Newsletter: Week 18, 2023
Newsletter: Week 18, 2023
The luxury of slow writing, maritime disputes beyond the South China Sea, and new perspectives from emerging leaders from the Quad countries
Firstly, apologies for no newsletter last week. Lacking time I had to abandon it. I’m also still contemplating how I take the newsletter forward, especially with the other writing I wish to publish here – the writing I keep forecasting, yet fail to produce. This is the kind of writing that needs more research and far more contemplation, as well as requiring me to sit and stare at a single sentence for a good half an hour until I’m comfortable with its precision. Slow writing might be a luxury that we all lack at the moment, but I think our agitated and insecure times require us to invest in more considered forms of communication.
Things may also change as I’m about to shift hemispheres for most of the rest of the year, and the time I have available may be less. In Melbourne, I can spend my weekends in front of the computer avoiding human contact, but this will be less likely while in Sweden. So the day of publication may also change, depending on how organised I can be.
This week I’d like to bring attention to pair of related essay series that have recently been published in Australia.
The first is a collaborative series between Blue Security and the Melbourne Asia Review titled - Beyond the South China Sea: Other Maritime Disputes In Southeast Asia (scroll down the MAR homepage to reach the series). Obviously, China’s extraordinary claims in the South China Sea has produced a number of new maritime disputes in Southeast Asia, but this series highlights that there are other contested spaces that are also consequential.
For Australia, as an island continent, the maritime domain is central to both its trade and security. And, given that the vast majority of the population hugs its coast, central to its sense of nationhood as well. However, alongside how we utilise the oceans, there should also be a recognition that these are entities that are often beyond our control. The laws we create around oceans, and the disputes over who controls them, can be hubristic in their attempts to place human restraints on natural forces. This was one of the themes of my initial explanatory essay for International Blue
The second is a series of essays from La Trobe Asia titled Fresh Perspectives on the Quad - featuring commentary from emerging scholars from the four Quad countries – Australia, India, Japan and the United States. The burgeoning cooperation between these four states also has a significant maritime focus, but as these essays highlight, there are a number of other areas where their cooperation can enhance positive outcomes within the Indo-Pacific.
I’d like to make particular note of the essay Mainstreaming Human Security Through The Quad, co-authored by Aditi Mukund. In what was meant to be a regular feature on International Blue, Aditi was my first profile on emerging researchers and thinkers – Advancing an Indian Feminist Foreign Policy with Aditi Mukund. She is an incredibly sharp and talented scholar (and lovely person) and someone to keep an eye on.
I do have plans to continue this feature of profiles on researchers and thinkers, but have been swamped by other work the past few months and it keeps getting pushed down my to do list. I did interview a Ukrainian researcher a couple of months ago (recommended to me by Aditi), but her profile unfortunately sits half-written in my Google Docs, staring forlornly at me each time I click on another document, or start something new. I’m hoping by mentioning it here it will force me to organise my time effectively and get it finished.
This Week’s Reading
More Than Embarrassing: Australians Behaving Badly in Indonesia
Grant Wyeth – The Diplomat
“Yet this elite cooperation is not built on a solid platform of knowledge and understanding of Indonesia within Australia. A recent report from the Asian Studies Association of Australia titled “Australia’s Asia Education Imperative” argues that there is no coordinated national strategy within Australia to enhance the country’s understanding of its region. That there is a disconnect between what the Australian government states are its strategic interests and the inconsistency and inaction of its policy toward greater Asian literacy.
Australia’s strategic interests are greater in Indonesia than Indonesia’s strategic interests are in Australia. This means that the effort of cultural bridge-building is more important for Australia. There is enormous goodwill to be gained for Australia to be seen as making the effort to become more engaged culturally with Indonesia. This is especially important as Indonesia’s power rises.”
‘Skill up or Sink’: A New Approach to Migration in Australia
Grant Wyeth - The Diplomat
“Migration is a nation-building project. For a country with a massive landmass and a small population, migration is about enhancing the country’s overall capabilities. It is not only an economic injection, but it is also about Australia’s security – an ability to develop the skills and capacities the country needs to negotiate what will be an increasingly challenging century. Personal security and national security should be seen as intimately linked. Shifting the migration system to value permanent migration over temporary migration gives Australia a more solid national base to protect its peace and prosperity.”
Five ideas From Allan Gyngell For A Better Foreign Policy
Vafa Ghazavi – The Interpreter
The doyen of Australian foreign policy, Allan Gyngell, passed away this week. There have been many tributes, including from the foreign minister, Penny Wong. This piece outlines five central ideas that Gyngell advanced.
First, incorporate an Indigenous element in the ceremonial welcome of foreign heads of state and government to Australia…For Gyngell, the specific act he proposed would “remind Australians as much as visitors of the nature of the place they have come to and in which we live.”
Second, craft problem-solving coalitions in response to emerging global challenges…He made the case for Australia to “identify areas where opportunities exist to build coalitions of interest on new subjects” such as on lethal autonomous weapons or the governance of genetic engineering… Gyngell recognised that doing this work effectively in a world where power was becoming more diffuse meant Canberra would need new partners across different regions of the world.
