Newsletter: Week 9, 2023
The fraught attempts by the West to partner with India, Germany's new feminist foreign policy, and the movement of mothers working to end the indifference to children in family courts
Much Ado About India
In India this week one of the major events of the foreign policy calendar – the Raisina Dialogue – took place. Australia’s foreign minister, Penny Wong, has been in attendance, as has Antony Blinken, the United States’ secretary of state. With their Japanese and Indian counterparts – Yoshimasa Hayashi, and S. Jaishankar – they formed a panel discussion centred on future of “The Quad” – the grouping of the four Indo-Pacific powers that seeks to counter any revisionist behaviour from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) – although only Hayashi would say this directly.
As both Australia and the United States seek to move close to India questions are starting to be raised about whether Wong and Blinken can continue to be silent about the India government’s increasingly authoritarian behaviour and persecution of religious minorities (Japan is very unlikely to). There have been signals from Canberra and Washington that private communications have been transmitted, although it is not known at what level.
I think if this is the case, both Canberra and Washington currently believe that it is best to raise these issues quietly. The Indian government is very sensitive to being publicly embarrassed, and the Indian press is prone to hysterical and performative outrage. So best not to provide them with any fuel.
But this may not be an effective way of registering concern. As John Sifton from Human Rights Watch stated this week “problematic governments don’t change their conduct unless they face public scrutiny, so, of course, that’s why it’s important to speak publicly.”
There is a strategic calculation that Canberra and Washington (and the broader West) is making in regards to India, but it’s fraught one. There is a distinction being made being India’s domestic behaviour and its international behaviour. Internationally India maintains a firm commitment to issues like multilateralism, seeing this as important for power dispersal and the preventing of unilateral actions (with a particular concern over shifts in power in the Indian Ocean). But this commitment needs to be placed in context.
First there is a residual worldview within the Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) that actually believes in multilateralism and international cooperation as part of a longstanding suspicion of great power politics built from the intellectual foundations of the Non-Aligned Movement. However, secondly, there is also the blunt understanding that India doesn’t have the power just yet to engage more forcefully internationally and therefore needs the current rules of the game to advance its interests.
But it is worth separating the worldviews of the MEA and the BJP. The BJP is a party that does not believe there should be any restraints on its actions. Its commitment to a liberal international order is due to the current a capability gap between what the party would like and what it is able to achieve. The party is not liberal by nature. Internationally, it is only liberal by necessity.
Australia and the U.S, and other allies like Japan and the UK, are working towards a world when India does have greater international power as a prominent state that will help protect the international status quo, but in doing so they are hoping that the BJP will lose power domestically. It’s a risky bet, and in the meantime it will come with a lot of tongue biting.
This hope also rests primarily on India’s border dispute with China maintaining New Delhi’s antagonistic relations with Beijing. If the CCP were smart they would quickly seek a workable compromise with India over the border, knowing that the BJP and CCP share more in common ideologically and operationally than the BJP does with the West. The deep suspicion of the West within the BJP is also seam that the CCP has yet to comprehend and figure out how to exploit.*
*Although – and this is probably something worthy of a wider essay – there is a further clash between the idea advanced by Hindu nationalist groups of Akhand Bharat – or the Dharmic-sphere – and China’s perception of what constitutes the Sinosphere. The Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh (which China claims as “South Tibet”) and the union territory of Ladakh are the frontlines in this ethno-cultural battle (with Tibet itself being far more Dharmic than Sinic). The existence of Tibetic people in India and outside the CCP’s control is something that the CCP finds difficult to handle.
A German Feminist Foreign Policy
This week, Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, launched Berlin’s new Feminist Foreign Policy. The policy document begins with a blunt statement of fact that far too often is overlooked – “As long as women are not safe, no-one is safe.” Of course, we should value the safety of women and girls as imperative in and of itself, but this statement also recognises what I’ve been describing as “the concentric circles of violence” – how violence spirals up from the individual and household level, to community and national level, and then expands to the international realm. The psychological drivers of violence are the same, regardless of its setting and degrees.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has established this clarity in the minds of German policymakers. Baerbock’s introduction to the policy highlights Russia’s use of rape as a tool of war, and asserts that this should be considered a war crime. It should be paramount that any Russia soldiers captured who have committed acts of sexual violence be prosecuted, and Germany’s weight within Europe is critical to pursue these outcomes. This pursuit of justice for women needs to be central to Germany’s broader Zeitenwende – a turning point in history.
