India is smartening up its naval diplomacy in the great maritime game with China. New Delhi is showing signs of a new spirit of cooperation with Beijing in the Indian Ocean, offering to protect Chinese oil shipments or even cooperate with the Chinese Navy.

This is not capitulation. It is cleverness. As I have argued previously, India needs to be on the front foot in building maritime security cooperation in the Indian Ocean, in a way that locks in India's own advantages as being the only great power actually located there. That's why India should have offered last year to refuel China's anti-piracy patrols, rather than letting the French do it at Djibouti. Maybe the Indians were spurred into engagement by their worries about China recently taking a lead role in patrolling a zone in the Gulf of Aden.

Well, better late than never. By making a show of taking the lead in engaging with the Chinese, India can test China's intentions, and weaken China's rationale for a 'string of pearls', in the form of the permanent bases some Chinese analysts are now advocating.

This is not to deny that India might face a direct military threat or wider strategic competition from China in the Indian Ocean. Alongside proactive engagement, India should continue to hedge – asymmetrically, as Admiral Suresh Mehta has wisely argued.

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

Amid all the heat and worry over how the student safety crisis is affecting Australia-India relations, here are some angles that deserve more attention:

• The Indian Express, consistently one of India's sharpest newspapers, brings a few breaths of fresh air to the overheated Indian media debate, pointing out that an over-reaction is not in India's interests.
• Maybe India's External Affairs Minister still has a balanced view of the situation after all.
• The Indian High Commissioner to Australia explains her view.
• And the Australian High Commissioner to India explains his.
• Australia — or at least Victoria — certainly has to do a better job of getting accurate information on crime into the public domain.
• One Indian magazine, Outlook, put a downright prejudiced spin on its recent investigation into the student issue. The story itself had a few notes of balance buried within the text, but the front page headline misleadingly screamed 'WHY THE AUSSIES HATE US'. Instead of linking to that piece, which has already had more attention that it deserves, I'd like to bring some prominence to this article, written by an Indian-origin journalist who is actually based in Australia.
• And some even-handed opinion in the Australian press too.
• Finally, since we can all be forgiven for not believing what we read in newspapers, here are the views of some Indian students in Australia, and of some young Australians visiting India.

Australian Defence Minister Senator John Faulkner has a reputation for speaking plainly. Not yesterday, when he told the Seapower 2010 conference that the availability of the nation's Collins class submarine fleet was 'less than optimal'.

When you get below the surface, that actually means our island-continent with vast maritime interests has been reduced to having just one operational submarine.

What an embarrassing contrast to the 12 promised in the current Defence White Paper – not to mention the 18 or 30 which some prominent defence analysts think we need. Thank goodness that the forbidding strategic environment envisaged in the White Paper – great powers poised for military confrontation in the sealanes, or perhaps even contemplating the coercion of Australia — has not yet come to pass.

Yet for all this, the government seems determined to press ahead with its plan to create the Son of Collins, a uniquely Australian boat, meant to be the most potent diesel-electric sub ever made. All the Minister had to say yesterday was to remind us that the RAND corporation had been commissioned to 'examine the nature of the required design capability' and report on whether Australia has the ability to produce this fleet domestically.  (The uncharitable might guess at a one word answer.)

Meanwhile, although the idea of Australia buying submarines off-the-shelf remains off the agenda, that has not discouraged Navantia (already contracted to build much of the country's future surface fleet) from including a model of its Scorpene class submarine at the Pacific 2010 defence expo being held alongside the Seapower conference — just in case.

Photo courtesy of the Royal Ausralian Navy.

An intriguing session at the Seapower 2010 conference in Sydney today involved Chinese and Japanese admirals giving their national perspectives on counter-piracy operations off the coast of Somalia. A promising topic, though alas, they left a lot unsaid. Then again, perhaps that was for the best. If China-Japan security relations can always be as cordial as the public camaraderie of these two sailors – lots of on-stage quips and handshakes – then Asia's future will be peaceful and prosperous. Admittedly, that is a rather large if.

