‘America First’ is no more, but can president-elect Biden fix the US reputation abroad?

Jacquelyn Martin/AP

Gorana Grgic, University of Sydney

Throughout the four years of Donald Trump’s presidency, Joe Biden spent significant time reassuring American allies around the world that Trump’s America is not “who we are” and pledging “we’ll be back”.

Now that he’s the president-elect, those who were most worried about another four years of “America First” foreign policy are no doubt breathing a sigh of relief.

Much has been written about a Biden presidency being focused on restoration, or as David Graham of The Atlantic put it,

returning the United States to its rightful place before (as he sees it) the current president came onto the scene and trashed the joint.

Then-Vice President Biden meeting Chinese leader Xi Jinping in 2013.
LINTAO ZHANG / POOL /EPA

The old world order doesn’t exist anymore

This idea has revolved around restoring the post-1945 liberal international order – a term subject to a lot of academic contention. The US played a central role in creating and leading the order around key institutions such as the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organisation, North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the like.

However, there is now no shortage of evidence that many of these institutions have come under extreme strain in recent years and have been unable respond to the challenges of the 21st century geopolitics.

For one, the US no longer wields the relative economic power or influence it had in the middle of last century. There are also increasingly vocal critics in the US — led by Trump — who question America’s foreign commitments.

Trump questioned the US commitment to NATO and expressed affinity for Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
Hau Dinh/AP

Moreover, nations themselves are no longer the only important actors in the international system. Terror groups like the Islamic State now have the ability to threaten global security, while corporations like Alphabet, Amazon, Apple and Facebook have such economic power, their combined revenue would qualify them for the G20.

Equally, the so-called liberal international order was built on the idea that a growing number of democracies would be willing to work within institutions like the UN, IMF and WTO and act in ways that would make everyone in the system better off.

Clearly, that has not been the case for the past 15 years as democracies around the world slowly eroded, from European Union states like Hungary and Poland to Brazil to the US.

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Biden wins – experts on what it means for race relations, US foreign policy and the Supreme Court

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Biden can’t fix everything at once

Trump’s 2016 election seemed to have been the final nail in the coffin for the idea of a truly liberal international order with the US as a benevolent leader.

From his first days in office, Trump was on a mission to roll back US commitments to myriad organisations, deals and relationships around the world. Most significantly, this included questioning commitments to its closest allies in Europe, Asia and elsewhere that had been unwavering for generations.

Trump damaged some of America’s strongest alliances in Europe.
Francisco Seco/AP

Biden takes over at a precarious time. The world is more unstable than it has been in decades and the US image has been severely damaged by the actions and rhetoric of his predecessor.

There is no naivety on Biden’s part that he will be able to fix everything that was broken along the way. After all, many of these challenges predated Trump and are merely a reflection of a changing world.

Furthermore, Biden will have many pressing domestic issues that will demand his immediate attention — first and foremost addressing the greatest public health and economic crisis in a century.

We are also likely to see growing pressure for Biden to pursue a more progressive climate policy and a better-managed industrial policy, though he’ll be greatly constrained in what he can do if the Republicans maintain control of the Senate.

All of this will limit both his bandwidth and appetite for an overly ambitious foreign policy agenda.

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What would a Biden presidency mean for Australia?

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Rejoining the world, with managed expectations

Given this, Biden’s presidency should be approached with managed expectations. Unlike President Barack Obama, he did not campaign on lofty promises of change. He ran on being the opposite of Trump and, as such, being better able to understand the intricacies of foreign policy.

This will mean a swift return to multilateralism and rejoining the deals and organisations Trump abandoned, from the Paris climate agreement and Iran nuclear deal to the the World Trade Organisation and World Health Organisation.

Given these moves by Trump required no congressional input, Biden will be able to return to Obama-era policies in a relatively straightforward fashion through executive action.

However, this didn’t produce the expected “blue wave” and national repudiation of Trumpism, so it remains to be seen whether friends and foes alike can be convinced the past four years were an aberration. In essence, how good can America’s word be moving forward?

Biden’s campaign put a great emphasis on strengthening America’s existing alliances and forging new ones to maintain what he frequently refers to as “a free world”.

This will involve a substantial change from the way Trump managed US alliances, nurturing relationships with authoritarian leaders in the Middle East, for example, and some of the least liberal eastern European states.

This shift will benefit America’s traditional allies in western Europe the most. However, these countries are more determined than ever to stop depending on the whims of the Electoral College to decide their security. Instead, they are strengthening their own defence capabilities.

‘America First’ finished second

Lastly, on the greatest geopolitical question of our time, there is no doubt the US will continue its competition with China in the coming years, no matter who is president.

Yet, there are still plenty of questions around how Biden will handle this relationship. His campaign adopted a much more hawkish stance toward China compared to the Obama administration, which reflects a growing bipartisan consensus the US must get tougher with Beijing.

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Read more:
Trump took a sledgehammer to US-China relations. This won’t be an easy fix, even if Biden wins

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At the same time, there is significant debate about how far his administration should push Beijing on issues ranging from technological competition to human rights, particularly given Biden has said the US needs to find a way to cooperate with China on other pressing issues, such as climate change, global health and arms control.

America might be coming back under Biden, but this is not the same world or the same country it once was. So, while the restoration of the US will be challenging, one thing is certain: “America First” finished second.

Gorana Grgic, Lecturer in US Politics and Foreign Policy, US Studies Centre, University of Sydney

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

Biden wins – experts on what it means for race relations, US foreign policy and the Supreme Court

President-elect Biden promises a new White House agenda and style.
AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

Brian J Purnell, Bowdoin College; Morgan Marietta, University of Massachusetts Lowell, and Neta C. Crawford, Boston University

The American public has had its say and for the first time in a generation denied a sitting president a second term.

President Donald Trump’s tenure lasted just four years, but in that time he dragged policy on an array of key issues in a dramatic new direction.

Joe Biden’s victory, confirmed by the Associated Press late morning on Nov. 7, presents an opportunity to reset the White House agenda and put it on a different course.

Three scholars discuss what a Biden presidency may have in store in three key areas: race, the Supreme Court and foreign policy.

Racism, policing and Black Lives Matter protests

Brian Purnell, Bowdoin College

The next four years under a Biden administration will likely see improvements in racial justice. But to many, it will be a low bar to clear: President Donald Trump downplayed racist violence, egged on right-wing extremists and described Black Lives Matter as a “symbol of hate” during his four-year tenure.

Indeed, according to polls, most Americans agree that race relations have deteriorated under Trump.

Still, Biden is in some ways an unlikely president to advance a progressive racial agenda. In the 1970s, he opposed busing plans and stymied school desegregation efforts in Delaware, his home state. And in the mid-1990s he championed a federal crime bill that made incarceration rates for Black people worse. He bungled the hearings that brought Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court by allowing Republican senators to dismiss Anita Hill’s damning testimony of Thomas’ sexual harassment and by failing to allow other Black women to testify.

