 So, welcome to panel one of the conference, which poses the question a new Cold War, reflecting on the increasingly fraught nature of the relationship between the United States and China, and we have an outstanding panel to kick this question around, to think about whether we do have a Cold War, is the analogy the right one, what's the state of the relationship, what are the different perspectives that both the key players, China and the US have on this increasingly complex relationship, no, increasingly difficult relationship, what does it mean for the region and of course what does it mean for Australia. My name is Nick Bisley, I'm from the Troubled University, I have the distinct pleasure of chairing this panel, so I don't have the obligation to say anything deep and meaningful unless I choose to do so, but instead I will just very briefly introduce the panel, they will speak as listed in the program, which is effectively from this side of the stage across to your right to my left, four bios are in the program, so I won't read them out in detail, but in the first instance we have Bates Gill from Macquarie University who will provide essentially the perspective on, the sort of Washington perspective on the question, James Lawrenson from UTS in Sydney will provide a take on the sort of Beijing perspective of things, then we have, actually you're sitting out of order, I just realised this is throwing my speaking notes, actually Townsend from the University of Sydney, he'll talk about the Australian perspective, and then Pichamon Yotufang from ADFA, furthest from me, but from the closest campus to the hotel realm, we'll finish off with some reflections about what a new Cold War might mean for the region and what the regional perspective is on increasingly difficult relations between the United States and China. Bates, take it away. Okay, well thank you very much Nick, and let me extend my gratitude to everyone here today who could come, and especially to the AIIA for the opportunity to make some remarks in relation to this interesting question as to whether we're now facing a new Cold War. I guess generally speaking and trying to read the tea leaves in Washington these days, I think most people who are following these sorts of things carefully would probably stop short of declaring a new Cold War, although there are certainly some who have used that terminology, but I think probably given it some deeper thought people would understand that the Cold War as traditionally defined with the Soviet Union is not the type of relationship we have with China today quite, surely maybe most importantly because of the depth of the economic relationship between the United States and China, even during these trying times around trade and other economic relations and disputes between the two countries. I think it's also true that we don't yet have the scale and scope of internationalism, which the Soviet Union attempted to represent in posing threats hither and yon around the world even through the prosecution of client state warfare with the United States. That, again, is not an aspect that we see with China. All that said, though, maybe we don't have a Cold War, but I would certainly say we have something that's getting chillier, certainly cooler, and as I really reflected on this, we are beginning to see the glimmers out of Washington, I think, of echoes, familiar aspects of the relationship with the Soviet Union back in those bad old days of the Cold War now being put forward as a way of dealing with China. So maybe a Cold War-light approach in many respects. All you have to do is read the National Security Strategy, which comes out swinging on China as a revisionist power and a strategic competitor. That sounds familiar, Cold War language. Of course, we have pending legislation. I don't think it has much hope of passage coming out of Congress, but nevertheless it's reflective of congressional opinion toward China, which seeks to restrict, restrain all manner of relations and ties with China. The word decoupling is bantered about quite freely, and there are many in Washington who think it is possible to economically decouple our relationship with China. That is very reflective, I would say, of the type of thinking we had vis-a-vis the Soviet Union. Most recently, the reporting, apparently based on a memo that was put forward by Mike Pillsbury, that there should be a way of targeting and limiting various forms of investment, not just investment from China into the United States, but also, importantly, placing regulatory constraints on American investments in China, for example, from universities or from retirement funds. And if you spend any time at all at IndoPaycom, you would know that the United States is busily preparing for a confrontation, even war with China going forward, not to say that we will have one, but nevertheless preparing for one. That too, quite reflective of our former relationship with the Soviet Union. And as was already noted today by President Ellen Gingel, this is true across partisan lines. It may be there are other things that the Democrats and Republicans agree on besides confronting China, but there aren't many other things. One other thing I want to underline here that does also remind me of a kind of Cold War light, and that's the increasing prevalence of what I would call ideological aspects of the coming confrontation with China. We become used to China as an economic competitor. We are increasingly viewing China as a military competitor. I think going forward we're going to see more and more and more in the way of understanding China as an ideological competitor, or if you want to put it another way, a competitor in the realm of ideas and values. This is something I've really been spending a lot of time looking at, and it's very fascinating, especially when you talk to friends in China about how they feel about this increasingly important aspect of the relationship. Again, not the same exactly as with the Soviet Union, but reflective in some ways of it. Let me just make a couple concluding points then. It certainly looks then to me that the mood is getting darker in the United States towards China. It may well be as we come into what's going to be a very raucous election year that China could possibly arise up as each side tries to outdo the other as to who can be tougher in its relations with China. I say all this in spite of the recent news we now have, primarily by tweet, that there's been the best, greatest, most wonderful trade deal in the history of the world, has recently been achieved between the two sides. Like so many things, like so many things to be serious with the Trump administration, I think we obviously have to wait and see what this is really all about. We shouldn't fool ourselves. I think much of what will come out of this trade deal will be primarily intended to help President Trump get re-elected, and it's not going to change the deeper fundamentals of economic competition, which is really at the heart, I think, of what the administration is trying to do in constraining China as an economic competitor. So Cold War, no, not in the way. We understood it in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, but definitely like this room, getting colder and colder. Bate, thank you very much. I should have said at the outset the speakers have all been given an eight-minute maximum. So Bate has come in at 6.35 and 3.300th of a second, with extremely good use of time. The stand has been set, perhaps, to achieve, not just your eight minutes, but a stretch savings target of at least 20%. So. Spoken like a true university administrator. I have sunk to new lows, it's true. Thanks very much to the AAAA for the invitation to speak, to provide one take on Beijing's approach to this increasing dispute with the United States. I think the first point I would make in setting the scene for how Beijing approaches this is that Beijing brings significant historical memory to being bullied by foreign powers. Two weeks ago, People's Republic of China had its 70th anniversary, which of course marked the end of what they called the 100 years of humiliation. You don't be occupied and you don't get bullied by foreign powers for more than 100 years, in fact, without that having any impact on the way you approach disputes with foreign powers today. I think there's a couple of factors more recently that also play into Beijing's historical memory of what's going on. It would remember, it would have seen Japan in the 1980s be bullied by the United States as its Asian neighbor rose up to become an economic competitor to the U.S. as well. Who can forget the Plaza Records? A massive forced appreciation of the Japanese currency that certainly did the Japanese economy no favours. And voluntary export restraints that were anything but voluntary. So it's got that more recent reminder as well, but in Beijing's view it would see that Washington doesn't shy away from bullying its economic and strategic competitors. It'd also look at 2012 with the Obama pivot to Asia as the United States homing in on China itself. Now many people will say, well, that pivot followed provocative Chinese actions in the region, most notably in the South China Sea, and it certainly did. But China would also see that the U.S. is accusing it of not following international law in the South China Sea, and that is the same international law that the United States itself refuses to ratify, that is, uncloss. In other words, rather than being some U.S. defence of liberal internationalism, it is in fact great, it looks a lot like great power politics. And more recently it would have seen U.S. complaints about China moving beyond narrow trade and tariff-focused issues to the ones Bates mentioned increasingly into the technology space. Now, let's be clear, once you start trying