There was a bit of interest recently when the foundation stone was laid on the Chinese funded military HQ in East Timor. 

Reader Rod has sent in some photos of another example of Chinese military diplomacy — this time, a port visit to Vanuatu last weekend.

Yesterday, I speculated on what might lie behind the latest press release from the International Criminal Court shaming Kenya and Chad for inviting Sudan's wanted President to visit. This morning I had another press release waiting for me.

It carries the bland heading: 'ICC Registrar meets with the Attorney General of the State of Qatar'. That would be quite uninteresting except that it was in Qatar in March last year that Arab leaders rejected the Court's decision to issue an arrest warrant for Sudan's President.

The press release claims:

During the meeting Mrs. Arbia and Dr. Al-Marri emphasized their shared commitment to the rule of law and the need to respect international law.

Apparently, the Court is doing its best to shore up support among Arab states and hopefully win their cooperation in arresting Al Bashir.

On a separate note, Geoff Tooth was appointed Australia’s High Commissioner to Kenya today. Hopefully there will be no more visits from wanted Presidents.

Photo by Flickr user sigma, used under a Creative Commons license.

The International Criminal Court issued one of its more interesting press releases on Friday. A Pre-Trial Chamber at the Court decided to inform the UN Security Council of the visit by Sudan's wanted President, Omar Al Bashir (pictured), to Kenya and Chad — both of which are states parties to the Court and have committed to cooperating in arresting all of the suspects it has indicted.

It's not the first time the President, who is wanted for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, has risked international travel, but it does suggest the Court is changing its approach: switching from quiet behind-the-scenes diplomacy to public shaming (although it took some time to comment on the visit to Chad). 

A spokesperson for Human Rights Watch said 'hosting al-Bashir would throw into question Kenya's commitment to cooperate with the ICC in its Kenyan investigation.' It probably does, but Kenya has still made a firm commitment to cooperate with the Court so this more assertive approach from the Court is a welcome development. 

Photo by Flickr user Ammar Abd Rabbo, used under a Creative commons license. 

• Canada scrambles fighter jets to intercept Russian bombers as Prime Minister Harper prepares for a visit to the Arctic.
• The Obama administration's trade policy and Asia — still not connecting the dots.
•  It wasn’t only the Lowy Institute’s Rory Medcalf that picked up Foreign Minister Stephen Smith’s support for a bilateral approach to the South China Sea.
• One benefit of the iPad.
• The CIA discusses its Red Cell reports (one of which we covered earlier this month) after the latest Wikileaks release.

There would seem to be a few pre-emptive warning shots in the speech delivered today by East Timor's Prime Minister Xanana Gusmão on the occasion of the laying of the foundation stone for China's latest aid project, the Ministry of Defence Headquarters.

Firstly, to Australia: '...there is nothing that would prevent us from requesting and accepting (Chinese aid), nor would it be legitimate for anyone to seek to constraint (sic) our options.' 

And secondly, what at first sight looks like a bid to pre-empt domestic concerns about China's intentions might also be aimed at China:

We are firmly committed to incrementing bilateral cooperation in the military area with friendly countries that provide us with uninterested support. Our Chinese brothers and sisters are clearly part of this group.

We are aware that an eventual assistance in order to enrich the technical know-how of our military, to be generously provided by the People’s Republic of China, will not result in heavy burdens to the Timorese State.

'Incremental bilateral cooperation', 'uninterested support' and no 'heavy burdens'. It sounds as if Beijing shouldn't expect too much in return for its generosity.

It's also reminiscent of regional commentary about China's intentions in Pacific countries. Some time ago, when discussing a loan China was about to provide to the Cook Islands, Foreign Minister Wilkie Rasmussen was quoted as saying:

(The loan terms are) extremely attractive and at the moment there are no strings attached, although we still have to consider what they want other than support for the One-China Policy. Marine resources are the most likely but there has been no pressure on the Cook Islands about access and while we believe the issues will become fishing we will handle them as we see them.

