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.

Apparently some of George W Bush's critics are bothered by the fact that he's quite a competent painter and in particular that he has a skill for perspective, because it implies that he's capable of seeing things from a different point of view. But art critic Morgan Meis (h/t Browser) takes the reader through a quick historical and theoretical tour of Realism and the work of Degas to arrive at the conclusion that Bush's critics have nothing to worry about:

Comparing the paintings of George W. Bush and Edgar Degas is an absurd undertaking if we are talking about quality. We would be comparing a hobbyist with one of the great masters. But I am not suggesting that we compare in terms of quality. I am suggesting that we can learn something about the Realist mind when we look at the art of George W. Bush as well as that of Degas. The Realist is often forced to the side, to the oblique angle, to the unusual vantage point precisely in his attempt to get at the truth. The truth of a scene doesn’t always reveal itself right away. The Realist must hunt for the right spin with great confidence. The Realist believes in his or her capacity to see rightly. The Realist cares nothing for multiple points of view. The Realist cares only for the correct point of view, the view that reveals the most truth. That is to say, Realists in painting (or in anything else) have an in-built arrogance. It is an arrogance born of the idea that Realists are uniquely able to see things the right way. Even if this means that they must climb up into the rafters and look down on a scene from a strange angle, the Realist is fundamentally convinced that his own point-of-view is the correct one.

Perhaps this begins to sound more like the George W. Bush we've all come to know and love (or love to hate).

The conclusion chimes with the criticism that what Bush lacked as president was not intelligence so much as curiosity. He already knew the truth, so his job was simply to be 'the decider' rather than a thinker or prevaricator.

And yet that conclusion doesn't sit entirely well with what Bush himself has said about his new hobby. In the video above, you see him describe, with an unmistakable sense of wonderment, how 'I look at colours differently; I see shadow'. The sense is not of someone who is painting 'the truth' but rather of someone whose eyes have been opened to a perspective on the world he never knew existed. It's actually rather endearing.

So maybe Bush the president did have the arrogance of someone 'uniquely able to see things the right way'. But people change. So much so that one is tempted to wonder what America and the world might look like today had Bush taken up painting 15 years ago...

• A bland media release from Europe's officials statistics agency tells a tale of a vast human misery: unemployment in Greece and Spain is around 27%, with youth unemployment approaching a staggering 60%. (H/t Drum.)
• The Economist has analysis of global youth unemployment here.
• 'France avoids defence cuts', says Reuters. 'Crisis-hit France to cut armed forces by 10%', says AFP.
• Yes, oil production is growing, but Chinese demand is set to grow even faster.
• David Brooks on America's think tanks: 'They used to look like detached quasi universities; now some are more like rapid response teams for their partisan masters.'
• An interview King Abdullah gave to The Atlantic is making waves in Jordan.
• Shashank Joshi on Syria:

...the United States and others are coming to the conclusion that deposing Assad would no longer guarantee regime change or transition, but might instead produce a prolonged period of fratricidal intra-rebel fighting.

There's no easier way to demonstrate the appalling standard of online political debate than to cite comment threads: abusive, intolerant, disrespectful, rude, inflammatory etc.

That's true, but it's not the whole truth. I give occasional seminars here at the Lowy Institute for groups of public servants about how they can make best use of the internet for policy work, and my advice about comment threads is as follows: avoid comment threads on mainstream websites, but on specialist sites, seek them out, because they attract other specialists who often add value.

Arms Control Wonk is an excellent example, and today one commenter in particular made me think differently about Syria's chemical weapons. I've been mulling for some days over this statement from Arms Control Wonk founder Jeffrey Lewis:

Chemical-weapons use invokes an interest that has nothing to do with the future of Syria. We have a stake in strengthening the norm against chemical-weapons use. If Assad is using chemical weapons to hold on to power, we have an interest in ensuring that his government falls and that the responsible regime figures take their turn at the Hague.

I'm not one to dismiss lightly the importance of norms in international relations (though being schooled in conservative political philosophy, I prefer 'traditions', 'rituals' or even 'practices'), but as Anthony Bubalo pointed out, the Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya experiences should make us extremely wary of what the West can do in Syria. Then there's Stephen Walt's point about the taboo against chemical weapons:

• Paul Krugman asks: why aren't we seeing more protectionism during the current recession?
• What Russia and the US can teach China about nuclear disarmament.
• Japanese power company Tepco (which ran the Fukushima plant) has a decidedly feminine face these days.
• Want to know what Obama is thinking on Syria? Pay heed to the 'Obama whisperer', Rep Adam Smith.
• Contemplate your insignificance. (Thanks Eddo.)
• What's Japan's role in America's AirSea Battle concept?
• A recording of Shadow Defence Minister David Johnston's remarks to the Lowy Institute yesterday. This was notable: 

Last Monday's Interpreter piece from Environmental Studies Professor Roger Pielke Jr was one of a number of commentaries in the international media arguing that Europe's emissions trading scheme (ETS) had essentially failed as a mechanism for reducing carbon emissions.

