 Well ladies and gents thank you so very much for coming back to this final session on this as I'm sure you'll agree particularly chilly Canberra day on how Australia Japan and the US can work with other regional security players. For those of you who don't know me hi there my name's Matt Sussex and I'm the academic director here at the NSC and we're particularly privileged to have for this this last session three very very fine commentators and I'm sure you know them all very well but first of all we'll hear from Druva Drashanka and then we'll hear from Gordon Flake and then after that we'll hear from David Brewster each of the speakers will talk for around about 10 to 15 minutes to maximize time for discussion and Q&A there is a sense I think that people do want to to have a little bit more discussion and hopefully we'll be able to accommodate that this afternoon well without any further ado in that case I think that I should hand over to to Druva and let him get us underway thank you Matt thank you to Roy Medcalf to his colleagues at the NSC it's a great privilege to be here back in Canberra I was here last month for the first time and this is my second visit in just two months and it's great to be talking with all of you about US Japan Australia cooperation these are three countries I actually have a personal connection with all three of them I lived I'm from India but I lived in the United States for over a decade I lived in Japan for five years and while I'm a relatively recent visitor to Australia in a professional capacity I actually spent a month here as an exchange student in primary school so I do I do have a sort of personal connection to all three of them I will be addressing and I'm sure this will come up more in the Q&A but I will be using a four-letter word quite a lot quad and but I will be talking about why the quadrilateral the US Japan India Australia quadrilateral why it makes sense and also lay out why it doesn't make sense why cooperation is difficult and why may not happen but I want to set the stage and I think I'll be recapping just briefly some of the comments that we've heard over the last few sessions I think that there's some sort of broad agreement or just some general observations about about the context why are we here why are we talking about this issue at this time one is I think there's a broad consensus that the security order in the Indo-Pacific has become increasingly unstable that we are in a period of greater competition that the Indian Ocean region in particular is one where there isn't a strong security architecture and there is a sort of I think a serious concern that this could become a zone of greater competition between maritime powers a second reason is I think we were living under we were living at least under you can call it an illusion or we were living under the understanding the that we were in a positive some world that economics and strategy economics and security could be could be advanced on parallel tracks were somewhat independent of each other and I think that that we're now seeing a sort of a slide towards more of a zero-sum world where economics and strategy are becoming more and more aligned we're not quite there yet but I think this is a reality that is beginning to dawn on various people at various times the third I think is we have a bit of a vacuum in terms of an entity that is able to establish order that is the ASEAN led order ASEAN centrality is becoming more and more untenable that then the conditions under which ASEAN centrality to Groot were were quite specific there were ones in which all the great powers were either internally focused great and middle powers in the Asia Pacific why they're internally focused or were were distracted by by other considerations the United States the Soviet Union China under Deng Xiaoping India Australia Japan but those conditions no longer really apply and we've seen all the great middle powers now reinserting themselves in various ways into particularly in terms of strategically speaking in the Indo-Pacific and this is we I think we now have to ask some very serious questions particularly in the aftermath of the permanent court of arbitration is ruling on the South China Sea as to whether ASEAN centrality really is tenable in the long run the fourth is fourth observation and final one is that we're we're seeing a sort of a new security art architecture slowly evolve and this is most apparent in the creation of various triangles various trilaterals in the region there's six at least that they come to mind as as six triangles six trilaterals that meet on a regular basis at a reasonably high level and their US Japan South Korea US Japan Australia US Japan India Japan Australia India China Japan South Korea and India Russia China and the interesting thing of I think about that is Japan is part of five of those six so it's in some ways the sort of nodal point for this emerging architecture so with this backdrop I just want to speak a little bit then about sort of India's bilateral relations by the security relations with the three other actors US Japan and Australia all have been arguably much better placed today than they were five or seven or ten years ago and I'll briefly just discuss why I mean I think the US is perhaps the actor that India now engages with in terms of security on a more on the most regular basis the US and India signed joint strategic vision for the Indian Ocean Asia Pacific and Indian Ocean region it's a mouthful in January of 2015 when President Obama came to India which I mean you know there was a lot of criticism that this was not a strategic relationship if you have if you want to put those doubts to rest please read this text it's a very short document it does lay out a sort of a joint strategic vision for the region military to military contacts are now better than ever they're more regular the index India conducts exercises with the United States more regularly than almost than any other country staff talks take place on a regular basis military sales the US is now the second largest provider in terms of value to the Indian Armed Forces after Russia for somebody who's observed the relationship for you in 10 or 12 years ago you would not have imagined this was possible it now is there's not a lot on the combat side a lot of this isn't the sum now it's just been a big sale of how it serves that's been agreed but largely this is in the form of transportation aircraft and very important airlift capability and so forth but this is this has been a very positive development there's been an AXA a logistics support so agreement that was signed after 12 years of negotiation almost but long overdue but this has been done so so this kind of I think sets the backdrop for the US and India relationship joint development is the next frontier in many ways to it but but we're so slowly moving into in that direction with Japan arguably I would say India Japan is now possibly possibly the country that India meets with bilaterally at a political level perhaps more than any other country in Japan and Russia the only two countries with which India has annual summit level meetings that's the two Prime Minister's meet alternatively in India in Japan there's a two plus two dialogue involving the foreign and defense ministries which is the only such arrangement India has with another country is with Japan the trilaterals as I mentioned both the US Japan India trilateral and the now India Japan Australia trilateral now take place on a regular basis military exercises is another one the particularly the maritime domain is another area that has seen very positive developments recently the two countries also signed two important agreements one related to technology transfers another related to the sharing of classified military information and for Japan the next frontier really is defense sales thanks in part to Australia Australia's decision regarding subs which everyone seems to be referring to India might possibly be the first buyer of Japanese defense equipment the India Australia relationship security relationship is perhaps the least developed of the three and the conditions for that five or six years ago I think we're not very propitious Australia had recently pulled out of the four letter word again out of the quad in 2008 there was some self-political issues made of supposed attacks against Indian students and Indian citizens in Australia and it was a uranium band in place and I think all three of those those issues that kind of tarnished the relationship or the perception of the relationship have all been dealt with in the last few years which so the circumstances certainly more favorable the uranium band has been lifted number of Indian students to Australia is still very large and growing and I think there's now with the new government particularly after Prime Minister Modi's visit to Australia in 2014 and his bromance with Tony Abbott you you now have a sort of in some ways the two sides turning a new leaf in the relationship so what is then stopping the four or even the three for that matter and I think it applies equally to the trilateral what is what it's now stopping these I mean I think there were some practical reasons given in the last panel but for me I think that there's of three three three larger conditions one is I think we're in a post alliance age I'm gonna elaborate on each of these second we're in an anti-strategic age and third we're in an age of digital nationalism and the common thread to all of these is that all have to do with the fact that we are all live in democratic societies so just as democracy is perhaps one of the values that is pulling these actors together equally it is perhaps responsible for keeping them apart and I'll just briefly elaborate on what I mean by all of those three things we're in a post alliance age there is a while the US does have alliance of the five in the Asia Pacific I think it is quite remarkable that there've been no new alliances formed in the post-Cold War era all of these are in fact legacies of the Cold War and arguably not all of them I mean perhaps Japan also there are the exceptions but I think serious doubts have been cast in the 90s or 2000s about the other three certainly about South Korea but Philippines about Thailand the in large part it's it is precisely because of democratization that that's become very difficult for two countries any two countries to enter into a mutual defense treaty that is it requires a commitment on the part of an elected government that citizens of country a will defend and put their lives on the line for country B and vice versa and this again I think is very difficult to now I mean it's all good and fine to have these legacy institutions I think the region is better off for it for the US alliances but entering into new ones is going to be increasingly difficult and preserving the existing ones will be increasingly difficult the second issue that we're in an anti-strategic age and I think I want to echo that some of the comments made I think by one of the panelists I can't remember who I think the previous session I think Ross Babbage maybe mentioned it that is we are we now in some ways take peace for granted and this is particularly true