Author: Peter McCawley
Last Thursday president Obama made his much-awaited speech on United States–Muslim relations at Cairo University in Egypt.
In the words of The Economist, ‘he sought to project an openness to Islam, a sense of shared values, support for Muslim aspirations and a determination to use American power to help fix the problems that most trouble them.’ The speech went well. The Economist’s view was the President ‘used his oratory to superb effect.’
But oratory aside, what messages did President Obama have for Muslim countries beyond the Arab world? Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim country; what was the significance of president Obama’s speech for Indonesia?
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Author: Tobias Harris
Prime Minister Asō Tarō and a group of national security hawks in the LDP may be pushing hard for the inclusion of preemptive capabilities in this year’s National Defense Program Guidelines (NDPG), but it appears that while there is little opposition from within the LDP, the Aso government may yet have some difficulty getting its way on preemption.
The LDP’s campaign for preemptive capabilities is part of a broader national security program compiled by a subcommittee of the national defense division of the party’s Policy Research Council. In addition to the acquisition of preemptive defense capabilities — which the subcommittee maintains is critical to strengthening the US-Japan alliance — the draft calls for reversing cuts in defense spending, permitting collective self-defense, creating a ‘Japanese-style’ National Security Council, relaxing the three arms-exporting principles to permit joint development, and altering Japan’s policies on the defense of outlying islands.
Not surprisingly, Komeitō’s leadership has aired its skepticism about both preemptive defense and a new law in the works on the inspection of North Korean vessels.
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Author: Trevor Wilson, ANU
The world has been understandably outraged by the ridiculous farce of the Burmese military regime’s trial of opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi for breaching the ‘rules’ of her own (illegal) detention.
So obsessed are Burma’s top generals with Aung San Suu Kyi that they fail to see that they could neutralise much criticism by allowing her a genuine degree of personal freedom, even if they continued to restrict her participation in Burma’s political future. As the length of her unjustified detention grows, hostility towards their cruel and ruthless suppression of Suu Kyi increases, from inside as well as outside the country.
Unprecedented gestures such as allowing diplomats or journalists access to the trial were minor concessions that did not divert the regime from their ultimate goal of keeping her in detention, but also did not divert Suu Kyi’s supporters from coming out to support her, albeit in small numbers thanks to the regime’s well-prepared security against protests.
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Author: Peter Drysdale, ANU
Last week the deal that would have seen Chinalco (the big Chinese metals conglomerate) take a US$19.5billion stake in Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto fell over.
This was not just another of the many Chinese resource investment deals on the block. It would have been the largest ever Chinese commercial investment abroad and would have led to the creation of the first great Anglo-Australian-Chinese mining and metals company, probably headquartered in Australia. This company would have been positioned to play a lead role in the Chinese market.
It was not just significant in the Australian scheme of things. It would have been significant in the Chinese and the world scheme of things.
Quite apart from whether it influenced the commercial outcome announced on Friday, the kerfuffle over the proposal in Australia prompts reflection on how Australia is managing the relationship with China. Australia’s management of its relationship with China is not merely of national significance; it is of regional and global importance because of Australia’s strategic role as an energy and resource supplier to China and, indeed, the whole Northeast Asian region.
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Author: Ron Huisken, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, ANU
In a fit of calculated fury, North Korea has undone the work of several years of negotiations, declared the armistice agreement that ended the Korean War in 1953 to be null and void, and promised ‘merciless’ retaliation against anyone that violates its unilateral definition of sovereign rights.
Subtlety and imagination are among the many things in short supply in Pyongyang. Policy setbacks lead the regime to press the only button on the console: belligerence. Even so, the latest phase of ill-humour is strikingly fierce.
Why? Has one or more of the other five participants in the Six-party talks done something so aggressive or insulting that Pyongyang was left without a choice?
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Author: Bruce Chapman, ANU
The federal budget’s announcements of wide-ranging changes to the youth allowance represent the most significant reforms to the system in 15 years, restoring fairness to a system that had strayed from its original purpose.
Many were surprised that the arrangements for this reform could be afforded when the Government seemed likely to postpone this kind of spending increase, given the present financial difficulties.
