Yesterday I asked:

...if political activism is pointless and 'greening your lifestyle' is tokenistic and sends the wrong message about how the climate change problem will ultimately be addressed, what options are left for concerned citizens? What's the most meaningful thing an individual can do to tackle climate change?

Based on the presentation below, I think Bill Gates' answer would be that grassroots political pressure is not pointless, but it needs to be properly directed. And foremost, that means pressuring governments to fund research toward what Gates calls 'energy miracles'.  

• China won't abandon its no-first-use nuclear policy because it 'is central to China's modern national identity as a leader of the developing world.'
• A short profile of the US State Department's new senior Asia hand, Danny Russel. (Thanks Michael.)
• Haiti as a case study for the 'opaque and unaccountable' aid industry. (Thanks Steve.)
• An upcoming exhibition of US presidential photography at the Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney, featuring work by David Burnett, who has photographed every US president since JFK.
• 3% of world population active on Twitter. Here's a geographical breakdown. (Thanks Hugh.)
• Despite censorship, China's social media users have 'expanded the range for self-expression beyond recognition throughout the past five years.' (Thanks Danielle.)
• Krugman on austerity: why were economic leaders so ready to throw out the textbooks? (Thanks Steve.)
• US opinion survey confirms what everyone knows: hipsters are irritating. (Thanks Fergus.)
• In Palo Alto, California, you can see the tipping point for electric cars.
• How KFC gets smuggled into Gaza:

Martin Wolf got my weekend off to a dreadful start. I read his latest FT column (Why the World Faces Climate Chaos) on Friday, and it's been on my mind ever since.

Wolf is hardly the first to lay out the reasons why climate change is such a diabolical policy problem. But if, like me, you have been distracted lately, his brutally frank assessment of why 'humanity has yawned and decided to let the dangers mount' is bracing indeed.

Wolf's column reinforces the pessimism I have felt for some time about the likelihood that coordinated international political action will have any meaningful impact on the climate change problem. It's been twenty years since the Kyoto Protocol, and in diplomatic terms, we have very little to show for the last two decades. Given all the barriers and disincentives to action laid out by Wolf, why would we expect the future to be any different?

Wolf's second point is equally important: nothing will come of making demands on people. The green movement has been all about sacrifice; about lowering our expectation for our own material well-being and that of our children. As a result, 'Most people believe today that a low-carbon economy would be one of universal privation', says Wolf. But people around the world understandably want a better life for them and their children, not a more constrained one. So what's needed, says Wolf, is a 'politically sellable vision of a prosperous low-carbon economy.'

I sympathise with both points, but Wolf's column leads me to wonder what he would have ordinary citizens do.

This is one of those interviews that I wish could have gone longer.

Former Taiwan Deputy Defence Minister Dr Chong-Pin Lin visited the Lowy Institute last week for a roundtable with China experts from around Sydney, and he was kind enough to agree to this short chat. Dr Lin has a mild-mannered style of delivery, but his judgments are striking. He says the risk of China-Taiwan conflict is 'close to zero', that Taiwan's best hope of self-defence is to adopt the strategy of the Iraqi insurgency, and that the Taiwanese media's growing links with China are a concern for Taiwan's democracy.

• 'No President of the Fifth Republic has become so unpopular, so fast.' Francois Hollande, one year on.
• When Americans meet, one of the first questions they ask is 'Where are you from?' That's because Americans move a lot (though not as much as Kiwis, interestingly).
• Softball Ian Bremmer interview with Coca Cola CEO Muhtar Kent contains this notable assessment of Japan: 'It's too late to fix the demographics in Japan to convert it into an open, dynamic, growing population in short order.' (Thanks Steve.)
• Extraordinary colour photos of Russia, a century ago. (Thanks Dirk.)
• 'Only three of the 17 euro zone nations — Germany, Austria and Belgium — have bigger economies now than they did in 2008.'
• High levels of racial tolerance in the Anglosphere.
• Lowy Institute Military Fellow James Brown appears before Parliament's Defence Sub-Committee today to discuss his submission calling for more parliamentary oversight of Defence.
• A follow-up to yesterday's preview of the Arctic Council meeting by Linda Jakobson: sanity prevailed, and six applicants (including China) were granted permanent observer status.
• Notable quote from the NY Times piece cited above about the Arctic Council:

In 2010, only four ships carrying 111,000 tons of cargo made the northern passage; by last year, 46 did, carrying 1.26 million tons. Among those was China’s first ship through the Arctic, an icebreaker called Xuelong, or Snow Dragon.

