Why pushing for an economic ‘alliance’ with the US to counter Chinese coercion would be a mistake

Leah Millis/AP

James Laurenceson, University of Technology SydneyThe Australian government desperately hopes this week’s AUSMIN meetings between Australian and US officials will see greater practical American support being delivered in the face of ongoing trade strikes by China.

Reports confirm that measures to combat Chinese economic coercion will be discussed at the meetings between Foreign Minister Marise Payne, Defence Minister Peter Dutton and their American counterparts.

This desire is readily understood: China’s US$14.7 trillion (A$20 trillion) economy towers over Australia’s at $US1.3 trillion (A$1.7 trillion). And since May 2020, China has blocked or disrupted around a dozen Australian exports, including beef, wine, barley and coal. Previously, sales of these goods to China had been worth more than A$20 billion per year.

Yet, there is good reason to question whether repurposing the ANZUS security alliance to tackle economic issues — and working ever more closely with Washington on initiatives aimed at Beijing — represents a coherent strategy for Canberra to get what it wants.

In 2017, the leading Australian foreign policy practitioner, Allan Gyngell, wrote that the animating force behind Australia’s foreign policy has long been a “fear of abandonment” by a “great and powerful friend” – first the United Kingdom, and since the ANZUS treaty was signed in 1951, the US.

The US has consistently signalled its support for Australia in its trade dispute with China — at least, rhetorically.

Late last year, Jake Sullivan, the new national security adviser in the Biden administration, declared the US stood “shoulder to shoulder” with Australia.

Then, in March, Kurt Campbell, President Joe Biden’s “Indo-Pacific czar”, assured Australian media the US was “not going to leave Australia alone on the field”. This message was repeated in May by Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Yet, when Trade Minister Dan Tehan went to Washington in July, he received a more tepid message regarding Australia’s stoush with China.

Katherine Tai, the US trade representative, was only prepared to say the US is “closely monitoring the trade situation between Australia and China” and she “welcomed continuing senior-level discussion”.

The US is not always a reliable partner

What has been particularly jarring isn’t just that the Biden administration has stopped at rhetoric, without offering any material support to Canberra. Rather, it has persisted with choices that actively hurt Australia.

One example is a continuation of the tariffs the Trump administration unilaterally imposed on Chinese imports, which were subsequently assessed by the World Trade Organisation as being inconsistent with international rules.

The US then appealed the decision, which effectively ended China’s legal challenge to the WTO. This was because the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations have blocked the appointment of new judges to the WTO’s appeals body as the terms of serving judges expired.

As a result, the body was left completely paralysed in November 2020. Last month, the US rejected a proposal from 121 other WTO members to have it restored.

Lacking the sheer power of the US or China, Australia relies on global adherence to WTO rules to protect its trade interests. But the US actions mean the rules can no longer be enforced.

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Another example is Tai’s insistence in February that China “needs to deliver” on the bilateral trade deal that Washington pressured Beijing into signing in January 2020.

This granted American producers favourable access to the Chinese market compared with their Australian competitors. It also served as another demonstration to China that big countries are able to use their power to coerce others.

Australia still likely to double down on US support

That US support for Australia hasn’t gone beyond rhetoric is in a sense not surprising. To do so would involve a political or economic cost to the US. The bilateral trade deal it struck with China, for example, benefits American producers.

But as Gyngell’s analysis suggests, tepid US support to date is more likely to prompt Australia to double down on its efforts to seek more US help.

Addressing the Australian American Leadership Dialogue in August, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said that in view of China’s economic coercion, he believed “bilateral strategic cooperation must extend to economic matters”.

He proposed a “regular strategic economic dialogue” — an extension of AUSMIN talks that cover defence and foreign affairs – between key senior US and Australian economic and trade officials.

The American response to the proposal was reportedly “non-committal”.

Nonetheless, a new report commissioned by the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney backed Morrison’s call and advocated an alliance response to China’s trade strikes on Australia.

Reasons to be concerned about an economic ‘alliance’

There’s nothing wrong with an economic dialogue with Washington. But there’s two important considerations for Canberra to reflect on.

First, the pain that Beijing has been able to inflict on the Australian economy by disrupting exports has been limited.

A new analysis by the Australia-China Relations Institute looked at 12 goods that were disrupted by China’s economic coercive actions — everything from barley to rock lobster. And it found that for nine of those 12 goods, the cost incurred by Australian exporters has been less than 10% of the total export value.

The analysis also found that in the first half of 2021, the value of Australia’s overall goods exports to China was actually 37% higher than the previous record set in 2019.

What this means is that China’s trade strikes are nowhere close to being an existential crisis. The Australian economy can weather the storm, with or without US support.

Second, what Australia wants most is for China to follow global trade rules and for these rules to be updated and extended to cover more activities, like government subsidies for agriculture and fisheries.

But the ANZUS alliance is ill-equipped to deliver on this. It has no legitimacy in setting or enforcing global trade rules. And the US has a poor record of following the existing WTO rules itself.