But that was then.

During the 2020 campaign, President-elect Biden consistently spoke about problems stemming from systemic racism. Many voters will be hoping that his actions over the next four years must match his campaign words.

One area that the Biden administration will surely address is policing and racial justice. The Justice Department can bring accountability to police reform by returning to practices the Obama administration put in place to monitor and reform police departments, such as the use of consent degrees. More difficult reforms require redressing how mass incarceration caused widespread voter disenfranchisement in Black American and Latino communities.

“My administration will incentivize states to automatically restore voting rights for individuals convicted of felonies once they have served their sentences,” Biden told The Washington Post.

The killing of George Floyd earlier this year reinvigorated talk of addressing systemic racial discrimination through fundamental changes in how police departments hold officers accountable for misconduct and excessive force. It is unclear how far President-elect Biden will walk down this road. But evoking the words of the late civil rights icon and Congressman John Lewis, he at least suggested at the Democratic National Convention that America was ready to do the hard work of “rooting out systemic racism.”

After George Floyd’s death, how far will Biden go to address systemic racism?
Jeenah Moon/Getty Images

Biden can help address how Americans think about and deal with unexamined racial biases through reversing the previous administration’s executive order banning anti-racism training and workshops. In so doing, Biden can build on psychological research on bias to make American workplaces, schools and government agencies equitable, just places.

Making progress fighting systemic racism will be a slow, uphill battle. A more immediate benefit to communities of color could come through Biden’s COVID-19 pandemic response – the Trump administration’s failure to stanch the spread of the coronavirus has led to deaths and economic consequences that have disproportionately fallen on racial and ethnic minorities.

On matters of race relations in the U.S., most Americans would agree that the era of Trump saw the picture worsen. The good news for Biden as president is there is nowhere to go but up.

The Supreme Court

Morgan Marietta, University of Massachusetts Lowell

Despite the fact that American voters have given Democrats control of the presidency, the conservative Supreme Court will continue to rule on the nature and extent of constitutional rights.

These liberties are considered by the court to be “beyond the reach of majorities,” meaning they are intended to be immune from the changing beliefs of the electorate.

However, appointees of Democrats and Republicans tend to have very different views on which rights the Constitution protects and which are left to majority rule.

The dominant judicial philosophy of the conservative majority – originalism – sees rights as powerful but limited. The protection of rights recognized explicitly by the Constitution, such as the freedoms of religion, speech and press and the freedom to bear arms, will likely grow stronger over the next four years. But the protection of expansive rights that the court has found in the phrase “due process of law” in the 14th Amendment, including privacy or reproductive rights, may well contract.

The Biden administration will probably not agree with the court’s future rulings on voting rights, gay rights, religious rights or the rights of noncitizens. Ditto for any rulings on abortion, guns, the death penalty and immigration. But there is little President-elect Biden can do to control the independent judiciary.

Unhappy with what a strong conservative majority on the court may do – including possibly overturning the Affordable Care Act – many Democrats have advocated radical approaches to altering what the court looks like and how it operates, though Biden himself has not stated a clear position.

How will President-elect Biden respond to the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court?
Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

Suggested options include term limits, adding a retirement age, stripping the jurisdiction of the court for specific federal legislation, or increasing the size of the court. This strategy is known historically as court packing.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg opposed expanding the court, telling NPR in 2019 that “if anything would make the court look partisan, it would be … one side saying, ‘When we’re in power, we’re going to enlarge the number of judges, so we would have more people who would vote the way we want them to.’”

The Constitution does not establish the number of justices on the court, instead leaving that to Congress. The number has been set at nine since the 1800s, but Congress could pass a law expanding the number of justices to 11 or 13, creating two or four new seats.

However, this requires agreement by both houses of Congress.

The GOP seems likely to maintain a narrow control of the Senate. A 50/50 split is possible, but that won’t be clear until January when Georgia holds two runoff elections. Any of the proposed reforms of the court will be difficult, if not impossible, to pass under a divided Congress.

This leaves the Biden administration hoping for retirements that would gradually shift the ideological balance of the court.

One of the most likely may be Justice Clarence Thomas, who is 72 and the longest-serving member of the current court. Samuel Alito is 70 and Chief Justice John Roberts is 65. In other professions, that may sound like people soon to retire, but at the Supreme Court that is less likely. With the other three conservative justices in their 40s or 50s, the Biden administration may be fully at odds with the court for some time to come.

Foreign policy and defense

Neta Crawford, Boston University

President-elect Biden has signaled he will do three things to reset the U.S.‘s foreign policy.

First, Biden will change the tone of U.S. foreign relations. The Democratic Party platform called its section on military foreign policy “renewing American leadership” and emphasized diplomacy as a “tool of first resort.”

Biden seems to sincerely believe in diplomacy and is intent on repairing relations with U.S. allies that have been damaged over the last four years. Conversely, while Trump was, some say, too friendly with Russian President Vladimir Putin, calling him a “terrific person,” Biden will likely take a harder line with Russia, at least rhetorically.

This change in tone will also likely include rejoining some of the treaties and international agreements that the United States abandoned under the Trump administration. The most important of these include the Paris Climate Agreement, which the U.S. officially withdrew from on Nov. 4, and restoring funding to the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

If the U.S. is to extend the New START nuclear weapons treaty, the arms control deal with Russia due to expire in February, the incoming Biden administration would likely have to work with the outgoing administration on an extension. Biden has also signaled a willingness to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal jettisoned by Trump, if and when the Iranians return to the limits on nuclear infrastructure imposed by the agreement.

Second, in contrast to the large increases in military spending under Trump, President-elect Biden may make modest cuts in the U.S. military budget. Although he has said that cuts are not “inevitable” under his presidency, Biden has hinted at a smaller military presence overseas and is likely to change some priorities at the Pentagon by, for instance, emphasizing high-tech weapons. If the Senate – which must ratify any treaties – flips to Democrats’ control, the Biden administration may take more ambitious steps in nuclear arms control by pursuing deeper cuts with Russia and ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Could Biden be the president who finally pulls all US troops out of Afghanistan?
Wakil Kohsar/AFP via Getty Images

Third, the Biden administration will likely continue some Bush, Obama and Trump foreign policy priorities. Specifically, while a Biden administration will seek to end the war in Afghanistan, the administration will keep a focus on defeating the Islamic State and al-Qaida. Biden has said that he would reduce the current 5,200 U.S. forces in Afghanistan to 1,500-2,000 troops operating in the region in a counterterrorism role. The Biden administration is likely to continue the massive nuclear weapons modernization and air and naval equipment modernization programs begun under the Obama administration and accelerated and expanded under Trump, if only because they are popular with members of Congress who see the jobs they provide in their states.

