And while the White Paper contains some sensible articulation about the risks and opportunities facing Australia in the Indo-Pacific Asian century, it is not blunt about the security risks the nation will accrue if year-on-year political calculations mean that aspirations towards serious levels of defence spending do not materialise.

The biggest headline about capabilities should be about the promised new submarine fleet. The Government has narrowed the range of options for those boats, pushed out the time horizon, and bequeathed massive expenses on future governments. The idea of buying an off-the-shelf boat – an existing, cheaper, albeit more limited capability – has been taken off the agenda. The nuclear-powered notion has been categorically killed. We don't know exactly what the new boats will do or cost, but we do know they will be built in Adelaide.

Kevin Rudd's 2009 White Paper envisioned 12 next-generation submarines, armed with cruise missiles, in service by perhaps 2030. Stephen Smith starkly declared today that, with upgrades, the existing Collins fleet could still be in service until 2038. That's another 25 years. To put that in perspective, it's the same time-span between 1914 and 1939. World events, strategic threats and military technology can change rather a lot over such a time.

And it's a little baffling why Australia's security can tolerate a naval capability gap for so much longer than it can tolerate the much-warned-of air capability gap caused by delays to the Joint Strike Fighter program.

Speaking of gaps, this White Paper is silent on the 2009 ambition to equip fairly much the entire Australian combat fleet – surface and sub-surface – with land-attack cruise missiles. The 2009 idea of a new hybrid naval vessel, an offshore combatant vessel adaptable to patrol, mine-hunting and hydrographic roles, seems also fairly much dead in the water. And, true to Australian Labor sensitivities, ballistic missile defences still get cautious treatment, even though North Korea's latest provocations should be changing a few minds.

One thing the Government gets right in this White Paper is its decision to improve the Cocos Islands' air facility to take the RAAF's P-8A Poseidon maritime surveillance aircraft, when they arrive, as well as US aircraft if a future access arrangement can be negotiated. It would be absurd for Australia not to make full use of such a strategic piece of Indo-Pacific real estate.

At the same time, there is a peculiar pattern to the document's emphasis on the US alliance, combined with optimism about other kinds of defence diplomacy (especially Asian multilateralism and ties with China). More than ever in recent years, and whatever the usual rhetoric about self-reliance, Australia is looking to others for its security. Yet further neglect of Australia's own strategic weight will diminish the quality of alliance contributions and security partnership we can offer others in return. Don't think they won't notice.

Dedicated work by officials has helped ensure that this White Paper is neither a disgrace, as some would claim, nor solely a political pamphlet. But it is much more about treading water in the Indo-Pacific than charting a new course for the Asian century.

Photo courtesy of the Defence Department.

Instead, much of what has happened seems like an improvised stream of belligerent words and destabilising deeds. If there was a plan, it may have undergone some desperate changes, which suggests how rattled the regime may be by the degree of international – including Chinese – opposition to its actions and the unexpected starkness of America's deterrent signaling.
 
It's hard to make sense of the sequence of threats. One day North Korea is calling for all-out nuclear war, yet a day or two latter it suddenly mutes the hysteria to the prosaic level of obstructing South Korean workers and restarting the Yongbyon reactor. Then, as an afterthought, comes a new scare tactic in the shape of supposed concern for foreign diplomats' safety. Next it shuts its main economic link to South Korea by withdrawing its own workers from the Kaesong joint industrial zone, which challenges any notion that the belligerence is in part a show to entrench a new breed of economic reformers within North Korea by affirming its security credentials.

Now the North Korean leadership needs to find some kind of face-saving spectacle before it can declare victory. Only, the regime doesn't want that to be an actual war, which it knows would be suicide.

Of course there are still risks of miscalculation which could lead to conflict, although recent US signals of restraint make that less likely. We are not out of the woods yet. But even if this ever was really a war crisis – and I suggested last week that perhaps it wasn't – the highest point of risk has passed. 

