This Side of the Blue: 12 October 2022
India's External Affairs Minister visits Australia, OPEC exposes Australia's oil issues, and the Defence Department looks clumsy. Plus this week's essential articles and playlist
It’s the second week of the new newsletter and I’m having to make a name change. Bluenotes is the name of the ANZ bank’s commentary publication. So keeping with the theme and outlook of the site the newsletter will now be called This Side of the Blue (with thanks to Joanna Newsom). Indicating an Australian perspective on international affairs, and a nod to the Blue Pacific.
Indian Minister of External Affairs Visits Australia
This week saw a visit to Australia by India’s Minister of External Affairs, S.Jaishankar. This was the second visit to Australia by Jaishankar this year, indicating the continued closeness of the two countries. Inevitably Jaishankar was asked about India’s abstentions from United Nations’ Security Council votes condemning Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. The general understanding is that India’s reliance on Russia military hardware limits its ability to be critical of Russia – although Prime Minister Narendra Modi has expressed his disapproval directly to Russia President Vladimir Putin recently.
Jaishanker was blunt in his response, stating - “For multiple decades western countries did not supply weapons to India and in fact saw a military dictatorship next to us as the preferred partner” - referring to Pakistan. Jaishanker’s point was that there are no high-horses in international relations. Every state acts in ways that it sees as best securing its own interests at the time, and India won’t be browbeaten by moral superiority when no country is perfect.
Yet as Happymon Jacob wrote recently for Foreign Affairs, India is moving away from Russia, but doing so in a gradual and subtle manner. Although this pace may not please countries like Australia who desire India to fully invest its weight in liberal order advanced and protected by the West and Asian powers like Japan and South Korea.
However, India values its strategic autonomy above all else, and won’t align itself fully with the United States and its web of allies, even if it is moving closer through groupings like the Quad. The BJP government especially has a worldview that is in serious tension with both Western and Asian liberal democracies. Yet Canberra is hoping that the adversarial – and occasionally conflictual – relationship New Delhi has with Beijing is enough to keep India broadly aligned with Australia’s interests.
Oil Shocks and Transport Options
The combination of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a strong US dollar, and OPEC’s decision this week to cut oil production means that $2 for a litre of petrol may become the new normal in Australia. Although Australia doesn’t source most of its oil from OPEC countries, OPEC’s decisions still affect the overall price of oil on the international market.
Due to a geographic quirk, Australia has an abundance of most other natural resources, but only a small amount of crude oil. This makes Australia almost entirely reliant on foreign sources for its crude oil supplies. Australia is also the only country in the International Energy Agency that doesn’t hold at least 90 days of domestic supply of fuel, making it vulnerable to market shocks.
The invasion of Ukraine should be a clarifying event for how countries secure their energy supplies. It should accelerate the energy shift to renewables, with a recognition that these sources of energy provide greater strategic autonomy, alongside less environmental impacts. This should also accelerate the shift from petrol vehicles to electric vehicles.
Yet, Australia has been slow to adopt EVs. In 2021, just 2.4 percent of cars sold in Australia were EVs. Although this was a jump from 0.78 percent in 2020. However, surveys have indicated that around half of Australians would consider an EV for their next car purchase. While in opposition, the Labor Party proposed a 50% electric vehicle target by 2030. Although, as the supply chains for many of the essential components of EVs are dominated by China, EVs don’t quite get around Australia’s lack of energy autonomy.
One thing that would provide Australia with greater strategic autonomy would be its cities having public transport networks that make owning a car either unnecessary or even a burden.
No Defence for Australia’s Approach to Defence
My standard line to foreigners on Australia’s governance is that the country tends to have poor quality politicians but excellent bureaucrats, and its politicians generally follow expert advice – even when engaging in the partisan theatre of politics. Yet Australia’s attempt to procure a new submarine fleet - and its defence expenditure more broadly – has undermined this line of reasoning. At present the Defence portfolio looks to be a mess, and it seems to have been political. With the previous government keen to move the theatre of politics into the practice of Australia’s security.
Central to this has been the AUKUS deal, between Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom. The agreement – of which a new fleet of nuclear-power submarines is the central component – has been handled incredibly poorly from its conception. It produced an unnecessary rift with a global power and important Pacific neighbour in France, has created suspicion in Indonesia due to concerns about the proliferation of highly-enriched nuclear material – concerns also shared through the nuclear-free Pacific Islands – and due to Australia not having a domestic nuclear industry it will make the country reliant on either the US or UK for maintenance (the US most likely). Undermining Australia’s sovereign capabilities.
