Questions and Answers
Dr Tim Huxley, Executive Director, IISS-Asia; Editor, Adelphis; Corresponding Director for Military Information and Analysis, IISS
Prime Minister, thank you for your address, you provided a panoramic view of the economic and security issues facing this region, of which Australia is very much a part, and you talked also about the role that an Asia-Pacific community might play in meeting these challenges. In your address you also mentioned the new Defence White Paper, but the White Paper was not just about cooperation, it also outlined major changes in the force structure of the Australian defence force, in particular it projected a major naval build up, including a doubling of Australia’s submarine fleet, and the procurement and deployment in the medium to long-term of land attack cruise missiles. My question is whether there is any contradiction between the assessments of strategic challenges, which are inherent in your new defence white paper on the on hand, and Australian thinking about the potential for a regional community on the other hand.
Kevin Rudd
The reality for all defence and strategic planers, and foreign policy planners, is to proceed on both tracks; each government and country represented in this room takes prudent national decisions to directly prepare for its own national defence. In our case that is reinforced by our own strategic environment; we are a country of 21 million occupying a continent with probably the fifth or sixth largest coastline in the world, and if you were to aggregate our combined maritime zones, one of the largest maritime zones to policy worldwide, certainly within the top five around the world. This commands our attention in relation to the capacity of our naval forces to discharge that function in the future, and explains what we are doing in that space. However, making prudent national preparations for national defence, shaped by our own strategic circumstances, is one track.
The second track must always be around how we shape the institutions, cultures and habits of security policy, transparency and cooperation. I fear that is where we currently lack an institution within the region to properly harness and further that. One of the great things that has occurred under the leadership of Singapore is this dialogue that we are participating in today, and which your institute has been such a key partner in forming. This takes us a far way into a process of discussion with each other about common security and strategic perceptions, and where those security and strategic perceptions differ. Institutionally we need to lift this to a broader regional focus, so that the pre-existing tensions that exist in our part of the world, in part arising from unresolved territorial disputes that go back decades, if not centuries, as well as the new threats to security, can be properly openly discussed and maximally harmonised within an environment of common regional security community.
I draw some inspiration from what has occurred in Europe; there are many critics of what has happened with the EU, and I am not foreshadowing the emerge of a EU here in our part of the world, but when I look at the history of Europe prior to the formation of the Union in the 1950s, back to the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, this was a period that had a few problems attached to it. In this region we would like to learn from that and not replicate it, and therefore the institutional mechanisms that have emerged in the last 50 years have, I believe, ameliorated long-standing political and security tensions, and outstanding territorial disputes. Over time that has been done to the maximum extent, and has shaped a common security view; we can learn from that in sprit if not in letter, and craft some of that into our own deliberations here, given this will be, as I said in my formal remarks, the centre of global geo-strategic gravity and geo-economic gravity for the century ahead, I believe we have got that challenge on our shoulders. In our Defence White Paper we seek to prosecute both courses of action simultaneously, and I think that is the right way to go.
Kishore Mahbubani, Dean, Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore
Mr Prime Minster, Australia, like Singapore, like other countries in this region, has a strong and powerful vested interest in a positive and stable relationship with the US and China. We are currently in a rather unusual situation where the relations between the world’s greatest power, the US, and the world’s greatest emerging power, China, are positive and stable, but this goes against the logic of history. As someone who speaks Mandarin and English fluently, you understand the interests and concerns of both sides; can you suggest two or three concrete steps that we in the region, or Australia, can take, apart from the idea of an Asia-Pacific community, to ensure that the rather abnormal situation we have, of a stable and positive relationship between the US and China, continues in the next decade or so?
Kevin Rudd
Thank you Kishore, and I will acknowledge publicly your enormous contribution to scholarship and diplomacy over a long period of time. Where you rightly start your question is with what is going right in terms of the relationship between the two, and I said this to President Bush before he left office, that one of the things I commended his administration for, and certainly to his Chinese counterparts as well, was the fact that that relationship proceeded in a stable and a mutually beneficial way over a long period of time, under careful management at both ends of the relationship, and that is good. Secondly, in my discussions with President Obama, it is quite plain to me that from the American perspective that will be his intention with his administration in relation to China as well; my discussions with the Chinese leadership reflect exactly the same. We are therefore in a virtuous position, as far as this important relationship is concerned.
A practical thing that has emerged, albeit in the non-security space, is for the first time in the last six months we have China and the US conjoined in the G20, with other states, including Australia, in forming decisions about the global economic order, in a body that before has not operated in this way. The encouraging thing I have to report from the first and second of those summits, and the most recent one concluded in London, was the degree of collegiality, not just across that conference at large, but between China and the US in particular. The great stimulus efforts undertaken, for example, on the global economy by the US and China, and by other states including Japan, have been fundamentally important in tracking this trajectory towards global recovery. Why do I use that as an example to respond to your question? I believe that contained within that possibility of where the G20 goes for the future, including its next summit in Pittsburgh, we see the emergence of a good body of global governance for the future, where these two states and others are directly engaged.