amongst millennials there's a there was a widely circulating survey that was done recently I think Australia was one of the countries that was surveyed in this and they found that you know people don't care so much you know younger generations don't care as much about democracy as older generations they've never developed there's never really been a fear of an alternative but equally we all have I think sharpening and complicated civil military relations in many cases and it's a particularly acute in Japan where I think you have a very sharp military divide I mean military officers in Tokyo don't wear their uniforms when they go in public transportation because of fear of how people would react to it but equally I think we have we have an issue in India with a very sharp civil military divide and this is obviously getting complicated in places like the United States as well elite universities in the US almost have almost no recruitment to the military now and so as a result I think there's a bit of been a bit of a failure on the part of strategic elites and I count myself I suppose and in that camp in trying to explain why national security is necessary why are why do alliances matter why do and in some ways if you see the success of President Trump in the United States who's questioned many of these underlying beliefs why did why does NATO exist I think a lot of this resonates with people precisely because I think the strategic elites have done a pretty poor job of explaining and explain national security we consider these things reflects reflexive truths within our own community but do a very poor job of explaining it outside of our narrow communities the third condition that I mentioned is is the age of digital nationalism and what this means is really that it will become increasingly difficult to control escalation in a during periods of tension this is what a certain Edward Litvak wrote 20 years ago about us being in a post-heroic age and many of those words see he would not say 95 and then a version of in 96 and he said today disputes over minor diplomatic aims or mere posturing for domestic constituencies are enough to provoke reckless displays of bellicosity or imprudence and I think that resonates pretty strongly today he was using the example amongst examples he was using was the Taiwan Strait crisis in the mid-1990s but that that again is just as equally applicable I think to what we've seen more recently in Taiwan we're seeing in the Korean Peninsula what we may be seeing you know not immediately but possibly be seeing hypothetically in between India and China as well and so I think for all of these reasons it will become increasingly difficult for for these countries whether the US Japan Australia or India as well to work more closely towards greater coordination and cooperation particularly in the security realm so let me leave it at that those are just some thoughts that I had hopefully we can continue some of this over the Q&A thank you thanks for that particularly insightful and comprehensive I think I will I must say I was struck by your comment about the emergence of a reemergence of a zero-sum region you know we hear a lot about the liberal order being underpinned by positive some interactions or US-led order however you want to conceptualize it led me to think you know do would we really know what a positive some region looked like in the absence of a US-led or liberal order would we know what it looked like if it was a multipolar or Chinese led alternatively so something I'm thinking about anyway come Gordon to the microphone he's got to focus on the time well thank you I'm delighted to be here as I was flying in this morning I spent some time trying to think of a well-crafted phrase that would keep you all awake in the last panel of the afternoon but when I heard Grant Newsham say cargo cargo cult on amphibiosity I gave up there's just nothing I could do that could possibly stop that instead I've turned to coming up with a new tourism slogan for Western Australia where I live in Perth which is Perth the farthest point in the planet away from Donald Trump and I figure if we mark it you know we could do pretty well with that the topic I was given was obviously working with regional security partners and Rory asked me to focus on a country that I've spent a lot of time focusing on and that is Korea and obviously this is the topic that has new importance after the last three months the transition the remarkable eight days of a Trump administration I just returned today midday from a conference in Los Angeles that I was attending with Amy and others entitled US Australia dialogue on the Indo-Pacific you will not be surprised to know that we didn't talk about the Indo-Pacific very much there was a very huge elephant in the room which dominated much of our discussions I'm going to do my best to avoid that today and to focus on the topic at hand but let me just kind of start by by addressing it very briefly because the transition happening in Washington and I'll talk about it in the points below really does render much of the conversation we're having uncertain at best irrelevant at worst just because there are so many moving parts and I've never you know many of you here in this room in various parts of your government or academic careers have probably worked on these wargaming exercises you know where you sit there and you're chatting along and then an hour later somebody comes in and just throws in some preposterous change in the wargame and everything changes that's what the last eight days has been like right at least four times a day there's a new tweet that comes in it just kind of upends some 50 60-year long-standard kind of assumption or truism and candidly I can't think of a single issue that's been discussed thus far today that is not uncertain right now and so again I don't want to understate that in my focus on the issue today but having said that let me return to kind of focusing on the basic idea that after a morning and an early afternoon discussion which I thought was fantastic on the potential for real and deep in cooperation between Australia and Japan and the United States now one of the important areas to explore a little more deeply is who might those three partner with more effectively in the region we've got some perspectives about India I think we're gonna hear a little bit more about Southeast Asia as well but Korea is an obvious candidate like Japan like Australia allies with the United States in like Japan like Australia you know very active in the international community democratic society you know market economy major economy considerable strategic capabilities and so it would seem to be an obvious candidate now having said that I'll begin with a kind of a broad observation is that that Korea has a very different perspective on these issues than does Japan and I've known this for a long time but it was driven home to me in spades this past October when I spent just a back-to-back weeks in Korea and Japan and to state it quite bluntly Japan has a strategic perspective about Australia and that is evidenced by Prime Minister Abe's decision to kind of rush his visit here to Canberra you know the week before the inauguration by the repeated phone calls the meetings the joint statements the work together on TPP and that I think is a partnership that is going to be driven ever deeper by those same uncertainties that I was talking about in Washington DC Japan's view of Australia strategic importance is driven in part by Japan's having a broader view of the region and by Japan in this case I'm really talking about the Abe administration and again even in his first term you know he had a clearer vision of where he wanted Japan to go and what he wanted Japan's role in the region to be so these are very closely tied together but there are even you know security analysts and others in Japan right now that are talking about Japan's Indo-Pacific pivot Korea on the other hand and again I'll be very blunt here does not have a view of Australia that is strategic they're an important partner it's a close relationship in terms of trade it's an important one we have former Ambassador Bill Patterson here that can attest to it in great detail but you know they recognize the history they recognize Australia's role in the Korean War but other than Australian Korean businesses they don't necessarily view Australia in that light Koreans have kind of the US here China here Japan off to the side with all the sensitivities that come with that and then Australia and the rest of the world it just they are so consumed by their own issues particularly the division of the Korean Peninsula and candidly I've done now three different conferences in Seoul in the last two years you know evangelizing you know the Rory Medcalf kind of Indo-Pacific kind of notion and each one of them is kind of met with great surprise because they do not have an Indo-Pacific strategy and if you don't have an Indo-Pacific strategy it's difficult to make the case for Australia in that context so now having said that it's important also to note and again not surprisingly that you know while there is at this point an emerging and I think evidence by our discussions that they've ever strengthening US Japan Australia trilateral kind of dialogue there is no US Korea Australia trilateral dialogue let alone a US Japan Australia Korea quad right the four four letter word right ironically the only country in which that's probably a really a four letter word would probably be India India is the one that's kind of averse to the quad if that makes sense in that regard but in this context I thought I would just start off by talking about you know four obstacles to a closer cooperation with Australia Japan in the US and Korea and then I'll point out some more positive developments that I think are worth exploring and working on as we go forward first and foremost again is not a surprise to anybody ongoing Korea Japan tensions over historical legacy issues that you know time after time after time you think are resolved or not and so a year and a half ago you had this historic breakthrough on the ever sensitive issues surrounding comfort women and the instability in South Korean politics means that you know with Park when hey having been impeached at the process going through the trial part of that process there's a throw the baby out with a bathwater phenomenon so anything that she did is inherently suspect and you're not going to be surprised to know that includes the the deal with Japan on the comfort women so that final we've solved this this issue is put to bed issue will once again already is but we'll once again rear his head and you know there has been some positive developments we finally got a G so Mia a general sharing of military intelligence agreement between Japan and Korea you know again it's kind of a baseline agreement we should have had 20 years ago but there's been some progress in that front but those tensions really make this very difficult and of course that's very dependent also on what happens on my second point in terms of obstacles and that is our okay domestic uncertainty I think everybody in the room here knows what's happening there right now