, emphasising common interests and the need for continuous communication between militaries to prevent misunderstanding and crisis – a widely-repeated refrain this year.

Connecting the spokes to include South Korea and India

The document is a resounding endorsement of the emerging web of security links between US allies and partners. The US-Australia-Japan trilateral dialogue is still touted as the most important of these. But there is newly-forthright support for what would seem to be four-way 'training and integration' among the US, Australia, Japan and South Korea to deal with dangers and provocations posed by North Korea. 

Incisive reporting from the Financial Times (subscription required) on India's growing concerns about the military difficulties posed by a rising China. This follows reports last week of an extraordinary challenge by Chinese forces to an Indian navy ship in the South China Sea, just after its visit to Vietnam.

Just imagine if the Indian Navy had declared a similar 'keep out' message to a Chinese destroyer transiting the Bay of Bengal after one of its friendly visits to Burma or Pakistan.

As my colleagues and I foreshadowed not long ago in our major report on Asian maritime security, Crisis and Confidence, China's tensions at sea with the US and various East Asian countries could in time be replicated in China-India relations. Some readers may have seen our report as too realist and gloomy for their tastes. But, if anything, we have under-estimated how quickly Asia's maritime security troubles might spill over into relations between the world's two most populous states.

This makes it all the more urgent for New Delhi and Beijing to begin building their own regime of confidence-building measures and continuous communications at sea.

This week marks the 20th anniversary of the military coup that was meant to preserve the Soviet Union but instead ensured its demise. Gorbachev's recollections make for fascinating reading, but for me these events had an oddly personal meaning beyond their geopolitical significance.

That was the week I first seriously thought of a career in foreign and security policy, and I can in large part thank the inspired way in which my then teacher, Bill Tow, turned a lecture on the Cold War into an impromptu policy workshop on the unfolding events in Moscow.

The news of Gorbachev's arrest had just broken. Along with my fellow political science students at the University of Queensland, I dutifully turned up for our weekly strategic studies lecture with a recently-arrived American academic who seemed to have novel notions of relating our study to the real world. 

This was an unsettling experience for those of us more accustomed to hermetic recitations of academic theories, unsoiled by human agency and day-to-day events. Until that point I was frankly beginning to wonder why I'd quit the modest thrills of small-town journalism for the dusty rites of studying political science.

For the next two hours, normal business was suspended. Instead, we found ourselves thinking aloud about the motives and strategic implications of the epochal events unfurling on the other side of the world. Like any kind of intelligence assessment, it was hard work.

I can't say all of Bill's predictions rang true – whose from that era did? – but I left that lecture theatre convinced that the study of international relations mattered, and that history depends as much on political choice, accidents of timing and errors of judgment as it does on crude measures of military power and strategic weight.

The HBO TV series Game of Thrones is an international phenomenon. Described as 'The Sopranos in Middle-Earth', it makes medieval fantasy respectable for grown-ups.

It is also strangely educational. Foreign and security policy wonks, along with diplomats, spooks and soldiers, could all learn a thing or ten from it. If you don't have time for a doctorate or a decade of hard policy experience, you could do a lot worse than watch the series or read the books by George R.R. Martin. And it's hideously good, unclean fun.

Here are my ten strategic lessons from Game of Thrones:

1. Trust no-one.
2. Women who hold political power know how to use it.
3. Make sure you have spies everywhere — your rivals will.
4. Policy is not rational — all politics is court politics.
5. In strategy, timing is everything.
6. If you want a friend, get a dog, better still a wolf.
7. When it comes to defence, don't put faith in a wall.
8. Debt is decay.
9. Keep your head.
10. And don't get complacent — winter is coming.

So at last we have hard data to test the claim that many Indian students in Australia have been the victims of racially-motivated crime. And the picture turns out to be much more complicated than the racist caricature presented in hyper-competitive, hyper-sensationalist parts of the Indian media. 

Here are some of my initial impressions. The Australian Institute of Criminology's exhaustive survey of crime data relating to more than 400,000 foreign students in Australia shows that foreign students are less likely to be the victim of physical assault than the general population. 