Still, there will be plenty of lessons to be learned from this tense episode. One is about the insecurity and strategic unsteadiness of the Kim Jong-un regime. His coercive diplomacy seems to be a caricature of his father's and grandfather's (if such a thing is possible) and even more dangerous because of it. It is hard to see how young Kim could have done more to end China's policy of tolerating his country's perilous behaviour, and Xi Jinping is not amused. This cannot but harm North Korea's interests in the longer term.

Another lesson may prove to be about how hard it is for America to reassure its Asian allies without goading an adversary into war. The US military may well have been following a playbook of graduated signals of resolve, but at some point last week the balance may have begun to tip too far – the cost in terms of destabilisation and threat began to outweigh the benefits in terms of stability and reassurance. Deterrence still has a place in 21st century Asia, but it is getting much more complicated.

Photo by Flickr user Joseph A Ferris III.

The fate of North Korea is less likely to be about a high-definition replay of the 1950-1953 war than about change from within and eventual regime failure leading to some seriously dangerous moments for US-China diplomacy (as explored in Chapter 5 of this Lowy Institute report). 

So for the moment I would play down the war talk. I put a small-scale North Korean attack in the 'possible' basket, an escalation to large-scale conventional conflict in the 'highly unlikely' basket, and the chance of nuclear escalation pretty much as remote as it has been for decades (which is not to say it is impossible).

If the Korea crisis of recent weeks underscores one reality it is the central and continuing role of deterrence in Asia's security. It exposes in plain sight – as plain as last week's much-publicised B-2 'stealth' bombing run – the unpleasant fact that the security and prosperity of the Asian century still rests on the existence of American military power and a professed willingness to use it.

The talk and action coming from Washington at present is about reinforcing the credibility of so-called extended deterrence – America's capability and willingness to use force, including nuclear force, to protect its allies. This is not the Asian century Australia's economic optimists had in mind when they wrote Canberra's eponymous white paper.

As I have explored with colleagues in a major international study on the subject (including a research workshop in Seoul on the day the North bombed Yeonpyeong Island) the toughest audience to convince when it comes to extended deterrence is not the adversary, it is the ally. A parallel debate on this blog reached much the same conclusion.

Much as some may comfortably decry America's supposed obstinacy, the fact is that the US extended deterrent is doing us all a favour by keeping a lid on the other North Asian nuclear proliferation genies: South Korea and Japan.

Bear in mind that two-thirds of South Koreans claim to be in favour of their country building its own nuclear weapons, presumably out of concern that the US cannot really protect them. And the possibility of Japan eventually following that path is not to be discounted, even though the politics of it would tortuous. Japan already has the scientific infrastructure and the plutonium stockpile it needs.

The good news is that there is no nuclear arms race in North Asia now. If Tokyo and Seoul definitively lost faith in Washington, there would be. Indeed, the effect would cascade right across the Indo-Pacific, for China could well build up its presently modest nuclear arsenal if it faced a nuclear Japan, and India would end its relative nuclear restraint if China did (Pakistan seems to be going hell for leather with its nuclear program anyway).

None of this means that the US should lightly brandish its overwhelming nuclear capabilities or issue matter-of-fact pronouncements about a readiness to use them. Thankfully it is not doing those things. President Obama's Administration is arguably the most morally troubled by America's possession of nuclear arms of any administration since the Bomb was invented.

Obama has done sane, practical, realistic things to reduce the size of the US nuclear arsenal and the role those catastrophic weapons play in global security. In recent months, there have been rekindled discussions within the Administration about possible new reductions to America's strategic arsenal.

But it is likely that the current Korea crisis will put that push on hold, to avoid unnerving the Asian allies. However cautious the language ('everything necessary') or ambiguous the signals (a B-2 can carry conventional or nuclear bombs), the posturing of extended deterrence is back. It's now a part of America’s Asia pivot. No wonder China is getting worried and perhaps even rethinking its creaking North Korea policy.

