Category Archives: Foreign Policy

Tibet and the Olympic flame

Posted on by
Reply

The passage of the Olympic torch through these parts of the world over the last few days has been a lot more dramatic than it usually is. I probably can only admit to having a passing interest in the world’s premier quadrennial sporting competition, but this year, the political slant of this year’s games promises to have quite profound ramifications across the international world. The recent skirmishes between the Olympic bandwagon and protesters in London and Paris throw up some interesting questions about the right way to pressure the Chinese Government into ending its seemingly malignant authority over Tibet. Like many, no doubt, I am incensed by the images of violence that have found their way out into the media in recent weeks from the troubled province. Relatively speaking, on a much milder scale, I have also found myself disgusted at the way that some torch runners have been treated by the odd rat-bag protester. That is of course an absurd juxtaposition of concerns to have when one considers the relative severity of the actions that we are talking about, but its hard not to think that the more aggressive protests aimed at the torch relay participants are representing the protest lobby in a poor light.

China is the elephant in the room of the modern global political economy. It is a superpower to be; that is, if it can not already be considered a superpower, given its population and the ubiquity of its economic power. You only have to have a look through the various items in your own house to get a thumbnail view of this ubiquity. I don’t really doubt that the Gordon Browns, the Kevin Rudds or the Nicolas Sarkozys of this world are not morally troubled about developments in Tibet and their own vague complicity in what is going on. I also don’t doubt that each of these leaders is acutely keen to avoid any rash act of political activism that does more harm than good diplomatically. Presumably, no leader with strong personal feelings on Tibet wants their act of political activism to be the straw that sets the world on a path towards another catastrophic military conflict. It is for this reason that Kevin Rudd’s reluctance to be around the Olympic torch or indeed to engage in talk of boycotts is understandable. A unilateral protest action by Australia would merely ensure that we would no longer have a credible position for engaging in talks with the Chinese. A multilateral diplomatic effort may under the right conditions achieve something, but the Olympics is far too tokenistic a platform to carry the burden of a debate of this scope.

In short, Tibet represents a seemingly intractable political conundrum. There are no easy answers, and the path towards Tibetian independence is an uncertain and risky one. It seems certain that the only path towards an eventual resolution will be paved with the (perhaps begrudging) cooperation of the Chinese. It is for this reason that the global community should avoid trivialising the issues by using the Olympics as a primary vehicle for pressuring the Chinese Government. These are clearly not problems that are going to be solved by turning our backs on a little sporting event, nicking the Olympic torch or directing attacks at the athletes and celebrities who want to honor the greatest sporting competition of our times. A resolution, if it comes at all, can only realistically be reached if the international community slowly and patiently nibbles away at the resolve of the oppressive elements within the Chinese Government.

The only alternatives to this approach imply a high risk that the bloc-centric military antagonism of the last century will return.

A seat at the big table… but would it be as an activist?

Posted on by
6

Kevin Rudd’s assertion today that Australia will be seeking temporary membership of the UN Security Council for the 2013-14 term is a welcome and not altogether surprising move. The Rudd Government’s time in office so far has been characterised by a strong interest in re-engaging in a multilateral sense with the international community, and a willingness to commit to fairly long-winded plans that could conceivably only come to fruition beyond the life of the current government. In a foreign policy sense, it is refreshing. One imagines that John Howard was never that interested in seeking representation for Australia on the security council; probably partly because he didn’t have much belief in the United Nations, and partly because there was no need given that the United States spoke for Australia while he was in power anyway.

What I am hopeful of is that Australia takes an activist role in its interactions with the United Nations. In relation to most of the metrics one can conceive of, we are of course a bantam-weight at best on the international scene. Our twenty million people are barely a drop in the ocean when compared to the billions of people shared between the likes of the United States, China, and India. Australia may not be in the position to throw its weight around in the international political arena, but we are perfectly suited to playing a “fixer” intermediary role between the most powerful nations in the world. We have strong friends and the respect of nations in both the West and Asia. Kevin Rudd has the unique power to talk to the Chinese in a way that no Australian leader ever has. The prospects for Australia’s role in global politics to become greatly enhanced over the coming five years or so are extremely good, and this is an exciting and wonderful thing.

You don’t know how lucky you are, boy

Posted on by
Reply

The recent presidential “election” in Russia creates some interesting moral conundrums for the rest of the democratic world. One could be forgiven for wondering whether things have really improved for those living in the largest country within the former Soviet Union since the heady days of Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika. It is indeed true that Vladimir Putin’s Russia is by and large a friend of the broader West, at least, much more so than was the case when the Communist Party controlled the Soviet Union. And yet, he is, in a not dissimilar way to Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan, a dictator. He personally wields a truly disgusting amount of power for a single individual, ruling over such a large country.

The latest, blatantly obvious manifestation of Putin’s near-monarchical control of his power base is the Russian presidential election, won convincingly (numerically speaking) and yet unconvincingly (transparent process-wise) by the President’s chosen candidate, Dmitry Medvedev. Putin, of course, is continuing on in true dictatorial style as Prime Minister, where one would think he will likely continue to pull the nation’s strings. As David Hearst comments in the Guardian, Medvedev is somewhat stuck between a rock and a hard place in his new role:

But even greater danger lies in Medvedev being too successful and becoming his own man. For then, he will be sucking both limelight and power away from his political master and that is a dangerous thing to do, unless Putin agrees to it first and is planning his early retirement. There is no indication that he is. In the short term at least, Medvedev has to steer a middle course between failure and success. He has to be competently mediocre.