Australia is a safe and welcoming place for the overwhelming majority of Indian and other foreign students. In general, it seems, foreign students are actually safer in Australia than many Australians. And Australia is mostly a calm, tolerant and law-abiding place – a point worth bearing in mind in an awful week when the streets of Melbourne and Sydney are looking a lot safer than London or Birmingham.

When it comes to acts of robbery, the picture is slightly different, and somewhat troubling. Between 2005 and 2009, in some parts of Australia, Indian students were more likely than students from other countries to be the victims of robbery. So on this score, the Indian media and the Indian Government were right to be concerned.

Geopolitics wasn't meant to be easy. But former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser does himself, China and sensible strategic analysis a triple disservice in this recent Asia policy speech at the Australian National University. The short version — an equally ill-structured blog post — can be found here. 

I am broadly in accord with the argument that China's military modernisation is, in substantial part, the understandable behaviour of a great power with a fast-expanding economy and wide international interests. I would also agree that the diplomatic and media signaling surrounding Australia's 2009 Defence White Paper was poorly handled.

But Mr Fraser chooses some decidedly weak and self-defeating examples to allay worries about China's martial path.

For the US, Australia, Taiwan, Japan, India, Vietnam, the Philippines and others, the most troubling aspects of China's military rise include its acquisition of asymmetric missile, cyber, and submarine capabilities. And the destabilising impact of its assertive behaviour at sea in recent years is widely recognised, even if the causes and the solution remain subject to debate. Yet Mr Fraser ignores these maritime and high-tech dimensions.

Instead, he focuses on land, and weirdly identifies Iraq, Pakistan, North Korea and Indo-Pakistani tensions as somehow major and understandable drivers of Chinese martial might. This is a truly novel approach. Let's briefly look at each example.

It's rare that an institution with as dull a title or vague a mandate as the Association of South-East Asian Nations Regional Forum makes headline news. But tomorrow's meeting of the ARF in Bali is likely to do just that.

It will be a critical test of Asia's ability to manage maritime security tensions, in the South China Sea and beyond.

A failure by foreign ministers to discuss openly the region's maritime security problems will marginalise the ARF. Silence on these issues would also damage the credibility of other parts of the region's emerging diplomatic architecture, notably the East Asia Summit (EAS), which is due to meet at foreign minister's level in Bali today.

Reducing risks of war at sea in Asia should be squarely on the agenda of these meetings, otherwise they face irrelevance. Activist middle powers like Australia are well-placed to take the diplomatic lead on this front.

A vital challenge now facing Indo-Pacific maritime Asia is the risk of armed conflict arising from 'incidents at sea' – confrontations between forces from China and other nations, notably the US, Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines. A major Lowy Institute report, Crisis and Confidence, has recently highlighted the increased frequency and intensity of such incidents since 2009.

That report, which is drawing serious attention in international debates on maritime security, distinguished between direct and indirect confidence-building measures (CBMs). The latter are typically far removed from the direct issues of zones of contention, and accordingly have little impact on the risks of conflict. Diplomatic efforts are much better deployed in focusing on the first kind of CBMs, such as hotlines, regular operational dialogues and the formulation of rules of the road for preventing incidents arising or escalating.

Behind the handshakes and formalities, military relations between the US and China remain strained. Of course it's good to see the US-China defence dialogue occurring once more, after Beijing suspend it for most of 2011. But there is little hint of a meeting of minds or worldviews in the visit to China this week by the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen.

For years, America has used such dialogues to urge China to increase the transparency of its military capabilities and intentions. Now the tables are somewhat turned. General Chen Bingde, PLA Chief of the General Staff, has used his counterpart's visit to chide the US publicly over the size of its military budget, its surveillance operations close to the Chinese coast and its combined exercises in the South China Sea – including with Australia. 