Now I see that there's been something of a push-back to that assessment, arguing that the rock-bottom price of European emissions permits is not a bad thing, and even that the European parliament's recent failure to prop up that price was a blessing. You can read articles here, here and here, but let me extract one section from commentator David Roberts:

...the ETS is not a mess/broken/dying, it’s working like it’s supposed to. The goal of a cap-and-trade system is not to create a high price on carbon, or a low price on carbon, or any particular price on carbon. It is to reduce carbon emissions along a pathway specified by a series of targets (17 percent by 2020, etc.). The EU is on that pathway. Emissions are expected to come in under the cap, which means the cap-and-trade program is working.

• Afghanistan: the CIA is delivering bags of cash 'to maintain access to Mr. Karzai and his inner circle'. (Thanks Michael.)
• A US Congressional Research Service report on global internet freedom. (Thanks Fergus.)
• US Ambassador to Canberra wants Australians to stop pirating Game of Thrones. (Thanks Michael.)
• An attempt to quantify the social damage of unemployment.
• An obituary for former Australian ambassador to South Korea, the Soviet Union and France, Ted Pocock. (Thanks Michael.)
• 'In Japan, women still form an economic underclass.'
• The Council on Foreign Relations has released its first Global Report Card, grading multilateral cooperation on six key world challenges.
• The Parliamentary Library has compiled an exhaustive history of 'Lubyanka by the Lake', ASIO's new HQ. (Thanks Marty.)
• Scientific American has a nice slideshow on the history of manufacturing. (H/t Economist's View.)

In the interests of keeping alive the near constant discussion on this site about the significance of China's rise, three disparate but related sources worth flagging:

1. If you want an easy way to keep up with the very latest writing about China, bookmark Sinocism (or subscribe to the newsletter), which compiles all the best China material daily.
2. If you're used to thinking about China's military rise as a looming threat to peace, you may be pleasantly surprised to discover that countries across the Asia Pacific do not seem to agree with you. At least, that's if you look at regional defence spending, which is at its lowest in at least 25 years.
3. When Hugh White's The China Choice was first released, few were surprised by the wide and vigorous debate which emerged in Australia. Interpreter readers will remember the excellent discussion on these pages last year. The book has also made it across the seas, and it is causing some ripples, as the latest edition of Security Challenges, the journal of the Kokoda Foundation, makes clear. The editors have brought together a number of international analysts to get their views on The China Choice. Look out in particular for Ralph Cossa's blistering take on Hugh White's thesis. Hugh responds to each critique in his usual affable but unyielding style.

Thanks to Markus for alerting me to this trailer for an upcoming HBO documentary about the capture of Osama bin Laden, and the audio of this Council on Foreign Relations panel discussion hosted by Fareed Zakaria and featuring Peter Bergen, who wrote Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden.

Tomorrow is ANZAC Day in Australia and New Zealand, when we stop to remember those who have died in war. Normal blogging resumes on Friday.

Photo by Flickr user Luke Redmond.

• The Lowy Institute has launched its undergraduate essay competition.
• Everywhere you go in China, you see hints of liberalisation. But not in the media, or any other sector that might threaten Party control.
• Earlier this week Don Markwell asked where the remaining $100 million would come from for the new $300 million Schwarzman Scholarship program for China. Little Red Blog says the Australian business community should pony up.
• Further to Donald Gumbis' post about violence in PNG, a powerful letter to the editor in today's Post Courier, tweeted by ABC reporter Liam Fox. (Thanks Danielle.)
• the US has made substantial progress in deficit reduction.
• About half the Chinese population is now online, and it turns out they really like watching clips of Jon Stewart's The Daily Show.
• Business Spectator interviews the PM about China:

The US and China are deeply engaged. They are engaged at every level. Their economies are intertwined too. Their business communities, education and political leadership are all understanding how there will be, you know, strategic competition. That’s inevitable with two great powers, but both I think understand how catastrophic true strategic rivalry would be and they’ve both got a big vested interest in building it.

A fascinating short documentary below about a Frenchman living in Beijing who has made it his mission to save discarded film negatives portraying everyday life in China in the period when film photography was commonplace, starting around 1985 until digital photography took over in 2005.

As noted in the film's synopsis, this is a twenty-year period when China began to open up, and when its people started 'prospering, travelling, consuming, having fun'.