Further complicating matters, the US has designated China as a “strategic competitor” since 2017.

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But as Peter Varghese, Australia’s former chief diplomat noted in June,

that does not automatically make it the strategic competitor of Australia.

The more the idea of an “economic alliance” with the US on par with its security alliance is embraced, the greater the danger of Australia getting bogged down with the US in a “forever war” against its largest trading partner — in this case, spilling treasure rather than blood.

Alternatively, the US might cut another bilateral trade deal with China, leaving Australia on the sidelines again.

If the Australian foreign and defence ministers emerge from this week’s AUSMIN meetings empty-handed on the economic front, the public might, in time, consider itself lucky.

James Laurenceson, Director and Professor, Australia-China Relations Institute (ACRI), University of Technology Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

From Five Eyes to Six? Japan’s push to join the West’s intelligence alliance

AAp/AP/Kaname Yoneyama

Craig Mark, Kyoritsu Women’s UniversityAs tensions with China continue to grow, Japan is making moves to join the “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing alliance. This week, Japan’s ambassador to Australia, Shingo Yamagami, told The Sydney Morning Herald he was “optimistic” about his country coming on board.

[I] would like to see this idea become reality in the near future.

This comes as New Zealand voices its concerns over using the Five Eyes process to pressure China.

What is this spy alliance? And what are the benefits and risks to bringing Japan on board?

What is the Five Eyes?

Beginning as an intelligence exchange agreement between the United States and United Kingdom in 1943, it formally became the UKUSA Agreement in 1946. The agreement then extended to Canada in 1948, and Australia and New Zealand in 1956.

This long-running collaboration has been particularly useful for sharing signals intelligence, or intelligence gathered from communications and information systems. The group’s focus has shifted over time, from targeting the USSR during the Cold War, to Islamist terrorism after the September 11 attacks in 2001, to the rising challenge from China today.

Japan’s intelligence infrastructure

There is a significant intelligence tradition in Japan. After the Meiji Restoration of the 19th century, the imperial Japanese army and navy and Ministry of Foreign Affairs developed extensive intelligence networks. These aided the rise of the Japanese empire in its wars against China, Russia and eventually the Western allies in the second world war.

After the war, Japan’s intelligence services were revamped under American supervision. Japan has since been an important base of operations for US intelligence operations in Asia, particularly by military intelligence, the CIA and the National Security Agency.

The Japanese intelligence community now comprises a range of services, including the Ministry of Defense’s Directorate for Signals Intelligence, which provides expertise in regional signals intelligence. Given Japan’s proximity to China, North Korea, and Russia, Japan may well be an attractive addition to the Five Eyes alliance.

There is also a precedence for formal intelligence sharing with the West. As well as its long-running collaboration with the US, an Information Security Agreement was signed between Australia and Japan in 2012. At the end of 2016, the US, Japan and Australia signed a similar trilateral agreement deepening the extent of covert security cooperation.

Japan’s close relationship to the US is seen in Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s visit last week to the US, the first foreign leader to be officially hosted by President Joe Biden. The talks in Washington focused heavily on China.

Previous reluctance to expand the group

While the Five Eyes group has often cooperated with the intelligence services of Japan on an ad hoc basis — as well as those of France, Germany and Israel — there has so far been reluctance among the Five Eyes members to formally broaden the alliance.

The US especially has had doubts in the past about the security and reliability of the Japanese intelligence community. In particular, this is due to concerns over its relative lack of overseas experience.

Suga was the first foreign leader to be hosted formally by President Joe Biden.
AAP/AP

In 2013, the Abe government passed a controversial Designated State Secrets Law to reduce these vulnerabilities and present Japan as a more valuable security partner. The ensuing revamp of the intelligence services, under firmer central direction of a National Security Council, has reformed Japan’s capabilities to some extent.

But further complicating matters, New Zealand has now shown its hesitancy about using Five Eyes to pressure China. This threatens to undermine the unity and stability of the alliance, even raising the prospect of New Zealand leaving Five Eyes altogether.

What about China?

Japan’s relationship with China — its neighbour and main trading partner — could potentially be a stumbling block. This relationship was managed fairly successfully under the Abe government, where the mutual benefits of trade and investment were prioritised.

This has largely continued under Suga, but more hawkish members of the government are starting to push a tougher line against China.

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With the ongoing territorial dispute over the Senkaku Islands, and more assertive demonstrations of force by the People’s Liberation Army, relations between China and Japan have become much frostier. As Japan is on the “frontline” with China, becoming a Five Eyes member has the potential to improve its strategic position via stronger support from its alliance partners.

Leadership change in Japan?

The best prospect for Japan joining Five Eyes probably lies with cabinet minister Taro Kono. He is the minister for administrative reform, responsible for supervising Japan’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout. In his previous tenure as defence minister, Kono was enthusiastically in favour of Japan joining Five Eyes.

