Author: Jon Fraenkel, ANU

The Solomon Islands has a new prime minister. Danny Philip is a veteran politician from the western part of the archipelago. His country is home to half a million people living scattered across a few hundred islands. Mr Philip introduces himself as a leader with whom the Australian-led Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI), which has been stationing hundreds of foreign soldiers, police and civil servants in the country since 2003, can do business.

But RAMSI cannot be pleased by his expressed intention to honour the militants who rampaged across the country with guns and bankrupted the state until 2003. Read more…

Author: Charles Prestidge-King, ANU

After the Solomon Islands Prime Ministerial election Danny Philip looked a happy man. Following two hard weeks of wrangling and lobbying between contending camps, he was elected leader by Solomon Islands Parliament with 26 votes to rival Steve Abana’s 23.

An emotional Philip took the stand in front of local and international media to dedicate the win to his mother, a long-time sufferer of polio, and to put forward his government’s agenda. Read more…

Author: Aurelia George Mulgan, UNSW@ADFA

On September 14, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) faces a choice between two leaders from the same party who represent radically different ideals and policies. The repercussions of this choice will be felt throughout Japan in terms of the trajectory in which its political system develops and the course in which its economy tracks in the medium term.

The differences in the policies of the two candidates – Prime Minister Kan and former DPJ Secretary-General Ozawa Ichiro – are clear. Ozawa supports a continuation of the DPJ’s big spending policies under the slogan of ‘putting people’s lives first’ and is hammering the DPJ’s anti-bureaucracy and decentralisation themes. In this respect he is staying true to the DPJ’s original 2009 manifesto. Read more…

Author: Robert Sutter, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University

Since the early years of the George W. Bush administration, US and Chinese leaders have endeavored to emphasise the positive aspects of the US-China relationship and to deal with their many differences out of the public limelight, mainly through the dozens of largely secret dialogues that characterise recent Sino-American relations. Barack Obama came to office with the unusual distinction of avoiding significant China related issues during his long presidential campaign.

Since taking office, Obama has sought the cooperation of China and other world powers to deal with such key international issues as the global financial crisis, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, and climate change. Read more…

Author: Peter Drysdale, ANU

There is no question more central to the future of political stability and security in Asia and the Pacific than how the rise of Chinese power is managed alongside the established power of the United States of America. Over the last few years, Hugh White has made an immensely important contribution by forcing us all to think about this question. The central issue for White is whether it is possible to construct an arrangement whereby the new powers in Asia, most prominently China, can engage with the established power, the United States, as the structure of regional power undergoes dramatic change. The answer to this question is vital to the future of regional political stability in the intrinsically unstable process of transition in the balance of regional political power.

In the political sphere, former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made focus on this issue an international political mission. Read more…

Author: Hugh White, ANU

Asia’s security and Australia’s future depend not just on the choices China might make, but on America’s choices too. Even if China overtakes it economically over the next few decades, the US will remain the second-strongest country in the world for a long time to come, and by far the most serious constraint on Chinese power. The way America chooses to use its power is as important as anything China decides, and America’s choices may be harder than China’s.

A peaceful new order in Asia to accommodate China’s growing power can only be built if America is willing to allow China some political and strategic space. Such concessions do not often happen. Read more…

Author: Sourabh Gupta, Samuels International

Ichiro Ozawa has been subject to a good deal of criticism over the past few days and for reasons not limited to his penchant for Kakuei Tanaka-style, traditionalist pork barrel politics. What Ozawa’s critics fail to understand though is that Japanese politics does not yet have a modernising centre that can hold.

Certainly, there are modernising reformers strewn across the political aisle. Yet neither party’s modernisers have the votes within their own party to guide reform policy through the Diet, and cross-aisle cooperation among modernisers is an idea whose time has not yet arrived. Read more…

Author: Andrew Levidis, Melbourne University and Kyoto University

There has always been an element of incongruity between Ozawa’s great political conception and his actual performance. His decision to challenge Prime Minister Kan Naoto for the presidency of the DPJ reflects the grimness that has crept into Japanese politics, disfiguring those who seek real reform, and an almost metaphysical need by Ozawa to defend his legacy and previous ambitions.