• Thanks to @RohanAlexander for reading my 10 Tips for Writing Op-Eds, and for recommending Andrew Leigh MP's essay on the same subject.
• Artificial intelligence raises profound questions about the future of work, money and democracy. (Thanks Mark.)
• Can you liquidate a country like you do a company? Eastern Europe may soon find out. (Thanks Danielle.)
• Lovely video essay about one of China's most influential bloggers, who cycles around the country reporting on stories censored by the official media.
• A question from Australia's submarine designers to the Government: 'Why are you are asking us to design is a nuclear-powered submarine without a nuclear engine?'
• A new opinion survey of EU attitudes to the EU. The most trusted and most arrogant member country is...

Chinese military websites have been abuzz lately with images emerging of China's first stealth drone, dubbed 'Sharp Sword', which has started undertaking so-called 'taxi trials' (moving under its own power on a runway) and will presumably make its first flight soon. This image posted today on Sinodefence Forum, evidently taken by enthusiasts hanging around the perimeter of the airfield, is strangely evocative of modern China. 

First, think about the fact that this picture was taken at all, then uploaded to the internet and now viewable anywhere in the world. That tells its own story about the rapid evolution of Chinese society and the limits of censorship in the information age.

Second, look at the machine itself, which speaks to the incredibly rapid development of China's aerospace sector and the modernisation of China more broadly.

Third, there's the lone figure in the middle ground, presumably a cleaner or maintenance worker carrying buckets slung over a timber pole. That's an image suggesting a poor society whose modernisation is imperfect and incomplete. I wonder if he ever thinks about the money being spent on the gadget in the background?

Meanwhile, the US Navy's stealth drone effort has reached a milestone, with the first take-off from an aircraft carrier. The US Navy's program is being pursued very much with China in mind, the idea being that drones such as the prototype seen in the video below will have long enough range so that the carriers themselves can maintain a safe distance from China's growing anti-ship capabilities.

The Lowy Institute has launched its first-ever undergraduate op-ed competition (the deadline is 24 May, so plenty of time to enter; you could win a $500 Westfield voucher), so I thought this would be a good time to reflect on what I think makes a good opinion piece, having written several dozen, edited several hundred and read several thousand.

Note, this is nothing so formal as a set of rules or guidelines for the competition (though I am one of the judges). And note also that these are my tips for op-ed writing, not blog writing, which is a subtly different discipline (op-eds tend to have a more authoritative and declaratory voice, while blogging is more contingent and conversational). Here goes:

1. Think about your audience.

2. Now think about them again. Odds are, when you thought about them the first time, you thought about your peers. And the truth is, most of us do write for our peers. But if you want to move public opinion, resist this urge. Why? Because focusing on your peers nudges you to write in an insiderish way which excludes the bulk of your readers. You'll be tempted to pander, and to insert endless qualifiers in order to head off potential disputes on obscure topics only a tiny group of experts care about. (Of course, you should always try to be accurate. But don't be pedantic.)

3. Grab the reader's attention early. There's an old joke about the structure of university essays that's sorta true: a student essay goes 'intro, body, conclusion' or 'say what you're gonna say, say it, then say what you've said'. Forget that structure when writing an op-ed. Don't set the scene, don't define terms; that stuff can come later. Just grab your reader by the lapels and shake. I've read countless op-eds which could have been improved simply by moving the concluding paragraph to the top.