so I won't go into it in great detail but as somebody who's watched Korea for over 30 years I have no idea how this is going to play out you know and again I'm also somebody who on November 8th stood in front of an audience of 450 people in Perth ever confident that Hillary Clinton is going to win the election walking around giving very specific vote tallories and then over the course of seven hours you know all my best friends in Western Australia watched me melt down and for two weeks afterwards would walk up to me in the street and say Gordon you need a hug so I've got a pretty bad record at picking politics and certainly it's even more difficult in the case of Korea right now you have the re-entering the race of former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon but has not been overly astute in terms of domestic politics but one thing I think is is pretty clear to me the relative stability of the Park Geun-hye Imyeong-bak era in terms of security alliance relationships is over yeah even if Ban Ki-moon comes in he's gonna have to come in on some very different premises given what's going on in South Korea right now so it's a really interesting time and going back to what I said at the outset of this conversation what just happened in the US does not help this you know so the same things that everyone in this room is reacting to and the demonstrators in and airports around the world are reacting to are playing out in Korea as well and it's going to play out in the context of a very difficult you know both impeachment process and presumably succeeding presidential election and not necessarily a good thing to have the US perceived as such in that context and it won't bode well so I'm concerned about that I'm concerned about that trajectory I'm concerned about the statements that are already being made and they haven't really gotten off the ball yet in that front third obstacle Chinese opposition again Grant and listing his his list of excuses included the Chinese won't like it this is a very important one for Korea and we often I've often accused my Korean friends of being more Catholic than the Pope when it comes to the Chinese you know thinking about what Chinese would think of before the Chinese have thought about it and acting accordingly but as of what's happening right now I don't know how closely you've all followed this but Korea's decision to move forward with that in a theater high altitude missile defense has engendered some very serious Chinese opposition and Chinese economic consequences and a major both diplomatic beatdown and now economic beatdown and so there are consequences in Korea's facing this and it's a tough and difficult time and so you put it in that context where the consequences are real you can imagine that the Koreans are going to be a little bit gun shy about moving forward into an open cooperation with you at Australia Japan Korea so I just throw that out as another obstacle worth us discussing going forward and the fourth and perhaps maybe I should have bumped it up to first and that is really uncertainty about the United States now it's kind of weird for me you know after having spent 25 years here in Washington to be here talking about US weakness because candidly whether you're an academic or think tanker or a government official you could come up here and just talk about that the the US commitment with tremendous confidence I just saw as I walked in here a moving op-ed by Ambassador Jeffrey Bleich who was with Amy and I just last week but I think probably after our frightening meeting felt inspired to write it but he basically said in his entire career including time as a US government official he has never once written a public article criticizing US government policy but he feels morally bound to do so right now and so in addition to the long list of issues that are there I'll throw out an issue that's of real concern to me personally and into Australia's in the room right now and again this echoes some of the conversations we had on the on the professional level there is a mandate to continue to cooperate on all the full raft of issues that Australia and the US work on at the Japan and the US work on and the Korean US work on together at the same time given that all of our societies are democratic societies we depend on popular support for those policies and that is long been taken for granted in Australia and so it was just striking to me that after we just had we had a really depressing day then then the foreign minister Julie Bishop came in and gave just a wonderful inspiring speech but all the great things that happened I thought well maybe it's not so bad then that evening I turned on my computer and I watched Wally leads the project and he had like a five minute just rant on the 43 40 things that had happened in the first eight days of the first seven days of the Trump administration at a time and you can imagine the average punter in Australia seeing that list and then seeing you know a government that's relatively bullish you can very quickly begin to see daylight in that position on some of these very sensitive issues particularly sensitive issues which are difficult to explain to the public so I think in all of our countries as I reference in Korea in Japan in Australia we are heading into an area where that is going to be a real challenge for policy makers and particularly those who haven't had to deal very much with public opinion to begin to wrestle with going forward I will throw in a couple of other things that I think are relevant in terms of the US's role in this process number one people you know international relations are about relationships I think you are all aware that when president elect Trump you know win in the very next week to meet with the then president Obama he was shocked to find out that there are some 4,000 political appointees that he was responsible he and his staff for appointing and he kind of thought he was just going to waltz in two or three people and just take over the government as it was I did a quick count just while I was sitting here in the earlier panel take two of the best of my knowledge thus far he has nominated 109 of that 4,000 now again he doesn't nominate all of them a lot of them and come in and once the other ones get into place and that process will flow forward but when you couple that with the fact that many particularly the State Department where this week we saw five senior civil service officials leave are not in position are not being consulted there is a real risk in terms of that process and again it impacts to restate it almost everything we talked about today the last thing I'll talk about on the US front is that our presumption at the Perth US Asian Center was that under a Clinton presidency we would be playing offense right you know when she launched our center in Perth you know four years ago she used the term Indo-Pacific and so it was all about what can the US and Australia do together and my guess is when this project or this conference was first conceptualized that was the presumption wow what could the US and Japan and Australia do together in the region but we have bluntly gone from playing offense to playing defense you know and to figure out what can we do to hold on to the gains we've made how can we hold on to whatever tentative games came out of the TPP how can we ensure that these things don't you know upend our fundamental you know advancement of standards and norms that we've been advocating for so long so before I depress everybody too much let me move on to a few positive developments for a quick then I'll wrap up here since I've been on long on the positive development there is a growing you know I think strength to the Australia-Korea relationship and despite what I was saying earlier a growing appreciation in Korea about the importance of Australia and this is really thanks to the efforts of people like Ambassador Patterson last year again doesn't get a lot of press but you know for the first time I understand there's an Australian officer you know embedded in US forces Korea you know actively involved in that process you know again Australia played a very important role historically and that level is important I understand there's ongoing negotiations about you know something similar to a status of forces agreement you know what they call a reciprocal access agreement which is key and we heard some great details about the importance of amphibiosity but obviously you got to start somewhere in that process and building those types of security ties to augment the already tremendous economic ties between Australia and Korea can only be a good thing and so those those developments are very positive secondly and this is an interesting area which I do not think was ever initially conceptualized in this front but has potential and that is mycta I think many of you are unfamiliar with it but there's a middle power grouping and again I'm not a fan of the term middle power but I use it anyway just to say it of Mexico Indonesia Korea Turkey Australia we at the Perth US Asia Center have just finished a major report on that which will be released later on this week but you know over the course of the last you know three years there's been some tremendous developments in that front where the foreign ministers who lead this initiative have really developed tremendous habits of cooperation and consultation and you will not be surprised to know that after being singled out for a special love from Donald Trump this week Mexico Mexico is ever more keen on make it ever has been before you know as is Korea in that context and so they're this like many other fora I think are going to highlight something that's going to have to take place at least in the interim that countries you know we were jokingly talking about the need for a G6 or G19 there are these different things but countries are going to need to kind of look to a moral leadership you know and strength where they can find it as they address issues of concern during the periods of instability and for Australia and Korea in particular their cooperation in that mixta form has already been a tremendous boom to the relationship and I think it's going to continue to expand dramatically just because I think there's there is real impetus and drive in Australia there's certainly greater than ever impetus in Mexico which actually initiated it and in continuing impetus and drive in Korea as well as growing appreciation in Indonesia and Turkey in their process the last two points I'll make and I realize I've gone long a bit here is one I think the key to this concept of getting Korea to play a more active role as a partner with Australia Japan and United States in this region really stems on on convincing the Koreans to think longer term about their role in the region and as I said at the outset Koreans are understandably focused first and foremost on Korean Peninsula issues but they are you know a you know top 12 economy in the world with tremendous capacity internationally and growing capacity both academically in terms of their government and they've demonstrated that in spades over the last decade in terms of their hosting of the nuclear security summit and the G20 and