Anyway, I was struck by the slickness and confidence of PLAN Rear Admiral Xiao Xinnian's presentation about Beijing's use of special forces in its anti-piracy patrols off Somalia. He emphasised the fact that these commandos are often placed as guards onboard Chinese merchant vessels for the transit of the Gulf of Aden. What he did not say is whether they have actually done any shooting. It is widely believed that they haven't. So far, for all the big talk, Beijing has been seriously wary about using force as an alternative to paying ransoms. 

Rear Admiral Xiao said positive things about the level of communication and information-sharing between the PLAN and other navies in the counter-piracy patrols, but was less forthcoming when I asked him what lessons China might draw from this for the prevention of incidents-at-sea in East Asia.

Japan's Rear Admiral Izuru Fukumoto, meanwhile, said that 'rule sharing' and confidence-building measures were indeed a positive spinoff from the anti-piracy patrols, noting that the Chinese navy had escorted ships with Japan-bound cargoes and vice versa. Not surprisingly, he did not place much emphasis on the possibility that Japan would have to use force against pirates – instead underlining the presence of Japanese coast guard officers on board Tokyo's destroyers in order to handle arrests which, by law, Japanese military personnel are forbidden from making. 

But his comments still had an undercurrent of national interest. He may not have said it explicitly, but clearly the JMSDF is becoming increasingly experienced and confident at protecting the distant sealanes on which Japan's economy depends.

Photo by Flickr user U.S. Coast Guard, used under a Creative Commons license.

• Latest on the question of whether Japan is comfortable with the US reducing the role of its nuclear weapons in East Asia: the Japanese Foreign Minister denies that Tokyo has a problem with the Washington retiring its nuclear Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles.
• Jaw-jaw or war-war? North Korea's signals are always mixed. The best recent guide to understanding Pyongyang remains this piece by former US Six-Party Talks negotiator Victor Cha in The Washington Quarterly.
• The timing of China's reported anti-ballistic missile test may have been to signal anger with Washington over exporting advanced missile defence batteries to Taiwan, but there are some longer-term strategic and diplomatic messages: China is interested in both anti-satellite capabilities and missile defences. And it sees little benefit in continuing to claim the moral high ground of rejecting the 'militarisation of space'. Oh, and India is getting into the satellite-shooting game too.
• India has a new National Security Adviser, former Foreign Secretary Shiv Shanker Menon. Not before time. New Delhi desperately needs some fresh thinking in fusing its foreign and security policies, as well as someone who will shake up the domestic security apparatus after the debacle of the Mumbai terror attacks. But can he do both?
• Public debate intensifies in India about Afghanistan policy. And two of my favourite Indian strategic analysts – Kanti Bajpai and Nitin Pai — are in very different corners.
• One for our American readers: it is said that Australians always stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the US. But it wasn't always so…

Two events in the past few days – one positive, one negative – have the potential to act as circuit-breakers in the crisis over the welfare of Indian students in Australia.

The negative event was the suggestion by the extremist Shiv Sena Party that Australian cricketers should be banned from Mumbai. Why might this threat actually do some good? I have explored the reasons in more detail in this opinion piece, but the short answer is that most Indians – including many who have been worried about questions of race and safety in Australia – consider the Shiv Sena to be the last people they want on their side. 

This development is at least a reminder that every society has its share of bigots and that irresponsibly accusing entire nations of racism plays into their hands.  

The positive event, meanwhile, was the free public concert by Bollywood maestro A R Rahman in Sydney's Parramatta Park on Saturday night.

This will be remembered as a watershed moment for Indians in Australia. It was both the biggest gathering of the Indian community in this country's history – much of the crowd of tens of thousands comprised people of Indian or South Asian origin – and a dynamic expression of Australia's openness to multiple cultures.

I can attest to all of this because I was lucky enough to be there. The show was broadcast live across the Asia-Pacific by Australia Network and could go a long way in reducing misperceptions that Indians are not welcome in this country.

Admiral Suresh Mehta (pictured, at a 2008 event at the Lowy Institute) has one of the wiser minds in the Indian strategic community. This speech last year was the most sensible and balanced piece of advice on Indian defence policy uttered publicly by a military officer. It has also been one of the most misunderstood. He did not argue that India should not try to protect itself from Chinese power. He argued, rather, that India should adopt a clever strategy of asymmetry – just as China has done against the US.