The energetic, media-savvy and ambitious Kono is widely favoured to replace Suga as prime minister if he does not survive a vote for leadership of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in September. An election for the lower house of the Diet (Japan’s parliament) also must be held by October.

Security environment could make the decision

A more threatening security environment overall may hasten the push towards a “Six Eyes” anyway.

A cyber attack on the Australian parliament in 2019 was implicitly blamed on China, while the US counterintelligence establishment is still reeling from the consequences of the massive Russian SolarWinds cyber attack and Moscow’s interference in the 2016 and 2020 US presidential elections.

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This week, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police have blamed the People’s Liberation Army for organising hundreds of cyber attacks on Japanese companies, universities and government departments, including Japan’s space agency JAXA. This is certain to harden opinion against China.

If all members agree, especially with encouragement from the US, it would be fairly straightforward for Japan to formally join the Five Eyes. If the regional security environment continues to deteriorate, the declaration of a Six Eyes alliance incorporating Japan would be a clear diplomatic signal of a determination to confront China in intelligence and espionage.

Craig Mark, Professor, Faculty of International Studies, Kyoritsu Women’s University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Yes, the US-Australia alliance is important, but Scott Morrison needs to take a careful approach with Donald Trump

Donald Trump has rolled out the red carpet for Scott Morrison in the US as part of a charm offensive aimed at shoring up the Australia-US alliance.
Mick Tsikas/AAP

Mark Beeson, University of Western Australia

One of the time-honoured tests of the diplomatic skills of any Australian prime minister has been dealing with the United States. We are frequently assured by the hard-headed realists who make and influence strategic policy that this is a relationship no PM can afford to mishandle.

Stuffing up is not an option. To judge by Scott Morrison’s lavish reception by the Trump administration, things really couldn’t be better.

But given our prime minister is dealing with someone who even some respected prominent former public officials from the US think is “seriously, frighteningly, dangerously unstable”, this could well be regarded as a modest triumph. It’s simply not controversial to suggest that Donald Trump is a highly unpredictable, erratic, inexperienced narcissist who has – to put it politely – an implausibly inflated sense of own abilities.

Remembering Australia’s interests while savouring foie gras

Under such circumstances, deciding whether the trip will be judged a success or failure is not a simple task, despite the Murdoch press predictably suggesting that an ever close strategic alliance is the only benchmark that matters.

And why wouldn’t they? After all, Lachlan Murdoch was one of the high profile guests, along with other business luminaries, adding to the theatrical quality of much of the visit.

The State Dinner for Scott Morrison was just the second hosted by the Trump administration.
Erik S. Lesser/EPA

One assumes that behind closed doors many issues of substance were discussed, even though this is a president who famously doesn’t do detail or nuance.

To judge by some of Trump’s public utterances, however, this can’t have been an easy task. The fact that the president casually mentioned that China, our largest trading partner, is a “threat to the world”, or hinting that the use of nuclear weapons remains an option when dealing with the likes of Afghanistan or Iran, might have given even the most enthusiastic alliance supporter pause for thought.

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While some influential Americans may think that destabilising China and undermining President Xi Jinping is not a bad outcome, things are a little more complicated for Australia.

Morrison’s White House visit will confirm many of China’s equally hawkish strategists in their view of Australia as a slavishly predictable lackey of the US.

Indeed, Beijing reminded us of just how important our bilateral relationship with China has become in a recent op-ed in the state mouthpiece, the Global Times. After Arthur Culvahouse, the US ambassador to Canberra, called on Australia to stand up more to China, the Global Times warned:

Morrison would be better off if he kept Australia’s national interests in mind while savouring foie gras at the White House.

When it comes to China, any prime minister would face the same difficult task reconciling Australia’s strategic and economic interests.

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Diluting our economic dependence on China won’t be easy or quick. Beijing can signal its displeasure with Australia in the meantime by holding up imports or even discouraging Chinese students from studying in an “unfriendly” country.

To be fair, Morrison has done his best not to gratuitously upset the Chinese leadership at a time when a rising tide of nationalism in China is defining its foreign policy. Indeed, the PM won rare praise in China for his support of embattled Liberal Gladys Liu.

But actions, as they say, speak louder than words in any language, which is what gives this trip such symbolism.

Rising tensions in the Middle East

Such concerns may not be uppermost in Morrison’s mind as the Americans turn on the charm for one its more reliable allies. As he frequently points out,

Australia is a reliable alliance partner — we pull our weight and we get things done.

That these things include fighting endless wars in the Middle East that have little immediate strategic relevance to Australia is less frequently mentioned.

Given that we may be about to embark on yet another entirely unnecessary, unpredictable adventure that may result in a conflict with Iran, this is not an inconsequential concern.

Morrison has been careful not to make an open-ended commitment to the US-led mission to protect shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, but we know only too well how these sorts of modest contributions to shoring up the alliance can end.