4. Get personal. The alternative style of opening an op-ed is to grab the reader with an anecdote which serves as a platform or metaphor for your larger theme. This can be a very powerful tool, as readers tend to respond on a more emotional level to stories about actual people (notice that TV news reports about medical breakthroughs invariably begin by introducing one specific sufferer). The convention in op-ed writing is to return to the opening anecdote in the closing paragraph, as a way of rounding off your piece. It's a cliché, but can work if executed well.

5. Should you make predictions? This is a tough one. On the one hand, chances are, your prediction about any given political event will be wrong, which could make you look foolish. Then again, pundits who make sensational (but inaccurate) predictions are often rewarded with more media attention, so it could be good for your punditry career. Whatever you decide, don't take a middle path. Tentative, mealy-mouthed, qualifier-riddled predictions make for dull copy.

• The famously scandal-free Obama Administration suddenly has two to deal with: one involving the Justice Department obtaining journalists' phone records, and the other about tax authorities targeting the Tea Party.
• Kenneth Waltz, one of the greats of international relations theory, has died.
• Laos still dealing with the 80 million unexploded bombs dropped during the Vietnam War.
• China's Israel-Palestine peace proposal is remarkable less for its content than for its source.
• Ahead of tonight's budget announcement, Lowy polling shows 47% of Australians think we spend about the right amount of money on defence; 38% want more.
• Ernie Bower issues a corrective to America's so-called Asia pivot. (thanks Malcolm.)
• Journalism is a dangerous profession in Iran (h/t Sullivan):

This could have been corny, but it's actually pretty sublime. I recommend giving it the full-screen treatment:

Commander Chris Hadfield is due to return to earth today onboard the Soyuz capsule.

(Thanks Hugh.)

• Despite the growth of China's armed forces, the defence of Taiwan is not a lost cause.
• Abenomics is working, says Matthew Yglesias.
• As for Shinzo Abe's foreign and security policy, his penchant for being photographed with military hardware is being noted by some critics.
• Worth bookmarking: NSFW Corporation is a Las Vegas-based digital news magazine that now has a monthly print edition.
• After bombing an arms convoy bound for Lebanon, 'Israel also made overt and covert efforts to communicate to Assad that Jerusalem was determined to remain neutral in Syria’s civil war.' (H/t Browser.)
• A contrarian take on the now widespread belief that China is becoming more assertive in its foreign policy.
• Ah, the all-powerful desk. Nice photo essay of bureaucrats around the world. (H/t MR.)
• Dani Rodrik:

...contemporary economics in North America has one great weakness, and that is the excessive focus on methods at the expense of breadth in terms of social and historical perspective. PhD programs now train applied mathematicians and statisticians rather than real economists.

It's nice to be able to flag an Australian film once in a while, and this one combines two modern Australian pre-occupations: China and wine. Red Obsession looks at the enormous appetite that China's wealthy elite have for fine French wine from the Bordeaux region. As the film-maker notes in this interview with the WSJ, China's Bordeaux bubble has recently burst.

Red Obsession is screening at the Sydney Film Festival in June. Looks like there are tickets left for the second of two screenings.

(H/t Sinocism.)

Via Kottke, a totally addictive game that makes ingenious use of Google Street View to test your world geography knowledge.

Geoguessr places you at a random Google Street View location and asks you to take your best guess of where you are by placing a pin on a world map. After five turns, you're given a score. The trick is to look for details in the natural or built environment to narrow down the possibilities (fans of Andrew Sullivan's weekly View From Your Window contest will find the format idea familiar).

I've noticed after playing it a few times that Australian locations come up a lot, which suggests that Google has uploaded a lot more street level images from this part of the world than others.

Image courtesy of Google.

Every year the US Defence Department releases a Congressionally-mandated unclassified study called Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China. This year's edition was released earlier this week. 

China specialists tend to pay this document some attention and so does the media, for a few hours. But why should we care? Given it has been produced by the Pentagon, which we might assume has some bureaucratic interest in hyping the China threat, should we even take Military and Security Developments 2013 seriously?