So why has this former Chief of Navy and Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee (in other words, India's head of the defence force) been sent as High Commissioner to New Zealand? Is he being sidelined, rewarded or both? Somehow I doubt it signals a New Delhi-Wellington strategic axis.

• What is the Royal Australian Navy going to use its great big strategic projection ships for? Are they as much for the Army as the Navy? Go to the Seapower 2010 conference to find out. 
• It's a bad sign for the supposed ruddy health of the Australia-US alliance that the 2007 bilateral defence trade agreement crafted under Howard and Bush still has not made it through Congress. One hopes there will be words about this at the AUSMIN talks next week. Mind you, there were words about it at the last few AUSMIN meetings too. 
• Speaking of AUSMIN, and Hillary Clinton's visit to the region, it is fascinating that she is including a visit to Papua New Guinea. There can only be one fundamental reason: China's growing influence in Port Moresby and the South Pacific more generally. The last time this part of the world was of real strategic significance to Washington was almost seven decades ago. 
• India-China security relations have come under serious strain in the past year. About time they talked about it.
• Vietnam's decision to acquire Russian Kilo submarines is surely entirely understandable given China's naval buildup. This shrill Thai editorial last month seemed to miss that point entirely. That, and any sense of ASEAN solidarity.

Australia's reputation in India — and worldwide — has suffered greatly in the past week. The storm of outrage in the Indian media over the safety of Indian students in Australia has gone global.

The catalyst for this furore has been the murder in Melbourne of a young Indian-born graduate. This was a brutal crime, but there is no proof yet of a racist motive. This has not stopped some Indian media organisations, driven by a mix of commercial sensationalism and heightened national pride, from leaping to conclusions and fanning fear in the Indian diaspora. The young man's cremation in India on Sunday provided another focus  for grief and anger, with the nationalist BJP trying to make political mileage.

And just when the Australian and Indian governments seemed to be making some progress in moderating the bad press — with the Indian Foreign Ministry urging its country's media to show some restraint – two more stories of grievous misadventure involving Indians in Australia seized the headlines.

• Washington is in a muddle over its nuclear weapons: the much-awaited US Nuclear Posture Review has been delayed by a month, presumably to allow more time to resolve deep differences between the Pentagon and the White House over the future of the US arsenal and doctrine. Don't hold your breath for a US No First Use policy.
• South Korea is sending 500 personnel to Afghanistan — a large provincial reconstruction team plus protection. This more than fills the gap left by the humiliating withdrawal of Korean forces after a hostage crisis in 2007, and adds substance to the Lee Myung-Bak Government's claims of a global role for the ROK. Perhaps Seoul may yet become the global ally to Washington that Tokyo, it seems, cannot. 
• Should India expand its security role in Afghanistan, perhaps even sending counter-insurgency forces? The thoughtful Indian foreign policy magazine Pragati is kindling this debate. (The current issue is also worth reading for a piece by my Lowy colleagues Andrew Shearer and Fergus Hanson on what the Chinese people really think of India.)
• Loose lips and Chinese ships: a retired Chinese senior naval officer has called for a Chinese naval supply base in the Gulf of Aden. This looks like yet another trial balloon by Beijing. As this excellent post on World Politics Review notes, the powers-that-be were quick to distance themselves from the idea, or were they? Note that this official Chinese television report says an overseas supply base 'might be an option in the future, but it's not being considered at this time'. Interesting also that the PLA Navy has been using a French facility at Djibouti to resupply its anti-piracy patrols.
• Still on China's anti-piracy efforts, China's state media cannot admit to the Chinese public that a massive ransom had to be paid to Somali pirates to free a Chinese crew. Instead, this China Daily report speaks euphemistically of an 'emergency response procedure'. It seems the PLA Navy lacked confidence in its ability to use force to rescue the sailors, but does not want the Chinese people to know that.

I have abandoned much of my earlier hope that China can be persuaded to apply much more pressure on North Korea to renounce the nuclear weapons path. Arguments like those made by Zhu Feng – despite their excellent, interests-based logic — appear to be on the losing side in the internal Chinese debate over what to do about the errant little brother.