Some good has come of the visit. The announcement of three new bilateral confidence-building measures (CBMs) is welcome. But two of these — anti-piracy and humanitarian exercises – are what might be termed 'indirect' CBMs. They have essentially no immediate impact on areas of friction and risk in maritime interaction: the tensions in the South and East China seas. The third is thankfully a more direct measure: a one-off dialogue on operational safety. This could have some effect in reducing risks from those incidents at sea associated with China's growing maritime assertiveness.

But, as my co-authors and I argued in a recent major report, much more substantial CBMs will be necessary to minimise the possibilities of major-power conflict at sea in the years ahead. A continuous operational dialogue between US and Chinese forces is one essential and so-far missing ingredient.

There is no sign yet from the Mullen visit that China is prepared to suspend its demand that some kind of overarching political trust — whatever precisely that may mean — should precede such vital, practical steps. I wish it were otherwise, but this week's events would seem to bear out the less-than-optimistic conclusions of Crisis and Confidence.

Photo by Flickr user Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The crimes of Osama bin Laden on 11 September 2001 had lasting, devastating strategic impacts. His death in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad will also have ripples across the international security landscape — and not all the effects will be benign.

For now, Americans and their friends around the world are variously rejoicing or relieved at the bloody end of this iconic adversary of the civilised world. It would seem a vindication of some aspects at least of the much maligned war on terror. It was fascinating to see President Obama rehabilitating some of his predecessor's martial rhetoric in announcing a successful military operation on foreign soil.

But, perversely, the elimination of bin Laden at this time may turn out to be bad news for the people of Afghanistan.

For the moment, expect American self-confidence to be restored. Even Americans who were children when the Twin Towers fell — including many thousands in uniform — will feel there has been a proper reckoning. In an era of economic gloom and geostrategic uncertainty, where many pundits exaggerate America's decline and China's supposedly unstoppable ascendancy, there will be a willing audience for Obama's boast that an act of patient vengeance proves that America can do anything.

Temporarily, all of this will be a shot of confidence to US and allied forces in their UN-mandated efforts to help Afghanistan provide for its own security. On the eve of the traditional summer fighting season, it is a much-needed morale boost.

It is proof that a decade of hard experience has taught America how to do counterterrorism of the most surgical kind. By all accounts, this was a painstakingly planned and well-executed mission, using intelligence from multiple sources to direct a helicopter-borne combat team.

The message to senior al Qaeda figures as well as the leadership of the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Toiba is simple: wage war and you are safe nowhere.

Certainly, the Abbottabad operation and its rapid announcement by Washington was an exceptional public relations victory in a conflict where the terrorists almost always seem to have the initiative. For once, the website of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan — the Taliban's propaganda vehicle — was slow with the news.

Yet there is a risk that these positive consequences will be short-lived. After all, American, Australian and other special forces in Afghanistan have long demonstrated their ability to target terrorist leaders.

Media coverage has made a big deal of Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard's comments on defence ties during her visit to China this week. I am not so sure the reality is all that dramatic.

It makes sense for Australia to develop constructive defence engagement with China, as I have long argued. Australian forces are less likely to find themselves confronting Chinese forces (whatever opinion polls might imply) than working alongside them, for instance in counter-piracy or disaster relief operations. So it makes sense for each side to forge a practical understanding of how the other operates.

It is also precisely because of the anxieties about how China will use its power that we ought to get to know the PLA up close. Channels of communication and so-called 'confidence building' measures (CBMs) between the Chinese military and their counterparts in the US, Japan and India are weak to non-existent.

Yet these will need to be strengthened in order to minimise the risk of maritime confrontations either occurring or escalating inadvertently.

Of course, CBMs have their limits, especially if one country is setting out to provoke or coerce another. But even if they can make a marginal difference to the risk and scale of conflict, they are worth the effort.

Australia has already made reasonable progress in engaging with the PLA. Media reports that Gillard is encouraging Chinese ship visits to Australia overlook the fact that these are already taking place — such as this exercise off Sydney Heads last September, reported directly by The Interpreter.