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Does anyone really think the Vietnam War or the invasion of Iraq were really good ideas in retrospect? And yet, Australia’s policymakers thought they were acting unambiguously in the national interest at the time of those conflicts, too, and they had little option other than to support our great and powerful friend.

Not much has changed in that regard, despite the disastrous consequences of these wars.

Being a junior partner in an alliance is tricky at the best of times. These are plainly not the best of times. The Trump administration’s disdain for the very order the US did so much to construct is one of the major reasons why, as even conservative commentators acknowledge.

In such circumstances, sensible Australian policy might involve more moderation and less ingratiation.

Mark Beeson, Professor of International Politics, University of Western Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

As Scott Morrison heads to Washington, the US-Australia alliance is unlikely to change

Wes Mountain/The Conversation, CC BY-ND

David Smith, University of Sydney

Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s official visit to Washington this week carries some prestige. It is just the second “official visit” (including a state dinner) by a foreign leader during the Trump presidency, and the first by an Australian since John Howard in 2006. Despite a rocky start, relations between Australia and the US have been uniquely smooth in the Trump era.

Many traditional allies have learned to endure constant insults from the president. Trump complains bitterly about allies taking advantage of the United States in trade deals and defence alliances. France, Germany, South Korea, Japan, Denmark, Canada, Mexico and the whole of NATO have all been on the receiving end of Trump’s scorn.

In contrast, the leaders of a select group of Middle Eastern allies – Saudi Arabia, Israel, the UAE, and Egypt – have enjoyed extravagant backing from Trump, born of a mutual hostility to Iran and Barack Obama.

Australia seems to be in its own category as a long-standing ally that rarely attracts the attention of the president. In the absence of either tantrums or patronage, business as usual has quietly continued.

Australia’s unique position may be largely because we have a trade deficit with the United States, rather than the other way around. This is an issue of core importance to Trump, and the US gets its fifth-largest trade surplus from Australia at US$7.8 billion.

Australia’s outgoing ambassador, Joe Hockey, has cultivated a genuinely warm personal relationship with Trump that lubricates various bargains. It’s impossible to imagine him suffering the same fate as the UK’s Kim Darroch.

Morrison also understands the usefulness of a close personal relationship with the president and has steadily worked on this. It helps that Trump believes he has some political affinity with him.

But the relationship between the Australian and American governments is much broader than the one between president and prime minister. It is conducted behind the scenes every day by public servants on both sides and reflects decades of cooperation. Earlier this year, pro-Australian forces in the US government successfully defused Trump’s irritation at the volume of Australian aluminium exports to the US. Australia remains the only country with a complete exemption from American steel and aluminium tariffs.

This very stability may limit the scope of what Trump and Morrison can talk about. Most issues are relatively settled. However, the US-China trade war, and Australia’s role in it, will almost certainly be a topic of conversation.

Given the risks to Australia from a trade war, some had hoped Morrison could influence Trump to de-escalate tensions. In June, Morrison warned against the development of a “zero-sum mindset” on trade. He told a London audience that the World Trade Organisation, then under attack from the US, needed support as the US-China trade conflict put prosperity and living standards at risk.

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Back then, there was still hope of an agreement, which now seems more remote than ever. Morrison seems resigned to an enduring conflict between two of our largest trading partners. He has said the world will have to get used to it and that the conflict is all about the need to enforce the rules of global trade on China.

Australia has long shared American concerns that China flouts the rules to the extent that it undermines the whole system. Indeed, Australians have sometimes worried that Trump’s obsession with trade deficits is actually a distraction from this deeper issue.

In February, Hockey warned Trump against making a deal with China that would reduce the deficit while leaving structural issues unaddressed. But none of this means Morrison would accept an invitation from Trump to join the US in the trade war.

Morrison has already committed Australian support to the US effort to guard oil shipments from Iranian seizures in the Strait of Hormuz. This is the kind of invitation Australia rarely refuses. A frigate, surveillance and patrol aircraft and some personnel will go to the Persian Gulf, though it is unclear when.

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Other US allies, some of whom are signatories to the Iran nuclear deal, have declined to make even modest contributions such as these. They see the current crisis, correctly, as Trump’s fault and they fear provoking further conflict with Iran.

Even after Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from the Iran nuclear deal, reimposing sanctions that led to increased hostilities, the Morrison government opted to continue support for the deal, subject to Iranian compliance (which is now evaporating).

Both major parties are framing Australia’s support for the US in terms of our commitment to freedom of navigation and a rules-based international order.

Morrison is likely to reaffirm this commitment in Washington, without getting into discussions about why Trump withdrew from an agreement that his own intelligence agencies said was working. The recent demise of John Bolton as national security adviser will hopefully make it less likely that Australia faces any questions about deeper military involvement in the Gulf.

Morrison is keen to secure Trump’s first visit to Australia, for the President’s Cup golf tournament in December. While he lauds Trump as “a good president for Australia”, Australians are sceptical. A US Studies Centre poll in July found only 19% of Australians want to see Trump re-elected (that includes just 29% of Coalition voters).