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And like the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations, the Biden administration will prioritize the economic and military threats it believes are posed by China. But, consistent with its emphasis on diplomacy, the Biden administration will likely also work more to constrain China through diplomatic engagement and by working with U.S. allies in the region.

Brian J Purnell, Associate Professor of Africana Studies and History, Bowdoin College; Morgan Marietta, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Massachusetts Lowell, and Neta C. Crawford, Professor of Political Science and Department Chair, Boston University

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

US-China relations were already heated. Then coronavirus threw fuel on the flames

Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

Nick Bisley, La Trobe University

Even before the COVID-19 crisis upended the world, US-China relations had entered a particularly mistrustful and combative period.

While the mutual antagonism predated the Trump administration – Chinese President Xi Jinping had earlier ushered in a more assertive and ambitious approach to the world and the Obama administration recognised the limits to its engagement with China – the 45th US president took things to a new level.

In its 2017 national security strategy, the Trump administration openly stated that great power competition was the defining feature of the age and the contest with China was at the heart of US global strategy.

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President Donald Trump then made good on his campaign bluster to launch a trade war with the PRC and sought to decouple aspects of US economic interdependence with Beijing.

For its part, Beijing has unapologetically pushed its agenda in destabilising ways. This has included militarily fortifying artificial islands in the strategically crucial South China Sea, acting assertively in the East China Sea, curtailing promised freedoms in Hong Kong and setting out to literally kill off Uyghur culture in Xinjiang.

Trump and Xi have rarely seen eye-to-eye since the US president came into office.
OMER MESSINGER/EPA

Trump turns up the heat in an election year

The current global pandemic has created a human catastrophe not seen outside wartime. But rather than being a reason for China and the US to come together, COVID-19 has been an accelerant in their hostilities.

American resentment toward China has increased dramatically, stoked by the explicit efforts by the Trump administration to pin the blame for all aspects of the pandemic on the PRC.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has repeatedly sought to formalise criticism of China, such as in communiques at the G7. Just last week, he also declared the US had “significant evidence” the pandemic was not just a disaster unleashed by Chinese mismanagement, but had been manufactured in a laboratory in Wuhan.

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Before coronavirus, China was falsely blamed for spreading smallpox. Racism played a role then, too

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Those in the administration and the private sector who had argued for a delinking of the US economy from China are now using the crisis to push harder for that goal.

Trump has also flagged a further escalation of the trade dispute between the countries, which had been paused after an interim agreement in January.

It is now clear he will make the politicisation of China a central plank in his re-election campaign.

Beijing forcefully denies US ‘lies’

Elites in Beijing perceive this to be in line with Washington’s long-term efforts to contain China’s influence and curtail its growth. And Beijing’s defensiveness in the face of criticism over its handling of the pandemic has led it to adopt a new and more combative diplomatic tone.

Ranging from absurd conspiracy theories that the virus was an American invention to threats against Australia’s call for an independent investigation into the pandemic – including flagging a tariff on barley exports – this “wolf warrior” diplomacy reflects not only clumsy political communication but a highly competitive outlook.

On Saturday, Beijing issued its most forceful defence against what it called “preposterous allegations” by the US – an 11,000-word article denying everything from claims it under-reported case numbers to allegations the virus spread from eating bats.

The relationship between the world’s two biggest economies has deteriorated significantly, but not yet irretrievably so.

The friction is principally symbolic and, in theory at least, adept diplomacy and some walking back of the more overheated rhetoric could go a long way. The problem is the positioning in both Washington and Beijing is largely for domestic audiences. And both Xi and Trump see little domestic capital to gain if they moderate their positions.

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Murky origins: why China will never welcome a global inquiry into the source of COVID-19

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In Beijing’s terms, China was the first to suffer from the virus. But for most of the rest of the world, the virus spread due to the PRC’s inability to manage the initial outbreak due to denial and cover-ups.

The world, rightly, wants not only an explanation but an understanding of the origins of the virus and how it spread to prevent future pandemics. Beijing, however, wants to present itself as a successful model in combating the virus and a source of much-needed medical equipment and money to support other countries’ efforts.

Medical aid from China arrives in Myanmar last month.
NYEIN CHAN NAING/EPA

So far, China seems unlikely to accept any international inquiry. A recently leaked report commissioned by its Ministry of State Security, however, indicates Beijing is aware of the levels of international hostility directed towards it over its handling of the virus. The report said global anti-China sentiment is at its highest since the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.

Consequently, it may yet shift its approach, which would certainly help lower the international temperature.

Who comes out of the pandemic on top?

All of this indicates the current crisis will not transform relations between the US and China in a positive way, but rather accelerate the competition between the two.

How this rivalry plays out and its implications for the world will depend on a couple key factors.

First, there’s the nature of the economic recovery. Who will recover faster and how bad will the damage be?

It seems most likely the US will have constrained capacity to project power globally and head off Chinese ambition after the pandemic subsides.

The US will likely emerge from the pandemic a slightly diminished power.
Richard B. Levine/SIPA USA

But China will also be hobbled to some degree and unlikely to be able to simply replace the US in Asia. Its ambitious infrastructure and political capital-building exercise, the Belt and Road Initiative, is likely to be curtailed to some degree.

A second factor will be the extent to which each side is able to use the pandemic and its aftermath to build partnerships with countries around the world. This is particularly important as many nations – both rich and poor – will be facing truly dire economic circumstances.

Trump has famously questioned the benefits of alliances and strategic partnerships and, if re-elected, is likely to continue to damage one of the US’s greatest geopolitical assets.

China, on the other hand, will attempt to use its significant wealth and developmental capacity to strengthen its network of global partners. It remains to be seen, though, whether these efforts will outweigh a loss of global trust in China due to the pandemic.

The global financial crisis of 2007-08 dealt a blow to the finances, confidence and credibility of western powers.

COVID-19 is likely to have at least as big an effect. Not only will the global recovery occur in the context of a turbocharged geopolitical rivalry between two superpowers, it will be one in which the US is likely to be weaker and China stronger than before.

Nick Bisley, Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences and Professor of International Relations at La Trobe University, La Trobe University

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

After a border dispute and spying scandal, can Australia and Timor-Leste be good neighbours?

Protesters outside the Australian embassy in Dili, Timor-Leste, in 2016, demanding a settlement of the border dispute between the nations.
Antonio Dasiparu/EPA

Michael Leach, Swinburne University of Technology

On August 30, Timor-Leste will celebrate the referendum that gave it independence from Indonesia. For the people of this small island, it has been a long battle – and one that continues today. You can read our companion story on the island nation’s struggle for independence here.

