China was the elephant in the room for the discussions Marise Payne and Peter Dutton had with their Korean counterparts in Seoul. Korea’s extremely complex bilateral relationship with China is so different from our own. (more…)
Mack Williams
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Five Eyes on the Afghan collapse-one eyed or blind?
The catastrophic failure of US and coalition intelligence in Afghanistan offers serious food for thought about the extent to which Australia relies on the vaunted Five Eyes arrangements.
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“Rules-based international order” camouflage for US exceptionalism
Bipartisan exceptionalism still predominates under Biden with “rules-based international order” at the core of his foreign policy prevailing over “adherence to international law”. China is stepping up its counter to US and Australian attempts to organise a new regional coalition of deterrence. (more…)
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Biden: Moon Summit- Little new on DPRK but significant bilateral issues.
Last week’s meeting in Washington between Presidents Biden and Moon was the second summit hosted by Biden since his inauguration, following that with Japanese Prime Minister Suga. While not very much new on the North Korean front emerged the atmosphere surrounding it was remarkably more congenial and workmanlike than Moon’s previous meetings with former President Trump. Moon remained very meticulous in any public commentary about China but some significant bilateral business was achieved.
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Biden’s speech to Congress – read his lips!
President Biden’s first address to Congress has provided a substantive and timely window into his ambitions for his term of office, but also the ideology which is driving him. Its central theme was “ We’re in competition with China and other countries to win the 21st Century”. (more…)
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Anchorage: Emerging Biden Policy on China
In his first few months, President Biden has had to focus on settling in his new administration and beginning to tackle the extremely challenging domestic issues he has inherited – especially Covid 19. His new team has begun to flesh out the general themes of foreign and defence policy set out in his election campaign. Biden has insisted on a cautious and systematic approach to the development of policy towards China and North Korea – for which the Anchorage meeting has been an important step.
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President Biden must call time on the “exceptionalism” US has long exploited
Last year I described an essay by then candidate Joe Biden “Why America must lead again” as “less an inspirational treatise … more a collage of ideas”. With so many daunting domestic challenges to confront, it will take time for Biden to put his personal stamp on key foreign policy themes.
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US Indo-Pacific Defence Initiative: What’s really going on ?
The ritual analysis of the departing President’s report card does not record many positives for Trump’s strategic policy management in areas most vital to Australia. The key regional issues have been passed on to President-elect Biden whose immediate challenge will be to craft some coherent whole of government policy from the abundance of ideas currently being pushed by a variety of “experts”, think tanks, interest groups and factions within the Democrats.
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Korea : Biden a mixed blessing?
Seoul and Pyongyang are trying to fathom the implications of the Biden presidency for the Korean peninsula, while concerns remain about the damage Trump may yet do during his remaining time in office.
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Trump pressures South Korea over China
When most around the world had battened down the hatches for a rough ride through the last days of the US Presidential election campaign, the Republic of Korea (ROK) has become seriously preoccupied again with the Trump administration. (more…)
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Biden’s Foreign Policy: Make America the leader again
In an essay in the prestigious US publication “Foreign Affairs”, the Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, sets out a broad set of his foreign policy objectives should he win the US presidency in November. The title – “Why America Must Lead Again – Rescuing US Foreign Policy after Trump” – is hauntingly close to that used by President Trump prompting one to wonder if this was deliberate – and if so why? Less an inspirational or ground-breaking treatise by Biden himself it is more a collage of ideas born out of an extraordinarily long, yet quiet, consultative process.
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Payne and Reynold’s collision course with China
Ministers Payne and Reynolds have presented their brief for the AUSMIN20 discussions in Washington for which the scene has been set by a series of aggressive anti-China speeches by Secretary of State Pompeo and other senior US ministers.
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Range of options for Kim Jong-un in the lead up to US elections
As the weeks tick over towards the US elections in November and doubts grow about President Trump’s prospects, the main stakeholders in the North Korean denuclearisation problem are having to reassess their options. All of which is making for a particularly complex poker game in which the stakes remain extremely high.
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South Korea and the G7 – some tricky issues
Recent months have seen little sign of any development in the US: DPRK relations but a lot has been happening in the peninsular – through piecing the jigsaw together continues to be challenging. (more…)
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MACK WILLIAMS. Cost/Benefit Analysis of the Morrison Covid19 “proposal”
Assuming that the WHA will pass its “Covid Response A73/CONF./1” Resolution now that President Xi has declared his support in his surprise personal address, which will have influenced widespread endorsement from developing countries, Australia needs to take a very serious look at its own performance on this sensitive issue. (more…)
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MACK WILLIAMS. Covid-19, China and the WHO: Quo Vadis Australia?
A long time American UN observer in the US publication Foreign Policy ( “ WHO Becomes Battleground as Trump Chooses Pandemic Confrontation over Cooperation” 29 April 2020) has claimed that “fighting the coronavirus has become secondary as the US seeks to hamstring the WHO, turning it into a 2020 election issue along with Chinese trade”. (more…)
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MACK WILLIAMS. International implications of landslide Korean elections
The spectacular success of President Moon’s party in the recent parliamentary elections has some important international implications as well as those for the South Korean domestic political scene. (more…)
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MACK WILLIAMS. North Korea. Has Trump lost the plot?
The stalemate between the US and the DPRK has dragged on past the Kim Jong-un’s end of 2019 deadline. (more…)
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MACK WILLIAMS. Alliance management ” It’s the elections now…stupid”!