Photo by Flickr user US Army Korea (Historical Image Archive).

Kim Jong Un's decision to test this week is a clear affront to the new Chinese leadership. After all, China had warned the North not to test, with outlets such as the Global Times claiming there would be a 'heavy price' to pay. And the timing of the test around Chinese New Year would have compounded the embarrassment, as Chinese netizens are pointing out. Indeed, the rise of social media and that fact that many patriotic Chinese are so openly critical of North Korea may itself help to shift the Chinese policy debate.

It is frequently argued that Beijing cannot or will not push Pyongyang for fear for contributing to instability and regime collapse. But this is not a matter of all or nothing. It should be quite possible for China to apply graduated pressure, such as temporary restrictions on oil, food or other cross-border commerce, as well as diplomatic signals like suspending or downgrading some official or military visits.

These may seem small and inconsequential steps when compared to the determination of the North Korean regime to possess the world's most dangerous weapons. Still, a shift in China's stance offers the only prospect of movement on this issue. Of course, as some analysts note, this kind of measure could also make North Korea exasperated with China. But where else is Pyongyang going to turn?

Photo by Flickr user Bert van Dijk.

To be fair, it is hard to fault the new 47-page strategy on its structure and bureaucratic word smithing. This is a considerably more coherent and crafted document than Kevin Rudd's laundry-list national security statement of 2008, and it is mercifully shorter than the 300-odd page Asian Century paper. It seems to reflect commendable consultation across government, demonstrating the very kind of coordination and efficient use of limited resources that the PM is calling for.

This is also substantially more than an election pamphlet, contrary to some of the media's less charitable characterisations. Yes, the Prime Minister's speech was needlessly partisan in giving the Howard Government no explicit credit for its national security achievements across most of the 9/11 decade, such as the massive, sustained and effective response to the Bali bombings.

But the new strategy itself is not, thankfully, a mere party-political confection. Drawing on the Asian Century white paper, it embeds national security within a framework of Australia's wider international aspirations. It also sets the scene for a new defence white paper. In that sense, it is the middle step in a logical policy cascade.

But, like Ms Gillard's speech, the strategy leaves unanswered at least two glaring questions on the crucial issue of resources and priorities.

Repeatedly, it emphasises international engagement and partnerships as critical to Australia's security. This would seem to be adding further to the demands on our overstretched, underfunded Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). But beyond the Prime Minister's carefully worded claims about expanding the Department's 'footprint', there is no evidence that the Government plans to give DFAT the resources to do the job.

Second, if the future really is about interstate risks, including those relating to military power, then presumably having a strong defence force is one way to deter or manage them. Nowhere does the strategy explain why the dawn of an era of intensified state-on-state challenges is precisely the right time to cut the defence budget. Perhaps that is one feat of drafting gymnastics that has been reserved for someone else. Spare a thought for the defence white paper team.

What this is not is an exercise in prediction. This is about projections, not prophecies. The report looks at major identifiable trends, marries them with distinctly possible game-changing events or discontinuities, and concludes with four alternative future worlds, none of them entirely positive or negative for human welfare, and all of them plausible.

Initial media reports have played up some of the report's starker projections about how Asia will dominate the global economy and how China will outstrip the US. But some of the best lessons of the report are more nuanced than that. In particular, it emphasises that power is not simply based on aggregate wealth: leadership, networks and agility matter too.

And from an Australian perspective, some of the document's most intriguing conclusions are about just what kind of Asian century we may be in for. In a subsequent post, I'll seek to unpack the NIC 2030 report alongside a rather more upbeat vision of the future that Australian policy circles have heard plenty about lately. What's clear is that the real Asian century could be at least as much about problems as opportunities.

 Of course the big test now will be what Australia does with its UN Security Council membership, and how the responsibilities of that role affect wider diplomatic priorities in the next few years. There is no question that – unless the Government eases its extreme constraints on the nation's diplomatic budget – servicing the UN role will divert staff and resources from other duties, and sometimes this new work will be on issues peripheral to Australia's interests. After all, suddenly Australia – with one of the smallest diplomatic networks among developed countries – will be required to have a position on basically every delicate international issue.

