Author: Justin Li, ICE
Australia has a new foreign minister, Bob Carr, a former premier of New South Wales and a senior figure in Australian Labor politics, after the resignation of former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd from the post in his spectacularly unsuccessful bid to challenge the current prime minister, Julia Gillard.
In an unusual route to the post, Mr Carr is coming from outside federal Australian Parliament to take up a Senate seat by appointment after the resignation of one of Gillard’s supporters, as is the convention for filling mid-term vacancies in the Australian Senate. Read more…
Author: Artyom Lukin, Far Eastern Federal University
Russia’s foreign ambitions have been directed almost entirely westward throughout its long history.
And while relations with the West continue to dominate Moscow’s foreign policy, recent developments suggest that Russian policy makers are now reassessing the importance of the Asia Pacific region. Read more…
Author: Tan See Seng, RSIS
The Sixth East Asia Summit (EAS) will convene on 19 November in Bali, with the US and Russia as full members.
Yet doubts remain over the Summit’s prospects as a high-impact forum, and its likely contributions to East Asia’s peace and prosperity. Read more…
Author: Peter Drysdale, ANU
Whatever is done to re-position Asian regional architecture, it needs to take account of Asia’s new role in global economic governance.
It needs to attend to the implications of Asia’s rise for political and security affairs. Read more…
Author: Henry Makeham, ACYD
There is still uncertainty surrounding China’s future economic, political and strategic intentions in the Asia Pacific.
Recognising a fundamental paradigm shift in the region, then-Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced on 4 June 2008 his intention ‘to begin the conversation about where we need to go’ to strengthen regional cooperation in the Asia Pacific via the idea of an Asia Pacific Community (APC). Read more…
Author: Micah Burch, University of Sydney
Much was made (in tax treaty circles, at least) three years ago when the OECD included in its model tax treaty a provision requiring arbitration.
The controversial provision (Article 25(5) of the OECD Model Tax Convention on Income and on Capital (2003)) requires states to arbitrate tax disputes arising under the treaty if they remain unresolved after two years of negotiation between the competent authorities. While arbitration is a generally accepted facet of international commercial dispute resolution worldwide, dispute resolution under bilateral tax treaties is relatively undeveloped. Read more…
Author: Takashi Terada, Waseda University
ASEAN’s function is often described as being limited to a ‘talk shop’ that merely provides venues where ministers and leaders from larger states join together to exchange views on regional security and economic issues.
So long as the so-called ‘ASEAN Way’ — which informally stipulates non-intervention, non-binding and consensus-based decision-making approaches to regional cooperation — is maintained, ASEAN’s major role will not go beyond hosting the ‘talk shop’. Yet the talk shop’s value could be enhanced if delegates discussed the hard issues, regardless of whether any binding obligations ensued. Read more…
Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, EAF
There is a palpable nervousness in the security communities in countries around the region about China’s rise and what it means strategically.
To those who have lived through the early phases of the Cold War, the mood is frankly a mite scary, and without substantial rational base. Read more…
Author: Peter Drysdale
The horror and devastation of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan continue to stun people all over the world — nowhere more so than in Japan itself, of course, where continuing anxiety is mixed with the numbness that such tragedies suffuse over the human psychology.
This is an awful period for the nation, picking itself up after being partially flattened. It is a period of helpless acceptance of loss. It is a period of struggling to find reasons where there are none. Read more…
Author: Andrew MacIntyre, ANU
Australia continues to enjoy markedly better economic performance than most other wealthy countries. But problems are accumulating.
The 2010 federal election yielded a hamstrung, minority government. Neither of the major parties shows any real appetite for large-scale policy reform. Read more…
Author: Deepak Nair
Australia’s recent proposal for an Asia-Pacific Community (APC) is fostering some positive debate. By generating some ‘big picture’ thinking about Asia’s future, it also helps to reaffirm the importance of international institutions in solving security dilemmas.
The proposal also stresses to ASEAN elites that their current centrality to the process of ‘architecture-building’ is not beyond challenge. In many ways, the APC concept embodies regional cooperation with a new urgency. Read more…
Author: Anthony Milner, ANU and University of Melbourne
Speaking at the Asialink/Asia Society National Forum last week, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd welcomed ASEAN’s desire to encourage deeper United States and Russian engagement in the evolving regional architecture. Mr. Rudd also noted the suggestion that these states meet with the current members of the East Asia Summit (ASEAN, China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand). ‘This is what we are seeking’, he said, ‘engagement in a cooperative institution of all of the key players in the region.’
Does this suggest that Australia will now be giving less attention to advocating their Asia-Pacific vision for the region, and will work more closely with East Asian or Asian regionalism? The distinction matters. Read more…
Author: Peter Drysdale
This week Kyung-tae Lee urges that regional leaders stop the talking and get on with establishing an East Asian Community (EAC). While doing so might be a little more complicated than it sounds, it does appear that the momentum is gathering to take the next steps in the evolution of Asian and Pacific regional architecture.
On Wednesday in Tokyo at a high-powered Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs sponsored meeting, Japanese Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama, spoke of his determination to re-position Japanese policy towards open and strategic engagement in building an EAC. Read more…
Author: Kyung-Tae Lee, KITA
In 2000, the East Asian Vision Group (EAVG) recommended to both the leaders of the 10 ASEAN member states, and the leaders of China, Japan, and South Korea that an East Asian Community (EAC) be established. Since then, intra-regional trade and investment has expanded rapidly. But this deeper economic integration, which is a key component for building an East Asian Community, has been driven not by the leaders of the countries concerned, but rather by market players.
Where does this leave the vision of an EAC, and what have regional leaders done about it? Put bluntly, the actions of East Asian leaders have been disappointing.
Read more…
Author: Claude Barfield, AEI
Recently, my American Enterprise Institute colleague Philip Levy and I published an International Economic Outlook, entitled ‘Tales of the South Pacific: President Obama and the Transpacific Partnership.’ In this analysis, we made the case for the Obama administration to move with dispatch in asserting U.S. leadership in the construction of a new Asian economic architecture that would be broad and inclusive. And we argued that the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership (TPP) agreement was an ideal vehicle through which to achieve this goal.
Since then, bolder moves by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) have increased the urgency for the Obama administration to advance a strategic vision of the U.S. role in a nascent Asian economic architecture. Read more…