their own leadership and drive in terms of mixta in that context so in that context it's just very important to get the Koreans to start thinking while they're focused on that the Korean Peninsula itself as a first priority but also start thinking about what the coming development the next 25 years is and again I will I will confess knowing full well that you know Steven Smith on who serves on my board as foreign minister was an evangelist for the Indo-Pacific concept that that Rory has been one of the most effective explainers of it when I was in Washington DC I made fun of the concept of Indo-Pacific I thought it was a an academic construct that had no use utility in in real-world planning now where you stand is impacted on where you sit I in Perth now I'm I love the Indo-Pacific my grandson is middle name as Indo-Pacific but the reality is that that the more I look at things from that perspective the more I'm convinced of its utility and this is an area where that has a real utility in terms of security cooperation because it is only when Korea understands that the economic center of gravity is shifting you know Southwest as India continues to emerge as Indonesia continues emerge that goes from 230 million people to 400 million people and as their economy continues to grow as Burma comes out of its isolation is Thailand hopefully stabilizes in Vietnam continues to boom there's no question about where that trajectory is going and it's going to a point that really makes that construct ever more important so if you look ahead for 25 years you know there's no question that the defining development of the last 25 years was the growth of China assuming that all my first points don't play out and the things return to normal relatively soon in terms of the issues I was talking about earlier you know the trajectory that we all hope the world will go in we'll see that defining development be that the defining characteristic of the next 25 years which is the Southwestern shift the economic center of gravity the Indo-Pacific and if Koreans can be made to understand that you know it'll be much more effective to do that rather than say pay attention to Australia you say pay attention into Pacific and then oh look it look who's sitting at the focal point of the Indo-Pacific it's Australia and in that context that works very well and I will also add that the most effective possible motivator for any Korean policies to tell them the Japanese are already there and they're doing it first so if you can do that that'll work very well right the final thing I will point out is there there is some real areas of shared interest from all four of these countries that should be kind of a centerpiece of these discussions obviously the one that's already there is a shared focus on the DPRK given you know how we responded in the last two days to this immigration ban I'm just prayerful that we don't have a long-range missile test because there is not the capacity right now to respond to that well on a political level in the United States but that's an issue where there's got to be really close coordination cooperation between all of those four countries today in that process and then obviously the territorial disputes the AZIS issues that impact both Korea and Japan are areas where I think they're all commonalities so I'll wrap up with that but I think we get in some gris for the mill thank you very much Gordon I know Rory and I can certainly attest to the relatively narrow or focused ROK strategic concept we were there last year also proselytizing the Indo-Pacific and probably did so on an unfortunate day because it was on the day that the DPRK hadn't had a an earthquake which was measured in about 20 kilotons I think it came in but it does raise questions again about how you can get other actors to reconceptualize their sort of strategic geometries and reimagine what types of arrangements might be possible within the Indo-Pacific space and it's fortunate in fact that David Brewster is going to do precisely that in our last paper for today so let me hand over to him thanks very much Matt so I get the lucky last position today and I'm going to use the opportunity to range a bit far and wide although I hope I'm not going to go too far off the reservation but I'll you'll see I'll bring it back how it all relates to essentially the Australia-US-Japan relationship so over in recent years Australia is being really forced to re-examine the regional order that's been in place for the last 70 years and think about new strategic geometries that need to be put in place and this is obviously being driven by the rise of China the emergence of India but now also some signs at least that the US may be looking to renegotiate or reposition its role in the region and this last factor the role of the US in in Asia makes it ever more important that Australia and other US allies such as Japan take a proactive role in determining what they want the region to look like and how we envisage the continuing role of the US in the region and we can't just wait for the next tweet from Washington we really need to be proactive in in in thinking about this and on the one hand you could characterize this as potentially a form of hedging but I I would prefer to see it as as proactively searching for a sustainable regional security architecture one that works for us for other major powers in the region and the United States and in order to do this particularly in light of the uncertainties in Washington which I expect are going to be continuing for really quite some time to come I think we really need to take a multi-track approach in pursuing several alternatives at the same time and particularly those directly involving the United States we really have little way of knowing whether or not one alternative or another will work for the United States but I think we should necessarily need to to try on work on on several tracks now as we know since the end of the Pacific war the the regional architecture has really been characterized by a series of bilateral treaties between the United States and its Asia Pacific allies and while these remain fundamental to Indo-Pacific security it's pretty clear that these are no longer sufficient in themselves to change to address issues in the changing order and this has spurred the creation of new and more complex strategic geographies or geometries and one trend is towards closer relationships between US allies joining the spokes if you like another is is in developing closer linkages between US allies and others outside the US alliance system and a third related to that is the development of what's known as these mini lateral security dialogue small informal groupings of countries with similar interests and as Druva enumerated earlier on there's a whole bunch of particularly of trilateral dialogues I'm not going to name them all because it's really quite a long list it's longer than most people would realize but clearly the most successful of these has been the strategy of our new S trilateral dialogue in the two plus four format which has been incredibly successful probably its big biggest element in success has been in helping to draw Australia and Japan together now these multi lateral dialogues not just in the US strategic orbit they're also I think you could call the Shanghai cooperation organization for example as being a mini lateral security dialogue and China is also involved in one or two others India also has been making initial moves to develop its own mini lateral groupings in the Indian Ocean and and these these groupings fill a space between the bilateral and the multi lateral and hopefully bridge the gap in some ways and they can particularly for US allies they can provide an important symbolic message to China of shared concerns of the participants and also give the participants possibly the potential to to work together to help shape US strategic behavior and that's going to become increasingly important over the next four years and some of these arrangements could even evolve into what's being called federated defense systems where countries cooperate and contribute particular capabilities and that's really potentially quite attractive to the United States where it can leverage its high-end capabilities in in in extending its influence through maintaining a low-cost and small footprint anyway that's that's that's something that's possibly somewhere down the track and while some fear that these groupings could potentially create a security dilemma for China others really see them as a sort of a soft form of hedging and the the line between that was really I suppose best democrat demonstrated by the fate of the quadrilateral security dialogue in 2007 in the face of reactions from China now if you recall that was the quad was proposed by Prime Minister Abe in 2006 and it was connected with an expansion of the Malabar naval exercises to include as well as US and India Japan Singapore and Australia now China reacted very negatively to this grouping and in fact all four putative partners of the quad made steps to back away from the grouping most particularly India the Indian government under fire from its leftist coalition partners sort of backed away from the Malabar exercises and our own Prime Minister Kevin Rudd really did us no favours by very publicly pulling out of the quad in circumstances which really sent a lot of bad messages but this the the failure of the quad or the the falling apart of the quad if you like is really being questioned now and the there is a lot of discussion among the four powers the four maritime powers of its potential reconstitution in one form or another but there still remains considerable hesitations about establishing a new quad the experience of 2007 has encouraged a view among some that four is bad three is good in terms of reactions from China that somehow or other China will accept trilateral security groupings but not quadrilateral security groupings it's a theory which I don't know how rational it is but nevertheless I think it has still has quite some sway in in some places particularly Delhi I think of the four potential partners of the quad probably Australia and India are both the the most cautious about it and really see really would prefer most prefer to take a graduated response in terms of building the four-way relationship in in response as an incremental response to actions by China if you like and I think that view is probably expressed by many both in Canberra and Delhi but that doesn't mean that less controversial steps can't be taken I think it's important that for example that Australia be included in the Malabar naval exercises in one form or another whether or not as a as a full participant and I think that there's a lot that can be done in terms of building 1.5 track more 1.5 track dialogues among the four partners not to do so I think can be seen as sending the wrong message to Beijing about its ability to veto other relationships in the region I'll just say a few words now about India and ways that India can be built into the the regional order other than the quadrilateral now as most of us probably know Prime Minister Modi has taken a much more open approach than previous Indian leaders towards