Certainly there are historical reasons to doubt the Pentagon's motives and its assessments. During the Reagan era, the Pentagon's annual Soviet Military Power report became something of a byword for sensationalism and threat inflation. It was filled with exaggerated statistics for the number and performance of Soviet weapons, featured lurid descriptions of the USSR's sinister ambitions for world domination, and was illustrated with maps showing fat red arrows emanating from the Soviet Union and stretching into the heart of Western Europe and the Atlantic.

By contrast, this annual China survey is sober, realistic and even recognises the debate inside China about its role in the world – there's no sense here of a monolithic and implacable force out to conquer the earth. The paper is even modestly self-aware, in that it acknowledges to some degree the role the US itself might be playing in Chinese threat perceptions and military modernisation. Granted, there are limits. The document notes, for instance, that 'defense against stealth aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles is...a growing priority' for China, without making the obvious point about which country might be driving such prioritisation.

So what kind of military force is Military and Security Developments 2013 describing? Well, despite the temperate language, the trends outlined in the paper are actually quite disturbing for the US and its friends and allies in the Asia Pacific. Let's look at naval power, since navies are the foremost means by which countries can project their power and influence away from their borders.

Captain Phillips tells the story of the Maersk Alabama hijacking in 2009, which was eventually brought to end by US Navy SEALs in what was interpreted as an early foreign policy victory for the new Obama Administration. The Wikipedia page on the hijacking tells a pretty hair-raising story, and the film potential is obvious. I just hope the Somali pirate villains are treated slightly more two-dimensionally than the trailer suggests.

For a more sober treatment of the piracy problem, check out James Brown's Pirates and Privateers: Managing the Indian Ocean's Private Security Boom. James notes that a private military security company played a role in defending the Maersk Alabama.

• I'm late to this, but you should take a look at a new Carnegie Endowment assessment of China's military growth and its implications for the US-Japan alliance. The NY Times has a summary. (Thanks Michael.)
• Who knew? American comedian Conan O'Brien is a presidential history buff. Here's his long conversation with TR and Reagan biographer Edmund Morris.
• Ernst & Young global survey shows a high public tolerance for corruption. (Thanks Jim.)
• Prospect magazine has launched its annual World Thinkers list.
• How and where you cross the street depends on where you come from.
• Hans Kristensen from the Federation of American Scientists says both Russian and American ballistic missile submarines are patrolling less.
• The Australian Greens want to copy the UK Tories on aid evaluation. (Thanks Danielle.)

A footnote to the recent exchange between Rodger Shanahan and myself on whether politicians could do their job better if they made art. Take it away, Hollywood director Steven Soderbergh (who made Contagion, above), speaking at the San Francisco International Film Festival last Saturday:

Art is also about problem solving, and it’s obvious from the news, we have a little bit of a problem with problem solving. In my experience, the main obstacle to problem solving is an entrenched ideology. The great thing about making a movie or a piece of art is that that never comes into play. All the ideas are on the table. All the ideas and everything is open for discussion, and it turns out everybody succeeds by submitting to what the thing needs to be. Art, in my view, is a very elegant problem-solving model.

That sounds rather wonderful, though I don't think it withstands much scrutiny. Is he saying that the problem-solving ideas people offer in an artistic setting are never influenced by their ideology?

BTW, if you love movies, do read the rest of Soderbergh's speech. The above point aside, it's thoughtful and intelligent.

BTW 2: Read this for more on Soderbergh's views about art and politics. I loved the section on film directors (and politicians) acting as facilitators rather than auteurs.

(H/t Kottke.)

• Bob Bowker on Syria: 'there is no serious foreseeable prospect of the regime collapsing or suffering a game-changing military defeat.' (Thanks Jerry.)
• The Pentagon's annual assessment of Chinese military power is out.
• A simple visual representation of the Asian century.
• 'The era of disruptive BRIC ascendence is over', says The Economist.
• When compared to the national figure, GDP figures from China's provinces don't add up.
• How to spot a weak argument: look for the word 'surely'. (H/t Browser.)
• Seven myths about Keynesian economics: Keynesians aren't in favour of big government, and they do worry about debt.