China has done quite a bit of building in East Timor recently, including the Presidential Palace, the Foreign Ministry, military residential quarters and a new Chinese Embassy. This latest project is consistent with its penchant for large infrastructure projects aimed at elites, but will no doubt raise some eyebrows because it is military-related. However, as I have argued elsewhere, so far, China has been cautious about any serious military-to-military cooperation in our immediate neighbourhood. 

Friends who visit me from overseas enjoy pointing out in feigned shock that, in Australia, we have to wait for YouTube clips to buffer! (For our foreign readers, yes it's true.)

But there is at least a political debate taking place about bringing our internet into the 21st century. In this context, a new poll out from Pew looking at Americans and their use of broadband is interesting. Among other things, it found:

Two-thirds of American adults (66%) now have a broadband internet connection at home, a figure that is little changed from the 63% with a high-speed home connection at a similar point in 2009.

By a 53%-41% margin, Americans say they do not believe that the spread of affordable broadband should be a major government priority. Contrary to what some might suspect, non-internet users are less likely than current users to say the government should place a high priority on the spread of high-speed connections.

Lolcat by Flickr user jeffmcneil, used under a Creative Commons license.

In today's Age, Dan Flitton reports statements from Fiji's dictator Frank Bainimarama that he wants to ditch ties with Australia and New Zealand in favour of China. While China tried to make a big splash in Fiji right after the coup, promising to deliver over $US160 million in grants and soft loans, the reality has been a little different.

After the 2006 coup, China came in strong to pre-empt Fiji making a switch to diplomatically recognising Taiwan. It handed Bainimarama US$5 million in cash, leading him to bring control over Chinese aid under his own immediate office. But since then, China and Taiwan have agreed to an informal détente, ending their damaging diplomatic competition in the region for the time being. China also seems to have felt pressure not to be seen to be lavishing aid on a pariah government.

It has gone ahead with projects like the Nadarivatu hydro project, which had been previously scoped by the World Bank, but it has been slow to disperse the other aid promised. The Fiji Government might claim this is because of disagreements over use of local labour or some such excuse, but surely it would have been in Bainimarama's interest to see infrastructure projects rolled out on a timely basis so he could at least demonstrate some benefits from his rule?

So is China the saviour that Fiji's strongman has been looking for? The evidence suggests it isn't. China has been slow to unroll its aid to Fiji and there are reports it has knocked back proposals to do more. A review Mary Fifita and I are undertaking of China's aid pledges to the region in 2009 also suggests the flows to Fiji were minimal. 

Frank's just huffing and bluffing.

It's been interesting to watch the apparent resonance of TIME's front cover of a shockingly mutilated Afghan woman. It seems to support the analysis offered in this CIA Red Cell report posted on Wikileaks in March.

The report discusses the prospect of the French and Germans following the Dutch lead in bailing out of Afghanistan and uses the results from government and publicly available opinion polls to suggest clever (if Machiavellian) ways to help shore up public support for the Afghanistan mission in Europe. The final section of the report notes:

Afghan women could serve as ideal messengers in humanizing the ISAF role in combating the Taliban because of women’s ability to speak personally and credibly about their experiences under the Taliban, their aspirations for the future, and their fears of a Taliban victory. Outreach initiatives that create media opportunities for Afghan women to share their stories with French, German, and other European women could help to overcome pervasive skepticism among women in Western Europe toward the ISAF mission.

• According to INR polling in the fall of 2009, French women are 8 percentage points less likely to support the mission than are men, and German women are 22 percentage points less likely to support the war than are men.
• Media events that feature testimonials by Afghan women would probably be most effective if broadcast on programs that have large and disproportionately female audiences. (C//NF)

This year's Lowy Poll also found Australian women were more likely than men to oppose Australia's military involvement in Afghanistan.