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This Friday marks the 20-year anniversary of the day the East Timorese people voted overwhelmingly for independence from Indonesia after a 24-year occupation.

Another significant anniversary comes next month, on September 20. That was the day of the arrival of the INTERFET mission, the Australian-led multinational force that brought an end to the violence that wracked Timor-Leste after the independence vote.

In the intervening three weeks, 1,500 Timorese were killed in the violence, which had been orchestrated by the Indonesian military and its proxy militias. Over 250,000 were forcibly displaced to West Timor and some 80% of the infrastructure was destroyed.

Many Australians are rightly proud of their contribution to Timor-Leste’s independence, which served as a historical corrective to Australia’s longstanding support for Indonesian’s invasion and forced integration of East Timor in 1975-76. The more than 5,000 Australian soldiers in the INTERFET mission marked the nation’s largest military deployment since the Vietnam War.

Yet despite the goodwill the mission engendered in Timor-Leste for the Australian people, relations between the two nations have repeatedly been undermined by contentious negotiations over control of the lucrative oil and gas fields in the Timor Sea.

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Australia and Timor Leste settle maritime boundary after 45 years of bickering

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A treaty signed last March created a maritime boundary between the states for the first time. The border is expected to come into force this week following its ratification by both parliaments – another momentous milestone in Timor-Leste’s history.

But other thorny issues remain. When Prime Minister Scott Morrison arrives in Dili for the anniversary on Friday, he will likely face calls for Australia to drop its prosecution of a whistleblower who revealed an Australian spying operation against Timor-Leste.

As former Timor-Leste leader Jose Ramos Horta said,

If Australia doesn’t show political leadership, moral leadership on this issue, every time we talk to Australian leaders I will wonder if they have a tape recorder in their pocket [or] if my office has been bugged.

Australian soldiers conducting an operation to flush out militia fighters in Timor-Leste in September, 1999.
Jon Hargest/AAP

Conflict over oil and gas

Since its independence, Timor-Leste’s relations with Australia have been overshadowed by one major factor: the oil and gas fields on its contested maritime border.

Relations hit rocky waters in 2012 when Timor-Leste challenged the Treaty on Certain Maritime Arrangements in the Timor Sea (CMATS), which had been signed by the two countries in 2006. This treaty had established a 50-year moratorium on maritime boundary negotiations, or five years after exploitation of the Greater Sunrise gas field ended, whichever occurred first.

Allegations then emerged in 2013 from a former ASIS agent (now known as Witness K) that Australia had spied on Timorese officials during the negotiations over the CMATS treaty. This led Timor-Leste to launch a case in The Hague challenging the treaty for want of good faith.

Australia was embarrassed by the exposure, but determined to maintain the countries’ ongoing treaty arrangements and focus instead on revenue-sharing agreements. However, Timor-Leste argued that the bulk of the oil and gas fields in the Timor Sea would lie on their side of a median line and pushed for a permanent boundary to be drawn between the countries.

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Australia and Timor Leste reach a deal on the Timor Sea – but much remains unknown

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As relations deteriorated, ministerial visits ceased for almost five years.

Because Australia had abandoned the international courts as a means of resolving the maritime boundary in 2002, Timor-Leste had only one option left. In 2016, it pioneered the use of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) compulsory conciliation process: a non-binding but mandatory mediation between nations on maritime disputes.

The conciliation panel of five judges found the CMATS treaty’s moratorium on defining a maritime boundary was invalid. This dealt a fatal blow to decades of Australian foreign policy focused on maintaining its continental shelf claim in the Timor Gap in line with the 1972 Australia-Indonesia border treaty.

Australia could have attempted to tough it out since the tribunal’s finding was non-binding. But by this point, the Labor opposition was arguing the maritime boundary with Timor-Leste should be renegotiated in line with international law, putting additional pressure on the government to resolve the dispute.

A separate dispute over China’s claims in the South China Sea, also settled in 2016, made Australia’s position increasingly untenable, as well. The world was urging China to respect an international tribunal’s maritime ruling, so it would be difficult for Australia not to do the same.

A new boundary finally set in the sea

Once the UNCLOS opening decision came down, the two sides began negotiating a border in good faith. Timor-Leste dropped its espionage case against Australia in the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, and later terminated the CMATS treaty, without Australian objection.

Announcement of the new maritime border treaty followed in March 2018. It was a major diplomatic breakthrough and soon led to the resumption of ministerial visits.

The new maritime boundary between Australia and Timor-Leste.
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

The treaty created a median-line boundary in the former Timor Gap, placing the wells in the former Joint Petroleum Development Area (JPDA) in Timor-Leste’s sovereign waters.

The Timorese believe there is another A$1.5 billion of oil reserves in this area, but as these fields near the end of their life, the greater game lies in the as-yet-untapped Greater Sunrise field. This field straddles the eastern side of the new boundary and is believed to be worth in excess of US$40 billion.

Timor-Leste also achieved a major increase in royalties from the future development of this field, up from 50% under the CMATS treaty to 70-80%, depending on whether the pipeline eventually goes to Timor or Darwin.

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For Timor-Leste, another election and hopes for an end to crippling deadlock

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China’s potential role in development

Since then, Timor-Leste’s focus has shifted to negotiations with its commercial partners over its ambitious plans for the Tasi Mane oil and gas megaproject on its southern coast.

This project could bring additional challenges for the relationship with Australia. The East Timorese government estimates that external financing will provide some 80% of the estimated US$10.5-12 billion funding for the project. And Timor-Leste’s ambassador to Australia has already stated that if funding partners cannot be found among Timor-Leste’s friends in Australia, the United States, Japan or South Korea, then Chinese capital would be a clear alternative.

Timor-Leste has rejected reports that China’s Exim bank offered a A$16 billion loan to finance the megaproject, though it acknowledges both countries have expressed willingness to cooperate over the separate development of Timor-Leste’s petrochemical industry.

It is also notable that China this month donated some US$3-5 million in defence materiel requested by the Timorese government.

Even though China might be seen as a logical partner for developing Timor-Leste’s oil and gas processing capabilities, Beijing’s involvement would certainly complicate relations with Australia.

Timor-Leste has generally sought to balance its relationships with key regional powers, in part to prevent the dominant influence of any single nation. The country’s foreign minister recently emphasised that discussions on the Tasi Mane project are ongoing with potential partners in Australia, the US, Europe and Asia.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop meets with her Timor-Leste counterpart, Dionisio Soares, in Dili in 2018. She was the first Australian government minister to visit Timor-Leste in five years.
Greg Roberts/AAP

Remaining obstacles to closer ties

Despite the major improvement in bilateral ties between the two countries, there are some remaining points of contention.