Unfortunately, without an end to North Korea's WMD ambitions, North Asia's nuclear tangle will remain thorny, wicked and an obstacle to global nuclear disarmament.

Still on the subject of bad news, I began the year will a few lingering hopes about the ability of India and China to get proactive in establishing a modus vivendi for security cooperation, including in the Indian Ocean region. But security relations between these two rising giants – never good — have soured badly this year. Read, for instance, this blast in China's state media. Beijing seems keen to keep border differences simmering, not least because it worries that a particular monastery in territory claimed by India might have the right to identify the next Dalai Lama. 

Not sure if it makes for ideal holiday reading, but a list of the best books I've encountered this year would have to begin with the masterpiece I neglected to mention in a recent essay about new books on India. Ramachandra Guha's India After Gandhi is the definitive account of how Indian democracy has evolved and survived. Don't be deterred by its length (as I was – which is why I can only praise this 2007 publication two years later). This is highly readable, engaging and accessible – but with plenty of the colour, spice and sheer detail that characterises India.

Usually I prefer short books. David Malouf's newest novel Ransom brings fresh life to The  Iliad in a bittersweet tale of fatherhood, loss, revenge and atonement, against the backdrop of the original total war. All this character, viscera and geopolitics in just 200 pages.  Homer meets Hemingway.

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

Forget The (other) Interpreter. Here are two must-see movies for those who love a good dose of international conspiracy with their entertainment. Both are big-screen versions of some of the sharpest British television ever made. Both open in Australia in January. One is a seriously dark tragedy about nasty goings-on in the nuclear underworld. The other is a darkly serious comedy about media spin, wars of choice and the US-UK special relationship. 

Edge of Darkness, in my view the best BBC thriller of all time, has finally made it to cinema (trailer above). I'm not yet sure about the casting of Mel Gibson in the lead role, and have to wonder how a story set in Cold War Britain will survive the transplant to an American setting circa 2009. I'd hate to see too much meddling with the late great Troy Kennedy Martin's dialogue – long before The Sopranos, here was someone who knew that TV scriptwriting could be high art.

It's out, all 294 pages of it: the report of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, sponsored by Australia and Japan, is in the public domain.

The report provides a menu of informed ideas for improving international cooperation at next year's NPT Review Conference and beyond. While some may find the rather wordy style distracting, it amounts to an impressive exercise in consensus-building among policy thinkers from countries such as the US, Japan, China and India. It's also a valuable reality check in identifying the many serious impediments to nuclear abolition.

This blueprint for reducing nuclear dangers has both strengths and flaws. Here are a few initial observations.

Cutting numbers

Sensibly, the report does not pretend nuclear weapons can be abolished overnight, or even in the space of a decade or two. With something like 23,000 nuclear weapons now in existence, even the nominal target of 2,000 by 2025 is at the boundary of the credible.

With real challenges like climate change, China's rise, nuclear proliferation and the fraying of Pakistan dominating Australia's horizons, you would think that the last thing we need is a prolonged diplomatic fight with a largely likeminded country.

Yet, from the tenor of Peter Hartcher's column in today's Sydney Morning Herald, concerning the recent Australian-hosted conference on a prospective Asia-Pacific 'community', a feud with Singapore is brewing.

It's all about membership of a club: who should be in and who should be out of an idealised future summit to discuss regional challenges. Singapore wants to ensure that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) — of which it is a key member — remains at the core of any future process. Australia seems to have a more open mind. Not, you would have thought, the stuff of which grand diplomatic drama is made.

According to Hartcher's story, Singaporean representatives allegedly tried to embarrass Australian Prime Minister Rudd on a recent visit, by springing an instant electronic audience poll when he addressed a business leaders' event on the regional community idea. If true, it was an underhand sort of stunt, and one can imagine the outrage were Australia ever to try something so undergraduate on a visiting regional leader. 

Culinary delights aside, I am still trying to work out what Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to the United States means for the implementation of the US-India nuclear deal. My impression, so far, is that the Indians are neither thrilled nor dismayed with whatever understandings President Obama may have communicated.