We can and should do more — for instance, training PLA peacekeepers in English. But we should keep our allies and partners apprised of the logic and merits of our relations with the PLA. Some Japanese analysts have quietly said they were less than pleasantly surprised by Australia's live-fire drill with the Chinese Navy last September, at a time of deep Sino-Japanese maritime tension.

And every step of the way we should be aware of the risks. After all, mutual intelligence gathering is a natural part of bilateral military engagement between any two nations that share less than fulsome trust.

Photo, of the People's Republic of China Training Ship, Zhenge in Sydney Harbour, courtesy of the Department of Defence.

It would be hard to draw a sharper picture of the balancing act Australia faces in North Asia: on Monday, Prime Minister Julia Gillard will commemorate Australians' sacrifice in a bloody Korean War battle, then fly straight to Beijing, capital of the nation we were fighting against.

Every other time an Australian leader has commemorated Anzac Day overseas, both the battlefield and the adversary were ones we knew we would never face again. But on Monday Julia Gillard will mark the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Kapyong, where 32 Australians died fighting off a Chinese onslaught during the Korean War.

No longer it seems, will Korea be Australia's forgotten war — and rightly so. The diplomacy, however, might be tricky.

These days China is our largest trading partner and a US-China conflict would be ruinous for the region and for Australia. Yet as last year's Lowy poll suggested, a growing number of Australians are becoming concerned about the security implications of China's rise. 

Julia Gillard may see her current visit to Seoul, Tokyo and Beijing principally as a chance to build her foreign policy credentials and an opportunity to pursue a constructive agenda in trade, disaster relief and multilateral cooperation. 

But, as I explored in this interview, the China leg of the visit next week could involve real tests for her diplomatic skills and her values in how to address the recent crackdown on dissidents. And as I will explain in Saturday's Sydney Morning Herald, North Asian security diplomacy can be delicate and dangerous territory for an Australian leader.

Photo by Flickr user Leonard John Matthews.

The world's strategic, political and nuclear landscape is changing, and the United States and its allies must adapt: that is the chief point of agreement among all of the contributors to our blog debate on extended nuclear deterrence (END).

But the fundamental question is how? Here the experts in our global debate part company.

Should the priority be on reinforcing the credibility of END guarantees through alliance consultations, or perhaps changes to arsenals, deployments and declaratory policy? Should the focus be on enhancing non-nuclear extended deterrence, such as conventional strike and missile defences?

Should allies contribute more to their own security? Or could diplomacy play a larger role in easing the mistrust that feeds the need for deterrence?

These are among the questions that have recurred throughout our debate. I will offer my own interpretation of key points from the discussion, before concluding with some thoughts on where this leaves policymakers.

George Perkovich rightly identifies that nuclear weapons are useful only against existential threats, and suggests that one reason the Obama Administration's pursuit of nuclear disarmament makes sense is because the conventional military balance favours America. I am not so sure, at least in those parts of Asia most affected by rising Chinese power.

The uncertainty that this power shift provokes among Washington's Asian allies, largely explains why they are hewing closer to END at the very time when the US is reducing its reliance on nuclear weapons.

This point informs the arguments of Tom Mahnken and Duncan Brown, who call for a dialogue about adapting END, not downgrading it.

Still, Tokyo, Seoul and Canberra might take comfort in Perkovich's reminder that US policy is for some form of END to be around for as long as nuclear arsenals exist.

The international political consequences of the post-tsunami nuclear crisis in Japan will play out for a long time, but one of the first might well be the early abandonment of the Australian Labor Party's — and thus the Government's — review of its nuclear policies.

It has been widely expected that, at its national conference late this year, Labor would open debate on a possible future role for nuclear power in Australia's energy mix. In addition, there has been serious talk of the party overturning its ban on uranium exports to India. This would bring Australia into line with most other nuclear-exporting countries and the Indo-US civil nuclear agreement, add a new pillar of strategic enmeshment to a very important bilateral relationship, and moreover end India's (false) perception that Australia does not trust it as a rising power.

It would also signal Australia's appreciation of the fact that India needs to meet massive energy needs while managing its carbon footprint, and show our recognition that India – unlike, say, China — has a good record of not proliferating nuclear weapons technology or know-how to others. I have supported this overall position and still see its merits.