Third, resource the foreign service properly… Gyngell’s call to “invest in the institutions and instruments of Australian foreign policy – our overseas posts, our trained diplomats, our soft power potential to influence and encourage – with the same calculation that we invest in our defence capabilities” is as relevant as ever.
Fourth, use foreign policy speeches on hard challenges. While ambiguity can be appropriate in international affairs…”there is a strong case for clarity, at least on the main structural issues.” A speech could set out the parameters and depth of Australia’s interests and objectives – and help overcome misreading.
Fifth, don’t securitise everything. Given the spectre of multiple threats, from terrorism to natural disasters, there is a temptation for policymakers to see multifaceted problems through a narrow security lens…Gyngell worried about the militarisation of American society due to gun culture, and encouraged Australian governments to work hard to “prevent that happening here.”
Xi Jinping Can’t Handle An Ageing China
Carl Minzner – Foreign Affairs
“Were Beijing serious about planning for its own ageing future, it would have its own cards to play. China has a host of embryonic links with Africa, the only region of the world that will experience a youth boom over the coming decades. The number of African international students in China surged from 1,793 in 2003 to over 80,000 in 2018, and a vibrant community of tens of thousands of African traders and migrants had developed in Guangzhou by 2010. Beijing is also engaged in a major expansion of vocational education in Africa. Theoretically, one could envisage carefully crafted programs to train a generation of African technicians to help run China’s factories and African caregivers to look after tens of millions of the rural elderly as China’s population ages and shrinks.
But that will almost certainly not happen. Under Xi’s banner of “rejuvenating the Chinese nation,” socialist slogans are giving way to a more explicit framing of China in terms of culture and race. Authorities have banned foreign cultural products, whether architecture or Christmas celebrations, deemed inconsistent with China’s own essence, while ethnic policies are pivoting away from Soviet-style autonomy to aggressive assimilationism.
This ethno-nationalist turn is fanning latent flames of anti-foreign sentiment. During the early 2010s, local authorities in Guangzhou carried out a tough immigration crackdown that would cut the city’s African community in half by 2016. Students and other foreigners encountered a wave of hostility with the outbreak of the pandemic in early 2020, including mass evictions of hundreds of Africans in Guangzhou that resulted in coordinated diplomatic protests by a number of African nations.”
Brian Klass – The Garden of Forking Paths
“Nauru was mostly unchanged for 3,000 years, a country as isolated as it is possible to be in a fundamentally intertwined world. Then, in the span of one century, the lives of ordinary Nauruans were radically transformed by distilleries in Scotland, industrialised farming in North America, Russian mobsters in Moscow, theatregoers in Covent Garden, terrorists in Afghanistan, federal agents in Washington, processed food manufacturers in China, refugees in the Middle East, people smugglers in Indonesia, voters in Australia, and now, climate activists in Sweden.
Nauru’s fresh problems come from Chinese coal plants belching out smoke, cows in Brazil, and Americans commuting in fleets of gas-guzzling SUVs. The island is being submerged due to sea level rise, as the volcanic blip that gradually emerged from the ocean, is now being reclaimed by it, this time, in a geological blink.
Nauru tried to surf on the tides of the globe’s newfound interconnectedness — and now, it is sinking beneath them.”
Ashley J. Tellis - Foreign Affairs
“The bigger question, however, is whether Washington’s generosity toward India will help accomplish its strategic aims. During the Bush and Obama administrations, U.S. ambitions centred largely on helping build India’s power in order to prevent China from dominating Asia. As U.S.-China relations steadily deteriorated during the Trump administration—when Sino-Indian relations hit rock bottom as well—Washington began to entertain the more expansive notion that its support for New Delhi would gradually induce India to play a greater military role in containing China’s growing power.
There are reasons to believe it will not. India has displayed a willingness to join the United States and its Quad partners in some areas of low politics, such as vaccine distribution, infrastructure investments, and supply chain diversification, even as it insists that none of these initiatives are directed against China. But on the most burdensome challenge facing Washington in the Indo-Pacific—securing meaningful military contributions to defeat any potential Chinese aggression—India will likely refuse to play a role in situations where its own security is not directly threatened. In such circumstances, New Delhi may at best offer tacit support.”
Who Can – Or Should – Question 'Mother of Democracy' India?
Rohan Venkat – India Inside Out
A recent special section in International Affairs looked into both the concept and projection of India as a civilisational state, examining a number of these ideas and tactics. One article in particular, by Oxford University’s Kate Sullivan De Estrada looks at how the Vishwaguru [global teacher'], ‘Mother of Democracy’ projection seeks to address both the legacy of Eurocentrist readings of the international order – while also creating a buffer to protect Modi from critiques of his more majoritarian and anti-democratic moves.