In fairness to Trump, polls conducted in 2008 and 2012 found even smaller numbers of Australians wanted John McCain (16%) or Mitt Romney (5%) to win those presidential elections. The Republican Party this century has been well to the right of nearly every other mainstream conservative party in the world, including the Liberal Party.

Trump isn’t the first deeply unpopular president Australia has seen and he won’t be the last. In the 2019 Lowy Institute Poll, 64% of respondents say Australia “should remain close to the United States under President Donald Trump”.

There is no danger of that changing under Morrison.

David Smith, Senior Lecturer in American Politics and Foreign Policy, Academic Director of the US Studies Centre, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Australians shy away from Trump but strongly embrace the alliance: Lowy poll

Donald Trump’s poor popularity has affected the level of trust Australians have in the US, but not their level of faith in the alliance.
Michael Reynolds/EPA

Michelle Grattan, University of Canberra

Fewer Australians are trusting the US to act responsibly in the world, and they have scant regard for Donald Trump – but this is not translating into people losing faith in the American alliance, according to the Lowy Institute’s 2017 poll.

Only 20% have a “a great deal” of trust to act responsibly in the world. This is a big fall from the 40% level in 2011, when the question was last asked.

Overall, 61% trust the US to act responsibly, 22 points lower than 2011. The contrast is stark when attitudes to other countries are compared – 90% trust Britain and 86% trust Germany and Japan. China is trusted by 54%.

The poll found that 60% of Australians say Trump causes them to have an unfavourable opinion of the US, with younger adults and women being especially likely to be unimpressed. Still, this figure is lower than the proportion who said this about George W Bush in 2007.

Despite people’s feelings about Trump, support for the alliance has actually increased six points since 2016 – 77% say it is “very or fairly important” for Australia’s security. Just 29% believed “Australia should distance itself from the United States under President Donald Trump”.

The institute’s executive director, Michael Fullilove, said that while Australians had come to terms with the Trump presidency, the relationship was not unaffected by him. “The president is not popular in Australia. And Australia’s trust in the United States to act responsibly has declined”.

The survey of 1200 people was conducted in March. The release of the results comes a week after Malcolm Turnbull’s parody of Trump at the federal press gallery’s Midwinter Ball. So far there has been no response from Trump.

The poll found considerable suspicion of China, mixed with strong pragmatism.

Some 46% believe it is likely China “will become a military threat to Australia in the next 20 years”. But 79% see China as more of an economic partner than a military threat.

Only one-third (34%) would favour using Australian military forces “if China initiated a military conflict with one of its neighbours over disputed islands or territories”. But 68% favour Australia conducting “maritime operations designed to ensure freedom of navigation in the region”.

Nearly eight in ten people (79%) are dissatisfied with the direction of the world, but despite the international rise in protectionist and nationalist sentiments, 78% believe globalisation is “mostly good” for Australia.

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The tag is cut: how will the Trump-Turnbull spat damage the alliance?

Alan Tidwell, Georgetown University

When former prime minister Paul Keating said last year it was time to “cut the tag” and loosen the bonds of the Australia’s alliance with the US, who would have thought the man wielding the knife would be Donald Trump?

The public disagreement between the Trump White House and the Turnbull government over the deal to send asylum seekers languishing on Manus Island and Nauru to the US is unprecedented. At no previous time in the history of the Australia-US alliance have things seemed so dire – and got there so quickly.

Past tensions kept quiet

Australian and American leaders over the years have, from time to time, disagreed or said things to cause embarrassment. But for the most part, such disagreements have been kept out of the limelight.

John Howard and Bill Clinton did not like one another. Their discomfort did not, however, seriously affect the alliance. But sometimes discomfort breaks into something stronger.

Blanche D’Alpuget, Bob Hawke’s then-biographer (and later his wife), recounts that Australia’s former foreign minister, Bill Hayden, and US Secretary of State George Shultz loathed one another. Hayden referred to Shultz as “the German pork butcher”, while Shultz called Hayden “stupid” to his face.

But, unlike the current saga, the Hayden-Shultz spat did not become public until after D’Alpuget published her Hawke biography.

In 2008, the content of another phone conversation between Australian and US leaders became pubic. A brief row broke out when reports emerged of a leaked conversation between Kevin Rudd and George Bush.

As the 2008 financial crisis erupted, Rudd had suggested using the G20 as a way of handling things to Bush in a phone conversation. Bush allegedly replied:

What’s the G20?

The White House angrily rejected the public version of events.

Time to think differently

Members of the US Congress have made a rare intervention in the latest spat in an attempt to counter Trump’s amateurish handling of the issue. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said:

Australia is a very important and central ally and it’s going to continue to be.

Republican senator Lindsey Graham admonished Trump, suggesting the president “sleep more and tweet less”. Representative Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee said:

Before the president shows such disrespect again, he should consider this: there is only one nation that has stood with us in every war of the last century, from the fields of France and Belgium to the mountains of Afghanistan – Australia.