to stymie China's technological development, you are talking about China containment. Whatever words, whether you choose to use China containment or not, once you start to stymie China's technological progress, you are dealing with China containment. Why? Because per capita incomes in China remain at less than one-third of those in the U.S. There's only one approach, whether you're China, the U.S. or Australia, to increase per capita incomes, and that is through technological progress. So China is also watching this and thinking this U.S. bullying seems to be extending beyond trade into more troubling areas that really get at the first principles, the basic commitments that the Chinese government needs to deliver to its population and improve their standards of living. So what does China do? Well, I think it does what it's pretty much we've seen it doing. It shows no signs of weaknesses, right? It's showing no signs of backing down. It expects, in the words of Xi Jinping, that this will be the start of a long struggle, whether it's a mini trade deal struck on the weekend, Beijing is thinking this is not going to be solved in a week, this is going to go on for decades. To show weakness and cough-up concessions is only going to invite more asks from the U.S. administration, so you don't do that. You respond to U.S. provocations with retaliation of your own. Of course, that doesn't mean China isn't interested in cutting trade deals, and it certainly genuinely is. And examples like those we saw last weekend are steps that Beijing is certainly willing to engage in, and more importantly, engage in those mini steps so that it can kick more substantive issues further down the road. And it also removes broader irritants that don't really cost it much. It's gone largely unremarked that over the last two years China has actually substantially cut average tariffs. The rest of the world's goods are getting into China with lower barriers than they were two years ago. Unfortunately for the U.S., the barriers they face have actually increased. How's Beijing's approach going? Let me finish on this note. I think Beijing would be looking at its approach now and feeling pretty good. 6% growth for China this year isn't unimaginable. Well, I can tell you, if you do the maths, if it manages to achieve 6.2% growth this year, in very trying conditions, it will have added more new purchasing power than in any previous year. That may sound strange because the headline we always read is that Beijing's China's growing at its slowest rate in 28 years. Yes, but it's coming off a much bigger base. So 6.2% this year will be enough to add more new purchasing power than in any previous year. Foreign companies, U.S. companies aren't leaving China on mass. Yes, there are examples. You can easily find anecdotes to fill a newspaper copy. But in general terms, that's not the case. In fact, U.S. investment in China last year was on par with what it was in 2017. I also think the Chinese authorities would be taking comfort in the fact that the U.S. is not having a lot of success in forming an anti-China containment block. The U.K., one of the U.S. leading strategic partners, seems to be moving towards allowing Chinese tech company Huawei to participate in its 5G network. Southeast Asia, as I read it, are pretty keen on embracing the Belt and Road. Australia, of course, does neither. It rejects Huawei and doesn't embrace the Belt and Road. But it's hardly lighting up with Washington as well. And we are a staunch U.S. ally. In Washington, the talk is of China as a threat. Here, Scott Morrison refers to China as a great and powerful friend. Who would have expected that six months ago? Scott Morrison welcomes China's economic growth. The Australian government regards any sort of economic decoupling as foolish and contrary to Australian interests. And finally, getting back to a point Bates made, the Prime Minister last week rejected framing this dispute in ideological terms. He said that to look at this as great power ideological competition would take us to a dangerous place indeed. So a lot of the core aspects of the U.S. way of viewing China, not even Australia, the most staunch U.S. ally, is buying into that. I think I'll leave it there. Thank you, James, and Ashley. Thanks, Nick, and I'll frame my remarks by picking up on a point that James just made or an observation he just made when he said that from a Chinese perspective, a lot of this looks a lot like great power politics. My remarks are about the great power politics of the power transition unfolding in the Indo-Pacific and are framed from a much more defense and strategic policy perspective because I think that was in many ways one of the defining elements of the Cold War. I'll start with two observations about the Cold War and how I think they resonate today for Australian policy. The first is a growing concern with the military balance and with conventional deterrence. That is deterrence with military hardware that is not nuclear in nature. Just as the Cold War in Europe was in part defined by mutual concern over the balance of power, so too is the Indo-Pacific region now increasingly preoccupied by and its major powers preoccupied by the nature of the balance of power, particularly in the Western Pacific. The analogy is not perfect, but it does resonate in important ways. Throughout much of the Cold War, the US and its NATO allies faced a numerically superior Soviet land force in Europe and as such, the Alliance had to find ways to devise and sustain credible deterrence vis-a-vis these superior land forces. Crucially, this could not be a posture that relied solely on nuclear weapons and as such, an entire school of thought about deterrence and concepts like tripwires, the sword and the shield, massive retaliation, flexible response were born. Now in the Western Pacific today, a similar dilemma is now foot. Having studied the American way of war, a way of war that has been in the post-Cold War era defined by power projection capabilities and all-domain dominance, China has now deployed a formidable array of systems that are explicitly designed to counteract that competitive advantage that the United States has held. As such, it's proliferated along its coastline and large numbers of short, medium and long-range missiles, as well as many of the enablers in terms of command and control facilities required to make them important in conflict. And some of these were on display at the 70th anniversary parade that we saw a couple of weeks ago, in particular, a new hypersonic missile which, although untested, if it works, would be able to evade any existing anti-blistic missile system in the world. Now a growing number of defense analysts and worry they do and worry they should that as their role are concerned that Beijing may be able to use the power that it has amassed with its capacity to block the United States out of parts of the Western Pacific in order to achieve limited war objectives in a short timeframe. That could mean the seizure of parts of the first island chain, whether that be parts of the Japanese islands, the Japanese archipelago rather, whether that be Taiwan, whether that be parts of Southeast Asia. And it is not to say that this is Beijing's intention, but rather that something has changed in the nature of the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific such that today it is conceivable that China could pursue that sort of policy, military policy, in such a way as it could be over and done, a fate of complete before the United States was able to do much about it. And that tells us that the balance of power has changed. Now as per the Cold War in Europe, such an outcome would sow infectious doubt about the nature of America's position in the Indo-Pacific, but more importantly about the nature of its alliance commitments and the credibility of those commitments going forward. So for this reason, it is of course an important consideration for Australia when we do look at the United States and its role in Asia coming under challenge by Chinese military strategy to say nothing of the strategic value that seizure of any parts of the first island chain could lead to. And for this reason, I think Australia, the United States, Japan and to a lesser extent India, Singapore and some others in Southeast Asia are beginning to play very close attention to the military balance in the Indo-Pacific and to pursue a range of independent but also collective efforts to shore up what our foreign policy white paper talks about as a favorable balance of power. This includes military modernization, it includes increases in defence spending and investment in high-end military capabilities, but most importantly it includes the fabric of collective defence that brings together countries in the Indo-Pacific around certain strategic objectives. And for Australia, I think this is an urgent priority and one that does recall but is very different to the kind of policies that we saw in the Cold War. The second observation is the return of a sphere of influence mindset. Again, the Cold War was defined by the competition between the superpowers for spheres of influence in the world's three most critical regions, the Middle East, Asia and Europe. And today that competition for spheres of influence as we've already heard this morning is very much back. In other words, the unipolar moment at the end of the Cold War in which the expansion of spheres of influence was purely an American prerogative is now over. In the Indo-Pacific it looks that China is implementing a concentric circles approach to pursuing a sphere of influence in the region. Although this is in a military sense focused primarily on the Western Pacific and the island chains that have been critical to the balance of power there since the Second World War and before, in many