But if I was advising the Indian Government now I would urge strongly against making wider progress in the Australia-India strategic partnership conditional on a near-term Australian policy shift on uranium exports. Like India, Australia is a democracy, and much of the Australian public has long been uncomfortable with nuclear energy. The tragic events in Japan in the past week, including the clearly inadequate nuclear safety precautions for a worst-case scenario, will obviously deepen those concerns.

Building on their important series of opinion articles that gave momentum to President Obama's nuclear disarmament efforts, America's four senior statesmen — Kissinger, Shultz, Nunn and Perry — have again weighed into the global nuclear debate.

Their new joint article in The Wall Street Journal looks at the future of nuclear deterrence, and specifically how to move towards increasingly non-nuclear forms of deterrence in the context of pursuing a world without nuclear weapons.

This theme touches closely on the security concerns of Indo-Pacific Asia, and indeed chimes with the Lowy Institute's current major initiative with the Japan Institute of International Affairs and the Nuclear Security Project, in which we examine the future of extended deterrence in the region, and whether there are realistic prospects to reduce its nuclear component. 

This project is being conducted through expert workshops in Sydney, Beijing and Seoul, in our robust and continuing blog debate, and in a forthcoming book with contributions from Australian, Japanese, Chinese, South Korean and American experts.

The new Kissinger-Shultz-Perry-Nunn op-ed is of course only the start of a process, not the last word. It makes a broad point about the need for the US to work with its allies in exploring whether there are alternatives to extended nuclear deterrence. But as our blog debate has shown, that is going to be an exceptionally challenging conversation. It is clear that there will be need to be careful attention to China's military modernisation (conventional and nuclear), North Korea's actions and the concerns of America's Asian allies as discussion on this issue gets underway in the US. 

Asia, not Europe, is where the world's nuclear dangers are greatest, and where the problem of somehow juggling disarmament, deterrence and stability are at their most wicked.

The Nuclear Reactions column is supported by the Nuclear Security Project of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, as part of a wider partnership between the NSP and the Lowy Institute. Photo by Flickr user stevec77.

With Julia Gillard's first visit to Washington as Prime Minister, it is a good time to ask: what might the Australia-US alliance look like in the looming age of the Indo-Pacific? In an opinion piece today in The Australian newspaper, my colleague Andrew Shearer and I offer a few initial thoughts.

These include not only a more active Australian role in maritime security — and a corresponding increase to Australia's strategic weight — but also more frequent US naval visits to Australia, including Western Australia. On this point we quoted Toshi Yoshihara who recently visited Sydney with a team of colleagues for a conference on Indo-Pacific security, co-hosted by the Lowy Institute and the US Naval War College.

Toshi suggests that a regular US naval presence on the coast of Western Australia — even one day some possible basing there — would offer exceptional flexibility and security of access to the Indo-Pacific theatre. He and a colleague have written about the idea here (see final paragraphs). Of course, they acknowledge that the politics of a greater US military presence in Australia is not a forgone conclusion. It remains to be seen if they have underestimated how domestically controversial the idea — however logical — might prove to be in Australia. (Before leaving Australia, Gillard indicated her openness to the idea of more US forces)

At the end of the conference last month, I interviewed Toshi about this idea, as well as his prolific writings on Asian maritime security, including the book Red Star Over the Pacific: China’s Rise and the Challenge to US Maritime Strategy, which he co-authored with James R. Holmes. Here is that conversation:

Recent achievements in nuclear arms control should not be a basis for complacency: this was one of the messages of Joan Rohlfing, President of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, when she spoke at the Lowy Institute in Sydney today.

According to Ms Rohlfing, the risk of terrorists acquiring a nuclear weapon is real, and in this regard an unstable Pakistan remained a key concern. She acknowledged also the challenges of bringing Asian powers, including China, on board with the recent US-led push to reduce the role of nuclear weapons and to move towards nuclear disarmament.