The full title for this film is The Defector: Escape from North Korea, and it follows the life of a people smuggler who helps North Koreans escape via the Chinese border. But since North Korean refugees are not recognised by China, these escapees then face the challenge of getting to a third country. 

The Defector was shot undercover, and had a festival screening in New Zealand last month. I can see no news of Australian screenings.

(H/t Sullivan.)

• China becoming a player in Israel-Palestine diplomacy?
• Via Fallows, a scathing take on modern China: 'It's becomes painfully obvious to me how something like the Great Leap Forward could happen in China where millions starved. When a society is built on so many layers of superficiality, bullshit and hypocrisy, and passing off responsibility to others, getting at the truth to solve real problems becomes impossible.'
• Prices for all major categories of renewable energy continue to fall.
• US historian and columnist Anne Applebaum is in Sydney, a city apparently witnessing a 'proliferation of Starbucks'.
• 'Quantitative urbanism', the mathematical study of cities.
• Empathy: if Syria had bombed an Israeli military base, how would the world have reacted?
• Jane Austen, game theorist:

The Lowy Institute's Rory Medcalf and James Brown are fashioning themselves into the David & Margaret of strategic analysis (for American readers, they're Australia's version of Siskel & Ebert). Here Rory and James review the movie that was the 2013 Defence White Paper.

• Help wanted: the Lowy Institute is looking for a new Director for its Global Issues program, and a Research Fellow for the G20 Studies Centre.
• New books, films and conferences casting light up Indonesia's dark past.
• Confucian culture will ensure that China never catches up with the West? Not likely.
• Citi Group looks at  the world's top 10 disruptive technologies.
• David Rieff: 'If utopia has always been a kind of escape clause from the human condition, contemporary techno-utopianism represents a radical upping of the ante.'
• What gets censored on Chinese social media, and what it tells us about China's future.
• A handy collection of recent writing on urbanism.
• Michael Levi, author of The Power Surge: Energy, Opportunity, and the Battle for America's Future, in an interview:

You can read a hundred studies about whether countries should care about where they get their oil from. Economists generally say they shouldn’t care. Security specialists say they should. But I was shocked that I could find a study about whether actual world leaders care about where they get their oil from. So I led a study with a colleague to drill down into that question and see if countries actually behave differently when they think they’re less vulnerable. And the answer is that they do.

'80 percent of life is showing up', said Woody Allen. But did he have any advice about leaving?

As my post from last Thursday made clear, I was more than pleased I showed up to Martin Indyk's speech on the Middle East and the Obama pivot, the full video for which is now available above and on our Vimeo channel.

What I should not have done was leave the room to fetch a pad and pencil at the beginning of the Q&A session. For it was at that exact moment (32.00 in the video) that Lowy Institute Executive Director Michael Fullilove, chairing the Q&A, made reference to Obama's 'Michael Corleone moment' in the Middle East. In fact, it's not even the first time he's invoked the famous quote from The Godfather III: 'just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in'.

For those who were there and who later read my analysis, which invoked the same quote, it must have looked like I was claiming Michael's pop culture framing as my own. Not so. Clearly we have similar taste in movies, but in this case, Michael got there well before me.

Goodness knows how they got John Howard to agree to this, but it comes out pretty favourably for him. Click 'read more' to see parts 2 and 3, and see you next week.

Here's an interview my colleague Anthony Bubalo did with Martin Indyk yesterday following his excellent speech at the Lowy Institute.

Indyk was twice US Ambassador to Israel during the Clinton Administration and is now Vice-President at America's most prestigious think tank, the Brookings Institution. For those of you unfamiliar with Indyk's background and who may be a little thrown by his unmistakably Australian accent, yes, he did grow up and go to university here.