Within Germany’s foreign policy there will now be a strong focus on women and girls in its development assistance programs. As the policy document states “women’s rights are a barometer of the state of our societies,” but it is also female advancement, not just rights that is the true test of a society’s health. Female advancement is the central driver of overall development and social flourishing.
As Baerbock states feminist foreign policy is “not a miracle cure that will conjure up change overnight,” but it is instead about recognising how actions and institutions often disadvantage women and perpetuate instability – both personal and state-based. It is about understanding these conditions and starting to unpick and change them.
Movement of Mothers
This week I met with Renée Izambard for a cup of tea. Renée coordinates Movement of Mothers, an organisation that advocates for child safety to be at the centre of all custody decisions. For those unfamiliar with family courts worldwide you may be surprised to know that far too often this is not the courts’ primary concern. Because of this, these courts have become incredibly hostile and untrustworthy institutions for children and mothers.
Renée and her children had spent several years suffering this institutional abuse from the family court system in California, but she was eventually able to secure their safety and has recently returned to Melbourne.
Over the past few years I have been researching and writing about the behaviour of family courts and the ideas that drive their decision-making processes. In doing so I have come into contact with an incredible network of women who are working tirelessly to change the brutality of family courts and the network of organisations surrounding it that profit off the abuse of children. These women have a strength, resilience and commitment to the cause that is truly remarkable.
What is most impressive is that even after securing the safety of their own children these women have felt a strong sense of duty and purpose to work to prevent other mothers and children from having to face similar institutional hostility. And more broadly seek to end the social scourge of child abuse and domestic violence.
Abusive men may have their physical strength, and institutions like family courts may have deep wells of cynicism and the coercive power of the state to funnel this through, but they lack the enduring spirit and moral force of this movement of mothers. Mothers in general have endless and eternal instincts to protect their children. The state is playing a very dangerous game with our humanity when it seeks to undermine this essential maternalism. But it is also playing a game that it will eventually lose.
This Week’s Reading:
What ABC Missed About Australia’s Interests In Taiwan
Grant Wyeth – The Diplomat
“War is in no one’s interests, and – despite the presumptions of these articles – that includes the United States and China. We should never confuse the ability of powerful states to exert their might with the moral legitimacy to do so. As we are currently seeing with John Mearsheimer and Russia, there’s a tendency for “realists” to become cheerleaders for those states that prove their theories about power correct. However, if – as the overarching theme of “great power politics” suggests – aggression from powerful states is inevitable, then deterrence is legitimate.
It is disappointing that ABC would publish an article series about the fate of Taiwan that failed to include a single Taiwanese voice or perspective. It is also disappointing that the broadcaster – by far Australia’s most trusted and important – would resort to lazy interpretations of Australia’s strategic calculations, provide a megaphone to intellectually juvenile anti-Americanism, and an uncritical acceptance of the PRC’s claims to Taiwan.”
Are Australia’s Neighbours Ready For AUKUS?
Susannah Patton - Australian Financial Review
“Australia’s regional position is more directly affected by perceptions of AUKUS than that of either the UK or US, so it must push to ensure that strategic reassurance is not forgotten in the months ahead.
In private, South-East Asian officials and analysts ask whether the defence capability benefit conferred by AUKUS outweighs the downside of ratcheting up tensions with China. They also ask how AUKUS aligns with traditional Labor foreign policy towards the region.
Australia would not help itself by speculating about how the submarines would be used in a Taiwan or South China Sea contingency. But it must find a way of explaining the rationale for AUKUS that treads a middle ground between counterproductive detail and platitudes about regional stability. This message needs to be consistent and led from the prime minister down.”
What Limits Any U.S. Alliance With India Over China
Michael Schuman - The Atlantic
“Still, Washington’s willingness to separate issues has a downside. Biden has generally chosen to overlook Modi’s illiberal domestic actions in order to pursue the overarching geopolitical goal of confronting China. This is an uncomfortable concession for a “values based” president who is engaged in what he paints as a struggle between autocracy and democracy.
India thus highlights the challenge the U.S. faces in confronting China in an integrated world, because New Delhi’s approach to international relations may be typical of the dominant direction of 21st-century global diplomacy. The “us versus them” nature of the Cold War does not apply to a complex and multipolar global order. In effect, Nehru’s belief in nonalignment is ascendant in world affairs.
For Washington, that may be a more difficult world, demanding a degree of adaptability that U.S. policy has often lacked. Washington will have to learn how to achieve its foreign-policy goals without the formal alliances that once served as the bedrock of the U.S.-led order. And in the coming confrontation with China, Washington needs all the friends it can find, however it may get them.”