Photo by Flickr user The Advocacy Project, used under a Creative Commons license.

Mark Thirlwell's 'depressing' and 'worrying' observations on the migration debate occurring in Australia's election campaign (a debate serving as a proxy for actually fixing failing infrastructure) are all the more worrying and depressing because this debate is being led by an Opposition Leader and Prime Minister who fit into the exact same 1 in 4 and 1 in 5 categories that Mark discusses — 'overseas-born' and 'overseas-born in the UK.'

Photo by Flickr user Wendy, used under a Creative Commons license.

That's how Alec Ross, the first senior adviser for innovation to the US Secretary of State, describes his boss Hillary Clinton in this fascinating NY Times piece, which tracks the work of Ross and Jared Cohen (the youngest member of the State Department's policy planning staff). It shows just how right Nick Gruen and Sam are about the timidity of the Australian public service when it comes to harnessing social media.

The article points to the beginnings of an entirely new approach to public diplomacy that is almost impossible to conceive of here in Australia. Exhibit A is the Australian embassy websites, which are worse than hopeless, even in our most important posts (actually, they all follow the same depressing design). Imagine having to refer someone to that site (try these two for a comparison). 

Ross and Cohen are depicted as freewheeling new-media junkies and their roughshod approach to diplomatic tradition and caution must drive many of their colleagues mad. They flit between organising private dinners between the Secretary of State and the new tech titans, to circumventing the usual deadening hierarchy to keep Twitter afloat during Iran's post-elections protests.

One moment they are harnessing the power and goodwill of tech geeks to raise millions after the Haiti disaster, the next they are trying to sidestep corrupt officials in the Congo by developing methods to pay officials directly using mobile phones.

If it's already sounding too evangelical, you don't want to know about the 'techdels'.

While the godmother of 21st-century diplomacy might be working the frontiers, surely Australia could be a little more ambitious. DFAT's public diplomacy team has been working on some interesting innovations (and a new website is in the pipeline) but, as this article suggests, there's a long way to go.

Photo by Flickr user TarynMarie's photostream, used under a Creative Commons license.

The Netherlands has now formally ended its mission in Uruzgan with a change-of-command ceremony. But four years and 24 deaths later, what has the mission achieved?

When the Dutch first approached Australia to co-deploy in Afghanistan, Uruzgan was not the only province on the table. There were a number of safer options which would have exposed both nations to fewer risks, but which would also have been less useful in combating the Taliban.

After the national shame of Srebrenica — where Dutch peacekeepers failed to stop one of the most infamous massacres of recent times — the Dutch needed to reestablish pride in their armed forces. Uruzgan was a suitably ambitious province in which to take a lead role. While some have dismissed the difficultly of operating in Uruzgan, on any objective measure, it is no walk in the park. There might have been differences in approach (and food tastes) between NATO nations and partners, but the Dutch have restored some of their wounded pride. 

Interestingly though, it might be the ghosts of Srebrenica and the fear of being left holding the can that have contributed to driving the Dutch withdrawal.

• Malcolm Cook found this interesting Thai perspective on the politics of expanding the East Asia Summit.
• Taiwan’s South China Sea choice. 
• Michael Fullilove takes a look at what an Australian Coalition foreign policy might look like.
• A Japanese government panel to recommend relaxing 'longstanding defense guidelines to prepare for "contingencies" in the Korean Peninsula and Taiwan Strait'.
• The latest on China's aid plans in Vanuatu.

Peter Hartcher today asks Prime Minister Julia Gillard to explain her population pitch for Australia with the headline: 'No numbers, no substance, no solutions'. While the Australian reports concerns about any shift away from a big Australia.

The Lowy Institute conducted polling on this issue back in March and the numbers suggest why it has been so difficult to get down to specifics.

While a majority of Australians (69%) wanted Australia's population to be smaller than the 36 million projected in the government's Intergenerational Report, at the same time 72% wanted it to bigger than the current size.