On the other hand, this could have positive side-effects for cultivating our long-term diplomatic capacity, especially if the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) can demonstrate new kinds of agility in making better use of its talented and highly educated staff. Incoming Secretary Peter Varghese will shortly inherit a stretched organisation that has proven itself big on campaigning (and much credit is due to the drive and dedication of our diplomats for the UN win) but which has often put little premium on knowledge and generating new ideas.

Too often DFAT, with its restrictive 20th century protocols and hierarchies, has failed systematically to tap and hone the skills and knowledge of its junior and mid-ranking staff, limiting much of their intellectual input to the scripting of talking points that senior officials and ministers may not even use.

With the UN role, there is going to be a demand for something else – a more continuous stream of policy responses, outputs, ideas and knowledge than the Department has been called upon to produce since at least the early 1990s, when Gareth Evans was foreign minister. It is time for the government to trust DFAT and for DFAT to trust its new generations.

Photo UNPhoto/Devra Berkowitz.  

I tentatively aired it in an open letter to then Foreign Minister Smith about India policy on this blog in late 2007, and have advanced it subsequently in blog posts, analytical snapshots, research reports, book chapters, speeches and opinion pieces with Australian and international colleagues. Lowy Institute Executive Director Michael Wesley advocated the primacy of the Indo-Pacific prism for Australia's worldview last year in his award-winning book There Goes the Neighbourhood. And several of us have examined and tested the concept in conferences and roundtables, including with the US Naval War College in February 2011. 

We would certainly not claim to be the only think tank whose researchers have championed this term in the past few years, but it is fair to say that our work has anticipated and helped to inform a tangible shift in decision-makers' perspectives.

That said, it would be churlish not to note that I first encountered the term among some far-sighted Australian foreign service officials as far back as 2005, and that some Indian experts and policy practitioners such as Raja Mohan and Shyam Saran have been at the leading edge of the Indo-Pacific curve. This should not be surprising, given the concept's fit with a rising India's interests east of Malacca. Indeed, Wikipedia credits a 2007 Indian journal article with introducing the term to contemporary strategic policy debate. 

There are some with mixed feelings about the Indo-Pacific idea, or about what the name actually means. Some scholars will no doubt challenge the view that the Indian and Pacific oceans, or maritime East and South Asia, can form a coherent strategic system. Certainly there will be some important security dynamics that remain principally concentrated in one or other of these subregions, such as Korean Peninsula tensions in North Asia or India-Pakistan relations on the subcontinent. 

For now, the official Chinese position is to be circumspect if not suspicious about the Indo-Pacific, perhaps because it could be taken as legitimising India's role into China's Western Pacific neighbourhood, thus diluting a sense of the centrality of China in the Asian strategic order. Some Australian scholars also seem to associate the popularisation of Indo-Pacific with a China-balancing strategic agenda, even though they see academic merit in the term.

Yet there are powerful objective arguments for the integrity of the Indo-Pacific idea simply as a description of new geopolitical realities. Not least among these is the fact of China's and other East Asian nations' energy and trade reliance on Indian Ocean sea-lanes, a dependence that is set to deepen further, whatever success Beijing encounters in building continental transport corridors.

Indeed, when Chinese maritime trade with Africa and the Middle East is combined with its overwhelmingly important strategic and economic relations across the Pacific with the US, China is arguably the quintessential Indo-Pacific power. My colleagues Anthony Bubalo and Malcolm Cook have notably argued for a 'horizontal' definition of Asia to reflect growing economic and strategic linkages from the Western Pacific to the Middle East. In so doing, they seem to have recognised that the maritime dimension is likely to remain at least as important as the continental one, if not more so. This sounds not unlike the Indo-Pacific.