China’s Increased Attention to Tibet’s Borders With India
Apa Lhamo - The Diplomat
“With an increasing emphasis on border defence and security in Tibet, including frequent inspections by Chinese officials, the tensions between India and China over borders is likely to get murkier and possibly birth more skirmishes moving forward. With a substantial TAR [Tibet Autonomous Region] budget allocated for border-related infrastructure, relocation projects, and lucrative deals to attract people from other parts of Tibet and even from China to relocate and resettle in the border areas, tensions are set to grow.
China is investing heavily and strategically in border-related infrastructure and “enriching and prospering” border residents. India could perhaps follow suit and consolidate its borders in terms of investing more and giving vital importance to its borders, securitising and ensuring safety for people like Rinzin living in the border areas.”
Why Half Of India's Urban Women Stay At Home
Soutik Biswas - BBC
“Rahul Goel, an assistant professor of transportation research at Delhi's Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)…used data from India's first Time Use Survey - which measures the amount of time people spend doing various activities - to find out more about how gender inequality impacts daily mobility. (Surveyors spread out across India in 2019 collecting information on how people used their time the day before the interview.) In particular, Mr Goel looked at a dataset of 170,000 people living in cities and towns, who were a part of the survey.
The findings were striking. When surveyors visited households, more than half - 53% - of women said they had not stepped outside home the previous day. Only 14% of the men said they had also stayed in.
The study also found that girls were less likely to go out than boys when they were in their adolescence - aged 10 to 19 - and that there was a "slight increase in mobility" when women reached middle age. Mr Goel believes it shows that conservative social norms that restrict women from working outside home, or going out of home at all "start their effect early in childhood".
The study revealed glaring contrasts in gender roles. Women did largely unpaid house work while men spent time in activities outside home. Women, aged 25-44, spent an average of eight-and-a-half hours every day on domestic or caregiving work. Men in the same age group spent less than an hour on these activities. Only 38% of women in this age group reported going out of home, compared to 88% of men.”
Kishore Mahbubani - Foreign Affairs
“Given that many developing countries are beginning to adopt ASEAN’s approach to managing competition between the United States and China, Washington would do well to learn from the association’s experience. The strategy ASEAN has used to balance the concerns and sensitivities of China and the United States (and other major powers such as India, Japan, and the European Union) could also enable the rest of the global South to do the same. China is already pursuing deeper trade and investment ties across the developing world. The United States must decide whether to deal pragmatically with these regions or continue with its zero-sum approach to competition with China and risk driving them away.
What would a more pragmatic U.S. approach look like? Consider three simple rules to follow when dealing with ASEAN and, by extension, the rest of the global South. The first is not to ask any country to choose between Beijing and Washington. There is a practical reason for this: compared with China, the United States has little to offer ASEAN. Strained finances and congressional resistance to expanding foreign aid mean that Washington has provided only a fraction of the assistance that Beijing has provided to the region. At the U.S.-ASEAN summit in May 2022, for instance, Biden pledged to spend $150 million on infrastructure, security, pandemic preparedness, and other efforts in ASEAN countries. Compare that with the $1.5 billion Xi pledged in November 2021 to help ASEAN countries fight COVID-19 and rebuild their economies over the next three years.
True, Washington has more to offer in terms of defense cooperation and arms sales. But relying too heavily on military rather than civilian cooperation could end up hurting the United States.”
China’s Head Of Ethnic Affairs Is Keen To End Minority Culture
Aaron Glasserman - Foreign Policy
“Pan casts Islam as a spatial and demographic problem as much as a cultural or ideological one. It is unsurprising, then, that his proposed solution involves resettlement on a massive scale.
If Islam and Tibetan Buddhism are problems in Pan’s framework, so too is the system that has permitted them to persist unreformed and unassimilated. In his dissertation, Pan takes direct aim at what he characterises as the shortcomings of the party’s conventional approach to ethnic affairs. He elaborates the damaging consequences of what he sees as excessive respect for linguistic diversity, criticising the creation of writing systems for nationalities that previously lacked them—once a point of pride for the party: “Our goal is to strengthen ethnic unity and fusion; rather than spending energy creating ethnic scripts that never existed, it would be better to promote Putonghua [standard Mandarin], which is used throughout the country.” He also warns of the demographic danger posed by the implementation of family planning regulations (such as the one-child policy), which often exempt minority nationalities from limits on childbearing.”