It will be interesting indeed to observe how the international community works with Medvedev (and Putin, his putative puppet-master) moving forwards. Gordon Brown has already extended something of a fig leaf, in the hope that relations between Russia and the United Kingdom might stand to improve as a result of this change in leadership at the top. True to form, President Bush admitted, a couple of days ago, not knowing much about Medvedev. As far as I can tell, neither Foreign Minister Stephen Smith nor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd have been asked about their thoughts on developments. One hopes that the international community takes a constructive approach, but also attempts in the most diplomatic way possible to remind Putin and Medvedev that they are not painting a particularly rosy picture of the state of Russia’s democracy with their tag-team approach to the government of the nation.

Glory be to secularism in an unpredictable land

Posted on by
Reply

Booker Prize nominated writer Mohsin Hamid has a nicely written piece in the Guardian that sums up his feelings about the election results in Pakistan. What is truly wonderful about the result, as he points out, is that it does seem to offer credence to the idea that Pakistan has a secular heart:

Instead, Pakistan managed a relatively free and fair election that delivered a crushing defeat to the ruling party of Pakistan’s unpopular President Musharraf. More than that, the country’s religious parties were assigned to the electoral dustbin, with voters even in the supposedly conservative Northwest Frontier province that borders Afghanistan flocking to secular candidates. The winners were moderate, centrist politicians – suggesting perhaps that Pakistanis, notwithstanding acres of newsprint to the contrary, are at heart a moderate centrist bunch.

There’s more detail on that point over at OpenDemocracy:

The MMA, the major alliance of Islamist parties, won only three seats in the National Assembly. In 2002, the MMA won 63 seats in the country’s parliament. Tellingly, the godfather of the MMA and the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-i-Islam, Maulana Fazlur Rahman, lost in his constituency.

Assuming that President Musharraf goes soon and goes quietly, one wonders if there is a lesson to be learnt for the West from these election results. If Musharraf had not been so amenable to the West during his time as dictator, his administration would surely have been targeted by the Bush Administration for a spot of regime change during the heady period immediately following 9/11. It is hard to imagine secular elements within Pakistan achieving the same levels of support today if a more hawkish approach to Pakistan was taken back then; disliking America and the West would have been all too easy a trend to create for extreme fundamentalist groups around the country.

Instead, democracy has been allowed to run its course in Pakistan, and although it is perhaps too early to be sure, the results are promising.

Apologies and catastrophes: welcome to government

Posted on by
3

The scene is set for what promises to be a fairly emotional week in Australian politics. For the first time in over a decade, Federal Labor will take their seats on the government benches in parliament. By the end of tomorrow we will know what the full text of the government’s apology to the stolen generation will look like, and we will have a better idea whether the apology really is set to heal old wounds, or just to re-open them for some. Either way you look at it, history will be made tomorrow, in what may well prove to be one of the Rudd Government’s defining moments. In political terms, not just compassionate terms, the new government’s early credibility on indigenous affairs rests on its ability to deliver a national apology that compels the country to move on. The last thing that the country or the government needs is for tomorrow to kickstart a regressive discussion about whether or not the apology was “good enough” or not. An apology that does not satisfy the majority of the country, and in particular the majority of impacted indigenous Australians, could derail the government’s ambitious reform agenda. Needless to say, the apology is not going to please everyone and some people are going to feel short-changed by the process.

To add to the tumult, the apparent attempted coup in East Timor that has left President Jose Ramos-Horta in a critical condition bodes ill for political stability in the region. We can only hope that Ramos-Horta, who has been an admirable voice for the East Timorese and a popular political figure in Australia, recuperates from the attempt upon his life; he is reportedly in an induced coma and being treated in Royal Darwin Hospital. Details of just how serious his condition is are somewhat sketchy at this stage. Jill Jolliffe’s reports from East Timor in the SMH are well worth a read, and would seem to indicate that there are likely to be some heavy questions asked of the Australian UN forces responsible for security once the immediate concerns created by the crisis are addressed:

He [Ramos-Horta] fell to the ground after being hit by up to three bullets. Men in two cars – one of them the renegade major Alfredo Reinado – fired the shots. Presidential guards, who live at the Ramos-Horta residence, and nearby soldiers from the Timorese Army rushed to the scene and returned fire. But it would be another hour or more before the bleeding President got medical attention.

The Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Stephen Smith have reacted quickly, deploying 340 additional personnel to East Timor. What this latest development does reinforce, however, is just how important stability in the immediate region is to Australia’s foreign policy outlook. Contrary to all the sensationalism propounded by the more hawkish Western administrations and certain corners of the media in relation to the “war on terror”, it would seem that Australia’s foremost national security challenge at the moment relates to the stability of one of our closest neighbours. It is a black and bitter irony that one of the region’s foremost political champions needs to be lying in a critical condition in an Australian hospital before news and events from East Timor get a bit more of the focus the country deserves from the media.

ELSEWHERE: Former (more’s the pity) television current affairs journalist Stan Grant’s contribution is also worth reading.