Trump has handled this situation very badly. In a very short space of time he has undone decades of work in building trans-Pacific security ties between Australia and the US. Other American allies – Japan and South Korea in particular – must look on, aghast at what has transpired.

But the Australia-US alliance was already under pressure before the phone call between Trump and Malcolm Turnbull went awry. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a vital element in the Obama pivot to Asia, was headed for the dustbin even before the US election. Within hours of being sworn in, Trump cancelled US involvement in the trade deal.

More ominously, other US security partnerships in the region exhibit severe strain. In an eerie and intemperate foreshadowing of Trump’s outburst, Philippine President Duterte in 2016 called Barack Obama a “son of a whore” and then denounced his country’s security alliance with the US and embraced the Chinese.

While many aspects of the US-Philippine relationship are still in place, it is nonetheless showing signs of strain.

The Australia-US relationship has suffered numerous knocks over the past year. The greatest threat to it has not come from China, the Philippines or Australia, but from the US. Trump’s misguided handling of the refugee issue and his withdrawal from the TPP has combined with external events to place real pressure on the alliance.

Trump has cut the tag. Now Australia must think differently about its relationship with the US.

Alan Tidwell, Director, Center for Australian, New Zealand and Pacific Studies, Georgetown University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Islamic Extremists Held for Church Blast in Bangladesh

Police believe militants from banned groups responsible for 2001 bombing that killed 10.

LOS ANGELES, December 11 (CDN) — Police in Bangladesh said they believe at least two Islamic extremists are responsible for a bomb blast in a Catholic church building that killed 10 young Christians and maimed dozens of others in 2001.

After a district court remanded the two extremists of the banned Harkat-ul-Jihad Al-Islami (HuJi) group, including its chief leader, to police for seven days on Dec. 7, Police Inspector Sheikh Mohammad Akhteruzzaman of the Criminal Investigation Department told Compass that they believe the militants are responsible for the long-unresolved case.

“We took Mufti Abdul Hannan and Arif Hassan Sumon on remand for interrogation for three days in the middle of November, and we found their involvement in the bombing inside the church,” Akhteruzzaman said. “We took them again on remand on Dec. 7 for seven days to verify their previous information found after interrogation. If the previous information matches this time’s interrogation, then we can be sure that they were involved in the bombing inside the church.”

A total of 14 Islamic extremists are suspected in the bombing, including three from the banned militant group Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh and 11 from the HuJi.

The blast took place as about 70 Christians attended Sunday mass on June 3, 2001 in Baniarchar village in Gopalganj district, some 100 kilometers (62 miles) south of the capital, Dhaka.

Initial police reports suggested that the blast might have been the result of a dispute between two Christian groups in the area.

“The bomb blast did not happen because of any internal feud of church members that was previously suspected,” Akhteruzzaman said. “The magnitude of the blast indicates different motives. Apparently, it seems that they found Christians as their enemy for whatever they were doing against Islam. But the exact motive will come out soon.”

The late archbishop of the Roman Catholic Church in Bangladesh, Michael Rosario, had said after the blast that there was no report of any communal tension in that area.

The initial investigation faltered under the previous Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)-led Islamic alliance in power from 2001 to 2006 but was revived after a landslide victory of the Awami League-led Grand Alliance government in December 2008. The chief priest of Baniarchar Catholic Church, the Rev. Jacob Gobbi, had urged the new administration to revisit the case.

The left-leaning Awami League-led government does not include Islamic fundamentalist parties such as Jamaat-e-Islami. Prior to the election, the country was ruled for two years by an army-backed, caretaker government that imposed a countrywide state of emergency.

Christians account for less than 1 percent of Bangladesh’s 164.4 million people, according to Operation World, but Baniarchar has a large number of Christian residents. Muslims make up nearly 90 percent of Bangladesh’s population, with Hinduism the second largest religious affiliation at 9.2 percent of the people.

The Bangladesh government banned HuJi and its activities in Bangladesh in 2005. An international Islamic militant group, HuJi’s Bangladesh chapter had been involved in carrying out terrorist activities in Bangladesh for more than five years.

It was responsible for several major bomb attacks, as well as assassination attempts in 2004 on leading intellectuals and on then-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed, who was ushered back into office in December 2008. An intelligence report in October 2003 had strongly recommended that HuJi be banned.

The Bangladesh chapter of HuJi was established in 1992 with an aim toward establishing Islamic rule in the country.

Report from Compass Direct News

Orissa, India Christians Still Face Boycott, Forced Conversion

Hindu nationalists continue to oppress Christians in Kandhamal district, report says.

NEW DELHI, November 11 (CDN) — More than two years after losing relatives and property in anti-Christian violence, there is no sense of relief among survivors in India’s Orissa state, as many are still ostracized and pressured to “return” to Hinduism, according to a private investigation.