The prosecutions of Witness K and his lawyer Bernard Collaery in the espionage whistleblower case have been criticised by Horta and another former Timor-Leste leader, Xanana Gusmão. This week, Gusmão indicated he would appear as a witness to give evidence on behalf of the two, raising the potential for further embarrassment for Australia.

Some political activists in both Australia and Timor-Leste have also called for Canberra to pay back oil and gas revenues it has received from the JPDA since the border treaty was signed in 2018, and accused Australia of delays in ratification.

While these accusations have made headlines, Timor-Leste’s parliament had not ratified the treaty either until last month. In any case, Timorese NGOs point to the far larger question of up to US$5 billion in revenues that Australia has received dating back to 2002, when revenue-sharing agreements began.

But it appears there is no appetite in either country to consider repayment of historical royalties.

As Australia and Timor-Leste prepare to celebrate the anniversary of the independence referendum – as well as the recent restoration of good bilateral relations – it’s worth keeping in mind that new hurdles potentially lie ahead, with implications for the wider region.

Michael Leach, Professor, Politics & International Relations, Swinburne University of Technology

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

US-China relations are certainly at a low point, but this is not the next Cold War

Though a Cold War between China and the US seems unlikely, there are still repercussions of a deepening rift.
Roman Pilipey/EPA

Nick Bisley, La Trobe University

Trump’s long-threatened trade war with China is now a reality. Beijing has met Washington’s sanctions with retaliatory measures as the world’s two most important economies square off.

Since Vice President Mike Pence’s speech to the Hudson Institute in October 2018, American policymakers have increasingly used hardline rhetoric toward China. FBI director Christopher Wray described China as a “whole of society threat” in testimony to Congress.

The view that China’s rise has come at the expense of the US is now seen as conventional wisdom. The evidently warm relationship established by leaders Donald Trump and Xi Jinping over chocolate cake at Mar-a-Lago in 2017 seems a world away.

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After APEC, US-China tensions leave ‘cooperation’ in the cold

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Given this, it is unsurprising that many scholars and analysts have described the emergence of a new Cold War between China and the US (including myself in an essay last year).

The Cold War seems an obvious historical parallel. Like the former Soviet Union, China is also a communist country. And the US and China both have genuinely global interests and the capacity to act on those interests around the world.

But is the deteriorating state of US-China relations likely to tip the world back into the kind of ideological and geopolitical competition that dominated international politics for four decades after the second world war?

The Cold War’s unique dynamics

The Cold War was unlike any great power rivalry that has come before. Most obviously, it was the first geopolitical contest of the nuclear age. Both the US and Soviet Union rapidly developed vast arsenals of the most devastating weapons yet conceived. And their jockeying for power and influence meant that the threat of global annihilation was an ever-present risk.

But it was not just a contest for power – the Cold War was also fight between two evangelical ideologies. Each side believed their respective ideologies – liberal capitalism and Soviet communism – represented universal and fundamentally superior ways of organising society. The mobilisation of resources on a global scale, the nature of these commitments, and the risks they were willing to take was underpinned by the ideological dimensions of the contest.

The Cold War was principally focused on Europe and East Asia, yet it had a global reach. As colonial empires crumbled after 1945, the Soviets and Americans competed for influence among those fighting for their independence and the newly free. This indirect competition, which led at times to proxy wars, and its consequence of dividing the world into duelling blocs was the Cold War’s third main component.

…And a very different current world order

Sino-American relations are at their lowest point since at least 1989 and appear to be entering a level of mutual mistrust and suspicion not seen since the 1970s. Yet in spite of the trade war, explicit calls from US officials to treat China as a full-spectrum threat, and a growing militarisation of their interactions in the western Pacific, this is no Cold War.

More importantly, Sino-American relations are not even on that trajectory. And shrewd statecraft could easily avoid a repeat of the four decades when the world sat on the edge of nuclear apocalypse.

Presently, there is no meaningful ideological dimension to the competition between the two. While China is formally a communist state, its economy is an unusual mix of command, market and statist forms.

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The country also shows little interest in spreading its particular mix of ideas and values globally, although, like all great powers, it is interested in increasing its global influence. China adheres to an orthodox view of sovereignty and evinces no meaningful desire to reshape the political and economic structures of states in its own image.

Equally, the contest between the world’s top two economies has not moved beyond the Asian theatre, geo-politically. Clearly, the US is concerned that Chinese technology may be used on a global scale to advance the country’s interests, hence its very visible campaign to try to contain Huawei’s global reach, but this is a long way from using conscripts to intervene in conflicts in Vietnam and Korea.

And most obviously, the economies of the USSR and US were hermetically sealed from one another. They may as well have been on different planets, such was the sparse nature of their interactions. The US and China could not be more different.

A rivalry for a new age

Today, China presents an increasingly confident face on the global stage. It is increasingly assertive and at times even abrasive in the way it tries to advance its interests.

But it is not yet explicitly contesting the US role in Asia or indeed the world. Rather, it is testing the US-led order to probe for vulnerability and creating new institutions to try to shape the world around it, like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Belt and Road Initiative.

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But it is a long way from a direct confrontation. In part, this is because China’s risk appetite is not that great. But it’s also because Beijing believes it does not need to take such steps to increase its influence in the world.

For its part, the US has moved from its cautious engagement of China to a position in which it is trying to counter Chinese advances and contain its influence. Even with the tariff wars, the two remain profoundly economically interdependent and it will take many years for any real de-coupling of their relationship to occur.

The first great power rivalry of the 21st century has begun. It is not a re-run of the Cold War, however. Instead, this rivalry will look unlike any that has come before it. How acute the competition will be and the consequences for the world order will depend on the price China and the US are willing to pay to undermine and limit the other’s ambition.

Nick Bisley, Head of Humanities and Social Sciences and Professor of International Relations at La Trobe University, La Trobe University

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

Christchurch attack strains Australian-Turkish relations ahead of ANZAC day

Michelle Grattan, University of Canberra

Weeks ahead of the ANZAC commemoration at Gallipoli, serious tensions erupted between Australia and Turkey, after threatening comments by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the wake of the Christchurch massacre.

Scott Morrison on Wednesday called in the Turkish ambassador to give him a tongue lashing. He demanded a withdrawal of the remarks and the taking down of a nationalist video featuring footage of the Australian gunman’s live stream.

The strength of the Prime Minister’s response has an eye to the emotional place of Gallipoli in the Australian narrative. But he also has to be careful not to cause the Turkish government to respond by hampering next month’s ANZAC commemoration.

President Erdoğan, electioneering at Çanakkale, just across from the Gallipoli peninsula, referred to the massacre, saying: “They test us with the messages they give in New Zealand […] We understood that your hatred is alive […] We understood that you begrudge our lives.”