security relationships with other countries and while India still aspires to what it sort of calls strategic autonomy there seems to be a less narrow view of actually what strategic autonomy means and how it might might ultimately be achieved but while India is progressively leading more and more towards the US strategic orbit it's not yet clear exactly how India can be or would be prepared to be connected into the US security order in a way that allows it to maintain its strategic autonomy whatever that is but probably more importantly in a way that adds and doesn't subtract to its leverage with China there's still a lot of caution in Delhi in my view about moving the India-US security relationship beyond the bilateral and Delhi still remains instinctively cautious about any multilateral security relationships to which the United States is a party and the one exception to this and not necessarily a fully rational exception is any relationship that includes Japan so we have for example the India-US Japan trilateral relationship in which India is a very keen partner on the contrary India is really quite cautious and skeptical about entering into a trilateral Australia-US India relationship and then not I in my view there's not necessarily a completely rational response to that I think the instinctively Indians would see a trilateral involving US and Australia is somehow incorporating itself into the US alliance system where Delhi would not see the same vis-a-vis a Japanese trilateral and there are other factors at play I think in Indian thinking which makes it difficult to treat Australia as a peer partner in the region and so that's that's another reason why Australia would be cautious about that sort of trilateral relationship however I think that there's still a lot of scope for operational cooperation between the three partners particularly in the Indian Ocean India US and Australia are among the three biggest players in the Indian Ocean and increasingly Japan will become an important part of that mix as well there's also potential to establish mini lateral dialogues with a number of other partners and that's really should be seen as almost as an important part of these new strategic geometries particularly with partners that currently lie outside of the US security sphere and this includes for example the potential for an India Indonesia Australia dialogue or an upgraded dialogue or even India upgrading India Vietnam Japan discussions also an India France Australia dialogue would be an important element for naval cooperation in in the Indian Ocean they're just some examples but you can put together a lot of other triangles importantly the we should be thinking about how to maximize our comparative advantages in terms of relationships obviously countries like Australia and Japan have extremely good relationships with countries within or less within the US strategic orbit India has very strong relationships with countries outside that orbit and so it's a matter of mixing and matching and trying to maximize the benefits from all of those relationships in particular arrangements that connect with but do not necessarily include the United States I think would be consistent with important elements of Australia's relationship with India Australia has very strong interests in seeing the continuation of US strategic predominance in Asia in the long term but to the extent that changes in the regional balance of power will occur over time and that of course they will it's also in Australia's interests and Japan's interests I would say to see the development of a multipolar system in the India Indo-Pacific region that includes a strong and democratic and friendly India sitting at the top table so I think probably for that reason India has to be a focus and I see the India relationship very much in terms of a shared project potentially between Australia and Japan and the United States thank you folks I make it around about bit over 30 minutes for questions so we do have a fair bit of time can I ask for them in the usual way and Paul Div had his hand up well before anyone else so I'll go to Paul first thank you Matthew if I may with your indulgence a comment and then a proposition to put to the panel we scarcely mentioned Russia in person and although I would argue as Matthew knows that it's not a great regional power it is a great nuclear power and it is being authoritarian and aggressive what does the panel think about yet in another eternal Trumpian question is Trump really going to have a friendly relationship with this nasty aggressive authoritarian power called Russia is he going to have an alignment after all he's got a secretary of state who has the order of friendship which Matthew in the old days you and I would have called the order of Lenin what would it matter for Australia well it would matter a great deal the alliance that we have with the United States is not only about common interests it's about values we have no common interests of the Russia that is threatening the integrity of Ukraine Estonia Latvia Lithuania and Poland but it's a non-democratic country without a free press without an independent judiciary no common values mr. Trump the second one is the geopolitics of Southeast Asia as many people in this room know Southeast Asia is crucial to our defense security a friendly stable cooperative Southeast Asia is a shield to our northern approaches the opposite of that a Southeast Asia that is effectively a Chinese sphere of influence or if you don't like that Cold War term a set of tributary states is decidedly not in our strategic interest and I would argue and many of you in this room will disagree with me I think that what we have seen with China is it is effectively detaching significant parts of Southeast Asia into at least a sphere of influence and let's look at Cambodia Laos Thailand and increasingly the Philippines and I would argue Malaysia that doesn't leave us with much it leaves us with a Myanmar that's going through enormous change and the crucial relationship with Indonesia Singapore and Vietnam I think guess my question is what if anything can we do about this and we should be able to do something with the United States and Japan to try and head the Chinese off and make a Southeast Asia more attractive to the liberal international order it's not an easy question I recognize that not an easy question at all and I welcome any views any of you have on does Trump even know where Southeast Asia is or does he care I might just in closing say that in case you think this is some academic question I have represented Australia for 10 annual meetings of a ASEAN regional forum group that looks at preventive diplomacy and there's limits to what I can say in public some chairing the meeting in Australia next month of 27 countries are we making great progress absolutely not okay so general so Russia Southeast Asia I'll let you take them as you like Gordon is this working can you hear me Russia the answer is no there is not going to be a partnership there is not going to be a new relationship the one area where I'm actually relatively confident at the willingness of the gutless wonders known as a Republican party to resist Trump is on this issue and so you had over the weekend again it's been obscured by the fact that there's been 50 other kind of absurdist things happened but there was a phone call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin there was signals given early on the week that things that were on the table included kind of lifting the sanctions on Russia to which you know John McCain and Lindsey Graham put out a statement that said basically if you do that we will codify them into law and and there's been very few things on which Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan have been willing to speak out on and this is one of them the second point on that is that the other shoe has not dropped there are a stream of ongoing intelligence operations going on in this front where the first casualty will likely be Mike Flynn you know the current National Security Advisor and I think that would happen relatively soon he's already largely been cut out just in this first eight days received bad and there too and given his real exposure on this issue I think it's going to be interesting to see that plays out so among all the issues that I'm worried about you know Russia is not the number one in this region obviously if I was a Europeanist and we're talking about what's going on in Europe I'd be in a very different perspective in terms of Southeast Asia the best way to describe what's happening in Southeast Asia is not anything direct like it might be with a bilateral relationship with China or direct in terms of threat to Mexico but it's really the opportunity cost right we went from you know the potential for a continuation of a real appreciation not only of Asia but remember the US rebalance towards Asia was also a rebalance within Asia and candidly I'll admit that it kind of faltered into in the under at least in the State Department in the last four years but there was every reason to assume there would be a real reinvigoration of that focus on Southeast Asia and so if you look at what we're not going to have obviously the loss of the TPP is huge on that front you know Indonesia had expressed its interest Korea had expressed their interest you know for countries like Vietnam and Malaysia that really put heart and soul into this and took tremendous domestic risk it's just sets you back just stunningly and so you know as time goes on more and more we're going to be thinking about what could have been you know had we not gone in a very different direction and in this regard I think really there is a growing imperative for countries that are like-minded like Australia and Japan throw in Canada South Korea whoever is usually get in the front to reinforce those issues the good thing is you're absolutely right I mean there has been almost no statement about from the Trump either campaign or transition and administration of Southeast Asia they haven't focused on it I think it's a good sign that that Secretary Jim Mattis is going first this next week to Korea and Japan would love to see some good signs about Southeast Asia but given the 40 other things have been thrown up there's probably too much to expect at this point that is a good sign in terms of the defense side the trade sides all down at this point I have heard two very different things about whether or not that third leg of the rebalance which is the the political leg attending the East Asia summit attending APEC is going forward so whether I have a hard time imagining you know a president Donald Trump at APEC in Vietnam or at you know the East Asia summit in the Philippines so maybe you know there's a lot I haven't been able to conceptualize before but we'll see some of this point actually Trump's personal investment in Indonesia is quite striking he has several properties there which I'm not sure how that how if at all that will factor into things but I think it's perhaps a good perhaps a good news that I'll see on the Southeast Asia have not been mentioned today because every country that has been Mexico Russia this has been a problem the second on just