The only other point I would make by way of furtherance of this discussion, is again an initiative that emerge during the Bush administration, and which has continued, and many of you in this room are familiar with it, in terms of the bilateral, strategic and economic dialogues between Washington and Beijing, which have been continued and, at least against one argument, elevated. This has been important, as it brings together key economic decision-makers, foreign policy decision-markers, and strategic policy decision-makers in both countries. This is to be encouraged, and to be developed further, and certainly in my discussions with counterparts, not just in the White House, but also in the administration in Washington, there is a strong desire for that to continue. In summary, active engagement in a new forum wrestling with a common crisis that unites us all, which is how to jump-start the global economy back into life and to fix the rules up for the future, China and the US are actively and constructively engaged on this, and it is good to see and be part of. Secondly, on the bilateral, what is occurring with the strategic and economic dialogue is a very good thing both for those two countries and the rest of us combined.
Ambassador Robert D Blackwill, Senior Fellow and Senior Adviser to the President, The RAND Corporation; former US Ambassador to India and former Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Planning
Prime Minister, thank you very much for joining us this evening, and I commend your optimism about the region; my question is this, is there anything that worries you about the future of the region, that keeps you awake at night, other than North Korean nuclear activities?
Kevin Rudd
There is a lot that keeps me awake at night Bob, and a lot of those challenges are domestic, but they are also international. The virtue of travelling from Australia is you have a long time to think on the plane before you get anywhere, and I was talking to our defence chiefs and others coming up here today on this subject. If we look at the enormous challenges that we are presented in our wider region, in terms of what is emerging in Afghanistan and Pakistan, I share entirely the sentiments recently reflected by President Obama on this question. Of course, you have just made reference to what has occurred with North Korea, and great uncertainties not just in terms of the nuclear trajectory of North Korea, but also uncertainties about the future evolution of its own leadership.
Thirdly, the great and unresolved question of the Iranian nuclear programme; I made mention of that in my formal remarks, and this is of a direct concern to us as well. If there is another, which is periodically below the radar and periodically above the radar, it is what all those who are engaged in the wider national security policy debate, wider than a clinical definition of defence policy, are now seized with, and that is with global pandemics. We have had three rounds of debate about this in our region, one with SARS, with Avian Influenza, and now with the current H1N1. Based on my discussions with health policy analysts this former below the radar concern, and now above the radar concern, should seize all of our national policy establishments about how we best plan effectively to deal with this, if and when it becomes a large and immediate problem for us all.
I believe we have had several warning shots across the bows on this, and while it belongs in the non-hard security, but so-called soft security box, if it occurs it will size all of our political establishments with a level of common need for endeavour that we have rarely been seized with in the past. There are four that keep me awake at night, and there are a few others besides, and I am sure we can discuss that further over a drink.
Stanley Roth, Vice-President, International Government Relations, Asia and Middle East, The Boeing Company; IISS Member
Prime Minister, you have done the conference a great service by starting off with the big picture, but since you are leaving I would like to get your thoughts on the crisis of the moment, which is North Korea. Having exploded two nuclear devices, we at last have to ask the question whether it is possible that North Korea is no longer willing to voluntarily give up its nuclear programme and, if that is the case, then the question for all of us is whether there is anything that can be done to compel them to give up the nuclear capability, particularly because of what you just referred to, the precedent for Iran and other potential proliferators in the future?
Kevin Rudd
I have enormous sympathy for all countries represented in this region that have been part and parcel of the six party talks on the DPRK, and I would particularly commend what the Government of China has done in seeking to facilitate those talks over a long period of time. I can also privately reflect upon the frustration this must occasion in Beijing, to see what has happened most recently as well. I have talked with those participating in the six party talks, and the processes that preceded it in various US administrations going back a long time; the only constant to emerge in all of this is the consistently non-cooperative approach of the DPRK regime. This most recent setback is an acute one, for reasons that you as defence policy analysts will be intimately familiar with. When I said in my remarks before that the obligation we face at the UN Security Council is to arrive at a resolution that is not just with one voice, but with a concrete set of measures, I meant both parts. That is, not just a universal statement of condemnation, which in part has occurred in the absence of the resolution, although it is necessary to do that for proper reflection in the instruments of international law, but secondly, the measures have to be uniform and strong as well.
Regrettably the conclusion that I have reached is that one of the only effective ways of seizing the attention of the government in Pyongyang is by a harsh range of financial measures of a type that existed and then were lifted at one point. I believe they need to be re-embraced and hardened, and these may have some potential to arrest the attention of the regime, as I believe they did on an earlier occasion, prior to being lifted. The other point is that I have become, in my own dealings with representatives of the North Korean Government over a long period of time, completely persuaded of the view that those in North Korea only respond to a unified demonstration of strength on the part of the international community. If I thought there was something else in there that would work I would embrace that, but I believe strength and resolve is what is necessary to command attention and respect on the part of that regime. All other governments represented in the six party talks, including my own, have tried all sorts of means by which to engage in a proper process with Pyongyang, and most of those have come to naught. I believe strength is necessary, and the first test of strength will be what measures we embrace as an international community through the UNSC.
Dr John Chipman
Prime Minister, thank you very much indeed; Australia has been from its very inception a huge support of this Shangri‑La dialogue for seven consecutive years. The defence minister from your country has attended this eighth year as well, and that now capped by your personal presence and the tribute by that presence that you pay to this dialogue process. The IISS enjoys a large and vibrant membership in Australia that has itself shown great intellectual leadership of the strategic debate. We at the IISS, and I am sure all of us in this room, wish you great good fortune in your continuing consultations on the idea that you launched last June, and which you have refined here, about an Asia-Pacific community. You have given us much to think about; you have sung for your supper, I think it is time you enjoy it. Thank you very much.