other senses of national power, many other ways of national power, China is using a combination of economic leverage, infrastructure development, technological standards, political interference in some cases, in order to create, establish, build, co-opt, coerce the region into a sphere of influence in ways that are of benefit to Beijing. This is what great powers do. I think there are some important differences to the nature of the struggle in Asia today with regards to spheres of influence when we think back to the Cold War. First is that the aim of counteracting a Chinese sphere of influence in the Indo-Pacific, if that is indeed the objective of the US national defense strategy, is certainly more ambitious than it was in Cold War Europe. The Soviet Union was granted a sphere of influence by the West at the end of the Second World War and the containment strategies that flowed George F. Keenan there on were about containing the further expansion of Soviet power rather than denying the Soviet Union a sphere of influence per se. I state this simply to articulate that the object of military strategy or strategic policy in the Pacific, if it is to prevent the formation of a hostile sphere of influence will be much more difficult than it was during the Cold War because the ambition is greater. Second, and notwithstanding the crucial role of military power, the nature of competition for spheres of influence in the Indo-Pacific is by and large playing out in the gray zone. This is a corollary of the fact that the US and China are joined in so many ways such that competition in the financial system in terms of technology webs, in terms of political influence in international organizations is possible. But it's also playing out in ways and parts of the region very different to those that it did during the Cold War. And here I would note the important urgent priority for Australian policy to pay attention to the nature of that competition in the Pacific. And finally, so Nick doesn't get a hegemonic on me as he threatened to beforehand, the third point is the United States is less well equipped to preserve a sphere of influence in Asia today than it was against the Soviet Union in the Cold War. Put simply the United States now with the share of only 20% of world GDP as opposed to 60% at the start of the Second World War has less of the wherewithal to macro level to prosecute this strategy. And meanwhile, its allies also have fallen in terms of their relative share of global defense spending. As such, I think it is incumbent on Australian policy to think much more in terms of our collective contribution with like-minded partners to maintain a kind of sphere of influence and a kind of military order in the region that befits our interests. Thank you. Thanks, Ash. I thought we'd keep my hegemonic threats private, but there we go. Finally, we have a step back and a regional perspective from Pichamon from Adva. Does not, okay. Yeah, better. All right, well good morning everyone and thank you to the AIA and Bryce Wake Field as well for organizing this event. Being that I'll be stop talking a lot about ASEAN, I will probably be a little bit over time, you never know. But I wanted to start by saying that I've been conducting, oh, that's better. I've been conducting, so you didn't even hear my joke just now, what is unfortunate. Do it again. So I've been conducting field work interviewing policy makers, civil society, people in Southeast Asia for quite a while now, and also in other countries in South Korea and Japan as well. And the one thing that's become increasingly apparent with this rift in China, Sino-U.S. relations is the fact that countries in the Asia Pacific don't seem to see current tensions between the two countries, the two powers as a surprise. In fact, for a region that's been long exposed to their rivalry, such a confrontation was expected to happen at some point. And of course, to state the obvious, no one wants a Cold War. I mean, especially for the Asia Pacific for Southeast Asia, memories of the Cold War and the devastating proxy wars that happened still haunt many of the countries today. So this, along with the fact that the Asia Pacific has had a very checkered past with both countries. Arguably, most countries in the region don't really see themselves as a true fan of the United States or of China. This explains the varied hedging strategies that we see being employed historically as well as currently by states in the region. And again, this is especially true of Southeast Asian countries. Despite ASEAN's idealistic rhetoric, their foreign policies have more or less been colored by not only a distrust of the great powers, but also real politic considerations. A reality that is actually reflected in a recent survey by ASEAS, where around 50% of respondents expressed a comparable lack of confidence in both the United States and of China. So regionally, what we are seeing now, I would argue, is the emergence of leadership vacuum. There is geopolitical fragmentation across Northeast Asia, largely as a result of the ongoing historical and trade frictions between Japan and South Korea. But we also see continued hesitation from other potential regional powers or great powers like India, regarding multilateral initiatives like the Quad and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, or RCEP. But for this, again, for this brief remarks, these brief remarks, I won't really focus on these other countries. I will instead focus on Southeast Asia, and there's a reason for this. You might ask, what agency do smaller states like those in Southeast Asia have? Why should we care about them? Well, if anything, the recent trade spats in the region have come to highlight the increasing importance of ASEAN. Southeast Asian countries obviously have agency, in particular, for China, winning support from countries in the region, especially from Southeast Asia, has proven to be crucial to its consolidation of power now, but also after the Cold War. So these are reasons why Southeast Asian countries can remain optimistic and have remained optimistic despite current economic instability. Their pragmatic approach to managing these issues appear to have worked in the past and appear to be working now. So like what we're seeing in the South Pacific, where island countries have hedged between Australia and China, in Southeast Asia, we also see these countries seeking to benefit from the US and the US-China confrontation by manipulating their relationships with both. Again, this has worked before, and one is in particular reminded here, for example, of the US-Bachelor Maco Initiative, as well as the Chinese Lan Sao Maco and Cooperation Framework, counter-institutional mechanisms that were created in order to woo mainland Southeast Asian countries, but which ultimately meant that even more money was going to be channeled into infrastructure and public diplomacy initiatives in the region to the benefit of mainland Southeast Asian countries. So make no mistake here. Despite a lot of claims to the contrary, neither China nor the US has unbridled influence over countries in the region, no matter how small they are. Despite claims of Chinese debt trap diplomacy, it is a fact that the majority of Chinese finance infrastructure projects, including Hambunta Port, were originally driven by the host country, and we see this time and time again in Southeast Asia. The real import of Chinese money lies instead with its ability to open up possibilities and options that weren't previously available to these countries. So anxieties about the destabilizing effects of the US-China trade war have thus been limited really to certain circles domestically in the region. So speaking to business, academic communities across Southeast Asia, I found that short concerns about the trade war are palpable. However, for the general public and even a number of policymakers, anxiety seems to still be driven and derived mainly from domestic problems that plague the region. So overall, there is a very strong desire among Southeast Asian countries to take advantage of the new economic opportunities that are being created by this US-China trade war. Consider, for example, the Vietnamese. Due to the trade war, we're seeing a sudden influx of even more Chinese money into Vietnam, especially into the real estate sector. And this is proving to create more opportunities, potentially even more jobs for Vietnam. Similarly, trade frictions between the US and China as well as between Japan and South Korea are quite ironically setting up the viable conditions needed for ASEAN to push through ARSEP as a result of the emerging leadership vacuum stated earlier. Of course, at the same time, domestic polities matter a whole lot and they also constitute a major factor that influences the responses of Southeast Asian countries. Having said that, we've seen Thailand's schizophrenic relationship with the US, we're also seeing how Malaysia's relationship with China has been evolving over time. But it's evolving very much on the basis of pragmatism, right? So in late 2018, Mahatir decided to cancel billions in Chinese Belt and Road Initiative related projects in the aftermath of the corruption scandal that rocked the country. However, now Mahatir is talking about how China's BRI is great for the country. And this of course was coupled with the development where nearly 30%, and there was a nearly 30% discount in the price tag of the East Coast Rail Link, right? So we are seeing these back flips constantly, I think in the region, happening again and again. And this is really because of pragmatism that is driving the foreign policies of the Southeast Asian countries. So looking ahead, we've often heard about how the South China Sea dispute and to a lesser degree disputes over the management of the Macong River's water resources