• The dark side of Qatar: 94% of the labour force is foreign, working under 'near-feudal' conditions.
• I have been remiss in not linking to China's new defence white paper, released last week.
• The world's top 100 airports, according to a passenger survey. Interesting that the first US airport is at no.30.
• Peak car still some way off, says The Economist. But shouldn't governments be planning now for big changes to urban transport?
• What the recently signed Australia-China aid cooperation deal could mean for the region. (Thanks Ashlee.)
• How social media damaged the Boston bombing investigation.
• Michael Fullilove:

The Iraq war made the US weaker, poorer, less respected and less feared. Given that we rely on US power for our own security, this is something that Australians ought to regret.

• The world emits more carbon per unit of energy than it did a decade ago because of the growth in coal.
• A junior minister in the UK Government visits Melanesia. (Thanks Danielle.)
• A Rhodes-style scholarship scheme for China has been launched (we'll have more on this story soon).
• South Korea is doing its share of sabre-rattling.
• The argument of my 'America getting it right' post of last Friday somewhat undermined by the fact that the entire city of Boston was locked down to find one terrorist.
• A major US arms deal with Israel, the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
• Thomas Friedman on the right reaction to terrorism (thanks Jacob):

...wash the sidewalk, wipe away the blood, and let whoever did it know that while they have sickeningly maimed and killed some of our brothers and sisters, they have left no trace on our society or way of life.

I can't help thinking of the US reaction to the Boston tragedy in light of John Howard's recent description of the feeling in America after the 9/11 attacks (the vast differences in the scale of the two attacks notwithstanding). As I noted after his speech, Howard returned constantly to the psychological shock created by the attack. Howard seemed to find it only natural that America's leaders (and Howard himself) should respond to that shock by invading Iraq.

But as was pointed out on the night, leadership on such occasions calls for the calming of fears, not the stoking of them. Particularly when those fears are vastly out of proportion to the actual threat.

So it was great to hear President Obama state plainly two days ago that 'the American people refuse to be terrorised'. That's exactly the right tone. Don't play into the hands of terrorists by over-reacting to what is a very manageable threat which is actually in decline. Don't be panicked into thinking that nowhere is safe and we're all at the mercy of madmen, because by any reasonable standard our lives are incredibly safe, happy, affluent and free. And above all, don't lash out by using disproportionate force, because your reaction will probably end up costing you vastly more in lives and money than the terrorist attacks themselves ever could.

None of this means that the best counter-terrorist strategy is 'do nothing'. By all means, invest in intelligence and police work to foil attacks before they happen. And be resilient. Part of refusing to be terrorised is showing that attacks cannot keep your country down; it's important to demonstrate that life will go on because your people, government and infrastructure can take a hit and bounce back quickly. That's why it is so encouraging to read that post-9/11 investments in hospital disaster response capability paid off so richly in the aftermath of the Boston attack.

Photo by Flickr user four12.

Taiwan's intelligence chief told a parliamentary committee earlier this week that China is yet to deploy its newest ballistic missile submarine (Type 094) and the intercontinental-range missile (JL-2) which is intended be its primary armament. This is despite the fact that the first of four or five Type 094 was launched in 2004. According to Sinodefence.com, the JL-2 has also had a protracted development.

This raises a couple of thoughts about Chinese military strategy.

First, it's a reminder that, despite the dramatic changes to China's conventional military forces, China's nuclear arsenal remains modest, and Beijing doesn't seem to be in any great hurry to expand it.

• Myanmar has come a long way in a short time, but the tough reforms are yet to come.
• Dilbert creator Scott Adams' optimistic take on climate change, nuclear weapons, crime, debt, and peak oil: 'whenever humanity can see a slow-moving disaster coming, we find a way to avoid it.'
• The hollowing out of the American foreign service.
• Panel crasher: the blog of an unemployed policy wonk looking for free food at Washington think tank events.
• The European parliament's failure to reinforce its own carbon emissions trading scheme marks the death of European climate policy.
• 'The idea Thatcher was a Conservative is absurd.  She was a radical who sought to remake UK society and especially the economy...'
• New Zealand's parliament passes its same-sex marriage bill, and breaks into a traditional Maori love song:

Understandably, media coverage of the Lowy Institute-Australia India Institute Poll of Indian public opinion has focused on newsy topics such as uranium sales and violence against students. But one so-far overlooked aspect of the poll jumped out at me. Indians have high levels of trust in their media: 

To summarise, 83% of Indians agree that their media reports accurately on what's happening in the world, and for events within India, it's 86%. I'm not certain those exact questions have been polled in other countries, but the level of trust in the media is clearly lower in Australia, the US and UK.