Breaking those numbers down, 43% said 'the best target population for Australia' was '30 million people', 23% said it was '40 million people' and 6% said it was '50 million people or more'. Just over one fifth (22%) said it should be 'around the current size of 22 million people' and only 4% said it should be 'less than the current size of 22 million people'. 

For a politician hoping to please everyone, it seems there is no number everyone can agree on.  

Photo by Flickr user alexkess, used under a Creative Commons license.

One of the more intriguing presentations at our recent Myer Melanesia MDG conference was that by Dennis Whittle, CEO of Global Giving. It's an innovative attempt to democratise the selection of aid projects and the delivery of funds. A bit like Kiva.  

I had the chance to speak with Dennis after his presentation about Global Giving.

• The Lowy Institute has been following the expansion of China's aid program in the Pacific for some time, while the Economist asked back in 2003 whether China needed any more aid when it was launching men into space. Now the UK has said it can't justify aid to either China or Russia.
• The latest NYT/CBS poll found most Americans 'expect alternative forms to replace oil as a major source within 25 years. Yet a majority are unwilling to pay higher gasoline prices to help develop new fuel sources.' It's a finding similar to that in the 2008 and 2010 Lowy polls: a lot of people want action on climate change but are not prepared to pay much to make it happen.
• General Stanley McChrystal goes out on a limb in an interview with Rolling Stone. Passport asks if he can survive.
• Gordon Chang partly agrees with Mark Thirlwell's reading of China's latest movements on its currency peg. As Mark foreshadowed it now looks like it won't be front and centre on the G20 agenda.

One of the speakers I particularly enjoyed hearing from at the Myer Melanesia MDG conference was David Roodman from the Center for Global Development (his blog here).

The first interview I did with him follows a presentation he did on some of the fascinating micro finance innovations currently taking place in Kenya — predominantly through the very impressive M-Pesa. (The Economist also looked at these recently.)

The second interview covered the Commitment to Development Index, which David was involved in setting up. The CDI has a pretty handy website too.

Last week the Myer Melanesia Program hosted a two day conference in Sydney on the MDGs. There were a number of impressive speakers and a some interesting ideas to come out of the various sessions.

Below is my interview with Professor Peter Singer (you have to excuse the background noise of busy conference goers) in which we discuss his ideas about giving.

Yesterday, Wednesday Lowy Lunch subscribers were treated to an insightful look at the recent turmoil in Thailand by Dr Milton Osborne, who is only recently back from a trip there.

I spoke to him afterwards about the significance of the unrest and the divisions within Thai society, the role of the King and the future for democracy. You can listen to his full presentation here.

Photo by Flickr user Karsoe, used under a Creative Commons license.

In the wake of the British election, there has been a lot of discussion about the representativeness of the UK's electoral system.

But a friend in Moscow alerted me to the fact that things could be much worse — take Russia, for example. 

Foreign Minister Stephen Smith is in New Zealand today for a meeting of the Pacific Islands Forum Ministerial Contact Group to discuss Fiji.

He might be interested in this result from the 2010 Lowy Poll, released today:

The 2010 Lowy Institute Poll was released today. It's the sixth annual poll tracking Australian attitudes towards the world.

Poll results can be interpreted in various ways. In a seminal book on polling, Walter Lippmann argued public opinion dealt with 'indirect, unseen, and puzzling facts and there is nothing obvious about them'.

Here's my attempt at interpreting the results of our latest poll.

First of all, Australians love New Zealand. Every year we ask Australians to rank their feelings towards different countries and in no year has any country received a higher score than New Zealand did this year. Canada managed second place followed by France, Singapore, the US and Japan. North Korea continues to suffer from an image problem and ranked last.

Australians might know who they like, but are divided about where they fit in the world. One third (32%) said Australia was more a part of Asia, one third (31%) said we were part of the Pacific, and the other third (31%) that we were not really part of any region.