might become potential flashpoints within the region. We've heard experts say this for the past three to four decades. But in reality, what we will more likely see is Southeast Asian countries becoming even more strategic, even more pragmatic, trying to hedge behaviorally, but also discursively, to separate security and politics from economics. We see this again in the negotiations leading up towards the RCEP, potentially it's its conclusion later this year. But along with the fact that Southeast Asian countries continue to host, if not welcome, Chinese investment despite disputes over the South China Sea as well as concerns over Chinese interference as heard in other parts of the Western world. So Southeast Asia in particular will continue to avoid making an explicit choice due to their embeddedness in both the US and Chinese spheres of influence. And we again see this through the hesitancy that ASEAN has expressed towards the Indo-Pacific concept in particular. So again, I think what the China-US trade war has underscored is something almost counterintuitive, that the regional impacts of the SPAT and resulting leadership vacuum haven't been as bad as we expected them to be. And basically as a result, we need to be more creative in terms of how we assess the current regional situation. One thing China got right is the BRI and its newness. And for this reason, there is a need for the Asia-Pacific to constantly evolve and to also consider these new and emerging factors. So I'll end there. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Pitua. I can tell, 12.45 for questions. Now, what I thought I'd do is I'm going to pitch a question to each one of the panelists. I'll give them all at the same time. So as they go, they've got more time to think. And that'll allow you some time to think about questions. Whilst they're answering, if you're interested in asking a question, catch my eye. We're trying to get the diversity of the room. We've got plenty of time. But as always, please keep your questions short and sharp. I don't want to have to get hegemonic on people in the audience as well. And please try to make clear to whom the question is directed if you've got someone specific who you wish to address your question. So my question forbates, in the unlikely event that Donald Trump loses the election, and certainly based on odds and smart thinking at the moment, it's more likely to win than not. So if the Democrats were to win, how different would American policy towards China become, do you think? Could it even become worse than where we currently are? James, during the Cold War, it was pretty clear that the Soviet Union saw itself in a competition. It conceived of itself very clearly as in overt competition with the West. Does China see itself as in a competition? Does it have the view that it is in a competition whether for ideas, whether for influence, or whether for strategy with the United States? Ash, you described a world of, you know, a pretty stark world, actually, of geopolitical competition that I think we really talk about openly. That's to say, a world in which the threat of war is real, in which the likelihood of war is increased. Do you think the Australian public is ready for a kind of all-domain competition of the kind that the Cold War was, or which you've described? And finally, pitch them on really interesting discussion of the sort of pragmatic attitudes of Southeast Asia. I was wondering about ASEAN itself, and what your thoughts might be about where ASEAN as an institution might find itself in a world of great power competition. Because that, of course, is where ASEAN came from in 1967 as a way of these countries carving out some space. Where do you see ASEAN going in great power competition in the 21st century? All right, Bates, you can go. We'll go down. Meanwhile, catch my eye if you'd like a question. You asked, will the relationship between the United States and China get worse? Were there to be a democratic administration? My question to you is worse for who? I think, I take your point, though, that the relationship itself would continue to sour. I think that's probably right. I meant to say in my opening remarks that we can't pin the current downturn, the downward spiral in U.S.-China relations to the Trump administration alone. I think this was a trajectory that had already begun in the second term of the Obama administration as the White House became increasingly disillusioned, I think, or unhappy with China and not seeing progress across a number of areas where they had felt they had made legitimate offers for cooperation. So this is a trend that I think is gonna stay with us. Now, the reason I raised the point about worse for who earlier is because I think there would be a difference, though, in how that competition is prosecuted. I don't say this very often. I hardly say it at all. But I think in some ways, President Trump may have something right. I think that noting that China is a strategic competitor is correct. This is what great powers do. I've heard that said a lot here today. China's a great power, the United States is a great power, and history tells us that there is a fair bit of likelihood that they are going to enter into a competitive relationship, and we've seen that already economically, militarily, and I believe increasingly in this area of ideas and values. So that's gonna continue. But where President Trump really has it wrong is how to prosecute this competition, to do it in a way that's not only in American interests, but I think in the interests of like-minded partners and allies around the world. We don't have time to get into this in depth, but I think just one point I think is fair. I suspect that under a Democratic administration, there will be a lot of work done to try and rebuild relationships with allies and friends around the world. This is not a fight, this is not a competition that the United States can win by itself. We've heard it said already here. I would suspect under a Democratic administration there would be far greater effort, at least, to try and build up with friends and allies around the world a more cohesive strategy amongst ourselves to find ways to counterbalance while still cooperating with China. Right now I see nothing of the sort in American ally relationships, perhaps short of efforts simply to deal with this militarily and militarily alone, which of course isn't gonna happen, not particularly successfully at least. So I guess I would say this is a trend with us for some time to come. In that sense I suppose if you're a big fan of happy relationships between great powers, well then I guess it's gonna get worse. But if you are a fan of developing effective strategy to deal with what is an inevitable increasing competition, then maybe it won't get worse. It might actually get better for those of us that wanna see that competition done effectively. Okay on competition, Nick, I think in the economic realm that's undisputable. If we look at patents for example for the next generation 5G telecommunications rollout, Chinese companies hold 34% of the core patents, US companies only hold 14%. So there's no doubt that as China's technological progress continues, they're entering more head-to-head competition in the economic space. That's not particularly troubling though, that's just the nature of economic development. The same thing happened with Japan and the US by the end of the 1970s. There is this question about the extent to which Beijing is seeking to compete with America on ideology. And I think it is true to say that it is seeking to compete in China. But I'm not persuaded that China is seeking to compete with America on ideology by exporting its political system in a way that the Soviet Union did. So certainly within China, absolutely. There's a lot of efforts to remind a Chinese domestic audience of the strengths of China's economic model and its political system. So it's domestically focused competition. That said, I get a bit concerned with this strand of thinking that under Xi Jinping, China has become rampantly ideological. Absolutely granted, China has become more ideological. For sure, the power of the party has been moved more towards center stage. Ideology is more important now than it was five years ago. But to suggest that it is ideology that drives much or most of China's decision-making today, I think is wrong. Pragmatism remains a very, very powerful driver. Everyone knows, including the average Chinese citizen, that income in China, as I said before, is less than one third of that in the United States. Being more ideological isn't going to lead to better healthcare, better social services, better education, higher per capita incomes. Only pragmatism will deliver that. And when I look at the economic policies sphere, yeah, sure, there's areas where ideology, you can see ideology cropping up, such as increased Communist Party influence inside private companies. But I see a whole lot of pragmatism as well. For example, it's not well known that the overwhelming majority of industries in China actually have higher levels of competition than the United States. In other words, industries are more competitive in China than they are in the United States. Now that's not ideology, that's pragmatism because China worked out a long time ago that it's a competition that will drive productivity growth and improvement in economic outcomes, not ideology. So I don't think we should get too drawn away by the fact that it's all about ideology now. Pragmatism remains important. Thanks, Nick. Two parts to your question, I think. First, military balance in any particular region is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for a regional order. So when it comes to thinking about the military balance in the Western Pacific or in the Indo-Pacific, I think that