He said: “Your ancestors came. […] Later on, some of them returned back on their feet, some of them in coffins.

“If you will come here with the same intentions, we will be waiting for you. You should have no doubt that we will farewell you just like your grandfathers”.

New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters, visiting Indonesia, on Wednesday highlighted that the gunman was “a non-New Zealander, an outsider”.

Peters also said he thought Erdoğan had not known the full facts but “since he’s been apprised, or informed of the facts, he’s made a very conciliatory statement today […] which would stand in stark contrast to what he said the other day.”

In an opinion piece published in The Washington Post Erdoğan has written “all Western leaders must learn from the courage, leadership and sincerity of New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, to embrace Muslims living in their respective countries”.

Peters, who is going to Turkey this week, said when there he would “set any record straight that needs to be set straight as to what went on”.

Attacking Erdoğan’s original comments, Morrison told a news conference they were “highly offensive to Australians and highly reckless in this very sensitive environment”.

Morrison said he had asked for the remarks to be clarified and withdrawn. “I’ve asked for these comments, particularly their reporting of the misrepresented position of Australia on Turkish television, the state-sponsored broadcaster, to be taken down,” he said.

He would wait for the Turkish government’s response – beyond that “all options are on the table”. Asked what these options were, the Prime Minister would not elaborate.

Morrison said he did not accept as an excuse that “things are said in an electoral context”.

The travel advisory for Turkey is under review. People planning to go to Gallipoli should exercise common sense and await further advice, Morrison said. The present advice is for people to exercise a “high degree of caution”.

Morrison said Erdoğan’s remarks were “offensive, because they insult the memory of our ANZACs and they violate the pledge that is etched in the stone at Gallipoli, of the promise of Atatürk to the mothers of our ANZACs. So I understand the deep offence Australians would be feeling about this.

“The comments completely misrepresented the Australian and New Zealand governments’ very strong response to the extremist attack, he said. All Australians had condemned it.

“We have reached out to embrace our Muslim brothers and sisters in New Zealand and in Australia, quite to the contrary of the vile assertion that has been made about our response,” Morrison said.

He said he had spoken with Turkish Australian leaders on Wednesday morning. “They have expressed to me their deep disappointment about these comments. They don’t represent the views of Turkish Australians.

“I am not going to single out the comments of one person and ascribe it to a people, whether in Turkey or across Australia. I don’t think it does reflect the views of the Turkish people, or certainly of Turkish Australians,” Morrison said.

He said Foreign Minister Marise Payne would be speaking to her Turkish counterpart.

The Australian ambassador to Turkey was due to speak with Erdoğan’s advisers.

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

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

Chinese-Australia relations may not be ‘toxic’, but they do need to keep warming up

Tony Walker, La Trobe University

When former Trade Minister Andrew Robb took to the ABC’s AM program to sound off about a “toxic” relationship between Australia and China, he exposed a rippling debate about how to manage an increasingly comlex foreign and security policy challenge.

Long gone are the days of the John Howard formula that Australia did not have to choose between its history, meaning America, and its geography, meaning China. Choices are no longer binary.

While the Robb word “toxic” may be an exaggeration, stresses in Australia-China relations are such it is clear we have entered a new and more challenging phase.

For a start, China is undergoing what is, arguably, the most testing moment of an economic transformation that began in 1978 at the third plenary of the 11th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. This is when Deng Xiaoping re-emerged to initiate one of the more remarkable economic shifts of the modern era.

Apart from a hiatus caused by the Tienanmen uprising in 1989, and an economic soft-landing in the mid-1990s, China has bounded ahead economically, and has seemed unstoppable – until now.

China’s economy and political system has encountered the sort of difficulties that were inevitable. Put simply, an investment driven – as opposed to consumer-led – model is running its course, piling up massive government and bank debt in the process.

China risks becoming caught in a “middle income trap” in which a developing country, having enacted the easier reforms, gets stuck in second gear in its effort to push ahead with its economic transformation.

You can only build so many road, bridges, fast trains, airports, ports and housing developments. Many of the latter have become “ghost cities”.

At this month’s National People’s Congress, the annual session of China’s “parliament”, Premier Li Keqiang gave what was, by Chinese standards for these sort of cheerleading events, an unusually downbeat assessment of challenges ahead.

China, Li said, faces difficulties “of a kind rarely seen in many years”.

What is undeniable is that China’s economy is faltering, its ability to create millions of new jobs annually to employ a restless population is being stretched, and its management of a continuing economic transformation has come under unusual stress. US-China trade tensions are not helping.

In counterpoint to the need for a more dynamic economic environment, its leadership, under President Xi Jinping, is asserting even tighter political controls when it should be giving freer rein to its entrepreneurial class.

This is the central contradiction of a model that has delivered what is the most extraordinary event in world economic history since the industrial revolution. But that model clearly has its limitations compared with those, say, of neighbouring Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

From an Australian perspective, a slowing and, perhaps more to the point, anxious China is not good news. While economists might argue that a slowdown and thus the need for Beijing to stimulate its economy by ramping up infrastructure projects will benefit iron ore and coal exporters, economic pressures more generally should be concerning.

A Chinese regime that feels itself under stress from within and without may prove to be more cantankerous, and unpredictable. Australian policymakers should be mindful of the consequences of China getting through this difficult stage without mishap.

Of course, forests have been felled publishing predictions China would be unable to maintain its remarkable transformation since early glimmers of an opening to the outside world appeared in 1978, two years after Mao Zedong’s death.

This brings us back to Andrew Robb’s observation about a “toxic” relationship between Beijing and Canberra. Referring to the shelving of a plan to develop a health precinct in China to match that of the Texas Medical Centre – the world’s largest medical facility – Robb said central government officials had kyboshed the arrangement due to ongoing tensions with Australia.

Australian medical professionals would have helped establish the facility. Robb said Landbridge (the company for which Robb was consulting) was

told in no uncertain terms by the seniors officials that unfortunately the relationship between Australia and China had become so toxic that this would be put in the bin.

Leaving aside Robb’s own chagrin at losing a lucrative consultancy, what is the fair judgement about the state of Australia-China relations?

And, what of Robb’s criticism of sections of the Australian security establishment, notably the Australian Strategic Policy Institute? He accused ASPI, a hothouse of China negativity, of being “a mouthpiece of the US security agencies and its defence industry”.

Given ASPI’s hawkish views on China more generally, Robb has a point.

His assessment is correct that China-Australia relations were off-track when the decision was made to scupper the Landbridge-proposed medical facility. But it is also the true that by the end of last year the relationship had been “reset”.

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Foreign Minister Marise Payne went to China in November for what was described as a cordial exchange. This followed a two-year freeze in relations during which no senior Australian official was welcomed in Beijing.