But Singh will at least take heart that, bilaterally, Obama has retreated from one of the more unrealistic points in the UN Security Council Resolution he promoted in September, which had in effect reiterated a call for India to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty: that is, to abandon its nuclear weapons unilaterally. Instead, this week’s Singh-Obama joint statement says:

Prime Minister Singh and President Obama reaffirmed their shared vision of a world free of nuclear weapons and pledged to work together, as leaders of responsible states with advanced nuclear technology, for global non-proliferation, and universal, non-discriminatory and complete nuclear disarmament. Part of that vision is working together to ensure that all nations live up to their international obligations. India reaffirmed its unilateral and voluntary moratorium on nuclear explosive testing.

The United States reaffirmed its testing moratorium and its commitment to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and bring it into force at an early date. Both leaders agreed to consult each other regularly and seek the early start of negotiations on a multilateral, non-discriminatory and internationally verifiable Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty at the Conference on Disarmament …

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If China wants its anti-piracy naval presence in the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden to be recognised as essentially defensive and legitimate, then a recent proposal about creating maritime zones of exclusive national responsibility is precisely not the way to go about it.

As I’ve written previously, China’s naval deployment against piracy provides an excellent opportunity for such countries as the United States, Japan, India and Australia to build patterns of cooperation and trust with the PLA Navy.

But of course we should make no assumptions about China’s willingness to cooperate; rather, the whole point of the exercise is to test and try to expand the boundaries of such willingness.

That is why this recent media report from China contains some disturbing implications. Media reports in China, as in many countries, are often used to trial new thinking underway in official circles.

Thus last year the idea of sending Chinese warships to the Gulf of Aden was raised several times by commentators in the Chinese press several weeks before it was announced as policy. If this new report is a sign of future policy, then other powers should be concerned, for a few reasons.

This is a big week for Australia in its relations with India. Cricket aside, the big news is Kevin Rudd's first visit to India as Prime Minister. As I argue in a new Lowy Institute policy brief, the bad headlines in Australia-India relations in the past year — especially over student welfare — have a silver lining: the two governments are now paying close attention to the challenges and the opportunities in the bilateral relationship.

Speculation is growing that this might translate into a security declaration, along the lines of those agreed between Australia and Japan (2007), Japan and India (2008) and, earlier this year, Australia and South Korea. My policy brief, and an associated opinion piece in today's Indian Express, suggests some of the practical elements such a document might contain, to ensure that it is more than rhetoric. It is good to see some influential Indian commentators taking note.

Dialogue won't only be at the government level this week. The Lowy Institute has its own presence in New Delhi at the moment, as joint convener of the Australia-India Roundtable, an informal dialogue among experts, opinion-makers and former officials. Tomorrow we join our Indian hosts, the Indian Council of World Affairs, for two days of talks about how to maximise partnerships and manage differences between the two countries, on such issues as energy, education, defence and the reshaping of the Asian and global strategic order. Kevin Rudd will address the gathering as part of his visit.

The Roundtable is meant to be a candid and closed-door discussion, so I won't be blogging on who said what. But it will be fascinating to hold these talks against the backdrop of leaders'-level discussions. I will report later on the tenor of our dialogue, and especially any new ideas and insights it generates on how to turn a promising but troubled relationship into a strategic partnership in which each power might genuinely assist the other's resilience and influence.

Photo by Flickr user R@VITH, used under a Creative Commons license.

The Lowy Institute poll, out today, suggests that three-quarters of Australians agree — many of them strongly — that nuclear disarmament should be a top policy priority. This would place Australian public opinion in accord with President Obama's aspirations, pursued most recently through an historic UN Security Council summit.

Hugh White may be right to say that the hard political steps on American nuclear disarmament have not yet been taken, but like a realist version of the Nobel jury, he is being seriously premature in judging where all this will end.

Meanwhile, other countries have hard decisions ahead of them too. With the Australian-Japanese International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (ICNND) finalising a major report, Canberra and Tokyo are going to have to consider some tough policy questions soon about their real attitude to nuclear weapons and the US nuclear umbrella. Canberra will also have to stop pretending that the global nuclear energy debate is none of its business.

So it is timely that the Lowy Institute is expanding its coverage of the nuclear field. The Institute has now consolidated its relevant work in a new web page, the Nuclear Policy Centre. Our aim is to make this the authoritative resource for analysis and policy thinking on nuclear challenges facing Australia and the Asia-Pacific, both with regard to weapons and the civilian nuclear sector.