is probably an easier conversation to be had than the one about the rest of the order, which is the all-domain competition aspect. On the former, on the military balance, I think that it probably hasn't dawned on most Australians because it hasn't dawned on most Americans yet that primacy, as Hugh White keeps telling us, is over for the United States in the Western Pacific. But what that means tangibly is, I think, what is up for discussion. I think what it means is that in order for a balance of power to be maintained or in order for there to be some form of countervailing coalition of countries that is able to maintain an equilibrium around any particularly coveted piece of territory, that will have to involve more flags in more kinetic aspects of that balance than previously. So for Australia that has been, since the Second World War, essentially a consumer of deterrence to go to being a contributor to deterrence and a contributor to deterrence against our most important regional partner in Asia, economically speaking, is a massive mindset change. That is dawning on the United States in a different way because from an American perspective, and Bates mentioned conversations out at Indo-Pakom, from an American perspective, allies have been coalition partners for predominantly diplomatic reasons, not for the critical niche capabilities that they bring to a fight. The United States hasn't wanted to, nor would you expect it to want to, rely on another country for anything pivotal in the upholding of a regional balance. Increasingly that thinking is changing and I think we're not prepared for that. And just briefly on the old domain competition, I think that that is the hard sell because if you take arguments and government documents about strategic competition to their logical extension, it's actually not about defense export controls and walling off certain aspects of technology, for example, that can't be shared with strategic competitors. It's actually about the long term and therefore about the IP or the potential IP, the potential breakthrough before then. And so the impetus for much more serious intrusions into the market or the research and development sector by government starts to rise and I don't think that that is something that we can easily have a conversation about. Yeah, so it's a tough question because in one sense, you have ASEAN as it is and it's working. On the other hand, you want ASEAN to change as well. You hear commentators telling or trying to recommend to ASEAN how it should kind of try not to be so stuck to the ASEAN way. It should try and kind of be more malleable with its kind of rigorous adherence to the idea of non-interference and so on. But really these are concepts that have been part and parcel of ASEAN since its inception. And I think that it's also these concepts that will allow ASEAN to continue to play a role within the region and potentially an even greater leadership role within the region because it is seen as an honest broker of sorts. I think what we've seen again from this trade war between the US and China and also between Japan and South Korea is that ASEAN is in the middle of it all. It has the potential to bring the stakeholders together to dialogue and because it represents the interests of much more than just two parties, it does mean that ASEAN needs to continue being consultative and kind of malleable in that regard. So I think in terms of your question about what does the competition mean for ASEAN as an institution, I think what we will be seeing is the kind of fitting the saying that the more things change, the more they stay the same. And I think in ASEAN's case, I think the institution itself will remain more or less the same regardless of these new developments in relation to economic integration or opening up borders for free trade and so on. But I think a more kind of more interesting point perhaps is if we disaggregate ASEAN, if we look at the responses of individual ASEAN states to this kind of this confrontation between the US and China, that's where we might potentially see new forms of engagement emerge. And already people often talk about Cambodia being a pawn of China or being China's lackey or whatnot, but in actual fact, again, Cambodia itself also has a whole lot of agency. Hun Sen's government is known for telling China, sorry, that unless you fund these projects for us, we're just going to grab the next fish that flows by. So it is that profound kind of pragmatism that is defining how ASEAN member states in particular responding to the competition. And I think that is where we might potentially see new kind of geopolitical dynamics emerge, new groupings, new alliances, but also kind of more creative ways to engage the great powers. Fantastic, thank you. Now I've got a long list of people from across the room. So the first one is there. If you just pop your hand up and a microphone will come to you. Is this on? I can't tell. My name is Alexi. I'm from the University of Canberra. I had a question that mostly jumped from Dr. Gil's point that it's difficult to make a comparison between the Cold War and the US and China relations because of the deep economic connections that the two countries have. It was mostly, the questions mostly aimed at him, but I'm interested to hear other perspectives. Do you think that this will lead towards a better outcome in the future? Or do you think it will just contribute to a worse outcome if things do go wrong in future relations? Like will the fall be harder because of those connections that the two countries have? Okay, so you're basically pitching it, economic interdependence is this stabilizer, but is it, if things go pear shaped, is this gonna help stabilize, but if they don't actually make things, could it exacerbate things? Is it, yep? I think by and large, as far as we can tell in the near to medium term, the economic interdependence will probably serve as a stabilizer. I think we have to see just how serious the Trump administration or its successors wish to be around getting beyond tariffs as an economic weapon or a form of economic warfare and gets more serious about actually trying to undermine China's continued economic development and progress. I think that's a fool's errand. Certainly some things could be done, I suppose, that would be damaging and there are some analysts out there who believe that the threat of those sorts of developments are helping to bring China at least to the table and have some discussions and kind of come up with some of these short term solutions that we see, such as over the weekend. Were that to be much fiercer? I think that, yes, we would end up, in other words, pulling apart the interdependency, which currently serves as something of a floor on the relationship. Yes, if that were to occur, I think things could get a lot, lot worse because there really isn't much, many other aspects of the relationship that you could point to that would form any kind of common ground for the two to not see each other then, not just as competitors, but more as fully fledged adversaries and enemies. And Ash, that links to what you were saying earlier about that full spectrum competition makes drawing that line around fencing off the military and strategic non-corporation from everything else, makes that really hard to do, doesn't it? Yeah, I think that's right. And I think that it's the integration between the US and China, but really the integration of the global economy that opens up an avenue for all kinds of what we call gray zone coercion, that although some of those were characteristic of the Cold War, many of them weren't possible because of the decoupling of the two. James, did you wanna weigh in or? Just to make the point that on this decoupling, I really don't think we know where the US is going to land on this. We know that there's interest groups in the US, notably the defense establishment that is pushing for a decoupling, but there's a lot of other aspects of US society that are not. I think of the university sector and by and large, the US business community as well. I'm not saying the US business community is as positive towards China now as they were, but they're certainly not at the leading edge of pushing for a decoupling. So these groups are going to push back on that because it hurts their interests, so we get to see where the US will land. Yeah. Okay, second question is way off from the far corners of, yes, you there with the pale sleeve I can see. Thank you. Thank you, Andrew Ritchie, member of the AAAA. This is to pitch them on. You've mentioned that the Southeast Asian countries are now significantly welcoming Chinese investment. Is there a long-term risk for them in this increasing welcome of that investment and how should Australia view that? Charlotte? All right. Well, thank you for that question. I should clarify that Southeast Asian countries are welcoming Chinese investment. This often is more at the governmental level. If you speak to civil society groups or to the general public, there has been some, a lot of concerns raised about the impacts of Chinese investment, whether on social, economic, or environmental grounds. So it is, there are long-term risks for China as well as for Southeast Asian countries. Already Vietnam is contemplating the implications of the influx of Chinese investment currently because of course what this means is that the Vietnamese government will have to become even more stringent about implementing and enforcing foreign investment laws and regulations. And we've seen this in the past. So across Southeast Asia, countries, especially those with lack of governance, which is more or less the case for most of the region, have really struggled to ensure that their legal standards are up to par with the rate of investment that's coming into the country from China. There are