China had made no secret of its displeasure over speeches delivered over time by both then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and then Foreign Minister Julie Bishop in which they had criticised Beijing’s expansionist activities in the South China Sea, and, in Bishop’s case, China’s political model.

Turnbull compounded the situation when he misappropriated an expression attributed to Mao in proclaiming the People’s Republic on October 1, 1949. Australia had “stood up”, Turnbull said, when unveiling laws designed to curb foreign interference in Australian domestic affairs.

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Next day, Turnbull made things worse by repeating Mao’s words in Mandarin in his description of legislation that was clearly aimed at Chinese influence.

So what of Robb’s comments? Whatever toxicity existed between Canberra and Beijing seems to have dissipated somewhat. However, real risks remain in management of what is Australia’s most challenging relationship.

It is no good pretending otherwise. China is not a benign power. It will seek to get away with what it can. It resists abiding by a roadmap for a rules-based international order, as we understand it. It will use cyber technology ruthlessly to advance its interests by dubious means, on occasions. It will “disappear” foreign nationals of those countries which incur its displeasure. It will invest in agents of influence in the Australian system. This includes universities.

All this requires a level of vigilance on the part of the security agencies, and, possibly, a new White Paper aimed specifically at just how Australia might manage a complex relationship that is likely to become, more, not less, complicated.

Bear in mind one in three export dollarsdepends on a functioning relationship with China.

This is an unsatisfactory situation, but it is the reality.

On the other hand, no purpose is served by yielding to a Canberra security establishment whose machinations risk chilling a relationship that needs to be warmed up, not cooled down.

Former ambassador to China, Stephen Fitzgerald, proffered some good advice this week when he said in a newspaper interview that Australia needed to deepen its engagement with China rather than draw back, since, unlike the US, we are “living in a Chinese world”.

That, whether we like it or not, is the case.

Tony Walker, Adjunct Professor, School of Communications, La Trobe University

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

Megaphone diplomacy is good for selling papers, but harmful for Australia-China relations

Wanning Sun, University of Technology Sydney

The issue of China’s influence in Australia is complex. It ranges from worries about national security, political donations and media infiltration to concerns about scientific collaborations, Confucius Institutes, the patriotism of Chinese students, and allegiance of the Chinese community. The most recent trope is China’s so-called “debt trap” diplomacy with Australia’s neighbours in the Pacific.

But there’s a simple reason this anxiety about China’s influence is so vexed. For the first time in history, Australia has had to deal with a world power that is not, as longtime defence analyst Hugh White puts it, “Anglo-Saxon”, and is not a liberal democracy. To quote The Australian’s Dennis Richardson in relation to China and the US: “Australia is friends with both, ally of one”.

The media in both countries have played a significant role in inflaming tensions, as well. Increasingly, China is cast in an adversarial light in the Australian media, and vice versa with Australia in the Chinese media.

There is less and less space for journalists who try to put forth an objective opinion and for commentators who attempt to steer the debate in a more rational and less visceral direction. Each side feels the need to simplify its message and take an increasingly radical position.

War of words

Of course, the media narratives in both countries need to be considered in the context of the rise of political populism globally — particularly the triumph of President Donald Trump in the US and Brexit in the UK.

Australia has a free but financially struggling media. This makes for a tricky combination. Take a media sector that is desperate to boost its readership, combine with a populist turn in the political discourse, add a generous dash of fear of China’s growing global power, and stir. The result, while great for sound bites and political posturing, is not a pretty picture, but it does make a good story.

Some commentators argue the public debate about Chinese influence in Australia tends to be dominated by hawkish voices who favour close ties with the US. This strident position runs counter to the diplomatic, business and university communities, who argue for a more culturally sensitive and constructive engagement with China.

To the anti-China hawks, concerns for Australia’s multicultural harmony and social cohesion are secondary.

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Meanwhile, China’s extensive soft power ambitions to improve the country’s appeal on the international stage also seem to have been moved to the backburner when it comes to Australia. The charm offensive is no more; it’s now just plain offensive.

Populism also reigns supreme in China, although in different ways. The tighter and wider the scope of the Communist Party’s political control, the less space there is for dissenting voices, and the more fertile the ground becomes for nationalistic discourses to flourish.

In fact, in an increasingly repressive environment of control and censorship, nationalism is the only populist game in town if you want to make a profit.

Over the past two years, the Chinese state media’s reaction to Australia has shifted from indifference to bemusement, and now to anger. This change in tone is evidenced in an article in the Global Times last year:

Australia poses a problem for China. If we mind its silly carryings-on, it will deplete our energy, and it doesn’t seem worth our while; however, if we leave it be and pretend nothing is happening, that would only encourage it, and it may go from bad to worse. Australia is one of the countries that have benefited most from China’s rise, yet it is also one of the most provocative voices in the Western bloc. It is beginning to look like a piece of chewing gum stuck to the bottom of China’s shoe.

The Global Times is a subsidiary newspaper of the Chinese government’s mouthpiece People’s Daily, but unlike People’s Daily, it is profit-driven and licensed to drive sales by pandering to populist sentiments rather than to reason.

The question is whether the Australian media should take the bait, trade insults with The Global Times, and allow such visceral responses to shape the debate.

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There are signs the Australian media are not only taking the Global Times seriously but also literally.

In fact, so literally that if you enter the current China debate in Australia and critique some aspect of the anti-China rhetoric — and then get quoted favourably (and possibly out of context) by The Global Times — you may automatically qualify for being labelled a Beijing apologist.

Impact on relations

Can this kind of sustained war of words have an actual impact on how the two countries view one another? Yes, it can.

One only need look at the recent rhetoric of top government officials in both countries as an example. Last year, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull vowed to “stand up” to China in an unusually sharp statement, while Foreign Minister Julie Bishop made a blunt assessment of China’s lack of democracy. China’s Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, just last week told Bishop that Australia needs to remove its “tinted glasses”.

Anecdotally, I’ve been told by some of my Chinese-Australian friends that their friends and families in China are repeatedly urging them to “stay safe” and “take care of themselves” as Australia becomes more anti-Chinese.

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But are Australia-China relations really as bad as the media have been making them out? If you look at the current number of Chinese tourists and students here, maybe the answer is no, or at least not yet. But the business community has already started to suffer.

As recently as two years ago, both countries were hoping to use their respective media to promote public diplomacy towards each other. At the moment, media organisations in neither country are doing that. In fact, public diplomacy has well and truly been replaced by megaphone diplomacy, specialising in what The Guardian’s Katherine Murphy calls “binary and cartoonish talk and analysis”, as is often found in the “graphic novel” genre.

The question we should be asking is not whether the relationship between Australia and China is as bad as the media in both countries portray it. Rather, it’s how much power the media has in shaping this relationship, and whose interests this current megaphone diplomacy is serving.