In response to this lack of recognition and conferring of status within the liberal international order, Indians turned – in different ways – to the idea of moral, spiritual superiority as a way of upending the international narrative. While the Nehruvian project also relied on this – albeit relying on India’s success in managing a pluralistic society rather than Hindu nationalism – De Estrada depicts the BJP’s current Vishwaguru formulation as another, currently ascendant version of the rhetorical effort to reshape the global hierarchy based on ideas of Indian moral superiority. And, as she explains, it is one that, at least domestically, appears to be receiving validation by the fact that the world seems to be courting this assertive Vishwaguru India.”
Conspiracy Theories Swirl Around Sikh Separatist Amritpal Singh Sandhu
C. Christine Fair – Foreign Policy
“Yet, it hardly matters who is behind Amritpal Singh Sandhu and his movement. While it is commonplace to assert that there is no broad support for any revivified Khalistan movement, my own experience tells me that this is highly generational. Those who lived through the terror of Sikh militancy have no taste for its return owing to the brutality of both the militants and the security forces combatting them. Fears of any such movement are further bolstered by the gruesome anti-Sikh pogroms waged by the Indian National Congress party using state resources, for which justice remains elusive.
While it is very unlikely that Punjab will witness a return to the carnage of the 1980s, the possibility of violence is still there. Whoever was backing Singh, his rise—and his popularity—come from genuine anger and unhappiness. That poses a challenge for Western countries with prominent Sikh diasporas, where pro-Khalistan groups take advantage of the free speech of democracies. Listening to Indian concerns around militancy may be important in the future if Washington wants to build close ties with New Delhi.”
Asim Ali - The Telegraph (Calcutta)
“The world is how we want to make it, it is our creation,” the sociologist, Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi, quotes Benito Mussolini as telling a journalist in her influential cultural-historical study of Italian fascism. The book, Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini’s Italy, emphasised the role of fascist leaders as “artist-creators”, engaged in a deeply aestheticised enactment of politics. According to Zamponi, the exquisitely performed spectacles of fascist violence were meant to exalt politics into a sphere of “absolute autonomy”: the “pursuit of total aims without any limits from laws, tradition, or ethical values.”
Zamponi would have appreciated the raw psychological power unleashed by the spectacular murder of Atiq Ahmad on television. The visuals were enough to “knock out the senses” of the viewer, the desired impact of fascist spectacles, as described by Zamponi. Furthermore, the act of violence explosively crystallised — in the intimate and unmistakable language of aestheticised political violence — the relationship of power between the dominant group and the dominated group. A band of anonymous criminals, symbolising the righteous vengeance of one group, felling a feared bahubali (strongman politician), the symbol of venal corruption of another group, to ritualised chants associated with dominant group violence (“Jai Shri Ram”).
While the nondescript criminals would soon fade into anonymity again, the face that would be indelibly associated with this act of ‘righteous justice’/ ‘State thuggery’ would be that of Yogi Adityanath, the Hindutva leader who valorises ‘police encounters’ (‘thok denge’) and who framed his successful re-election bid as a referendum on the continuation of the “80% versus 20%” rule.”
*Adityanath is the chief minister of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, which is roughly 80% Hindu and 20% Muslim
A Brutal Sex Trade Built For American Soldiers
Choe Sang-Hun - New York Times
“The euphemism “comfort women” typically describes Korean and other Asian women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese during World War II. But the sexual exploitation of another group of women continued in South Korea long after Japan’s colonial rule ended in 1945 — and it was facilitated by their own government.
There were “special comfort women units” for South Korean soldiers, and “comfort stations” for American-led U.N. troops during the Korean War. In the postwar years, many of these women worked in gijichon, or “camp towns,” built around American military bases.
Last September, 100 such women won a landmark victory when the South Korean Supreme Court ordered compensation for the sexual trauma they endured. It found the government guilty of “justifying and encouraging” prostitution in camp towns to help South Korea maintain its military alliance with the United States and earn American dollars.”
Samuel McIlhagga - Palladium
“Because of its status as an initially advantaged first mover, the UK now has a fortified elite content to live on the rents of bygone ages. Its social order is constituted by the cultural legacy of the old aristocracy, underwritten by London financial brokers, and serviced by a shrinking middle class. Its administrative and political classes developed a culture of amateurism, uninterested in either the business of classically informed generalism or that of deep technical specialism. The modern result is a system that incentivises speculative, consultative, and financial service work over manufacturing, research, and production.
To the extent that the UK is governed by a partnership between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, it is an aristocracy that is not aristocratic and a bourgeoisie that is not productive. The old administrative upper class no longer wields power through land or patronage. The commercial middle class produces little of innovative value, its most prestigious sector being the servicing of other states’ surplus funds through family offices and merchant banks in London.
Despite being the hegemon of the industrial age, Britain never developed the mechanisms that allowed the U.S. and Germany to overtake it in the late nineteenth century in chemistry, transportation, labor productivity, and organisational methods. London’s first-mover benefits turned into profound disadvantages. It is not that Britain is sick, so much as that British elites are like aged pensioners: overly successful in their heyday, they are now drawing down their last investments and savings while letting the country house crumble.”
No themed playlist this week, but there is a cumulative playlist from previous newsletters, now close to 24 hours long.