Interestingly, there was a difference among the generations. Younger Australians (18-29 years old) were most likely to say Australia was not really part of any region (46%) compared with just 15% who said it was more a part of Asia. Those 60 years or older said the opposite: 42% said Australia was more a part of Asia and just 15% that it was not really part of any region.

One of the results I found most interesting this year was on the world's leading economic power.

Eminent Australian historian James Curran delivered an impressive Wednesday Lowy Lunch speech yesterday on Australia's efforts to remodel its national image in the wake of the movement away from the mother country. 

I caught him for five minutes afterwards to discuss when exactly Australia separated from the UK (don't hold your breath for a precise date), how Australia's view of itself changed and James' intriguing anecdote about efforts by the Secretary of Foreign Affairs to introduce a uniform for diplomats.

You can listen to his full speech here.

I am joining Jim Molan in highly recommending Craig Jurisevic's new book, Blood On My Hands. I finished it last week and managed to catch his compelling talk on Saturday.

At almost every turn of the page Jurisevic smacks up against impossible choices and ends up pushing firmly against what many would consider the limits of moral and ethical boundaries — and not just medical ones. The reader is given a first-hand account of his actions and their consequences, which end up presenting a compelling case for what he does.

What sets Jurisevic's book apart from others in this genre is that he decides to act. In many other first-hand accounts of humanitarian tragedies, like those in Rwanda or Srebrenica, the foreign author is placed in a position where the rules prevent them from acting.

They do their best to fight against the rules, but ultimately they stand down. But you are left with a strong impression that they still wonder what would have happened if they had disobeyed and acted on their instincts.

Jurisevic is held back by a number of factors — including a young child and new wife back in Australia — let alone likely opprobrium from the Australian Medical Association.

His story is really about the consequences of taking that risk. By no means is every decision is a winner: his actions result in some people dying and very nearly himself. Yet he is operating in a world — more specifically a cave on the front line — that is a long way from ideals and laboratory conditions.

This book will make you think.

In his budget reply, Opposition leader Tony Abbott promised, if the Coalition is elected, to freeze recruitment for two years in most areas of the public service, including DFAT. But what does this mean in practice?

DFAT has provided numbers on its natural attrition rate over the last five years, which are as follows: 86 (2009), 140 (2008), 116 (2007), 107 (2006) and 109 (2005). That's an average of 112 staff lost per year — or 224 over the two-year period Abbott is proposing.  

This freeze would equate to a reduction of 10 per cent compared with DFAT's staffing levels reported in the 2008-09 annual report. This, when the foreign service is already suffering from a major resource deficit. Or as the current Secretary put it:

...between 1996 and 2008 the Australian Public Service grew in general by between 25 and 30 per cent. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade shrank by 11 per cent. By 2008 there were 100 fewer people overseas working for the Australian Government in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade than what there had been 15 years before.

When Mr Abbott gave his first major address on foreign policy as Opposition leader he said:

As the leader of the party, obviously it is my challenge to rise to areas of expertise and understanding that haven't been my forte in the past. It's always an interesting challenge.

If the Coalition is elected later this year, there might be even fewer people around to help him understand Australian foreign policy.

Back in November 2008 I wrote about the short-listing of several Australian judges to sit on two new UN internal dispute tribunals, which were set up to replace the shambolic former system. I was a little sceptical the new structures would succeed:

...one of the biggest obstacles to justice in the past was the significant financial implications of compensating so many staff who had been so poorly managed/abused for so long. States, it seemed, were reluctant to cough up for UN managerial incompetence.  

A report in the Sydney Morning Herald today suggests NSW Supreme Court judge Michael Adams, who was appointed to one of the new bodies, has found the new UN justice regime something like the old one — and at least as frustrating.