Wanning Sun, Professor of Chinese Media and Cultural Studies, University of Technology Sydney

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

Loose-cannon Trump enters the tinderbox of US-Russia-China relations

Joseph Camilleri, La Trobe University

Donald Trump’s inauguration speech had one simple message: “America first”. His was an inward-looking vision of the future in which America would set about regaining all that has been stolen from it.

His one promise was to restore America to its former wealth, power and security – to recreate a past that has long since gone.

But ours is an increasingly interdependent world, in which America’s relations with its arch-rivals, Russia and China, now less than cordial, are precariously poised. It is a world in which the wider economic, security and political environment is in a state of radical flux.

Neither Trump nor his cabinet nominees appear to grasp how far-reaching these changes are, how severely they limit America’s room for manoeuvre, and how serious are the dangers of miscalculation and overreach.

For all three countries, bilateral ties weigh heavily. Trade looms large in Sino-American relations, and US sanctions against Russia are a major bone of contention. But in reviewing relations between these three centres of power, we need to ask larger questions that go to the heart of regional and global security.

A key question is whether the US and Russia can find ways of accommodating each other’s legitimate interests without provoking European divisions and anxieties. Another is whether they can avoid the proliferation of proxy wars in the Middle East and elsewhere. Importantly, they face the task of averting a renewed nuclear arms race.

It also remains to be seen if China and the US are of a mind to contain, if not resolve, conflicts in East Asia. As the world’s two largest economies, they have to decide whether they will actively promote an orderly system of trade, institutions that can better guard against periodic financial crises, and a climate-change regime that is equal to the task.

We also wait to see whether the three most powerful members of the UN Security Council will allow the UN to play the constructive security and peace-building role assigned to it. Importantly, will they give UN reform the attention it so desperately needs?

Sadly, nothing on the public record suggests these challenges are uppermost in the minds of the new president or his advisers. Tellingly, on all these questions Trump’s inauguration speech maintained a deafening silence.

How will a Trump administration deal with Russia?

Trump is personally inclined to cultivate a better relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and to be tougher with China’s Xi Jinping.

But what is it that helps explain his approach? In each case, it seems his main preoccupation is to maximise business opportunities for the US corporate sector, and by extension for the US economy.

In decoding Trump’s chaotic use of language, we should not underestimate his ability to surprise and confound his critics. The greater risk would be to overestimate his capacity to control events, or the coherence of his anti-establishment rhetoric.

When it comes to Russia, we should not assume the Trump administration will speak with one voice. Nor should we assume that it will always command the support of the Republican majority in Congress, or that it will be able to disregard entrenched bureaucratic ways of thinking about Russia or the preferences of the immensely powerful US security and intelligence apparatus.

Several prominent Republicans are known for their hostility to Putin’s policies and advocacy of even stronger sanctions against Russia. Already the Senate Intelligence Committee has announced it will conduct a review of Russian hacking in the 2016 election and examine any intelligence “regarding links between Russia and individuals associated with political campaigns”.

Even among his cabinet nominees, anti-Russian sentiment is strong. Appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, James Mattis, Trump’s nominee for defence secretary, cited Russia as a major threat to US interests:

I think right now the most important thing is that we recognise the reality of what we deal with [in] Mr Putin and we recognise that he is trying to break the North Atlantic alliance.

With Mattis as Trump’s defence secretary, what chance a reset in Russian-American relations?

Even if Trump is given to periodic denunciations of NATO allies – for doing too little rather than too much – how likely is it that his administration will review NATO’s expansion into eastern Europe, or withdraw the thousands of troops that have just arrived in Poland as part of an ongoing rotational deployment?

In any case, Trump will sooner or later have to address the animosity he has aroused in the US intelligence community, and by extension in the American conservative establishment.

Recent allegations that Russian spies have gathered compromising material on Trump’s links with Moscow will make for added caution. Accurate or not, the leaked dossier will have the effect of subjecting his relationship with Putin to the closest scrutiny.

In the end, Trump may be happy to settle for improved economic relations and the easing of sanctions, but little more than that. Pleasant surprises are possible, but reversing the dangerous path on which Russian-American relations are currently set remains a distant prospect.

Donald Trump is personally inclined to cultivate a better relationship with Vladimir Putin.
Reuters

Troubling stance on China

Trump’s announced intention to play tough on China is even more troubling.

Having accused China of being a currency manipulator, of engaging in unfair trade practices, and of stealing American jobs and intellectual property, he could use his presidential powers to impose tariffs and other sanctions.

Given the large US balance of payments deficit with China, he could impose import surcharges of up to 15% for up to 150 days. He could also lodge a complaint against China at the World Trade Organisation.

But such measures are unlikely to produce the desired result, and each is open to costly retaliation. This may help to explain why Trump has, with characteristic clumsiness, made a point of raising two highly sensitive issues: relations with Taiwan, and the South China Sea dispute.

Acceptance of the One China policy has been the cornerstone of Sino-American relations for close to four decades. By threatening to review it, a Trump administration may hope to extract trade and other economic concessions from China. In return, it would agree to retain the status quo on Taiwan.

The same thinking may have inspired Trump’s brief post-election comment on the South China Sea, considerably amplified by Rex Tillerson, his nominee for secretary of state. Having likened China’s building of a militarised island in the Spratlys to Russia’s annexation of Crimea, he issued a rather extraordinary warning:

We’re going to have to send China a clear signal that, first, the island-building stops and, second, your access to those islands also is not going to be allowed.

Is this a real threat or mere bluff? Either way, the signs are ominous. And although the official Chinese response has been measured, the Chinese media’s reaction was predictably swift and furious.

Donald Trump could use his presidential powers to impose tariffs and other sanctions on Xi Jinping’s China.
Reuters/Ruben Sprich

What do the next four years hold?

Trump and his team have yet to think through the implications of their statements. Far from “making America great again”, their sloganeering will deepen mistrust of US motives and irreparably damage any prospect of co-existence, let alone a more co-operative world order.

Perhaps the greatest casualty will be the loss of anything approaching a moral compass.

Support for torture, disregard for the rule of law, almost complete indifference to the human rights agenda, and erection of physical and legal walls to keep the victims of war, persecution and economic hardship at bay will merely serve to encourage authoritarianism the world over, not least in Putin’s Russia and Xi’s China.

Assuming Trump lasts the journey, the next four years offer an unprecedented opportunity for America’s friends and allies, both the people and their governments, to exercise a newly found independence of thought and action. Collaboratively and with humility, they may need to assume the moral leadership that has become the great imperative of our time.

Joseph Camilleri, Emeritus Professor of International Relations, La Trobe University

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

Australia – Timor Relations Tested