Authors: Geoffrey Barker and Paul Dibb, ANU
Ross Babbage has deep concerns about China’s growing military power and assertiveness. His concerns are magnified by his pessimism over the economic outlook for the United States throughout the next decade.
In Australia’s Strategic Edge in 2030 (Kokoda Paper No. 15, February 2011) Babbage asks what Australia should do to ‘offset and deter’ the rapidly expanding Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in the Western Pacific. Read more…
Author: Paul Dibb and Geoffrey Barker
Foreign business negotiators in China face greatly increased uncertainty now that detained Rio Tinto executive Stern Hu, a Chinese-born Australian, has been formally charged with espionage offences.
The affair underscores the need for businessmen to understand Chinese communism and Chinese culture, history and attitudes, as well as the commercial and legal systems, when they deal with Chinese officials and business executives.
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Special Author: Geoffrey Barker, Strategic and Defence Studies, ANU
The Australian Labor government’s first full year in office became a momentous political and economic challenge as it moved to deal with the impact of the deepening global financial crisis while seeking to advance national foreign policy and security interests. By year’s end it seemed inevitable that Kevin Rudd’s government would be judged primarily by its economic management over 2009-10.
But Rudd remained committed to expanding Australia’s role as an activist, if largely conformist, middle-power. Despite changes of emphasis, and new multilateralist initiatives, he left little doubt that there would be more continuity than change in Australian foreign and defence policies while the government’s economic management would be cautious, orthodox but consistent with giving a nudge to global big spending stimulatory economic policies.
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Author: Geoffrey Barker, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, ANU
Barack Obama’s decision to nominate Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State is based a on a political calculation that will be familiar to all students of political conflict. Stalin summed it up nicely: hold your friends close and your enemies closer. Old Labor Party factional warlords put it less elegantly but no less accurately: better have her inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in.
Barack’s defeat of the Clintons to win the Democratic nomination was a remarkable achievement against Hill and Bill, two of the most ruthlessly professional campaigners seen in US politics since the Kennedys. It was arguably a tougher achievement than winning the general election.
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