The New Year has confirmed that the US Presidential election cycle is up and running and will pick up speed soon to dominate all forms of political discussion in the US until November. To paraphrase that old American cliché : “ It’s the elections stupid!” (more…)
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MACK WILLIAMS. North Korea: the clock is ticking – but just?
There have been a few developments since the abortive Hanoi Summit but overall little of substance has changed. (more…)
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MACK WILLIAMS. The CSIS report on Iran’s missile program
In The Iranian Missile Threat, published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (Washington DC: 30 May 2019), Anthony Cordesman examines Iran’s view of the threat, the problems in military modernization that have led to its focus on missile forces, the limits to its air capabilities, the developments in its missile forces, and the war fighting capabilities provided by its current missile forces, its ability to develop conventionally armed precision-strike forces, and its options for deploying nuclear-armed missiles. (more…)
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MACK WILLIAMS. Attacks on Saudi Oil Facilities: Trump “Locked and Loaded”?
Whatever the real story behind the damaging attacks on the Saudi oil facilities, tensions in the Gulf and Middle East more widely have been significantly elevated. US attempts to engage the Iranians in direct and secret dialogue to try to wind back the US “extreme pressures” on Iran which Trump had claimed were underway when questioned about French President Macron’s attempt at mediation are clearly in jeopardy. Whether Trump’s tweeted threat that the US was “locked and loaded” to respond militarily to the attacks heightens concerns about further escalation in the Gulf area have yet to be seen.
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MACK WILLIAMS. Alliance Management- Morrison’s First Challenge : Iran
The past week of the Australian-US Ministerial Consultations (Ausmin) talks has presented the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, and his inexperienced ministerial team with the first serious test of how to manage the US alliance relationship. Despite the very difficult contemporary problem of coping with the most dysfunctional US administration in recent history we should not fail to recognise that the fundamental issues for our alliance remain as they have been for years. The “Swamp” is still very much alive. (more…)
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MACK WILLIAMS Britannia Quo Vadis ?
Boris Johnson could hardly have chosen a more inauspicious moment to take over the reins in London with Whitehall in the death throes of a Prime Minister, the seemingly inevitable surge to a “no deal” Brexit plus the disrobing of Britannia by the Iranians and the likely accelerated pace of Beijing’s control over Hong Kong which inevitably will dog UK:China relations for some years ahead. All of which will be confused by President Trump’s graceless embrace which not only claimed Johnson as his acolyte but deliberately emphasised that he was his “man”! As Johnson himself noted, he will certainly need a better mojo than DUD but will he regret Americanising it into DUDE?
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MACK WILLIAMS : Korea : Just what did the DMZ Reality TV show add up to ?
After the enormous Reality TV coverage of the hastily arranged Trump:Kim meeting at the DMZ and the wads of media commentary afterwards,have the prospects of an eventually peaceful Korean peninsular been enhanced? To a large extent the jury is still out on this but there are a few possible glimmers of hope. The crunch issue remains an agreed definition of “denuclearisation” along with an as yet unresolved roadmap for future negotiations.
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MACK WILLIAMS. Iran : Coalition of the less than willing !
The spectacle of Prime Minister facing the “full court press” from President Trump and his team across the dinner table in Osaka starkly demonstrated how G20 Osaka was to be Morrison’s real initiation to the global arena. As the Iran crisis threatened to intensify it was little surprise that this became a prime focus of Australian media interest – even more than Morrison’s claim that he would be speaking squarely to both Trump and President Xi about the serious risks posed to the global economy by the US:China trade “war”. (more…)
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MACK WILLIAMS . North Korea : The tangled web becomes more so !
That the past few months have seen no real progress towards the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula is not all that surprising given the swirling global environment demanding priority attention for President Trump and other key stakeholders. Post mortems of the failed Hanoi Summit have revealed some significant divisions within both sides. Trump persists in proclaiming his close personal relationship with Kim Jong-un will eventually produce a deal but many of his allies and advisers remain sceptical. In the past few weeks the China card has become a major issue not only for Trump but also for President Moon as the spin-off from the US:China tariff war and the associated Huawei controversy pose some daunting issues for Seoul.
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MACK WILLIAMS . North Korea : Any movement?
North Korea has been squeezed out of the media headlines in the months since the Hanoi Summit between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un failed to achieve a breakthrough in February. This has been a factor both of there not being much new to report and the seeming plethora of other crises – at home and abroad – which Trump has on his agenda.
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MACK WILLIAMS. Australia and the United States more than joined at the hip?
The recent Morrison Budget and the subsequent public commentary had precious little new to add to policy debate about future foreign policy directions for Australia other than to cut again our overseas aid budget – to an accumulated 27% since this government has been in office. Sadly neither did the Shorten Budget Reply. But tucked away in the DFAT Portfolio Budget was a reference to an Australia: United States “joint work plan” which represents a significant strengthening of our linkage with the US. (more…)
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MACK WILLIAMS : The Hanoi Summit and aftermath – a South Korean perspective
Special Advisor to President Moon assesses the Hanoi Summit as not a failure but a setback. China and the ROK continue to agree the need for a US:DPRK agreed roadmap to move past the present stalemate towards the longer term common objective of the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula. At the same time the ROK has stepped up its working level contacts with the US. Prior to Hanoi, the ROK Opposition worked hard in Washington to urge Congress, the military security lobby and thinktanks to pressure President Trump to maintain a hardline approach in his negotiations with Kim Jong-un.