Justice Adams has accused the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, of 'wilful disobedience' and barred Mr Ban's lawyers from speaking in court until they comply with an order to produce internal documents related to a case. As he put it in an 8 March ruling:

In my review the refusal constituted an attack on the rule of law embodied in the statute of the tribunal.

It's nice to see someone prepared to hit back at a system in desperate need of some reform, but I don't know I would back him against the UN bureaucracy.

Photo by Flickr user lambdachialpha, used under a Creative Commons license.

The Lowy Institute has conducted polls every year since 2005. Most of our polling is done by phone — although we have used face-to-face interviews in Indonesia. Many fieldwork companies are now also offering internet polling — although it seems even this innovation in polling could soon be leapfrogged.

Carnegie Mellon has analysed over a billion tweets to see if they can be used to measure presidential approval and consumer confidence (by comparing them to regular polls). For a first attempt the results weren't bad:

...both the Twitter-derived sentiments and the traditional polls reflected declining approval of President Obama's job performance during 2009, with a 72 percent correlation between them.

Thanks to reader David for the tip-off.

Photo by Flickr user wicho, used under a Creative Commons license.

Paul Cotton writes in with this reply to Graeme Dobell's recent post.

A point you overlooked in your excellent and interesting article.

In a few days or weeks Kim Beazley will have as his fellow Ambassador in Washington none other than Mike Moore, whether he likes it or not.

• Michael Green in the WSJ says don't go wobbly on North Korea (subscribers only).
• Michael Fullilove takes you on a more personal tour of Washington in this Spectator piece. Rory Medcalf gives you a more personal look at India in this one. 
• From the NYT, the fraying seams in the fight against AIDS:

Of the 33 million people infected, 14 million are immuno-compromised enough to need drugs now, under the latest World Health Organization guidelines. (W.H.O. guidelines are conservative; if all 33 million were Americans, most clinicians would treat them at once.)

Instead, despite a superhuman effort by donors, fewer than four million are on treatment. Just to meet the minimal W.H.O. guidelines, donations would have to treble instead of going flat.

• Caroline Baum at Bloomberg disses the Greek contagion theory sweeping Europe. 
• Four reasons from Foreign Policy why the UK hung parliament is a bad thing, two reasons why it's good, and a truly bizarre one from Youtube to show it's gone on too long already ...

• Sam was sceptical of the new missile system Iran recently unveiled at a parade, but this analysis suggests it might be a bit more than some oil drums welded together and thrown on the back of a truck. 
• Social experiments to end poverty?
• Iran hosts a nuclear dinner party.
• Your UN Security Council bid moment of Zen: 'Australia very much wants to enhance its engagement with countries of the Caribbean...' said Foreign Minister Stephen Smith after becoming the first Australian Foreign Minister to visit Dominica.
• Drezner explains why the US dollar will remain number one: facebook.

Last week Dick Smith wrote under the headline, 'The people have spoken, halt population growth':

For the past three months I’ve been traveling all over the country talking to people about plans to rapidly increase our population. Nine out of 10 people I talk to oppose the idea.

Others read the mood in a similar way. Before opinion polls were widely used, President Roosevelt apparently used to dip his arm into a barrel of letters and choose one at random in an effort to try and gauge public sentiment.

And that is the problem with the less rigorous ways of guessing what the public in general want — it's pretty hard to get right. It's in these knowledge gaps that polling can serve a useful function. In March, the Lowy Institute asked a nationally representative sample of 1,001 Australians what they thought was the best population size for Australia by 2050:

• Almost three quarters (72%) of Australians supported a bigger Australia. But 69% preferred a population smaller than the 36 million predicted in the government’s Intergenerational Report. 
• Forty-three percent of Australians said the best population size for Australia in 2050 was 30 million; 23% chose 40 million, and 6% chose 50 million people or more.
• Twenty-two per cent were happy with the current level and only 4% wanted a smaller population than Australia has now.

Photo by Flickr user Christopher Chan, used under a Creative Commons license.