In her presentation, Ms Rohlfing noted the successes the Obama Administration had chalked up on the nuclear agenda: the US-Russia New START Treaty, the successful 2010 review conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Nuclear Security Summit, and the policy of nuclear restraint presented in the Nuclear Posture Review.

But she also argued that it was important for the international community to maintain focus and momentum, including to stop the spread of nuclear arms to more countries and potentially to terrorist groups.

We will be posting audio and video of her full lecture on our website next week. In the meantime, here is a brief interview I held with Ms Rohlfing following her presentation, in which we covered some of its main themes:

The Nuclear Reactions column is supported by the Nuclear Security Project of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, as part of a wider partnership between the NSP and the Lowy Institute.

In looking at the global context of likely future demand for Australian development assistance, it is worth thinking about key countries and scenarios where strategic shocks might greatly change the picture. For comprehensive surveys of what might lie in store, I recommend these two ambitious future-mapping reports, one from the US National Intelligence Council and one from the British Ministry of Defence, some of the most creative analysis that the Western intelligence community has done in the public domain.

Here are a few potential shocks and crisis zones to ponder...Read more on our companion blog, Interpreting the Aid Review.

Photo by Flickr user Tomas Fano. 

So, the game is on. With these remarks, it appears that Resources Minister Martin Ferguson is heralding a concerted bid by multiple pragmatic elements within the Australian Labor Party to change policy on uranium exports, to allow safeguarded sales to India for civilian use.

The moment of truth will come at the Party's national conference later this year, and it will be a test of, among other things, Julia Gillard's ability to show leadership on a major foreign policy issue.

This has been a long time coming. Some of us have been urging a policy review for years, and have begun to sound like a broken record. At one level, it is a shame that Labor did not change its stance when the idea was new. This would have sent a signal to India that Australia was serious, and ahead of the curve globally, on engaging it as a strategic partner. Instead, a change of policy now will appear a reluctant acceptance of the inevitable.

Still, it is a necessary policy choice, for many reasons: strategic, economic, developmental, diplomatic, and because it is consistent with Australia's stance on climate change. An in-principle decision to join the rest of the nuclear exporting world – including Canada and Japan — in recognising India as a special case will remove the major political obstacle to closer Australia-India relations. And if our safeguards are too much for Delhi, then the problem of diplomatic obstruction becomes theirs, not ours.

Photo by Flickr user Tjflex2.

A version of this post appears on the CSIS Asia policy blog, Cogitasia. 

Is Canberra about to revolutionise its military to confront Beijing, alone if need be? You would be forgiven for thinking so, if you had read Australia's Strategic Edge in 2030, the startling new report from prominent defence analyst Ross Babbage.

The reality is more complex. Yes, the rise of China is markedly altering Australia's security outlook and the shape of its future defence force. But this change is not as fundamental or as single-minded as certain dramatic newspaper articles and blog posts would suggest.

Babbage's report implies that China's growing military power could one day pose a direct threat to Australia's national security, even to its democratic way of life, and that therefore Canberra needs a complete defence policy overhaul.

It also leaves the impression that senior Australian security bureaucrats are comfortable with the thrust of its recommendations. Yet former Defence Deputy Secretary Paul Dibb and others have disputed this, and no representative of the Australian Government is on record as having endorsed the report's radical conclusions.

In recent decades Australia has developed a balanced, if overstretched, military, intended to adapt to diverse contingencies. Professor Babbage calls for much of this to be jettisoned in place of rugged attack capabilities designed somehow to cripple China, were this authoritarian great power ever to use its military to coerce Australia.

India's strategic community is mourning a great loss: its most respected thinker, K Subrahmanyam, passed away on Wednesday 2 February at age 82. Strategist, official, adviser, journalist, scholar, mentor: his work had a direct bearing on some of New Delhi's most profound national security decisions of the last half century.