China’s Collapsing Birth And Marriage Rates Reflect A People’s Deep Pessimism
Nicholas Eberstadt - The Washington Post
“According to the data, births in China have fallen steeply and steadily since 2016, year after year. In 2022, China had only about half as many births as just six years earlier (9.6 million vs. 17.9 million). That sea change in childbearing predated the coronavirus pandemic, and it appears to be part of broader shock, for marriage in China is also in free fall.
Since 2013 — the year Xi completed his ascent to power — the rate of first marriages in China has fallen by well over half. Headlong flights from both childbearing and marriage are taking place in China today.
The answer most likely lies in the dispirited outlook of the Chinese populace itself. Absent disaster, one of the most powerful predictor of fertility levels the world over — across countries, ethnicities and time — turns out to be the number of children that women (also men) happen to want. More than any other factor, human agency matters in national birth patterns, a truth that should come as no surprise.
So, yes, China’s birth decline since 2016 can be explained — but only by a revolutionary, wildfire change in national mood. It would take a sudden, pervasive and desperately pessimistic turn of mind.”
Eric Schmidt – Foreign Affairs
“In the contest of the century—the U.S. rivalry with China—the deciding factor will be innovation power. Technological advances in the next five to ten years will determine which country gains the upper hand in this world-shaping competition. The challenge for the United States, however, is that government officials are incentivised to avoid risk and focus on the short term, leaving the country to chronically underinvest in the technologies of the future.
If necessity is the mother of invention, war is the midwife of innovation. Speaking to Ukrainians on a visit to Kyiv in the fall of 2022, I heard from many that the first months of the war were the most productive of their lives. The United States’ last truly global war—World War II—led to the widespread adoption of penicillin, a revolution in nuclear technology, and a breakthrough in computer science. Now, the United States must innovate in peacetime, faster than ever before. By failing to do so, it is eroding its ability to deter—and, if necessary, to fight and win—the next war.”
Piotr Buras - Persuasion
“The genie of transformation is out of the bottle. Germany’s foreign policy debate has never been so engaged and informed, despite its idiosyncrasies and peculiarities. There is a fast-growing understanding that security has its costs, and that Germany needs to limit its dependence on authoritarian regimes. Clinging onto the failed Ostpolitik when the policy no longer fit the times has long since destroyed confidence that Berlin is up to the task of leadership in Europe; but it needs to be acknowledged that Germany is finally embarking on the right track.
No one knows how far Germany’s reinvention will ultimately go. But the country’s journey is in the interest of Europe and the world. We should give it the benefit of the doubt.”
How Lithuania Is Spearheading EU And NATO Efforts Facing Russia
Emilija Pundziūtė-Gallois – The Conversation
“In 2008, as part of a “nation branding” exercise – an attempt to give a country an easily recognisable identity – the Lithuanian communication specialists came up with the slogan “Lithuania – a brave country”. At the time, the country’s political elite were sceptical, but today, they identify with the label almost instinctively. Indeed, the small Baltic country has a population of less than 3 million and is in the borderlands of the EU, yet since 2020, it has stood up to three autocratic regimes: Belarus, China, and especially Russia.
The February 2022, the Russian invasion of Ukraine did more than shock the Lithuanian society, it sparked fear: after having spent 45 years under the Soviet regime, the Lithuanians readily identify with the Ukrainian victims of Russian atrocities. It also provoked the feeling that it was imperative to show solidarity with the country that had been brutally attacked and to punish its aggressor.”
Eliot A. Cohen - The Atlantic
“Any long-term planning for Ukraine and for the West should now also be predicated on the postwar persistence of a malignant and militarised Russia, which may well intend to restart the war once it has had a breather. Potential dissidents have fled the country or are in jail; a societal mobilisation built on xenophobia and paranoia is under way; freedom of expression is being stamped out; and any successors to Vladimir Putin are unlikely to be much better. Both Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of the Security Council, and Dmitri Medvedev, its deputy chairman, have expressed eliminationist views no less rabid than those articulated by their boss. Furthermore, even a defeated Russia will retain, in the Russian general staff, a thinking and planning organ of considerable quality. They will learn, adjust, and come back to avenge their humiliations at the hands of Ukraine and the West. And if they do not feel humiliated, it will only be because they have succeeded in crushing out the life of a free, sovereign, and whole Ukraine.
All of this being so, the best possible outcome leading to a cessation of fighting would be a Russian military collapse. If the West hopes to achieve this, it must provide Ukraine with a massive amount of all necessary weapons short of atomic bombs. Such an effort would require the kind of dramatic increases in output made possible under legislation like the American Defense Procurement Act of 1950.”
This Week’s Playlist is Themed: Spirit