“Despite the state administration’s claim of normalcy,” the preliminary report of a fact-finding team states, “a state of lawlessness and utter fear and sense of insecurity” prevails among Christians of Kandhamal district, which saw a major anti-Christian bloodbath in 2008.

The team, consisting of local attorney Nicholas Barla and another identified only as Brother Marcus, along with rights activists Jugal Kishore Ranjit and Ajay Kumar Singh, visited four villages in three blocks of Kandhamal on Nov. 5.

In Bodimunda village in Tikabali, the team met a pastor who said he has been closely watched since Hindu extremists forced him to become a Hindu. The pastor, whose name the report withheld for security reasons, said he had to convert to Hinduism in 2008 “to save his old mother, who could not have escaped the violence as she was not in a position to walk.”

He is still closely watched in an effort to prevent him from returning to Christianity. While the attorneys and activists were still at the pastor’s house, a man who identified himself as from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS, India’s most influential Hindu nationalist conglomerate) came to inquire about his visitors. The pastor felt compelled to tell them that they were “bank officials.”

In the same village, Hindu nationalists have also imposed a de facto ban on any private or public vehicle to ferry Christians or their belongings, said the report.

The team met the family of a paralyzed Christian, Bamadev Pradhan, whom auto-rickshaw drivers refused to take to a hospital when he recently ran a high fever. Eventually a Christian driver took him to the only hospital in Tikabali, around eight kilometers (nearly five miles) from his village of Bodimunda, but as the Christian was driving back, some local men confiscated his vehicle.

With the help of the auto-rickshaw union, the driver (unnamed in the report) got the vehicle released after paying a fine of 1,051 (US$24) rupees and promising that he would not transport any Christians in the future.

Another Christian said area Hindus extremists prohibited Christians from procuring basic necessities.

“We are not allowed to bring housing materials or food provisions or medicines, and nor are we allowed to buy anything from local shops,” he said. “We do not have any shop of our own. Here, we are struggling to live as human beings.”

The team also met a Hindu who had to pay 5,000 rupees (US$112) to get his tractor returned to him, as he had transported housing material for the construction of the house of a Christian.

In the house of a Christian in Keredi village in Phulbani Block, the team found a picture of a Hindu god. The resident, who was not identified in the report, explained that he had to display it in order to protect his family from harm.

The team found pictures of Hindu gods also in the house of a Christian in Gandapadar village in the Minia area, Phiringia Block. A woman in the house told the team that local Hindu nationalists had given her pictures of Hindu gods for worship.

“We have kept them, as they often come to check whether we have reconverted to Christianity,” she said.

Almost all Christians the team met complained that the local administration had done little to protect them and suspected that officials colluded with area Hindu nationalists.

Released on Nov. 8, the report asserts that Christians have been barred from taking water from a government well in Dakanaju village, under G. Udayagiri police jurisdiction in Tikabali Block. The village head, Sachindra Pradhan, has promised to take action “at the earliest,” it added.

Violence in Kandhamal and some other districts of Orissa state followed the assassination of Hindu nationalist leader Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati on Aug. 23, 2008. The rampage killed over 100 people and burned 4,640 houses, 252 churches and 13 educational institutions, according to estimates by human rights groups.

The spate of attacks began a day after Saraswati’s killing when Hindu nationalist groups blamed Christians for his murder, although Maoists (extreme Marxists) active in the district claimed responsibility for it.

John Dayal, a Christian activist in Delhi, told Compass that “the apparatus of 2008 remains undisturbed.” The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was part of the ruling state alliance with the regional Biju Janata Dal (BJD) party at the time of the violence. Although the BJD broke up with the BJP in 2009, blaming it for the violence, the former cannot be excused, said Dayal.

“While the BJP is mainly to be blamed, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik is not entirely innocent,” Dayal said. “Not  just that he allowed the BJP and RSS cadres to run amok when they were part of his government, turning a blind eye to their  very visible anti-Christian activities, but he was his own home [interior] minister and cannot really shirk command responsibility for the carnage together with his BJP ministerial colleagues and senior officers.”

Kandhamal district Magistrate Krishan Kumar, who was on a tour at press time, could not be contacted for comment despite repeated attempts.

Of the 648,201 people in Kandhamal district, 117,950 are Christian, mostly Dalit (formerly “untouchables” in the caste hierarchy in Hindu societies), according to the 2001 Census. Hindus, mainly tribal people and numbering 527,757, form the majority.

Report from Compass Direct News

Australian Election Deadlock Continues But the End Seems Nigh

The political deadlock in Australia is perhaps coming to an end. The Australian Labor Party (ALP) has now formed an alliance of sorts with both the Greens and the Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie that currently gives Labor 74 seats (within the alliance) in the parliament. Labor now needs two more seats to form a minority government, seats which must come from the three independents who are yet to decide behind whom they throw their support. The Coalition opposition currently has 73 seats, including the independent National Party member in Western Australia. Obviously, either the ALP or the Coalition can yet form a government with the support of the three independents yet to decide just who they will support. However, the ALP seems to have the edge at this stage, with recent opinion polls suggesting that the majority of Australians would like to see the independents back the ALP. To counter this, it must be said that the three independents were elected from electorates that favor the Coalition
by a long way.