I've just returned from a visit to New Delhi, where, even though my main interest was nuclear disarmament and arms control,  almost every conversation included a reference to the controversy over the welfare of Indian students in Australia. Those discussions clarified a few of my thoughts on the subject.

First, the damage to Australia's image in India is bad but not beyond repair. And playing the issue with a straight bat is precisely the right approach, as new Australian High Commissioner Peter Varghese did to good effect in this interview on India's leading television talk show, Shekhar Gupta's Walk the Talk. Of course, more will be needed than words. With Foreign Minister Stephen Smith about to leave for India, and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd likely to visit before long, some demonstrable policy changes would help too.

I was struck by the difference between the private and public views of many informed Indians about the student issue. While all feel a compulsion to rally around the flag when their nationals get in strife abroad, many privately acknowledge that this was not a problem entirely of Australia's making, that the Indian media wildly overplayed the story, and that, for instance, a tightening of education visa and permanent residency rules would be recognised in New Delhi as an understandable Australian response that might benefit the relationship (and genuine students) in the long run.

What does seem to be unmovable is the commercially-driven cynicism behind the Indian media's treatment of the story. This is such a pity, given that in many ways the media is a bulwark of India's great democratic achievement. Yet the world's most competitive mass media brings its own bad baggage. In this case, editors and reporters generally know that the reality is much more complex than 'racist' Australians versus naïve and helpless Indian students, but are loath to change the storyline given that it guarantees sales and viewers.

Visionary, bold and long-overdue, or risky diplomatic over-reach: however you see President Obama's UN Security Council summit this Thursday on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, there's little doubt it will make history.

Perhaps it will build on the momentum of Obama's Prague speech, the Wall Street Journal op-eds by US elder statesmen, the ICNND and other initiatives, producing the breakthrough needed for a new consensus on reducing nuclear dangers. Or perhaps, by pushing too hard and too fast for commitments from so many powers on so many contested issues — cuts in nuclear arsenals, changes in nuclear doctrine, the future of atomic energy, how to handle Iran and North Korea — the summit will expose how deep and how many are the fissures of competing national interests.

Some might criticise Obama's draft UNSC resolution as largely a repackaging of accepting wisdom. But even if that is so, there is so much of it in one document that many countries might find at least one clause to balk at.  

It is not as if Washington is not willing to lead by example. The US has made concessions on several related fronts lately, including abandoning ground-based missile defence plans in Europe, accepting bilateral talks with North Korea and signaling, it would seem, quite dramatic reductions in the size of the US nuclear armoury.

Sorry Sam, there is another whopping exception to your rule correlating martial parades and military influence on government. The spectacular Republic Day Parade in New Delhi, on 26 January each year, showcases the glories and follies old and new of the Indian armed forces, from camel regiments to tanks to ballistic missiles. Yet, unlike Pakistan next door, India has a reputation for firm civilian control of the military.

(Ed. note: A follow-up post from World Politics Review, on France's military parades.)

Pakistan has, again, dealt a nasty blow to prospects for nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament – this time by blocking the start of talks on a global treaty to ban the production of fissile material. So much for the optimism held by many, including some of us at The Interpreter.

Islamabad has been capable of all sorts of short-sighted folly in its foreign and security policies over the years. This one is daft, not least because it provides rival India with the perfect cover for its own reluctance to see a fissile material cut-off treaty negotiated. Now there will be no way in the near-term of testing India's good faith on this issue.

The story about a possible US-China-Australia defence exercise is picking up momentum, with press coverage in Asia, the US and Europe, as well as at least one Chinese-language television channel, albeit based in Hong Kong.

The Australian Government has not denied that the idea was discussed by US and Australian military chiefs this week (pictured: ADM Keating at the Lowy Institute this week). But the clear implication of follow-up coverage in the Australian press this morning is that, as The Interpreter suspected, there is no definite political agreement to proceed with this yet.