Herewith my initial thoughts on the Defence White Paper 2013, with the usual caveat that this is the result of a first quick read and thus subject to revision.

All the talk about this White Paper is that it takes a softer line on China, and although Minister Stephen Smith says the Government has been consistent, David Wroe's language comparison of the 2009 and 2013 White Papers in the SMH tells its own story. More broadly, there's a strong emphasis in this White Paper on defence diplomacy, reinforcing the idea that we must seek our security in the region, rather than defending ourselves from it.

The other big theme is money: major projects are being cut or delayed because of the Government simply cannot afford them.

What's missing from this White Paper, as far as I can see, is any acknowledgment that the second big theme is actually driving the first. Because we cannot afford all the insurance we would like in the form of weapons systems, we have to take on slightly more risk and, to some extent, we compensate by substituting diplomacy.

The full text is here, and the Minister has put out various supporting media releases.

Stand by for our initial analysis.

My piece got a Twitter reaction from Nasya Bahfen, a Senior Lecturer in Journalism at UNSW:

Thanks Nasya; extra points for the '90s movie reference. But how about some other artistic depictions of the Bush Administration? Thomas Cole's landscape series, The Course of Empire, perhaps? Or one of Turner's storms (below)? Email us with your suggestions on blogeditor@lowyinstitute.org.

A superb speech this morning at the Lowy Institute from Ambassador Martin Indyk, Director of the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution and a former US Ambassador to Israel. We'll have audio and video soon, but I wanted to give you a few highlights. These are my impressions of the speech, and I might have to revise them when I see the transcript, but I thought some of what he said was pretty dramatic and worth putting down at once.

I should explain my headline. The 'Corleone moment' is my characterisation of what Indyk said about Obama's instincts.

The only memorable line in the otherwise forgettable Godfather III is Michael Corleone's lament that, try as he might, he can't leave the mob business behind: 'just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in'. Likewise, according to Indyk, Obama's plan is to end America's involvement in the Middle East 'great game' by ending two wars and stepping back from America's central role in the Middle East peace process. 

Obama has abandoned the policy of successive US administrations since the 1991 Gulf War to establish a Pax Americana in the Middle East and has pivoted to the Asia Pacific. The fact that America is coming close to energy self-sufficiency during Obama's term makes this move easier. The most dramatic demonstration of how far the Middle East has slipped in US priorities, according to Indyk, is the fact that Washington has allowed Baghdad to fall into Tehran's sphere of influence.

The media is reporting that the Defence White Paper will be released tomorrow. The document itself will presumably appear here first, and in the hours and days after the launch, we will have commentary from a range of experts both here and on Twitter (look for the #ausdef13 hashtag).

In the meantime, here's some suggested Lowy Institute reading, starting with the long debate we ran last year on Australia's Defence Challenges. You'll find contributions there from James Brown, Hugh White, James Goldrick, Christopher Joye, Tom Hyland, Jim Molan, Rory Medcalf, David Morrison, Mike Green, Paul Dibb and more. And here's a small selection of longer papers:

John Angevine, Dangerous Luxuries:

 The plan for the modernisation of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) is focused on expensive maritime and air capabilities for conflicts the ADF could not fight alone. Consequently, the ADF is exposed with an atrophying ground force and expeditionary capability for the low-level regional operations in which it will be most likely to engage.

Hugh White, A Focused Force: Australia's Defence Priorities in the Asian Century:

The biggest risk is not that China becomes a direct threat to Australia but that the erosion of American power unleashes strategic competition among Asia's strongest states, which in turn increases the risk that Australia could face a number of military threats to its interests, even its territorial security.

Alan Dupont, Inflection Point: The Australian Defence Force After Afghanistan:

With Afghanistan’s end game in sight, and a new Defence White Paper on the horizon, it is time for a vigorous public debate about the priorities of the ADF so that we do not repeat the mistakes of the post-Vietnam period and prepare for the wrong conflicts, made worse by ill-conceived strategy and chronic underfunding.