a couple points on that from an Indian perspective I think there is there is a recognition on the part of the Indian government that it needs to engage more seriously with Southeast Asia not this has not happened in a very systematic manner they have now sent an ambassador to ASEAN there's a lot more bureaucratic emphasis on ASEAN as well this annual India ASEAN summit this is actually this year we'll be celebrating the 25th anniversary of India ASEAN relations there'll be several big meetings but in fact actually three relationships really stand out from India's point of view one is Singapore which is a very important investor and a security partner actually the second is Vietnam which is primarily a security relationship between particularly a maritime relationship and the third now is Myanmar which is a neighbor and India's always had a very sort of complex relationship with with with Myanmar one one thing one recent development is that there's also there is an organization called Beemstek it started off as a Bay of Bengal initiative but it now includes Sri Lanka Nepal Bhutan Bangladesh Myanmar Thailand and India and India is now just this last year been trying to put a bit more they had a leaders summit in India on the sidelines of the BRIC summit and part of this is motivated by the opening up of Myanmar and the opportunities it brings with them so they would I think we will start seeing a bit more engagement how what form that takes one thing I think and there's a great deal of coordination now between India and Japan on Myanmar in particular but also other parts of Southeast Asia we're so working together and finally on Russia India has a very sort of long-standing relationship with Russia it's a largest defense program still it's becoming more and more mental transactional relationship there's not a whole lot of even though the two leaders meet every year it does not a whole lot of warmth you don't really have as many you don't have Indian students going there you don't have Indians learning Russian you don't have you know things like that what you did have a few you know a decade or two ago so it's still it's become a very defense relation defense heavy relationship there are I mean there were concerns in India about sort of of course Crimea and MH 17 and so forth but India has sort of largely held its fire I think the primary concern in India is about Moscow becoming a subordinate partner to Beijing and this has very real implications for India in terms of its defense relationship Russia's already effectively listed in our sort of unilateral arms embargo in Pakistan which I mean so they are very serious concerns there it's interesting that some of those concerns once again are shared by Japan about overly close relationship between Beijing and Moscow and so you saw for example in Abe tried repeatedly first just before Crimea when he went to Sochi and then afterwards trying to reach out to Russia particularly I think several European countries and to a less extent the United States were not very happy with that that outreach but there is actually a great deal of alignment in how Japan and India are looking I think it's quite notable that in 2015 both Prime Minister Modi and Prime Minister Abe visited all five Central Asian republics on a single they almost did sort of copy Abe actually went later so suppose Abe copied from Modi but but it I think that's quite significant as well I'll resist the urge to wage on Russia with the exception of the observation that it's not just others who are worried about the closeness of the relationship between Moscow and Beijing it's actually Moscow as well and particularly the potential for a subordinate role what I might do is I come to the time so I might run three questions together one two yes sir and John at the back three thank you Matthew Miles Cooper again I think it's great that we focused on India and on Korea and how they might relate to the Australia Japan United States objectives for security in the region but I very much share Paul Dibs concerns about Southeast Asia and the way China is insinuating itself into the region and becoming I think it's asserting itself with the ambition of becoming the regional hegemon now it may not be so easy to get Australia Japan and the US to work together in Southeast Asia particularly in the coming period as the new US administration settles down and sorts out its relationships with various other major players in the world but I think there is scope for Japan and Australia to work in the region not necessarily together because I don't know if as a double act we would be that effective but really in a complementary way and in a way that's deliberate and considered on the part of both of us in a way to enhance the resilience and independence of countries in the region so that that large slab of regional security is is not just left bare and open so I don't know if any of the panel feel that there are specific things that Australia and Japan could usefully do together in the Southeast Asian region thank you thank you for everything I'm kind of a bit I'm a data chef of MSM Japan I have question that thank you for a briefing I understand the three countries Australia Japan and the United States to work together with the regional security players like India or some other countries but the I have a question about the but you think about the incentive from the for India to join this kind of trilateral cooperation or what I call the lateral cooperation because the India particularly India has a non-liance policy so how to say that but how they are going to make India involve this kind of framework to for example to contribute to the peace and stability or that's how to see a security industry thank you yeah thank you also thank you for those presentations John Blackstone here from SDSE I just find it's a little bit connected to what Miles Cooper was asking about before but I'm struck by how little we've talked about ASEAN the Association of Southeast Asian Nations we talked a little bit about individual players in that space but all of us are all spying ASEAN related forums the ASEAN Defence Minister's meeting plus we all play in that space there's a number of activities that are taking place in the ASEAN context they're actually quite constructive and it strikes me that this is a space in which India Japan Australia the United States and others have been and can continue to play a very constructive role my sense is that we actually need to take that up a notch and really try to invigorate that and when you think about that space particularly from Australia's point of view it is our immediate neighborhood Japan is not India is not China is not Southeast Asia is and it is in and through that space that our security challenges have always emerged and yet it seems to we fly over it you know we happily fly over it and yet we really can't afford to keep doing that I wondering if the panel would just comment on that a little bit I might ask David to come in first on non-alignment and quads and then we can broaden out I'll try and answer a couple of questions I think there's there's a huge number of opportunities for cooperation or at least coordination between Japan and Australia in the Bay of Bengal region and I'm particularly thinking about countries like Sri Lanka Bangladesh Myanmar Japan is actually really surprisingly active in those countries in terms of building infrastructure and investment and it really hasn't gotten a lot of play it's almost to the level of China's One Belt One Road initiative in other countries and I think that's very much in coordination or with the the agreement of India and I think Australia also can play a very important role in a number of those countries in particular niche capabilities building capabilities not just physical infrastructure capabilities but governance capabilities for example and I think that can be done in loose coordination with both Japan and India in terms of the quad and security relationships what's in it for India it's it's a very simple answer and that is leverage over China you don't have to go any further than that that's what it's about and the question for India is will any particular step in terms of moving itself closer to Washington or Tokyo or even Canberra will that give it more leverage with China or not and there may be a particular level optimum level of closeness not too close but not too far away but I think certainly the experience that Delhi has seen over the last five years or so is the best way to get Beijing's attention is to do something with the Americans and that's when the Chinese sit up and start paying them a lot more respect than they would usually give. A little bit farther than David which is I think I mean one is there's a bit of a myth about non-alignment I mean it's a myth in India about non-alignment which is that India is non-aligned and India hasn't been non-aligned since 1971 and possibly not since the 1960s between 1971 and 1991 India was for all intents and purposes in the Soviet the Soviet bloc it was very much aligned one way the what's happened I mean I think now people use it as a and some people in India use non-alignment basically as a code word for anti-Americanism it's a little bit more it's not it's not much more than that but things have moved and then circumstances have changed and I don't think you'll see a lot of people wedded to non-alignment the current Prime Minister doesn't use it at all in any of his public comments nor do any leaders. I would say this you know India does have serious security concerns it has with regards to China with regards to and you know freedom of navigation is important there is a border dispute with China and it's not a it's not a small border dispute this is over territory the size of well if you look at all the territorial disputes together it's about the size of Vietnam a population of two million people so it's not insignificant it's there there are deep concerns about One Belt One Road as and then the so strategic complications of it so I think if you take all of these together what can India do about it one is internal balancing India can can grow faster that would be nice India could play a bigger role in Southeast Asia as I mentioned earlier and then I think the other thing you can do is partner with like-minded countries not just as leverage but also with you know possible steps towards interoperability for various contingencies and you know HEDR is a great example I mean you saw in 2004 after the tsunami in the Indian Ocean India Australia Japan US have organically come together to help to provide relief in the Indian Ocean region so I think there is there is a very clear logic to what India has in it I think there are certain caveats as well I think India doesn't want to India doesn't think it's reasonable to to be in an alliance for the reasons I articulated and so it's not simply just a sort of ideological there isn't just an ideological logic to it just quickly on ASEAN I mean ASEAN I mean I think a lot more is often made so three things I said one is I think we need to stop equipping Southeast Asia does not equal ASEAN and ASEAN does not equal Southeast Asia there are 10 countries in Southeast Asia that are ASEAN