also long-term risks for China as well, because again, as we see even in Cambodia, there have been rising anti-Chinese sentiments in different parts of the country, more or less within kind of among the general public. And this has become, as we've seen in Myanmar, a huge headache for Beijing because that means that Beijing has to deal as a result of its private investment and investment by state-owned enterprises to deal with the reputational consequences as well as material consequences that arise from anti-Chinese sentiments. So there are long-term risks, but similar to what is happening in the South Pacific, what we're seeing Australia trying to play is kind of this reinvigorated role. Australia has always played a role in Southeast Asia, and I do know that DFAT, as part of the whole infrastructure financing initiative in the South Pacific, has also launched something similar for Southeast Asia, although we haven't heard as much about that as we have about the South Pacific. So I think Australia is trying to reinvigorate its role in the region. This is always welcomed, but it also means that Australia has to be careful that it's not simply reinventing the wheel, that it's not simply adopting Chinese practices of funding large-scale infrastructure investments to the detriment of local communities and the natural environment. I mean, if Australia wants to be different, it has to do things differently as well. And this comes back to the idea that what we're seeing in the world now is a lot of reinventing of the wheel. We're not really seeing much creative international order building. But again, this is where Australia can come in with a different perspective, one that is hopefully not as colored by American or Chinese interests, where it can actually negotiate on a more level playing field with Southeast Asian countries. Thank you again for the question. Okay, the third question is here. Second row back, if you could pop your hand up in the microphone, we'll come to you. Hello, my name is Krishma. I am the New Colombo Plant Alumni Ambassador for La Trobe University. Hey. And my question... Rotor placement tick. And so my question comes off the back of the masterclass I attended yesterday on Australia and the Indo-Pacific. And it comes from something that was stated by Professor Burns. And she talked about the potential for not just states, but also cities and individual states of Victoria, Western Australia, for example, to actually be involved in sort of the bilateral relationships between Australia and other countries and how they've been able to develop those relationships despite the sort of high level tensions between governments. And so the fact that despite over the past couple of years, we've been hearing more and more about Australia needs to make a choice between the US and China in this Cold War situation. But we've also been seeing more and more exchange, more and more trade, more and more investment between the two countries. For the panel as a whole, what sort of things and do you see the potential for these sort of grassroots or most initiatives to actually help maintain the peace within the region and also keep Australia from having to choose between the US and China? Yeah, fascinating question on that sort of subnational diplomacy in the ways for all cities, states, other groups can play. Anyone want to weigh in? I mean, one thing I would keep an eye on and we don't know yet where it's all going to go, but I was quite impressed by the decision by the Morrison government to, I guess, increase by some eight to 10 fold the resources available to what is now known as the National Foundation for Australia-China Relations. Formerly, that was called the Australia-China Council, I think, right? It was always an under-resourced and to my very narrow knowledge, not particularly well-executed operation given the enormity of this relationship and its importance to Australia's future. Maybe even 40 million is not enough either, but that's a significant number for any Australian organization to utilize. And I understand that this is going to be an organization that will get stood up and start operating next year. Let's do all we can as concerned observers of Australian foreign policy to put pressure on this organization to act and to be effective and not be bogged down in the bureaucracy of the government, but rather allow for a greater degree of civil society organizations, private institutions, people-to-people contexts to be generated through this new source of support. Hopefully, hopefully, if done properly, it can provide something of a stabilizing impact on the relationship. It's not gonna answer all the questions we wanna have answered. It's not going to necessarily change what will be, in my mind, a continued sort of bounded relationship between Australia and China going forward, but at least it could provide some sort of a floor, a help contribute to a floor on the relationship, which I think is really in the interest of Australia and China to see. Other panelists, James? I think you'll find the states are going to provide a pretty useful counterbalance to the often national security-centric focus of the national government, which is entirely appropriate. State governments and local governments, of course, are most interested in economic outcomes, jobs, investments, and so when they see the national government taking steps that might threaten those interests, they will push back, and we have seen that increasingly. We've certainly seen the Victorian government sign a memorandum of understanding with the Chinese government on the Belt and Road in the hope that that would deliver more Chinese investment to Victoria. You've seen recent statements from the Western Australian government, which has 30% of its gross state product valued in its exports to China, so there's massive Western Australian interests there in preserving a good relationship with China. So you'll see increased activism from state governments as this competition heats up, and I think that's a pretty good thing. I think it's a healthy thing to see in a democracy where you have the national government focused on security issues rightly, and of course economic issues as well, with the state governments being more tilted towards the economic end of the spectrum. And I think that, James, to pick up from your point, that's precisely why we should be very concerned about state governments getting involved in international engagements that bleed into the foreign and security policy space, and this goes back to the nature of all-domain competition or the nature of competition for influence in the Indo-Pacific or in the 21st century globally, frankly, it's just not the case, or at least there is significant evidence to suggest that it's just not the case that investment from the BRI comes without strings attached, that may not be in every case, but nonetheless, it would be an overstretch, I think, of the role of the states to pursue, if you like, a quasi-foreign policy with regards to relations with China on that sort of investment initiative. And let's recall perhaps something that Penny Wong said this morning, which is it's really important for Australia that we have a collective China policy. Now, I think that means collective in the sense of bipartisanship, but also collective in the sense of bringing together all actors in this country together for a sensible conversation about how best we ought to prosecute and define our national interests, because if we do operate, as we have been, at a decentralized way on important questions that do merge economic and strategic policy, then we risk being the victim of our own un-bringing. All right, next question is a gentleman here in the green shirt. We'll pop your hand up in the microphone. We'll find you, I hope, there it is. Meanwhile, we can all reflect on the joys of federalism and foreign policy. Hi, good afternoon. Tim Baines, I'm a military analyst from U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. Very interesting conversations, and I'm glad to hear Indo-Paccom got a shout out there. I'm more interested in, we've heard a lot about the U.S. side of this chilling war and other Asian countries and stuff like that, we've heard a lot about what the Chinese aspects are of it, what they had to do with it, what their motivators are and stuff like that. More specifically, as we talk about Southeast Asian countries and ASEAN, and what is China getting out of their Belt and Road, other than maybe making money from some of their construction companies, are they hoping for more favorable dispositions, say, during code of conduct negotiations or hydrocarbon exploration and exploitation or fisheries or something like that. What is China hoping to get out of this increasing coverage? Thank you. And did you want to focus particularly on BRI and more generally the sort of what does China want question? All of it, if you can do it, but I'm really interested in the Southeast Asian area. Yeah. Okay, why don't we start with James and then pitch him on and then we'll see what we've got left with it. There's no doubt that China hopes to gain influence from the Belt and Road Initiative, but I would say that's not a bad thing. The reality is in Southeast Asia, within Asia generally, you do have a massive demand for better infrastructure. So in fact, all China's doing there is it's growing its influence by supplying a real demand. And as was said before, this idea that China can push a bridge or a port onto another country as though it's a drug dealer is silly, right? Most of these infrastructure projects are at the request of the host governments. So that's what China's doing. It is seeking to grow influence, but I don't see it as being particularly sinister. If the way China's going to grow influence is through building infrastructure, well, there's