In any case, given Australia's unique geography as a continent bridging the Pacific and the Indian oceans at the southern edge of dynamic Asia, for this country at least the Indo-Pacific idea is here to stay. Let's hope it is reflected in the Asian Century White Paper shortly to be released by the Australian Government. Oh, and for those interested in the long debate about Australia's elusive geopolitical and socio-cultural identity, here at last is a definition of Asia that automatically includes Australia. And that, I admit, is another reason I like it.

Photo by Flickr user Jarle "Speedemon08" Dixon.

But I doubt it can be simplistically attributed to some bid to widen the recruitment base or safeguard funding in a tough budgetary environment. The fact is, it was high time Australia's overseas clandestine service put its case in public. The Australian Secret Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) has been doing this sort of thing since at least 2005. The head of Britain's MI6 spoke openly a few years ago. Americans are used to the voice of the head of the CIA. I suspect the speech we heard last week has been in the works for quite a long time.

I doubt there will be enough that can safely be said in such presentations for them to become regular events. Still, if the occasional talk by the head of ASIS becomes an unexceptional part of the Canberra lecture-scape, we are likely to see the media frisson around every mere mention of that once-forbidden acronym steadily subside. And that would be a healthy thing for a more balanced public understanding about the necessary role of intelligence agencies in an uncertain world.

The Australian public is becoming nervous about China's military and China's influence. An important symbolic moment in the public mind was the 2008 Olympic torch relay in Canberra, which saw a large protest by Chinese students and residents in Australia triggered by Tibetan separatists' attempt to block the event. This had a strong impact on Australia. 

Much of that is essentially as I said it. But the words 'triggered by Tibetan separatists' attempt to block the event' are not mine. Instead, I specifically said that the Chinese protest had been aimed at drowning out much smaller Tibetan and human rights protests. I did not call the Tibetans separatists and I did not suggest that the Tibetan protest was an attempt to 'block' the torch relay or that it somehow understandably 'triggered' the Chinese demonstration.

Disappointingly, the 'article' carrying my name also failed to quote some very important additional points I had made to the journalists about the 2008 Canberra protest. Specifically, I said that there was a perception in Australia that the Chinese protest had been supported or orchestrated by Chinese officials, and that this could be perceived as interference in Australia's internal affairs.

In response to the Lowy Institute's complaints about the mishandling and misrepresentation of the interview, senior editors of the Global Times have, to their credit, moved promptly to correct the web version of the story, noting that it was compiled by their own journalist, and correcting the line about the 2008 protests. (The original text can still be found on the printed version and the e-paper edition, of course.) They and the reporter have also apologised to me directly and graciously. It would be most appreciated if their newspaper would now publish this blog post by way of a clarification.

Still, the fact remains that someone on the newspaper's staff thought it was perfectly acceptable to put words into my mouth to suit the Communist Party line. This is a real pity, since in principle it is a good thing for a Chinese newspaper to reach out to international audiences and to devote space for foreign commentators to communicate in their own words. The Global Times undermined this potentially positive initiative through some failures of basic journalistic standards. The press in China is going to have to do better than this if it wants to be taken seriously in its efforts to engage with and reflect the world.

Photo by Flickr user add1sun.

Our contributions to the debate have also extended to the wider media story. For instance, The Interpreter exclusively published the assessment of former Australian safeguards head John Carlson in critically appraising an academic legal opinion put forward by opponents of exports to India.

Also this week, the Lowy Institute hosted an awareness-raising visit to Australia by leading US nuclear policy and non-proliferation expert Professor Scott Sagan. Professor Sagan's Canberra and Sydney lectures were sponsored by the independent US-based Nuclear Security Project and address much wider nuclear issues – Obama's disarmament agenda and the future of nuclear power – but unsurprisingly the India issue came up in question time, and you can hear his balanced perspective here or here (an interview with Sagan will be posted on The Interpreter early next week).