His challenge can be seen as a metaphor for what has gone wrong with the DPJ since its moment of triumph, and Ozawa’s last fateful chance to redeem himself and his party. Read more…

Author: Yiping Huang, Peking University and ANU

China’s overseas direct investment (ODI) has been growing rapidly over the past years. The total amount of ODI reached US$48 billion in 2009, meaning that China is ranked sixth globally in terms of ODI. In 2009, Chinese invested in about 180 countries. According to the goverment, China’s ODI may reach $100 billion in 2013, with total ODI stocks reaching $500 billion.

While the rapid rise of China’s ODI is consistent with its growing significance in the global economy, the scale of investment is still a unique phenomenon when compared to ordinary international experience. Read more…

Author: Ernest Z. Bower, CSIS

In late September or early October, President Barack Obama will host the first US-ASEAN Summit on US soil. The summit will be the second of its kind following the inaugural meeting in Singapore last November. There are two venue options now being considered by the White House: New York, on the margins of the UN General Assembly; or Washington D.C., the US capital. There is only one correct answer to this foreign policy test: Washington.

While the policy teams at the State Department, the National Security Council, the Pentagon, the Commerce Department, and the Office of the US Trade Representative will understand immediately the core importance of ASEAN, political leaders may not have connected the dots yet. Read more…

Author: Thom Woodroofe, Left Right Think-Tank

The advent of the G20 as the most effective forum for global governance was former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s greatest foreign policy achievement, but it is time that it became a proper institution.

In early November, the world’s statesmen will gather in Seoul for the sixth G20 leaders meeting. Their key challenge is to ensure the forum can live on in a post-financial crisis environment. Read more…

Author: Ernest Z. Bower, CSIS

Indonesian democracy is one of the Asia-Pacific’s most remarkable recent accomplishments. The turn this giant country made from autocracy under Suharto to a system of ‘one person, one vote’ is truly breathtaking. Indonesia has been transformed.

At the same time, Jakarta is well aware that stable democracy is not an easily-won goal; the country cannot rest on its laurels. Indeed, Indonesians can learn an important lesson from their colleagues in Thailand; strengthen the institutions of democracy when you have the opportunity, and don’t wait until crisis comes knocking. Read more…

Author: Michael Cucek, MIT

Japan is a parliamentary democracy, but somehow the country is suddenly in the midst of a presidential election. There are two candidates, each with a distinct ideological cant and consequent distinct set of policy prescriptions. Both have their core supporters leaving the pair battling, quite publicly, for the allegiance of undecided voters. Unlike battles of the old days, where intra-party clashes were solved with promises of Cabinet and party posts or even exchanges of cash, the successful candidate in this election will likely have to charm the voters capable of putting him over the 50 per cent line. To capture these hearts and minds, both candidates are taking to the airwaves and the streets.

On the one side of the ledger is Ozawa Ichiro. Read more…

Author: Fenna Egberink, Clingendael Institute

The United States’ recent Asian diplomacy has been most interesting. The US has drawn ASEAN countries into the guarded enmity between the US and China. Is this to Southeast Asia’s benefit?

Earlier this year China took a noticeably more proactive stance vis-à-vis its regional partners. After first asserting the South China Sea to be a ‘core interest’ during bilateral discussions with the US, a term generally reserved for its claims to Tibet, Taiwan and Xinjiang, China defied US diplomatic efforts by using its veto-powers in the UN Security Council to block actions against North Korea in the aftermath of the Cheonan incident.    Read more…

Author: Amitendu Palit, ISAS, National University of Singapore

Many view India’s expanding trade deficit with China as a serious concern. India’s trade deficit with Australia is also being cited as troublesome.

From a bilateral trade perspective, India-Australia trade is much less discussed than India-China trade. As two of the Asia-Pacific region’s largest economies, India and Australia are expected to have robust exchanges. Read more…