Author: William Tow, ANU

Two developments critical to Asia-Pacific security transpired during early May 2010: the opening of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference (REVCOM) at the UN Headquarters in New York and North Korean Leader Kim Jong-il’s visit to China.  They are inter-related by North Korea’s disregard of Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) guidelines prohibiting its development of nuclear weapons.  A nuclear North Korea clearly threatens Australian interests. Any major conflict that explodes on the Korean Peninsula in the absence of North Korea’s denuclearisation, and that spreads throughout Northeast Asia, would cut Australia off from key trading routes, possibly involve Australian combat forces, and heighten prospects that Australia’s joint installations with the United States would be attacked by hostile regional powers.

Events leading up to both REVCOM and Kim’s trip underscore the challenges facing Australian policy-makers and other regional countries intent on realising regional peace and stability. Read more…

Author: Bill Tow, ANU

Embarking on his first trip to Asia as President, Barack Obama returns to a region where he spent a portion of his childhood and where his popularity remains high despite his worsening political standing at home.

Obama confronts a landmark decision on intensifying the U.S. military commitment to Afghanistan, America’s unemployment rate, and the likely defeat of his health care package in the U.S. Senate. One might conclude that his nine-day Asian tour constitutes a sentimental journey back to the early days of his presidency when it seemed his own country and most of the world was at his feet. Nothing could be more deceptive. Read more…

Author: William Tow, ANU & ASI

The newly elected government of Japan has already released its vision of how a regional community-building process could be pursued.

Yet Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has been vigorously promoting his own vision of a regional architecture for the past eighteen months. The Australian leader could caution the Hatoyama government on the dangers of going too far, too fast in promoting any one grand vision for regional order-building. Read more…

Author: William Tow

As President Barack Obama and his team settle into managing U.S. foreign policy, the new administration has made clear it will rely more extensively than did its predecessor on diplomacy and ‘smart power’ to influence global politics.

In an Asia-Pacific context, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s announcement in late January 2009 that the Bush administration’s predominantly ‘economic dialogue’ with China would be ‘broadened’ to become a more ‘comprehensive dialogue’ covering human rights, Taiwan, technology transfers and nuclear non-proliferation commanded attention.

It remains to be seen how responsive the Chinese will be to such thinking. There is less doubt, however, that Japan – the United States’ long-standing and arguably its most important Asia-Pacific ally – will be watching how this new U.S. policy unfolds with avid interest. So too will Australia, the other key U.S. ally in the region, and one with a record of success in calibrating its relations with Beijing and Washington so as to avoid having to choose sides when Sino-American differences intensify.

One reason that both of these U.S. security partners have an avid interest in smart power diplomacy is because of their recent upgrading of their own bilateral defence ties. Read more…