Finally, for deeper background on Australia's uranium export dilemma, I can't help but recommend this brand new book produced by a team of Australian scholars. My chapter in that book forms the basis for a research paper launched this week at the Australia-India Institute, which concludes that Australian uranium policy has never been really about the money – but nor has it been guided by non-proliferation priorities alone. Geopolitics and diplomacy are nothing new in this debate.

It will be fascinating to see how the Australian Labor Party resolves this hot question on Sunday. Will this be the first weekend of Australia's Indian summer? We will offer an initial reaction on The Interpreter on Monday.

Photo by Flickr user Michael C Clark.

As I hinted at in this piece today for Foreign Policy, it was a shame – and a public diplomacy error – that Obama stayed in the country for just over 24 hours and did not visit a single one of the big, striving, multicultural cities where most Australians labour and live.

Where was the big economic conversation with the business community? Where was the street-level encounter with the true diversity – much of it Asian, and increasingly Chinese and Indian – of our self-made society of immigrants? If it was good enough for Oprah Winfrey to dazzle Melbourne and Sydney (even Hillary Clinton managed a walk by the Yarra) and it should have been good enough for Obama. It wouldn't have been all that hard: after all, his popularity has endured here far longer than in the US.

A whistle-stop tour of Canberra and Darwin was not enough. Most Australians do not identify with Canberra and nor do they wish to, whatever its quiet charms of bushland and bureaucracy. And most of us have little familiarity with Darwin and the frontier spirit of the Northern Territory, even if we know we should.

Normally it might not matter that a US president had chosen to confine his visit to two of Australia's smallest and most isolated cities, mingling mostly with politicians and military personnel. This is not at all to begrudge our troops the deserved attention they got from the leader of the ally they have lost comrades fighting alongside in Afghanistan.

But this visit was special – it was about sending a message to Australians, to Asia and to the world about America's strategic priorities and its antipodean ally's place in that framework. So the maximum effort should have been made to cultivate and, frankly, charm the wider Australian public, in whose name, security interests and democratic values this is being done.

It is true that the Gillard Government has done a year's worth of rudimentary due diligence in warning Australians that alliance was going to get closer, beginning with the 2010 AUSMIN declaration. Defence Minister Stephen Smith especially has spoken of more US ships, troops and planes visiting Australia.

Yet there is still a sense of surprise in large parts of an Australian public unaccustomed to seeing grand strategy on the front pages of their newspapers. To be sure, most Australians support the alliance, and most will be able to live with the closer military partnership now being forged. Many will rightly welcome and value it. But the Greens and the wider anti-American Left probably now have a richer vein of public cynicism to tap than need have been the case.

Photo courtesy of the White House.

All of this makes me well aware that the question of tempering Australia's activist nuclear diplomacy with its need for better India ties is a tough call needing proper debate. But on balance, Australia's foreign policy, security and economic interests are all served by a change of policy on uranium.

Labor's existing policy overturned Prime Minister John Howard's bold decision in 2007 to begin negotiating uranium exports to India. At that point Australia was poised to be on the leading edge of nuclear engagement with India; instead, the Labor policy reversal ceded some of that ground to the US, Canada, Kazakhstan, Japan, France, Russia and fairly much any other nuclear supplier.

Of course, Labor could and should have gone to the 2007 election with the same policy as Howard – it would have won hands-down anyway – and then four years of delay and frustration in Australia-India relations could have been avoided. Instead, when Labor overturned its restricted 'three mines' policy on uranium mining, the offset for Labor's left was the reaffirmation of the NPT-only export rule, making India a very large and disappointed sacrificial lamb.

The policy of exporting only to countries that have joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty – a treaty that India is literally unable to sign – is unsustainable. The NPT only allows countries that tested the bomb before 1967 to possess nuclear arms, so India would need to surrender its small atomic arsenal before signing. Of course, it cannot do that while China and Pakistan possess nuclear arms.

