Dr Claude Rakisits

Context

India has formally invited Australia to join the large-scale naval exercises to be conducted in the Bay of Bengal (3-6 November) and the Arabian Sea (17-20 November), involving in addition to the navies of India and Australia naval assets of the US and Japan.

This is a very significant development—if not militarily, certainly symbolically—for the future of peace and security in the Indo-Pacific. This will be the first time that the navies of the four countries will be participating together in naval exercises.

Australia, India, Japan and the US are members of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, better known as the Quad—a grouping of four Indo-Pacific democracies founded in 2007 whose main mission is to ensure a Free and Open Indo-Pacific primarily through the maintenance of the rules-based international order.

The Timing of India’s Invitation to Australia

India’s decision to invite Australia to join Exercise Malabar 2020 comes in the wake of three important geopolitical developments.

First, an in-person meeting of the four foreign ministers of the Quad in Tokyo earlier this month—a significant symbolic event given the tight Covid-19 travel restrictions. At this meeting the ministers reinforced their countries’ determination to cooperate in a range of areas, including critically but not solely, in the maritime security domain. Except for US Secretary of State Pompeo, no one mentioned China specifically. But the 800-pound gorilla was very much at the meeting.

Second, India and Australia agreed on the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership on 4 June 2020, an agreement which progresses cooperation in a significant number of fields, including in the military and security spheres.

Third, in April-May this year India and China were involved in deadly clashes along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Ladakh. Whilst tension has diminished since then, with the holding of several meetings of the corps commanders on both sides and a meeting of the Foreign Ministers last month, this on-going issue with Beijing has been a wake-up call for the Indian defense forces and Prime Minister Narendra Modi—his informal approach to dealing with Chinese President Xi now in tatters.

Can China Hurt Australia For Participating in Exercise Malabar 2020?

Canberra has very much welcomed India’s invitation to the Malabar exercise. Australia’s defense minister, Senator Linda Reynolds, stated “High-end military exercises like Malabar are key to enhancing Australia’s maritime capabilities, building interoperability with our close partners, and demonstrating our collective resolve to support an open and prosperous Indo-Pacific”.

Australia last participated in Exercise Malabar in 2007. The then Australian prime minister, mandarin-speaking Kevin Rudd, decided to pull out of the following year’s exercise to avoid offending China. However, this did not prevent a significant deterioration in the bilateral relations down the road.

Bilateral relations were already at an all-time low. In response to Australia’s call for an independent investigation into the origin of the Coronavirus and China’s handling of it, China slapped huge tariffs on Australian barley in May. New tariffs have also been imposed on Australian beef. And wine exports could be next.

Last month China expelled the last two Australian journalists from the country. It’s been almost 50 years since there hasn’t been Australian media in China. Given that China is Australia’s largest export market, taking 30 per cent of all exports, Beijing could start to really hurt Australia’s economy if it wished to do so.

The Quad is Getting Ready to Resist China

More broadly, China will not be too worried about the military aspects of the Malabar exercise, however, it will note the significant diplomatic push-back it represents to its aggressive military activities in the region, notably its effective unilateral changing of the LAC in Ladakh, its 9-dash claim over most of the South China Sea and the accompanying massive build-up of military-purposed artificial islands, and its ongoing low-level military harassment of Taiwan.

Put differently, while until relatively recently China was willing to play by the rules of the Western-led international order, this has changed progressively since President Xi took over as the head of the Communist Party of China in 2012. Accordingly, the battle lines are starting to get clearer and the Quad is firming up its resolve to stand up to China.

While not being an alliance per se, the Quad could nevertheless become the key security vehicle for the Indo-Pacific. However, the strengthening of the Quad will really depend on the members’ resolve to stand united in the face of the inevitable Chinese response—military, diplomatic and economic—to what Beijing will perceive as a ganging up on the Middle Kingdom.

Biden Presidency Might Act Tough on China—Good News for the Quad

Needless to say, future unacceptable Chinese military activity will not attract equal interest or response from the different Quad members. And Beijing knows this only too well and will accordingly exploit these differences for all its worth.

So what is the future of the Quad? As noted above, much will really depend on the cohesiveness of the grouping and how it responds to future Chinese behavior. A likely Biden administration in Washington would probably be tough on China. This would be good news for the Quad. The display of American political will to fly the flag would reassure the other members of the Quad and make it more worthwhile for others, such as Canada, France, Indonesia, New Zealand and the UK to name some obvious credible candidates, to join the grouping. As Joe Stalin once said, “Quantity has a quality all its own”, a statement President Xi would surely relate to.

This piece originally appeared in The Quint.