These changes are being financed essentially through the abolition of a substantial aspect of the allowance’s independent category. The result is increased fairness in a system established to allow greater access to higher education for poorer students.
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Author: Tobias Harris
After consultations among the governing parties, the Aso government has extended the current session of the Diet for fifty-five days, with 28 July the final day of the marathon session.
Ostensibly, the government wants time to pass the supplementary budget-related bills and the anti-piracy bill.
But, as Asahi reports, the government only needs to wait until 12 July to have the opportunity to vote again on legislation ignored by the upper house; given that extending the session to late July virtually guarantees that the general election will be held as close to the end of the Diet’s four-year term as possible, the long Diet is clearly more about politics than about policy. Naturally opposition parties said precisely that in criticizing the extension.
And LDP officials responded to the extension by pushing back the likely date of a general election: on Tuesday Koga Makoto, the LDP’s chief election strategist, suggested that an October election in possible.
Who wins the most from the extension?
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Author: Richard Pomfret, University of Adelaide
In a recent exchange on East Asia Forum, Steve Keen responded to a piece by McTaggart, Findlay and Parkin on ‘The state of economics’ with a post entitled ‘Why neoclassical economics is dead’.
From the virulence of the attack, Keen’s real concern seems to be that neoclassical economics is not dead – but that it should be. Neoclassical economics stands accused of becoming ‘positively sicker ever since the last great financial crisis – the Great Depression’ – and the upcoming Second Great Depression will finish it off.
Keen’s ‘neoclassical economics’ is a straw man. Modern economics owes a debt to the neoclassical economists of the late 1800s, but it has moved on since then – and since the economists of the 1920s whom Keynes derided.
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Author: Tobias Harris
Already under consideration before North Korea’s nuclear test last week, the LDP’s push to include plans for an indigenous capability to strike North Korea to preempt an attack on Japan has picked up speed over the past week.
On May 26th, Prime Minister Aso Taro reminded reporters that since 1955 preemptive self-defense has been considered legal.
The same day a subcommittee of the defense division of the LDP’s Policy Research Council approved a draft of proposals to include in this year’s National Defense Program Guidelines (NDPG) that calls for preemptive strike capabilities, especially sea-launched cruise missiles. On the 28th, the prime minister once again asserted the legality of preemptive strikes, this time in proceedings in the Upper House Budget Committee.
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Author: Peter Van Ness
George W. Bush has bequeathed to President Obama two unwinnable wars, a global financial crisis, problems of nuclear proliferation in North Korea and Iran, and a record of doing nothing about climate change.
When the President invites advice from his experts about how to deal with these problems inherited from Bush, he will find that most of his foreign relations advisors are practitioners of realism, by far the most popular paradigm for strategic thinkers and policy-makers.
The problem is that realism, as a way of understanding the world and making it comprehensible, will not help very much, because it is based on three fundamental assumptions that no longer hold true.
Obama will have to look elsewhere for advice.
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Author: Tomohiko Satake, International Relations, ANU
It seems that President Obama’s Prague speech on nuclear disarmament completely suits Japan’s identity as a non-nuclear state. As the only state that has suffered from nuclear bomb blasts, Japan has aimed for the total elimination of nuclear weapons in the post-World War 2 era.
This is why the Japanese Foreign Minister quickly announced Japan’s strong backing for Obama’s initiative and later addressed Japan’s resolve for nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament by announcing ‘11 Benchmarks for Global Nuclear Disarmament’.
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Author: Mario Lamberte, ADBI
Asia did not contribute to the global economic crisis (GEC) by saving too much but rather was an innocent bystander.
Now, addressing the GEC provides an opportunity to rethink Asia’s growth strategy and macroeconomic paradigms.
Origins of the crisis
There are two views about the causes of the crisis. One view suggests that the global imbalance was its major cause. There was a global ‘savings glut’, the source of which was Asia.
It is not clear ex ante whether the large current account imbalance between the US and the rest of the world can be attributed primarily to excess demand in the US or excess savings in the rest of the world.
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