Japan’s past engagement of the Pacific Islands, primarily developmental and generally low-key, is viewed as having been “slow and steady”. However, as it has developed its ‘Free and Open Indo-Pacific’ (FOIP) strategy, Japan has begun to dispense with this quiet approach and now adopts a more strategic set of policies towards the Pacific Islands. Japan’s shift in style and the implications of a more contested Indo-Pacific region raise some important questions for Japan’s future engagement of the region, especially in terms of how the Pacific Islands fit within the FOIP vision. Indeed, as FOIP evolves, it is likely that the past approach will continue to be reworked as Japan’s Pacific Islands policies become more closely integrated into FOIP. Whether Japan has the capacity to deliver on ambitions for the Pacific Islands and the wider Indo-Pacific, however, remains open to question.
The Boe Declaration on Regional Security was signed by all members of the Pacific Islands Forum during the 49th Leaders’ meeting in Nauru. It has been introduced and socialised during a period of heightened geopolitical uncertainty. How it has been referenced and articulated has varied as between different actors and this reflects competing priorities as between domestic, regional and international policy. The Boe Declaration is premised on an affirmation that climate change remains the single biggest threat to the signatory countries. This highlights significant cleavages among signatories. We have yet to see how the implementation of this Declaration will work to remedy those or entrench them further.
The rules-based order is under challenge on a number of fronts. China as a rising power is naturally a major challenger, and its rise has created significant uncertainty about the kind of order that will prevail within the Indo-Pacific into the future. Other external forces at play — from the shifting nature and multipolar distribution of power across the region, to the emergence of new demands and sites for political contest, and the impact of new threats including climate change — are all exerting different pressures on the rules-based order. Add to this the fact that rules are not intended to be static fixtures of global order. They shift and evolve to meet the needs and expectations of those that set, enforce and comply with them. Amid this context of re-ordering, this paper argues that there is a more significant contest underway in the Indo-Pacific: the contest for strategic narrative. It is a contest of leadership, influence and ideas, whereby success is ultimately demonstrated through the ability to set the political agenda, while also framing the rules and terms of compliance for that agenda; thus, shaping the future of regional order in the Indo-Pacific.
Strategic power shifts in the Indo-Pacific resulting from the rise of China, combined with the disarray provoked by the tempestuous policies of the Trump Administration towards its allies, have created complex challenges for Australian policy-makers in managing their alliance relations with the United States. To understand contemporary shifts in Canberra's relative bargaining power position within the alliance over time this article conducts a net assessment through the employment of a specially designed framework taking the form of a 'ledger' that tallies Australia's 'assets' against its 'liabilities'. Through this exercise analysts can appraise how its advantages can be strengthened and weaknesses mitigated in dealing with Washington in future bargaining encounters. It also tangentially contributes to the International Relations (IR) literature of 'intra-alliance politics' by illustrating how allied 'bargaining power indexes' may be operationalised. through the empirical analysis conducted here.
The Australian Defence Force and Australian security community maintain many sensitive national capabilities that are subject to extensive security protections to prevent information disclosure. Often, the operational models of these capabilities are based on the assumption that they will not be discovered. This assumption is becoming tenuous. The frequency of public information disclosures of sensitive national capabilities is high, and technology has evolved to give Australia's strategic competitors greater ability to gain intelligence on these sensitive national capabilities. This article will consider the shared operational security features of two of Australia's most sensitive military capabilities-submarines and Special Forces. It contends that Australian policymakers must be more specific in designating the information they wish to protect, and take additional measures to do so, noting that operational security is becoming a more transitory concept rather than something that can be achieved into perpetuity.
Australia's counterterrorism policy is often justified publicly by the perceived threat of radicalisation. The purported rise of radicalisation, however, is based on conflicting academic opinion and limited empirical evidence. This article examines the radicalisation discourse and argues that there is no consensus in the field as to how a person can become radicalised, or even what the end point of radicalisation should be. Furthermore, scholars are yet to formulate a persuasive explanation for how ideas can actually lead to violence. The radicalisation debate may result in the securitisation of unconventional views, which could threaten the freedom of political discourse that underpins the Australian democratic system.
Since early 2016, these reforms have had immediate and far-reaching effects on the PLA’s organisation, force posture, command and control structures, and internal politics. Looking ahead and over the longer-term, the successful implementation of these reforms will help build the PLA into a far more capable fighting force.1 As far as China’s top political and military leaders are concerned, these reforms are critical in transforming the PLA from a bloated, untested and corrupt military with low levels of professionalism to a force increasingly capable of conducting joint operations, fighting short, intensive and technologically sophisticated conflicts, and doing so farther from Chinese shores.