The following videos relate to the current situation in Australian politics:

 

Pakistani Taliban Kills Three Foreign Christian Aid Workers

Kidnapped relief workers had come to provide aid to victims of massive flooding.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, August 27 (CDN) — Authorities on Wednesday (Aug. 25) recovered the bodies of three Christian relief workers who had been kidnapped and killed by members of the Pakistani Taliban in the flood-ravaged country, area officials said.

Swat District Coordination Officer Atif-ur-Rehman told Compass that the Pakistan Army recovered the bodies of the three foreign flood-relief workers at about 7 a.m. on Wednesday. An official at the international humanitarian organization that employed the workers withheld their names and requested that the agency remain unnamed for security reasons. Military sources who withheld news of the deaths from electronic and print media to avoid panicking other relief workers granted permission to Compass to publish it in limited form.

“The foreign aid workers have been working in Mingora and the surrounding areas,” Rehman said. “On Aug. 23 they were returning to their base at around 5:35 p.m. when a group of Taliban attacked their vehicle. They injured around five-six people and kidnapped three foreign humanitarian workers.”

Pakistan has been hit by its worst flooding in decades, with the United Nations now estimating more than 21.8 million people have been affected. Foreign aid workers are involved in relief activities across the country, including Swat district in Khyber-Paktunkhwa Province in northern Pakistan. At least 8 million people require emergency relief, with hundreds of thousands reportedly isolated from aid supplies.

An army Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) source said rangers have been deployed in Swat and other potential target areas to help provide security for relief workers.

“The Taliban had warned about attacks on foreigner aid workers and Christian organizations,” the ISPR source said. “All the international humanitarian organizations have been notified, and their security has also been increased.”

Rehman noted that the Taliban also has been trying to bring relief to flood victims.

“The Taliban are also trying to support the flood victims, and many other banned organizations have set up camps in southern Punjab to support the victims,” he said. “They intend to sympathize with the affected and gain their support.”

The president of advocacy organization Life for All, Rizwan Paul, said the bodies of the three relief workers had been sent to Islamabad under the supervision of the Pakistan Army.

“We strongly condemn the killing of the three humanitarian workers,” Paul said. “These aid workers came to support us, and we are thankful to the humanitarian organizations that came to help us in a time of need.”

Pointing to alleged discrimination against minorities in distribution of humanitarian aid, Paul added that Christians in severely flood-damaged areas in Punjab Province have been neglected. The majority of the effected Christians in Punjab are in Narowal, Shakargarh, Muzzafargarh, Rahim Yar Khan and Layyah, he said.

“The Christians living around Maralla, Narowal, and Shakargarh were shifted to the U.N.- administered camps, but they are facing problems in the camps,” he said. “There are reports that the Christians are not given tents, clean water and food. In most of the camps the Christians have totally been ignored.”

Life for All complained to U.N. agencies and the government of Pakistan regarding the discrimination, but no one has responded yet, he said.

“There have been reports from Muzzaffargarh and Layyah that the Christians are living on the damaged roads in temporary tents, as they were not allowed in the government camps,” he said.

In Sindh Province Thatta has been flooded, and around 300 Christian families who tried to move from there to Punjab were forbidden from doing so, a source said. Meteorologists are predicting more rains in coming days, with the already catastrophic flooding expected to get worse.

Kashif Mazhar, vice president of Life for All, said that in the northern province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa conditions for Christians are better as there are Christian camps established, and Garrison Church in Risalpur is also providing aid to victims.

“It is discouraging to see that the Christian organizations are wholeheartedly supporting the victims regardless of the religion or race, but in most of the areas the Christians are totally ignored and not even allowed to stay,” Mazhar said.

Foreign targets are rarely attacked directly in Pakistan, despite chronic insecurity in the nuclear-armed state, which is a key ally in the U.S.-led war on Al Qaeda and the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan. On March 10, however, suspected Islamic militants armed with guns and grenades stormed the offices of a Christian relief and development organization in northwest Pakistan, killing six aid workers and wounding seven others.

The gunmen besieged the offices of international humanitarian organization World Vision near Oghi, in Mansehra district, of the North West Frontier Province. Suicide and bomb attacks across Pakistan have killed more than 3,000 people since 2007. Blame has fallen on Taliban and Al Qaeda-linked militants bitterly opposed to the alliance with the United States.

The U.N. decided last year to relocate a limited number of its international staff from Pakistan because of security concerns. Its World Food Program office in Islamabad was attacked in October last year, with five aid workers killed in a suicide bombing.

Then on Feb. 3, a bomb attack in the NWFP district of Lower Dir killed three U.S. soldiers and five other people at the opening of a school just rebuilt with Western funding after an Islamist attack.

Report from Compass Direct News