members but they are I think we need to be sort of clear about you know ASEAN does some things and it you know it does conference building measures and the ASEAN plus ADMM plus our East Asia summit are very useful for that but I think to think of it as anything more than that is not what ASEAN was made for and I don't think we should be putting unrealistic expectations on as to what it can deliver if it can deliver a statement on the South China Sea I'm not sure we should be asking much more and I mean the other thing I think that's also interesting the reason why I think we all sort of have overlooked it in a way is not only is our ASEAN country is sort of surprisingly not active in these emerging mini-laterals that we've all talked about but and partly it's because there's pressure that a lot of ASEAN countries facing you know why are you doing this by yourself why why aren't you bringing in other ASEAN countries into it but the other reason is simply a lack of capacity if you look at take all 10 ASEAN member countries together their defense budget are less together than indias it's less together than japan's and so you know in terms of maritime domain awareness they don't really have the capabilities that you know the other members of the erstwhile quad do have so I think there's a reason it would be very nice I think we would all welcome it if Indonesia played a much bigger role it would be very welcomed but I don't sense there's an appetite for that in Jakarta but I might be wrong just a couple real quick points first and foremost in terms of Japan Australia cooperation in Southeast Asia I would think if there's one takeaway from what I thought was a really good day's discussion is that the scope for and the mandate for the expansion of that cooperation is obvious given both the concerns about China and concerns about the U.S. in that point right and you know obviously you know Australia has some tremendous diplomatic and defense capabilities that Japan doesn't in this region Japan has some tremendous economic equities a trade investment the things that Australia doesn't have the same degree in that region and so the scope for kind of coordination and cooperation I think is tremendous and and it can be done in a country by country basis and I think it should be expanded dramatically I think that we've seen some pretty good indications of that proclivity just in the last you know few weeks I think you know the Prime Minister Prime Minister Trumbull really handled at least the first phase of the TPP withdraw quite well you know that the joint statement with Japan the clear declaration that you know Australia is not the United States you know even though there's not a snowball's chance in hell of the TPP going forward now you know for Australia to say this is in our interest and these are our principles and we're going to stick by them or we're not going to abandon them just because Donald Trump said so it was a useful message to the region and again it opens a door and it keeps the door open rather for a lot of things going down the pike to spending on how things develop going forward ironically when it comes to India a lessened U.S. emphasis in the region probably probably easier for them I was joking earlier about some allergy to the word quad in India but there's less of that in terms of cooperation with Australia less of that in terms of cooperation with with Japan in fact in general Australia is in a really interesting period where I think that over the next two or three years you're going to see Australia's relative currency in this region increase quite dramatically there an ally of the United States a very close ally of the United States with a close cultural political security affinity and you know at this point every country in the world is just freaking out trying to figure out how to understand what's going and what's going on and in that context Australia which is you know both in terms of trade Australia has a trade deficit with the United States it hasn't been targeted by Trump for anything at this point in terms of the alliance relationship is very transactional in terms of security and defense they're kind of the model ally and in that context Australia has the patility to you know serve as at least a point of interest for all new countries in the region and with less sensitivity that then the United States has at this point the final point I'll make though is I don't want to overstate what I think I probably have in terms of my concern about the US withdrawal from the region the vacuum I didn't want to give that impression we've got Amy here we can give me clear views from defense but yeah among the three legs of that rebalance towards Asia clearly we're going to have some really issues on the diplomatic leg and unquestionably we already have major issues on the economic leg which is the TPP you know defense is a much bigger ship and it moves much more slowly and so throughout that entire military establishment there are longstanding long forward-looking plans and procedures in place and commitments in place so I don't anticipate the albini dramatic shift in terms of the US defense commitment to the region if anything you know the one area of unfortunate intention and focus on South China seas means that that tension that you're always writing if you're in Washington between reassuring partners and allies in the region enough you know to not being so provocative that they get a fear of a conflict that tension you know is going to continue and we'll see how it plays out given the current crew in Washington I'll put one to the panel first Gordon you're not the only one that that picked the politics wrong and you're not the only one that needed lots of hugs afterwards so I'm with you on that one I'm just wondering like somebody earlier on in the piece eloquently said that domestic politics played a big deal in in the US elections so there was an internal focus and I'm just wondering if the panel have any opinion that this might play a bigger part with other countries starting to to do the same thing and look internally instead of you know continuing with the collaboration and and carry on with what our discussion was all about today let me just ask a question right up front and then I'll elaborate briefly to you if you want to make a comment or for answer um question really is have we understated today the moving dynamic in the regional economies we've talked quite a lot about TPP but I'm not sure that we've really come to grips with the dynamic that we're really seeing underway in terms of changing economic dynamics across the region let me just give you a couple of examples my personal view is the Chinese economy is in really serious problems I talk and have a separate network which talks talks to investment analysts and senior people in Hong Kong and I think it's almost unanimous view that there is likely to be very serious problems that are going to become much more evident in the Chinese economy and that's going to have political and downstream effects there are already serious strains not only in debt levels that are other things in restructuring the Chinese economy I want to elaborate now secondly a lot of people other people in the region already changed it was mentioned earlier about Japanese foreign investment in in China but in fact in recent years the last two or three years Japanese foreign investment in ASEAN there's more than double what's going into China and in fact as you would I'm sure be well aware there's many a lot of investment coming out and even in this town there is some detailed modelling and not here but also in Washington are about looking forward in the regional economies and the and trying to take a risk assessment if you look at that there's a bit of a bit of a bait running that in perhaps 25 years time which is a long way to look at Australia's trading relationship with India when you look at where the Indian economy is going and you've got where the Chinese economy is going Australia's trading relationship with India may be stronger than it is with China so these things I know there's a lot of moving parts but do you think we've taken enough account of some of these possibilities I'm not saying there certainly since I've been kind of Dorothy Downer for for the book of this panel let me let me end that kind of a vote of optimism right there is no question that there this is an unsettling time for democracies around the world and again we're wrestling with some big meta trends in terms of information and media and the technology and wealth gaps and and so you can look country by country there's some form of this taking place but I feel compelled to kind of push back very strongly against the notion that what you've seen in the United States is somehow Brexit on steroids or what's happening in in in France and these other places or what happened in Italy in terms of the void and just to give that little bit of context you know the US you know because we don't have compulsory voting has some problem with voter turnout this this election only 58 percent of the eligible electorate voted of that 58 percent only 45 percent actually voted for Trump and if you consider the fact that a poll done immediately after the election asking them did you vote for Trump or or against Hillary Clinton you know 55 percent of those voters said they voted against Hillary Clinton not for Donald Trump which means that the percentage of the US electorate who actually supports Donald Trump and his positions is about 13 percent not too far off Pauli Hansen right you know and so this notion somehow that we have to take into account this America that is rejected as ideals is wrong you know we just have a system and it was exploited and we were caught unawares and there's a lot of mistakes made and a lot of blame to go around but in the end you saw the day one day after the inauguration 4.9 million women march it is the largest single political act in American history in terms of a demonstration like that right in 914 different cities and you've seen again in the course of eight days a coalition in the media that just didn't exist before the courts just in the last 40 hours i've set up so i i'm actually relatively optimistic more so than i've been for the last three years there is this sense of you know awakening and in the US you know we see pendulum swings right so we'll see there's a long bumpy process ahead and i have no idea how it's going to play out but i do have a relative sense of optimism and i do think that again we should write all these things off if you look at the underlying fundamentals they're still again it's too early to declare this the story over um the broader questions you're spot on we haven't paid nearly enough attention to to china's inherent weakness you know i moved to australia three years ago and i moved to western australia where just because of the dependency of that city and that state on china and iron ore you know if you suggested anything you know related to potential weakness in china it was just you know inconceivable you're whistling past a graveyard and that expression right you couldn't talk about it you know i came out of a strategic environment in washington where most of my friends