So what's going on? Is the Indian media that good? Are Indian consumers that gullible? Or is there another explanation?

• Is the British/German/American craze for fiscal austerity during a downturn based on research containing a crucial spreadsheet error?
• China's economic story is not one of the victory of markets over the state-run economy. You need to look sector by sector.
• Malcolm Jorgensen on John Howard's Iraq speech: 'To devise strategy from a reactive sense of vulnerability is an abdication of leadership.'
• Will SBY's rumoured cabinet reshuffle lead to a lifting of cattle quotas that hurt Australian exports? (Thanks Peter.)
• The Economist: 'Planting two bombs at the Boston Marathon is a sick, twisted act of mass murder, but it doesn't necessarily augur any more widespread campaign of terrorism, and it doesn't imply the need for major behavioural or policy changes.'
• People's political opinions are more flexible than you might think, as a trick survey reveals.
• Donald Horne, the man who launched a thousand lazy op-eds about Australia. (And yes, I plead guilty to using The Lucky Country as an occasional crutch.)
• Canada's Conservatives waste no time in releasing attack ads on their new opponent, Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, son of Pierre. (Thanks Michael.)

• Check out CNN, the Boston Globe and the NY Times for live coverage. Here's the Reddit thread.
• President Obama's statement: 'We still do not know who did this or why. And people shouldn’t jump to conclusions'.
• The New Yorker dissects Obama's words. Notably, he did not say 'terror'.
• The Atlantic collects some of the more inspiring images and stories emerging from the tragedy.
• 'The worst time for an explosion is at about the four-hour mark, when a new runner seems to cross the line every second.'
• Political Violence at a Glance: 'research has shown that incidents like this rarely translate into political gains for the perpetrators.'
• Social media playing a big part in the recovery (see example below from The Dish) and the investigation.
• How video evidence from the bombing can be forensically examined.

• Why does China have such a hard time with soft power? ChinaFile hosts a conversation.
• 50 years since The Spy Who came in From the Cold. John Le Carre reflects. (Thanks Michael.)
• While Adam Scott boosts Australia's image overseas, the NY Times is weirdly focused on Chopper Read, the feared criminal who became 'one of Australia's biggest stars'. Really?
• A ray of light in the strategic gloom surrounding the Senkaku island dispute. (Thanks Malcolm.) 
• China was once as isolated from the world as North Korea is today. We can learn something from that.
• An online spat between Paul Krugman and Estonia's president is now an opera.
• Why does the US take Iran's potential nuclear weapon so much more seriously than North Korea's actual nuclear threat? (H/t Sullivan; the Atlantic article referenced in the clip is here.)

Fairfax websites have been spruiking this dramatic account of British politics leading up to the Falklands War since the weekend.

You can watch it in one hit (with ads) here, but the BBC also has it in ten parts on its YouTube channel. I had not heard of this production before, but according to Wikipedia, it had a difficult birth, with the BBC canceling it in the mid-80s because it was too pro-Thatcher. It was eventually screened in 2002 and the playwright now wants it shown again.  

Here's part 1:

I've noted before in this space my admiration for Shaun Micallef, so when he got his own Colbert-like vehicle on the ABC last year, I was excited. Series 1 of Mad As Hell turned out to be bit of a disappointment, but series 2 is so far strong. Here's Micallef's take on the Korea crisis. Look out for the special guest appearance by Peter Sellers:

Earlier this week Jeffrey Choi wrote on this blog that:

North Korea's missile and nuclear technologies appear more advanced and sophisticated than previously thought and it is more common now to acknowledge North Korea as the world's ninth nuclear power.

It seems Jeffery might be on to something. Today we read in the NY Times:

A new assessment by the Pentagon’s intelligence arm has concluded for the first time, with “moderate confidence,” that North Korea has learned how to make a nuclear weapon small enough to be delivered by a ballistic missile.

The White House and Pentagon have both dissented from that DIA assessment, though a South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman is quoted as saying 'we have doubt that North Korea has reached the stage of miniaturization.'

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

The Guardian's film blog has a couple of excellent posts on the impact Thatcher and Thatcherism had on British films.

Two films from the late 90s come to my mind as interesting depictions of Thatcherism. Brassed Off (1996) and The Full Monty (1997) both depict life in towns struggling with the transition (which Thatcher set in motion in the UK) from an industrial to a service economy. They're also about unemployment and changing notions of male identity.

I found the nostalgia of both films for the old industrialised economy misplaced. As a whole, Britain is a richer and healthier and cleaner place for closing its coal pits, selling state assets, reducing union power and generally moving to a new economic model.

But the nostalgia of these films is really for a lost sense of community, and that sentiment is not at all misplaced.