a whole lot worse things it could do as it seeks to expand its power. Pitch one. And I agree with that. I think firstly, to answer your question, you have to also ask, who are you asking within the Chinese government? And we've all heard the answer of Beijing's not monolithic, the Chinese government isn't monolithic. Because if you speak to people at the Ministry of Commerce in Beijing, they'll tell you that it's really about allowing Chinese companies the ability to internationalize their portfolio to gain the skills to construct these variety of projects across not just Southeast Asia but the rest of the world and it's a lot about making money, right? Whereas if you ask the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, they'll tell you it's about creating ties, building bridges as a way to, I don't know, building rapport with countries in the region. Whereas if you ask the Chinese PLA, that's a completely different, I won't even address that. So it really depends on who you're asking. But for that reason, perceptions of what's actually happening in the region and what China is able to accomplish by engaging in these infrastructure projects within the region also varies depending on whom you speak to within Southeast Asia as well. But I will say this, I do think that it's a whole lot about money. It is a lot about getting Chinese companies the experience of going global as they put it. It's the case that people within China and Chinese academics and policymakers have already voiced their concern about how this might become another kind of tributary system, right? Where China was using it to demonstrate its project, its power, but it wasn't actually giving China itself any benefits. And the concern is that the BRI now is becoming unwieldy. It is defined more by what it isn't than what it is. And for that reason, it might become a burden on the Chinese economy in the near future. So there are those concerns and we're seeing kind of some examples of this. So like in Vietnam, you have the Haifeng Industrial Zone, for example. And initially that was about to fail, but then the Chinese government had to step in and kind of revive it. And saying that, they said, it's not about making money anymore, it's about demonstrating that the BRI is viable through that project, even though it was losing money early on. So there is that, again, a money incentive, but also a reputational one. And again, depending on whom you speak to, I think it varies within China, but depending on whom you speak to in Southeast Asia as well, the perception of whether or not the BRI is exceeding will vary. Thanks. I think all of that is correct. If we're looking at the BRI from, I would say a somewhat narrower macroeconomic perspective, we can justify it on the basis of money won profits, developing worthwhile projects. All that said, however, I think we also have to clearly understand that BRI is about more than that. This is a geostrategic initiative on one of the grandest scales of our time. And at the end of the day, what I think it's about, what does China get? China gets, I think it can be woven into a lot of domestic politics and economics. On economics, it's about exporting capacity, finding more productive uses of China's resources because they've kind of begun to hit a ceiling in, within the country. But it ultimately adds up, I think, to contributing to the long-term viability and survival of the Chinese Communist Party. That's what this is ultimately going to achieve, or at least that's the hope. And that's, you know, we can have our debates about whether that's a good thing or not. But I don't think we should lose sight of that, even though what we've already heard is also true. And I think, I just added one little footnote on that, which is as an aspect of China's international policy, BRI is worth looking at and the way in which China conducts itself, but it's the way in which it's learning. So it's realized it overplayed its hand early on. It realized it's learned about debt trap diplomacy. It's realized what the sort of public relations of this stuff plays out. And as an exercise in learning as you go, learning by doing, BRI is an interesting case. And China is becoming an increasingly sophisticated foreign policy player, almost kind of before our eyes. Now, next question is at the back, the gentleman at the back, I think with a red scarf. Yes, Graham, Tom Griffith University in Queensland, A-W-I-A. In the theme of the conference, New Agendas for a New Era, I just want to flip this for a moment to get the panel's response. So 50 years down the track, in the new era, post the new Cold War, when, or if China eventually trumps US, both in soft and hard power, and therefore, henceforth, everything comes under heaven, is there a problem other than an annual kowtow back to Beijing, when with Australia being in the orbit of just another superpower or great power, either economically or militarily? Crystal ballgazers? 50 years hence? Well, we're spending defense money now on what's gonna be happening when we get it till then, so we should be thinking these things through. I think most of us would agree that in 50 years' time, China will be more powerful than it is now, but it's not going to be the only powerful state in the region. So the idea that everyone will have to kowtow to Beijing because it's more powerful, and all of us smaller countries will lose our agency, I think that fear is probably a bit misplaced. Neha? Yeah, Pichonka. I think there's also the India variable as well in 50 years' time, so depending on how India continues to develop, then we might as well be in the same situation we are now, where we're seeing, again, friction between the great powers, and I think evolution towards a more multipolar world is really invisible at this stage, so even if China is much more powerful than the US, I don't think it'll be the case that smaller countries will be just simply standing oddly by. It's an enormously long time, and I think we're kind of crazy to think we can actually predict what it's going to be. Just think where the world was 50 years ago, just take China as an example. 50 years ago we would have never thought that China could be where it is today. I mean, I don't think there was anyone out there who would have thought that in the midst of Maoist excess that such an outcome could ultimately come about. I think just to stick with China, it sounded as if your question presumes this continual upward trajectory of China for the next 50 years, which is just simply crazy to assume is going to happen because they have a lot of difficulties that they're gonna have to overcome in order to become the dominant power of the world in 50 years, so I guess I'll take an academic cop-out and say it's really impossible for us to know at all what the world's gonna look like in 50 years. Ash? I'll take the other cop-out and say that we run strategic futures simulations that look at the region through 2040 or that makes stuff up in the region through 2040 because again, even at that time frame, there's not a lot of concrete predictions you can make with any certainty, but it is interesting to note consistently in those sorts of exercises done with multiple different groups of people from multiple different countries that the emergence of a balancing coalition or a group of other like-minded that have sufficient in common with regards to their interests and their concerns and their willingness to do something about those almost never emerges. And in fact, what you often see is that you have a lot more fragmentation where China of course is first by a long margin with regards to residents in the Pacific countries. United States not being a resident country in this definition. And in fact, therefore in the short to medium term, pending what happens to the Chinese economy is able to affect outcomes through its own portfolio of resources much more efficiently than most others in the region can. That's a pretty good cop out of it. Just at the back there. If you just pop your hand up so that the person with the microphone can see, yes. Thank you very much. June, very ACT branch. If I can ask a bigger picture question, I wonder if by using the phrase, the new Cold War, we're actually making the same mistake as the French generals with then Maginot line and mindedness and fighting the last war or preparing for it and not the next one. The world in the second generation, second decade of the 20th century is a very different place from the world of the 1960s, 70s and 80s. We've now got a much more multipolar world and this morning our last panelist made the first reference to India. We haven't had a single reference to Russia. Alan Gingel this morning noted the changing relativities in power between Australia and Indonesia. There are many more parts involved. Are they going to be sitting back and playing a role or just going along with this flow of an assumed new Cold War? All right. Anyone want to take a swing at it? I mean, one of my gripes with the Cold War and the Menclature is that it's a really, the Cold War was a really particular thing, an extraordinarily unusual phase in international history. And to just go, oh, there's this thing that has just finished a little while ago. So it involved two powers, one of them is the Communist, one of them is not, America. Yeah, it's probably a rough analogy. I think it often hinders a great deal more than it helps. But other thoughts, because I think the question is also more expansive about all of the multiple players that could be part of Asia's future. And I think there is a risk we often face where we're looking at the region and we focus almost too much on the US and China and the rest of us as if the rest of us just have to accept what goes on and diminish the role that the lesser powers can play and what their