were more concerned about chinese weakness and strength and ironically if you look at what's happening you know over the last two three years now with Xi Jinping you know his consolidation of power i also see these things as more indications of weakness and strength and so while on the one hand i'm deeply worried about the US own goals right it's just a complied the collapse of of the US credibility you know the you know the seeding of the ground on the trans-pacific partnership at a long range of issues i am not overly worried that china is poised to take full advantage of that just because of their own internal domestic issues and weaknesses and as to your broader point about india again obviously all these things are contingent upon trends which are hard for us to see right now but i would point out one interesting point we did and we're about to do our second round of it jointly a survey of public public opinion within the region and one of the areas which is quite remarkable more so than any other country in the region that we surveyed australians when looking longer term have a much more bullish view in terms of the future of india you know so when we asked the question in 10 years which country will be the most influential in asia 13 percent of australians said india yeah which was stunning i should start off by with the premise that i'm not an economist i'm not a china watcher which doesn't prevent me from having an opinion about this but no i mean i i do spend a lot of time talking to people who do both in the private sector and economists in various governments sort of who do follow this much more closely and i mean many people will rely will say with with some degree of confidence that they believe the chinese economy is actually growing and something closer to three percent despite the official figures that there's a massive bubble that's just waiting to burst and i think i remember having a conversation with some with some planners at the beginning of 2016 and we were trying to look at black swans and the three that we looked at were brexit trump and the chinese economic meltdown two of the two of the three have happened um now that being said i think we have consistently underestimated the ccp the communist communist party's ability to manage problems uh whether this may be a much sterner test that they've ever had to face and you'll have to see polls still show a significant um a significant confidence in the ccp's ability to manage things for polls within china um now and i think one of the key things we often overlook is the resilience of a country um if and and a resilience is really the the real key test is how does a system adapt to very adverse circumstances and we've not had to see that in action since 1989 in china um so i think that this is a big question um on on a related note i do think and you know and i think you brought it up very clearly in your presentation what are our strategic goals and i think we tended to use the phrase that people used used to use was we need to manage china's rise quote unquote and that was often seen as a euphemism for containment i know longer than we saw it that way um i think there was there was actually much more to it than that um the fact is every single one of us in this room has benefited from china's rise directly or indirectly um and so why is it that we have concerns about it and i think there are really four reasons one is it's not a market economy it's a mercantilist economy uh the second is it's not always a norm abider on freedom of navigation on on on proliferation it's a rule breaker it is not a status quo power it's a revisionist power at the south china sea in taiwan elsewhere and it's an opaque political system not a transparent political system so i think what we would like to see is a successful china i think we would all i would imagine all like to see this a successful china that is more a market economy is more transparent is status quo oriented and a norm abider um and how do we get to that stage and that really would require a soft landing uh if you will but i don't get the sense that shijin ping's economic or political reforms are moving china in that direction i think they're trying to on the economic side they're not necessarily succeeding on the political side they're not moving in the opposite direction um and so i think we're not anywhere closer to a soft landing than we were five or six years ago which i think is why bringing it back to my earlier comments why we we might be entering into a zero-sum environment i'll just say a couple words on the um australia india economic relationship i think it's going to follow a very very different model to the or trajectory to the australia china relationship i think bilateral in the with bilateral trade numbers currently india's the 10th uh most significant trade partner for australia after malaysia um and although that will will likely climb i don't think there is really any indication to believe that uh india will become another china for australia i think the uh india will resist the um globalization um much more than than than china and it will retain its trade barriers for quite some time so i think that that doesn't mean the relationship won't be close but i think it'll be just be a very different type of relationship than we currently have with china thank you very much matt and thank you to the panelists for i think that that really bracing session and i should just add that those those gifts are in fact a special investment in cyber invulnerability they are pens and very good very very resistant to to hacking look i would just say that it's been a really i think a really useful day from what i've observed i want to give maybe just a few reflections from myself and from a few colleagues here at the national security college on the day we've been through today and perhaps where this conference might lead the contribution that it might make it seems as the day has gone on we've really warmed up just as it's warmed up outside as you'll discover i think when you step outside but i think after a little um a little initial diplomatic politeness uh understandably i think we moved on to some very frank exchanges of views on the the difficult intersection between domestic political uncertainty and the strategic environment i think if that's one theme that many of us will take away from today it's that domestic international nexus which for us is really redefining what national security is about and goes very much to the core mission of this uh of this college but also poses really difficult challenges for policy makers whether it's in defense policy or foreign policy or strategic policy more generally how do we develop consistency and how do we maintain solidarity among allies and partners when the real uncertainties are very much within as well as as well as without i thought it was also useful and welcome that we heard from some really significant emerging voices in the strategic and policy debates in a number of countries in the region as well as very established voices established players so to hear from people with very distinguished and senior policy experience i think was of course worthwhile but to also have some of the emerging insights particularly into for example the Philippines and India i think was was especially valuable as well i think one of the um one of the challenges that certainly a few of my colleagues and i have taken out of today is this idea which i think gordon articulated for us about democracies and allies being on the defensive for the time being but also a very clear call a very clear recognition that this is not the council of despair this is about really as we say don't panic but don't relax it's about resilience it's about building and maintaining and defending the rules-based order that we've all contributed to the going is getting tough for democracies the going is getting tough for those countries that want to maintain a multipolar order in the Indo-Pacific but the game has just begun in many ways so i think in some ways there were some oddly reassuring notes that we heard from the conversation today and of course the focus on practical cooperation i think the contributions from colleagues like Grant Newsham and from Ross Babbage and others who were really pointing to some of the practical things that Australia, Japan and others can do together and some creative ideas for example example trilateralizing amphibious cooperation that work we hope will continue on the surface and below the surface despite a lot of the political challenges of of the short term now some of you particularly some of the policy makers in the room will be joining us tomorrow morning for a closed session with some of our visiting speakers we will get into these issues and perhaps a little bit more detail and i'm sorry i can't invite everyone to the closed session but i guess it wouldn't be a closed session if we did the good news is that we have dinner this evening where as our guest speaker we have Sarangas Houston former chief of the Australian Defence Force and someone whose career has very much intersected with the alliance with the United States and with Australia's security ties with Japan as well and i believe we'll have a good opportunity for really carrying on the dialogue informally over drinks and at dinner and indeed with our dinner speaker so really i don't have a lot more to say i want to thank all of you for coming here today i want to thank our friends at the Japanese Embassy for their partnership and support in the wider project that this conference is indeed a part of you'll be seeing more publications from the national security college flowing from this event in the months to come including a report that a few of us are putting together on particularly the australia-japan security relationship and how it intersects with these other relationships in the room we encourage you all to really stay connected with what we do at the national security college in addition to conferences like this which are part of our our really expanded program of engagement with policy we are of course a provider of training and education and it seems to be that there's there's never been a better time to study national security i have to say than at present so please think of us in all of those all of those contexts and please remain remain friends and in context of the college i just want to add one little housekeeping note before we close there'll be buses leaving for dinner at six o'clock just outside i believe just outside on liversage street so you've got a few minutes to i guess gather your gather your wits and relax before we head off to the dinner again i want to thank all of our speakers especially those who've traveled long distances from united states from japan and elsewhere in the region to really have this very dynamic conversation i know there's already a little bit of interesting media coverage emerging and a few of you will find yourselves quoted in the press but i'm sure i'm sure it's all accurate and i'm sure it's not fake news on that note i think we can say that the proceedings are at an end so please join me in thanking the organisers christ varnum and his team and his speakers thank you