Yet in other ways, India is a good non-proliferation citizen. Unlike China or Pakistan, it has never helped other countries acquire the bomb. And it has signed up to putting all its new reactors under safeguards for purely civil use. Yet we have been pointlessly telling India 'we do not trust you'. That is a contradictory message at a time when we are trying to engage strategically and economically with India as this century's third-largest economy and the world's biggest democracy. 

Of course we need to apply proper conditions and safeguards to ensure civilian use of our uranium, and if India has a problem with those safeguards then any deal would and should be off. But even then, at least there would be an end to Labor's outdated and discriminatory policy – a refusal even to talk about uranium with India, while we export to China and Russia.

Let the real debate begin.

Photo by Flickr user SiGMan.

I also think the debate in Australia has tended to downplay the role that a rising India will play in our future strategic, economic and societal calculations. This point was made clear in the recent Australia-India Roundtable held at the Lowy Institute. And it is explored in depth in Grand Stakes: Australia's Future Between China and India, my chapter in the 2011-12 Strategic Asia volume, published by the US National Bureau of Asian Research and launched in Washington, DC last week.

In this publication, my first major contribution to Australia's gathering Asia strategy debate, I argue that the contours of a rudimentary Australian security strategy for dealing with the giants are becoming clear. It involves both economic and societal engagement alongside three kinds of strategic hedging against the uncertainties of future Chinese power: stronger Australian maritime forces; a closer US alliance; and a web of security ties with multiple Asian powers, including India.

One big question is whether our leaders have the political will and courage to make the hard decisions needed to transform all of this into something enduring and properly resourced. Another is how smart and subtle they – supported by all of Australia's policy community - can become at putting it into practice.

Photo by Flickr user NASA Goddard Photo and Video.

This time round, Chinese government representatives are warning of unspecified repercussions, while even thoughtful commentators such as Zhu Feng argue that Beijing will not be able to tolerate continued arms sales to Taipei in the long run — a view reinforced by readings of Chinese public opinion. And there may still be a prospect of some new curbs to US-China military relations, given that these are a much easier target for symbolic Chinese sanctions than something more closely related to economic interdependence. Admiral Willard's comments suggest US Pacific Command is braced for some diplomatic fallout.

But on balance it looks as if good sense has prevailed in China's internal debates, and a full suspension of military diplomacy is not imminent. Accordingly, those of us who had become used to pointing to the strength of hardliners in the lead-up to Beijing's 2012 leadership transition need to think again. Some of the lessons of 2010 – notably, that an assertive stance can harm China's interests – are being heard. For now, and on the military dialogue issue at least, the pragmatists are rediscovering a welcome degree of influence.

The bigger lesson, however, is the reminder that China's foreign and security policy establishment has become a remarkably multi-headed or even conflicted creature, as Linda Jakobson and David Shambaugh have convincingly explained. Sensible influences are resurfacing in some quarters, even while certain agencies and nationalist mouthpieces continue to push the boundaries of destabilising behaviour and discourse on such issues as maritime differences with Vietnam and, most recently, India.

In this environment, other nations would benefit from fully considering the benefits and consequences of their statements or actions, to determine whether it is really worth providing China's 'nativist' nationalists, Marxists and Realists (the foreign policy hardliners of Shambaugh's typology) with extra political ammunition during what remains a sensitive time.

Photo by Flickr user John Yavuz Can.

Furthermore, full-blown geopolitical rivalry cannot occur on one dimension only – it needs to go beyond, say, a military capabilities competition to include diplomacy, economics and even soft power. Finally, I am not sure that rivalry can be one-sided. For the moment, China worries much of the Indian security establishment deeply, but most Chinese strategists are much less worried about India than they are about, say, the US and Japan.

That said, the two powers have fought before, and it would be foolish to dismiss the possibility that they could fight again. I recently heard an eminent Indian of uber-Nehruvian tendencies proclaim that 1962 was neither India's China war nor China's India war; it was simply a war that should never have happened. It was fine rhetoric, but it begs the awkward question: whose war, precisely, was it?