He was an early advocate of an Indian atomic bomb, although from the outset he also urged the government to shackle it with an explicit policy of 'no first use'. His persistence paid off: both pieces of advice were eventually adopted. As early as 1970, Subrahmanyam called for an Indian nuclear deterrent against possible future coercion by China. Extraordinary at the time, this view became the official rationale for the 1998 nuclear tests, and now can be assumed to inform New Delhi's strategic policy in the face of China's continued rise.

But it would be wrong to characterise him as a hawk. He also emphasised the need for engagement with Beijing, along with a defence posture of asymmetric deterrence rather than arms racing. Moreover, all along he saw nuclear weapons as essentially unusable. In his later years he argued that the case for nuclear abolition could be advanced by establishing dialogue between militaries, in which they would come to agree on the 'unfightability' of nuclear war.

Indeed, he surprised some of his fellow realists with his support in 2008 for the nuclear disarmament efforts of US elder statesmen Kissinger, Shultz, Perry and Nunn.

That said, I am not sure many of his fellow Indians would wholeheartedly agree with his being called 'India's Kissinger' — the sub-editor's headline to this obituary I wrote for Foreign Policy.

Subbu, as he was affectionately known, was renowned in India for his humble, egalitarian and bipartisan ethos, as well as his sense of 'dharma' (duty). His was a lifetime spent in service to his nation above all else. He rejected official honours, and was outspoken in defence of democracy and pluralism within India – he was not afraid to speak out against the 2002 violence in Gujarat. He was a mentor to generations of strategists and officials. And throughout his life he was generous with his time. I cannot claim to have known him well, although in recent years I benefited from some memorable conversations with him. I will leave the last word to one of his intellectual heirs, Raja Mohan:

Unwilling to be co-opted by the allures of office and privilege, he spoke truth to power, often risking his own career advancement...As India rises on the world stage, Subrahmanyam’s contribution in getting its security establishment to ponder the nature of power and its political purpose will long outlast him.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

These are confusing times in nuclear strategy.

The Obama Administration is promoting the vision of a world without nuclear weapons. At the same time, power politics and coercion are making a comeback, particularly in Asia, where repeated instances of Chinese assertiveness and the use of armed force by North Korea are unsettling US allies including South Korea, Japan and Australia. Half a world away, NATO has struggled to reconcile nuclear disarmament imperatives with concerns about Russia in its revised strategic concept. In South Asia and elsewhere, fears of nuclear terrorism are rising. And Iran's atomic ambitions could rewrite deterrence calculations across the Middle East.

All of this points to a vital question, the answer to which will be critical to international stability in the years ahead: is the age of extended nuclear deterrence (END) coming to an end? For decades, the US has made the seemingly-credible threat that it would use nuclear weapons to protect its allies against large-scale aggression — the so-called 'nuclear umbrella'. But how viable is such a strategy in a changing nuclear order and an altered strategic environment? And are there feasible, palatable alternatives?

Here at The Interpreter, we think it is time to foster a dynamic and truly global debate on this issue. To launch the exchange, we have invited contributions from four of the world's leading experts on nuclear arms control and strategy: George Perkovich of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Bruno Tertrais of the Fondation pour la recherche stratégique, Shen Dingli of Fudan University in Shanghai, and the Lowy Institute's own Hugh White.

The way the world found out about China's stealth fighter test flight yesterday is a fascinating lesson in the agility and impact of social media, and the disadvantages faced by traditional news organisations and governments in handling fast-moving stories. It took hours for mainstream media, let alone governments, to speculate about and eventually confirm the reported maiden flight of the J-20, despite (or because of) the fact that this was a widely anticipated event of major international significance.

I have recently been experimenting with Twitter, and that was how I chanced upon early rumours of the test, just minutes after it took place yesterday afternoon. An independent American security blog was re-tweeting one-line reports from private Chinese and, apparently, Singaporean blogs and Twitter accounts. The first unverified pictures appeared, and with the help of a few tweets and hyperlinks, were seen within minutes by thousands of individuals.

I did my bit, expressing the judgment that the reported flight test was not only the real thing but also a deliberate snub to visiting US Defense Secretary Robert Gates — as well as, potentially, to Hu Jintao himself.