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Context
How weak countries carrying economic significance become playground for foreign interests

June 9, 2009
The Amau Doctrine is the Japanese equivalent of America’s Monroe Doctrine (1823), which was designed to protect American interests in the Western Hemisphere. The premise of Amau, formulated around 1934, is that Japan reserves the right to act unilaterally in order “to preserve peace and order in East Asia.” The context was the depression of the 30s, when Japan lost a substantial amount of its trade as a result of international trade barriers. The Doctrine was chiefly intended to convert the then feeble China into a client state and to establish Japan as the dominant power in the Pacific while containing Russia, resurgent then as now. For Japan, China was the main source of raw materials, as well as possessing tremendous strategic importance in its struggle with Russia.

Analysis

In the Amau Doctrine, Japan also declared that China does not have the right to seek foreign assistance or to resist Japan in establishing a new order under the aegis of an East Asian League and furthermore, that any third parties involved in China would have to consult Japan. Historians believe that between 1933 and 1937 two events occurred that made Japan nervous: first, the increased Soviet presence on the Manchukuoan frontier and second, the formation, in 1936, of an anti-Japanese alliance consisting of Chinese Nationalists and Communists, enjoying Soviet support.

In addition, the Amau Doctrine directly challenged the so-called Open Door policy, under which many other powers, including Britain and United States, enjoyed special economic privileges in China. Britain’s China Lobby formulated what was to become England’s China policy in the Far East, which was that the government would safeguard Britain’s economic interests in China, enter into cooperation and competition with Japan and try to establish a China-Japan Detente.

During the 30s, Britain and France wished above all to avoid confrontation with Germany, which lead them to be forbearing with Japan, even in the face of its aggression. Moreover, at a time of global depression many of the big powers wanted to refrain from actions that could injure trade relations with Japan. The latter allied itself with Nazi Germany in 1936, then in July of the following year invaded China. This was followed by the infamous ‘Rape of Nanking’ in December 1937, in which between 250,000 to 300,000 Chinese civilians were massacred by the Imperial Army of Japan. More than 70 years later, these memories linger and continue to have a negative effect on Sino-Japanese relations.

The American policy towards China was largely the work of the American Asian Association (AAA) and proved less successful in promoting the national interest in China compared to the one devised by its counterpart, Britain’s China Lobby. Historians maintain that another factor was that the United States carried on a relatively small amount of trade with China at the time, in contrast to Britain, which had large merchant and banking houses in Shanghai.

The story of Japan in the 1930’s is pertinent to the current economic crisis in a number of ways. First, its Amau Doctrine emerged in response to a global recession and is an example of how such a catastrophe can impact major players and influence their decision-making. Secondly, weak countries, in this case, China, possessing vast resources and strategic importance, can become the arena where international power struggles are played out. The result: events that adversely affect the Pacific region, especially attempts to deal with an ever stronger China.

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Japan’s long standing dispute over the Kuril Islands with Russia has reignited following Russian authorities’ decision to allow a local farmer to appoint Chinese employees. The six employees, appointed by a Russian farmer at Kunashir, an island that is part of the Kurils, arrived on Sunday. All the employees have Russian work permits and are allowed to land on Kunashir, said the farm owner. The Japanese refer to the Kuril Islands as the Northern Territories. Condemning Russia’s actions, Japan’s NHK TV station said, “The Japanese government believes that such actions give legitimacy to Russia’s sovereignty over the islands, which Tokyo also lays claim to.”

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Japan has said that the crisis at a quake-hit nuclear plant was as serious as the Chernobyl incident in 1986. Japanese nuclear safety agency raised the level of severity of the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant by two points to level seven on Monday, which is the highest rating and on the same scale as the Chernobyl disaster. The move, together with ongoing quake aftershocks that have slowed down recovery efforts, sent waves of fear across the globe.

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Context
The water that men working at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant were exposed to had thousand times the quantity of radiation normal for that facility, said Hidehiko Nishiyama, an official of the Japanese industrial and nuclear safety agency. He also said that the contamination was likely from the core of the No.3 reactor. According to Nishiyama, there is a possibility of a leak of some sort, perhaps from a breakage in the unit’s containment vessel. The report has raised concerns over the measures to control radiation as over 500 people, including firefighters and government authorities, continued to work there on Friday.

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President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan has offered full support to Japan to help overcome the destruction caused by disastrous quake and ensuing tsunami. Zardari on Thursday visited Japan’s embassy in Islamabad to express solidarity with the people and government of Japan. He said that the people of Pakistan can relate to the damage caused by natural disasters like floods and earthquakes. More than 10,000 people have died in Japan since a magnitude-9 quake struck the country’s north-eastern coastal areas.

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The massive quake and tsunami in Japan could cost around $235 billion to the Japanese economy, or 4% of the country’s output, while reconstruction can take up to five years, according to the World Bank. The bank further warned that chances are that growth would be adversely affected through to mid-2011, but should improve in subsequent months once reconstruction efforts accelerate.

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