level of agency might be. Just a thought. I don't think I have a good answer for your question, but it does make us all realize, I think, that if is true, that we are going into a phase in international history where we're gonna see a lot more in the way of fragmentation, a lot more in the way of varying and shifting coalitions of common view, greater degree of sort of national sovereignty thinking rather than handing it over to let globalism solve all of our problems. If that's all true, then in fact, the Cold War was easy. Cold War was easy because you sort of knew who was on your side, you sort of knew who the bad guys were, who the good guys were and you had a plan, you had a real plan, at least in the West, about how to win that war, right? Which sort of worked. What we're really saying is we're going into this era of enormous complexity and difficulty and shifting and dynamism and change and all of those words we like to use, are we really ready for this? Are our elites and the people that we are tasking with securing our interests, are they really ready for this? Maybe we like the term Cold War because boy, we're familiar with that, we know what that is. That's something we can do, we did it well. And that's just laziness, that's laziness. I'll just put that out there because the people in this room are gonna be the people who, many of the young people I sit around this room, are the ones who have to deal with this. And so maybe, yeah, thinking about this through a Cold War lens is exactly the wrong way to be thinking about it because there's gonna be a lot more, a lot more difficult going forward. Can I jump in here with one of my points that I keep stressing? The region will be multipolar, but don't kid yourself that Australia can get away from its economic links or dependence if you wanna use that word on China, right? We hear all the time that Australia needs to diversify, manage our risks through diversification. Folks, we don't get to choose where the demand for goods and services from Australia comes from. That is determined by economic complementarities and purchasing power. So I think it's great if we can do a trade deal with India, but India is not going to be the next China for the Australian economy. We saw that from a federal government commission report last year that projected, or that hoped between now and 2035, Australia's exports to India would triple, sounds great, from 15 billion to 45 billion. Last year, Australia's exports to China totaled 150 billion. It's because those complementarities and purchasing power in China are so strong. So yes, the region's going to be multipolar, but our economic links to China are going to remain absolutely central. We can't get away from that. Ash. Look, I think, with regards to our economic dependencies on China, there are a number of begging assumptions in that view, which in fact could lead to the outcome being somewhat different. For example, if we did find ourselves in, and I agree with the question, the Cold War is not at all the right straight jacket to force strategic competition today into at the present point in time, if something were to change that forced a much more bipolar split in the Indo-Pacific, which is not likely but not inconceivable, then of course our trade dependency on China would in fact disappear almost overnight because the nature of block economics would be such that we wouldn't be in a position to, if you like, trade with our strategic competitor to give just one outside example. Similarly, a potential downturn in the Chinese economy may well radically change the kinds of dependencies that we face in the region. And I think this is the key point. As the multi-polarity is characterized, as I understand it, by proliferation of options. It's diffused, it's changing alliances, open and close, alignments open and close, there's a lot less rigidity in the system. But all of that is meaningless if it doesn't from a policy practitioner. Standpoint mean that country X has more options than it would in a rigid bipolar system or in an all-encompassing unipolar system. And so I think that is the, to flip the question background, that is what should drive us to be a lot more creative in our thinking about those kinds of options where we can see them, where we can seize them, how we can manufacture them over time by putting the groundwork into new economic relationships, new political alignments, new regional institutions and so forth now for the 10 and 15 and 20 year horizon. Rachel, final word. I recently concluded a research trip in China and I have to say most Chinese policymakers and academics I spoke to really dislike the idea of a new Cold War. And the thing is, the reason why they dislike it is for the reasons that you just said, which is that it creates a mentality, it creates constraints upon which we then view the world and the dynamics that we currently see. And it's the same thing in Southeast Asia. Most Southeast Asian governments I think haven't really adopted this Cold War language or mentality really, at least not explicitly. But what personally concerns me is the fact that when we speak about the Cold War, we think about the ideological overtones of the actual Cold War. And if we start framing what we currently see as a Cold War as well, that means that we're going to see more ideological fractures as well. And I think we're starting to see this, right? Earlier today we heard about the rise of illiberalism and this has become much more popular these days to talk about the rise of illiberal states. But I think, again, personally, such polarizing discourses are not helpful. It is the case that there are illiberal and liberal states perhaps, but calling illiberal states liberal aren't going to make them any more liberal than they currently are, if that makes sense. And I think the reality is that this is the new normal, whether we like it or not. It's the new normal that we have to cope with and to then engage in this kind of polarizing discourse where we invariably separate the world into different blocks, into different ideological blocks. It's going to bring about, you know, even though I don't really agree with him, but what Sam Huntington had talked about in terms of the clash of civilizations. And that's ultimately what we want to prevent, right? So I think, again, the Cold War is maybe an interesting frame, but it's not an accurate frame and it's not a helpful frame. Thank you. I'm afraid we're over time already and there's a bunch of people I had hoped to get to, but I'm unable to satisfy them. We've got lunch in just a moment. So you, and I think most of the panelists will be here for at least part of lunch, so if you want to collar them over the bain-marie, you can. Please quickly join me in taking Bates, James, Pitchmore and Ashley for a fantastic discussion. And now I'll hand over to Bryce Wakefield from AAI. Thank you very much. Hello, my name is Bryce Wakefield. I'm the National Executive Director of the Australian Institute of International Affairs and it's my absolute pleasure today to announce that we're launching a book by a fellow of the Institute but also a longtime friend of the Institute, Rick Smith. Yesterday I was giving masterclasses and I said that it was Rick's latest book and he informed me later that it's actually his first book. And this surprised me because the first time I met Rick was in Washington. I was a, what was known as a policy associate at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre of Scholars and Rick Smith was the Australian scholar at the centre. I don't know if he knew this, but it was my job to look after him. And he struck me as an extremely, extremely loquacious man then, extremely verbatious perhaps. Then he held court in the Wilson Centre lunchroom. People came to listen to his narratives about his career and they hung on every word. And I'm pleased to say that he's brought the strength of narrative to the book that we're launching today, India, the United States, Australia and the difficult birth of Bangladesh. This book weaves together published history, archival material and Rick's own memories as a diplomat in India to tell a compelling story about a tragic moment in the history of the region. But it also has lessons for Australia. Australia's position during the crisis in the 1970s that Rick writes about was to accept the realities of the situation on the ground, to accept that there was perhaps no future for East Pakistan while also focusing on a need to address the humanitarian crisis in a way that differed markedly with the way that Australia's American ally viewed the situation. And Smith's book tells us that for Australia it is possible to stand up for your own values and interests and your view of a situation that is possible to stand up for an independent foreign policy. But not only that, Australia may well be respected by its allies when it does so. So the book is a fine start to a series that we at the Australian Institute of International Affairs are launching on diplomatic history where we take the narratives of diplomats themselves and their experiences and ask them to use archival material and histories to talk about pivotal moments in history and how they dealt with those. The goal of this is to impart new knowledge to new generations of diplomats who will face crises and challenging times in their own careers and also to give this knowledge to all of you. This series is supported by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and we're proud that they have supported us in this effort. I'm glad to say that Rick's book will be available in the bookshop in the foyer and I'm even gladder to say that Rick has agreed to assigning of this book for those of you who want to copy. So please join me in thanking Rick for being the first author in our series on diplomatic history.