Importantly, the tenor of remarks by Australia's Prime Minister and the Chinese Ambassador in Canberra is broadly positive. It is still far too early to expect that a gesture about defence engagement – whether in the Australia-China bilateral sense or trilaterally with the US — will guarantee a way forward in rescuing the Australia-China relationship from the hole it has fallen into this year. But it just might. It would be well worth the effort, regardless of where the idea originated.

UPDATE: The story is now being published by PRC media outlets too. To paraphrase the key points: According to Australian media, Australia and the US are going to invite China in a joint military exercise. PACOM chief Admiral Keating is quoted as saying 'we are hoping to engage with China seperately and try to persuade it to join the exercise'.

Today's Sydney Morning Herald has this intriguing story suggesting US and Australian military leaders want a new shape for trilateral security engagement – this time involving China. The source appears to be an interview with the Commander of Pacific Command Admiral Timothy Keating, who was in Australia this week for talks with the security establishment and a dinner speech at the Lowy Institute. 

But before we assume an invitation will be on its way to Beijing soon, let's unpack the story a bit. For a start, the idea is basically a good one, and overdue. A year ago I argued in the US National Bureau of Asian Research's 2008-09 Strategic Asia volume:

… the United States could implement its new cooperative maritime strategy by seeking opportunities to engage China, among other regional powers, in the provision of international public goods such as disaster relief. The United States would find Australia, with strong links in regional naval diplomacy, a useful player in any plurilateral efforts at security cooperation involving China.

China's naval deployment on anti-piracy duties off Somalia further underlined the logic of countries like Australia developing with China habits of cooperation at sea. And an Australian initiative on this front would help limit the diplomatic damage from the unnecessary focus on China-as-problem in the publicity about the Australian Defence White Paper. 

The election of a DPJ government in Japan brings to power a party supposedly supportive of new thinking on nuclear disarmament, in sync with President Obama's Nuclear Weapon Free World speech and the purposes of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament.  Or so it would seem if, for instance, one were to rely on such pronouncements as DPJ Secretary General Katsuya Okada's comments to Gareth Evans earlier this year, encouraging a US policy shift in favour of the declared No First Use of nuclear arms – views echoed in some Japanese press commentary last week. 

It is striking, then, that the DPJ election manifesto is so non-committal. Nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament receive just a few vague sentences in the (also cursory) foreign policy section at the end of this document, released just a few weeks ago. Perhaps this was because the party is divided on the issue, or because party strategists saw little to gain from making bold promises on such a tough subject when electoral victory was already so patently within reach. 

That said, there could well now be a push by some within a ruling DPJ to reduce reliance on nuclear weapons in Japan's defence policy. But they will have a serious fight on their hands, not only because of differences within their own party. Tokyo's foreign affairs and security establishment remains keen to tighten the extended deterrence relationship with Washington, especially in light of North Korea's threatening weapons-testing and China's military modernization. Washington has begun to reassure Japan on this front, and wisely reached out to the DPJ in July with the first round of what is likely to become a regular 'nuclear umbrella forum'.

 Photo by flickr user kamoda, used under a Creative commons license.

Just when the Obama Administration is getting serious about nuclear arms control and disarmament, is India going to spoil the show with a fresh round of nuclear tests? Retired senior weapons scientist K Santhanam has caused a stir this week by being the first participant in New Delhi’s 1998 tests to claim publicly that the single thermonuclear device reportedly detonated at that time was a 'fizzle'.

Foreign experts have previously expressed doubt about India's claims that it had successfully tested an almighty H bomb, along with four smaller fission devices, but the Indian media is attributing greater credibility to Santhanam's words.

Santhanam has two messages: India should not sign the CTBT, and needs to test again to ensure it has a thermonuclear bomb that works.

No doubt his words will reopen a fresh round of international speculation about the possibility of further Indian tests and the damage these would do to fragile progress on global arms control. But before we hasten to assume the worst, it is worth wondering why Santhanam – something of a maverick and a mischief-maker in the Indian security establishment, despite his rise to high rank – has chosen this moment to speak out.

Could it be that he, and others in India’s test-again lobby, can sense a growing prospect that the Manmohan Singh Government will genuinely consider signing the CTBT if the US and China ratify in the years ahead? Whatever the case, India's establishment — for example, India's navy chief, ADM Sureesh Mehta — have been quick to hose Santhanam down.