Given that the United States is bound to prioritise its own new submarine fleet over constructing Australia’s, the projected “capability gap” Australia is expected to have between 2035 and 2040 may be optimistic. The current Labor Party government has accused the former government of “bungling” the defence portfolio, with 28 major defence projects now considered to be running a cumulative 97 years behind schedule. With significant budget blowouts expected.
The AUKUS deal looks like it was driven by the need for the previous government to create an “announceable” - a term that seems to have originated from Australian satire, but is proving to be less amusing for Australia’s real world security.
This Week’s Essential Articles (and more)
Australia and Pacific Islands: Polls Apart?
Meg Keen, The Lowy Interpreter
“Together, the polls and surveys not only give us insights about rhetoric and realities in the Pacific neighbourhood. They also provide signposts for future collaborations. Climate change, China and Covid recovery will persist as hot political topics, but we might need more direct communication lines to the people to really understand where their highest priorities lie.”
Labour Mobility in the Pacific: Transformational and/or Negligible?
Stephen Howes, Richard Curtain, and Evie Sharman, Dev Policy
“There is a fairly obvious conclusion from this. The impacts of the schemes are gender-specific, but the temporary schemes have been extremely impactful in the male labour markets in the three Pacific countries of Tonga, Samoa and Vanuatu, and much less so elsewhere…For the big three sending countries, we can compare the temporary employment gained in Australia and New Zealand with government employment at home. In all these countries, the government is the biggest employer. But in all three, about as many citizens are now working overseas on one of the three schemes as are working for government.”
A New Aid Strategy: Purpose, Priorities, and Plumbing
Cameron Hill, The Lowy Interpreter
“A new strategy is a chance to articulate more precisely how the development program relates to Australia’s national interests. These interests can be short-term and tactical (e.g., garnering support for a particular policy or position) or long-term and purposive (e.g., contributing to “growth, social development, better governance and stronger institutions in developing countries”). While aid has always had a national interest dimension, over the last decade it has seemingly become associated more and more with achieving tactical goals – influencing the foreign policy choices of regional neighbours (Solomon Islands) or responding in “whack-a-mole” fashion to the actions of strategic competitors (infrastructure in the Pacific).”
What Pacific Island States Make of the Great-Power Contest Over Them
The Economist
“For all that this unfolding contest seems new to its protagonists, the Pacific islands themselves remember previous eras when their external relationships were determined by great powers…Bearing that history in mind helps with an understanding of Pacific nations’ sense of vulnerability today—and their deep pride. They resent being played, especially when they are not consulted.”
When the Hindu Right Came for Bollywood
Samanth Subramanian, The New Yorker
“In contrast, Bollywood is glutted with movies and TV shows that align with the B.J.P.’s politics. There’s a series on a 2019 terrorist ambush of Indian troops in Kashmir. A film about Vinayak Savarkar, an architect of Hindu chauvinism. A bio-pic of Nathuram Godse, the erstwhile R.S.S. member who assassinated Gandhi. (Its producer promised that the film would “explore the mind-set and journey of a freedom fighter.” He was referring to Godse, not Gandhi.)”
Crackdowns, Lawsuits and Intimidation: The Threat to Freedom of Expression in India
John Reed, Financial Times
“India’s clamorous public square and disquisitive journalistic and intellectual culture has been a point of pride for many citizens. But the pressure on unfettered speech in the world’s largest democracy is palpable. Lawyers, journalists and activists say they see editors and reporters increasingly pulling their punches on topics that risk landing them in trouble. Even as the country moves to portray itself as a counterweight to an increasingly authoritarian China, rumours of self-censorship extend to people in business, with potentially harmful consequences for the development of the world’s fifth-biggest economy.”
What Will Happen to America if Trump Wins Again?
David Montgomery, Washington Post
“To help game out the consequences of another Trump administration, I turned to 21 experts in the presidency, political science, public administration, the military, intelligence, foreign affairs, economics and civil rights. They sketched chillingly plausible chains of potential actions and reactions that could unravel the nation.”
Eight Trends from Election Denialists to Watch in the US Midterm Elections
Sabine Lawrence, Lucy Cooper, Isabel Jones, Ciaran O’Connor and Jared Holt, Institute for Strategic Dialogue
Violent and heated rhetoric targeting election workers and public officials - Calls for vigilante actions at drop-boxes and polling locations - Small-scale organising and informations crowdsourcing - Delays and irregular reporting cited as proof of wrongdoing - Calls for audits, hand-recounts, and decertifications -Efforts to undermine trust in election infrastructure - Voter suppression narratives and tactics - Local to national and back again.