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

What to make of North Korea’s conciliatory gestures in recent weeks? Releasing American journalists and a South Korean worker; talks between Kim Jong-Il and the head of Hyundai; talks between the North’s delegation to Kim Dae-Jung’s funeral and ROK President Lee; the possible revival of North-South family reunions; even an apparent invitation for bilateral nuclear talks with Washington. In the eyes of some media, this opens up a real possibility of progress in Korean and regional security.

Certainly, any positive movement is welcome, given that it has been such a troubled time of late, what with missile tests, a nuclear test and threats of war emanating from Pyongyang. But is far too early for optimism. Observers should neither be surprised nor especially heartened at the latest twists in North Korean diplomacy.

For all of this is quite consistent with the pattern of the past 15 years: the North alternates between periods of confrontation and apparent conciliation. This on-again, off-again approach is aimed – quite effectively — at preventing real progress in dismantling the North’s nuclear weapons program and, with diminishing success, at keeping its neighbours off balance, minimising scope for a united front among the US, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia. It is all about buying time, and it looks like Pyongyang is in the process of buying a bit more.

Today is Hiroshima Day, and a strengthened regime to stop nuclear proliferation-related shipments is an essential part of wider efforts to ensure nuclear weapons are never used again.

A policy brief published today by the Lowy Institute calls on Australia and other countries to redouble their efforts to fix serious gaps in an international arrangement to stop maritime shipments of materials destined for weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs.

The report argues that heightened concerns over North Korea provide an opportunity to bolster the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), a 95-country arrangement to promote interception of transfers of cargoes related to weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Media reports this week raising concerns about Burma’s possible nuclear activities add to the urgency of strengthening PSI’s Asian coverage in particular.

In A Tighter Net: Strengthening the Proliferation Security Initiative, non-proliferation scholar Emma Belcher notes that PSI relies on participating states and their domestic laws, yet some key states remain outside, including China, India, Pakistan, South Africa, Egypt, Indonesia and Malaysia. They question its legitimacy and transparency. And within PSI, information-sharing is limited. 

To address these problems, Emma recommends that:

• Participants should redouble efforts to recruit missing states by persuading them of the PSI’s legitimacy and providing incentives. These could include legal and operational capacity-building, plus a mechanism to share information. 
• Australia should take a lead in bringing more Asian countries on board, beginning with Indonesia and Malaysia. 
• Australia should also renew efforts to urge the US to ratify the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which would reinforce the legitimacy of US-led maritime operations. PSI states could strengthen the legality of interdictions by pushing the limits of Article 27 of UNCLOS.

This piece makes it clear that a stronger Australian role in PSI would be consistent with the Rudd Government’s aspiration for Australia to be an active middle power with expanded maritime reach. If Canberra is looking for something practical to do to reduce nuclear dangers in the region and the world – something beyond its nuclear disarmament commission – then this could well be it.

Photo by Flickr user (stephan), used under a Creative Commons license.

Many wise heads agree on the need to streamline the diplomatic architecture of the Asia-Pacific, which already has too many institutions doing too little. For its part, The Interpreter has already aired some solutions, including the truly minimalist.

This week’s events in Phuket, with Secretary of State Hilary Clinton declaring that ‘America is back’ as she signed the ASEAN Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC), move some of these ideas a step closer to reality. Accession to the TAC, after all, is a precondition for joining the East Asia Summit (EAS), the existing regional forum with the most logical geographic and membership footprint. (All the big Asian powers are in it, without the Latin American add-ons that so distort APEC.)

And US admission to the EAS is a short-cut to the Australian Prime Minister’s ambition for an Asia-Pacific Community (APC). It is far preferable to the creation of yet another regional institution, which would amount to reinventing the wheel and roadtesting it on everybody else’s toes.

Indeed, the essence of this policy advice is so simple that it can be appreciated (along with, fittingly, a subtle Asian art form) in just 17 syllables:

America’s back

Sign the TAC*, join EAS

Instant APC

Now even the busiest policymakers can’t say they haven’t had time to read the brief.

*In keeping with the 5-7-5 phrasing of the Haiku, TAC should be pronounced ‘tack’.

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