Want a Green Transition? We’ll Need to Mine for it
Katherine Dunn, Prospect
“It is now clear that a successful energy transition will depend on a mining boom—on the extraction, in vast quantities, not only of rare earths, but of all kinds of metals and minerals known collectively as “technology minerals”. Copper is needed for wiring an electrified world. Wind turbines require steel. Electric vehicles use lithium and cobalt. Decarbonising the global economy will see our need for raw materials undergo a profound shift.”
One Nation Under Xi: How China’s Leader Is Remaking Its Identity
Chris Buckley, Vivian Wang and Joy Dong, New York Times
“In his vision, all Chinese people, regardless of ethnicity, are bound by cultural ties that reach back earlier than the first emperors. The implication is that anyone who defies Mr. Xi’s priorities is also betraying China’s ageless, sacred values.”
The World According to Xi Jinping
Kevin Rudd, Foreign Affairs
“Under Xi, ideology drives policy more often than the other way around. Xi has pushed politics to the Leninist left, economics to the Marxist left, and foreign policy to the nationalist right. He has reasserted the influence and control the CCP exerts over all domains of public policy and private life, reinvigorated state-owned enterprises, and placed new restrictions on the private sector. Meanwhile, he has stoked nationalism by pursuing an increasingly assertive foreign policy, turbocharged by a Marxist-inspired belief that history is irreversibly on China’s side and that a world anchored in Chinese power would produce a more just international order. In short, Xi’s rise has meant nothing less than the return of Ideological Man.”
A podcast series by Sue-Lin Wong from The Economist
“Xi Jinping is the most powerful person in the world. But the real story of China’s leader remains a mystery. The Economist’s Sue-Lin Wong finds out how he rose to the top, and what it will mean for China—and the rest of the world—when he breaks convention to begin a third term in October.”
How Democracies Can Shape a Changed Global Economy (video)
Chrystia Freeland, Brookings Institution
A compelling speech by Canada’s Deputy PM on getting serious about creating a new energy order that circumvents “petro-tyrants” like Russia (a summary can be found here). Canada as a major energy power obviously has a keen stake in helping Europe find new sources of energy, and this would also hopefully quell some dissent in Alberta, a petro-province that is Canada’s current problem-child (see the next item).
But as noted by Paul Wells – one of the “Big Five” of Canadian journalism (Althia Raj below being another) – this speech looks to be a further example of Freeland getting out ahead of the government. Wells believes that often it is Freeland setting the agenda for the Trudeau government, with the prime minister having to simply play catch-up. Freeland may be the heir-apparent for the Liberal Party leadership, but it seems she may not actually need it in order to run the country.
What If We’re Having a Constitutional Crisis and No-One is Noticing?
It’s Political podcast with Althia Raj, Toronto Star
When asked why I am interested in Canada, my standard response is that given that Canada is currently the 8th largest economy in the world, and is on the path to overtaking France as the 7th, someone in Australia should be paying attention to it. However, the other reason is that, despite common misconceptions, Canada is an absolutely fascinating country that simply does not get the attention it deserves.
As a far more decentralised federation than Australia, regional identity is often stronger than national identity, and this is currently leading to Quebec and Alberta seeing how far they can push the Canadian constitution. And how far they can push Ottawa before it starts to intervene. This is an excellent podcast explaining what these provinces are doing and what are the potential consequences.
A podcast from Rory Stewart and Alistair Campbell
For those interested in politics in the UK this has quickly become essential listening. Campbell is the former Downing Street Press Secretary for Tony Blair, and Stewart is a former Conservative cabinet minister. Both are forthright, witty and insightful. Stewart especially is one of the more interesting politicians of our times. His attempt to win the Conservative Party leadership several years ago by bluntly confronting the party’s membership was strategically unsound, but compelling viewing. Although no longer an MP, he is someone who unashamedly believes politics is about serious ideas (and I suspect he’ll make his way back into the Commons eventually). His recent series for BBC Radio 4 The Long History of Argument is also worth listening to.
Richard Reeves, Persuasion
Richard Reeves’s new book Of Men and Boys has received a lot of press recently. This is justified, given that men’s difficulty with adjusting to modern society is becoming a highly destabilising force. Here Reeves writes that men’s struggles are the fuel for dangerous reactionary politics and finding solutions should be a priority. Yet one thing I am yet to read in his work is that these solutions cannot come at the expense of women. Women cannot be made to give up their own advancement and safety in order to help men’s immaturity and emotional turbulence. The solution to men’s difficulties must come with men finding their dignity in kindness, caring, empathy and responsibility. Not placating any instincts for power lust, control and violence.
This week’s playlist is themed Strategic Autonomy