 Thank you all very much for coming out on this, I'm actually surprisingly warm for tonight. My name is Andrew Carr from the Strategic and Defence Study Centre and I'll be your MC for the evening. I've put together, I think I've got a highly distinguished panel to talk about the US election coming up, both its presidential and congressional elements and what this really means for the Asia Pacific. We know that in 2011 the Obama administration announced its famous pivot to Asia. We know that the rise of China is creating significant challenges for the United States of policy, but at the same time it's also being constrained, challenged, dragged down perhaps even by some of its ongoing challenges, some of its foreign policy entanglements of the last decade from Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, its connections with Israel, with the Middle East, its response to the Arab Spring. So America has quite a few challenges coming up, you can follow through with this pivot. A re-elected Obama administration may find that challenges at home force it to turn back, to neglect or give up this ambition to really assert its authority in the Asia Pacific. A newly elected Romney administration, on the other hand, may found itself torn between its concerns about debt and foreign entanglement and some of its domestic push, or some of the domestic lobbies which are pushing it to confront China, particularly over issues such as currency. America is a country that's very easy to judge, but I think it's very hard to understand. We know so many cliches and stereotypes that we used to talk about American foreign policy and yet we've all been, I'm sure, bewildered at times when America has acted for a sense of either for good or for ill. So I've put together tonight's panel to try and reflect that scope and different elements of drawing and pushing American foreign policy. And I'm hopeful that they'll also be able to draw and talk about what this means for Australia because we're going to have a lot of choices and a lot of challenges as well following on from America's positions. There's a great quote in Robert Kayden's new book. He's a conservative writer, but I think he might not be honest enough with some of the facts. And he argues that Americans in foreign policy are torn to the point of schizophrenia. They are reluctant, then aggressive, asleep at the switch, then quick on the trigger. Indifferent, then obsessed, then indifferent again. They act out a sense of responsibility and then resent and fear the burden of responsibility that they've taken on themselves. To understand what these changes in American temperament mean, what the various administrations make for our region and for international foreign policy, our first speaker is going to be Professor Anatole Lever from King's College in London. His book on Pakistan, part of a hard country, is for sale at the back of the room. It's a fantastic read. He brings his journalistic background and training to really provide an inscote study of the country and many challenges. And in some of its surprising abilities, he's also reissuing an updated version of his book, America Right or Wrong on American Nationalism and its impact on its foreign policy. So Professor Anatole will kick off the proceedings. He'll then be followed by my colleague from the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Benjamin Shriek, who's published widely on American foreign policy, Australian strategic policy, and who's really looking at the roles of America and its shift towards the Asia-Pacific and what this means in strategic terms. Finally, if you're here because you're wanting to know what the impact of Paul Ryan is on how Wisconsin's electoral college folks are going to change the race, or you just want to know who Paul Ryan is, I've invited Professor John Hart, who's a reader here. You make me sound like a friend of his. John Hart, who's one of Australia's foremost experts on American domestic politics and can give you a great insight into the nature and scope of the race. So if you can all join with me in welcoming our panel and especially Professor Anatole even to the back front, thank you. Thanks a lot. It's very kind of you to invite me. Obviously in the time available I'll have to skip pretty lightly over America's strategy in the world's whole. I may also perhaps put some of your at the very beginning by saying that I'm not sure that even if wrongly is elected in November that it will necessarily make a very major difference to the conduct of U.S. global strategy. Now you see that I hedge those statements very heavily and the reason is that of course before the election of George Bush in 2000 many of us looking at his father's role but also it must be said looking at a good many of the things that were saying that this will basically be a pretty cautious, pragmatic administration, certainly which won't have much time for ideas of spreading democracy and nation building. That prediction did not turn out to be 100% accurate. So I'm acutely conscious of the ability of events to disprove short-term predictions. However, having said that, what I'd say is this. Firstly, under the sort of the froth of debate in the United States particularly of course in an election year, there are on certain key issues and I think that does now include for a great extent China considerable elements of bipartisan consensus. And it's not just China, it's also true for a very great extent of Israel for example, Obama has tried to a limited degree to change policy we've seen what has come of it, nothing. And that is partly because when it comes to Israel there is a bipartisan consensus including a great majority of his own party the Democrats in Congress. And on certain other basic issues as well there is the appearance of a debate on whether or not to attack Iran but there is no debate in the U.S. party scene or establishment on the need to contain Iran or Iran is in essence a major threat. Another less noticed factor is also I think the great importance when it comes to moderating U.S. policy and moderating some of the wishes of the politicians including politicians in office and that is the uniformed military and this does make the United States today significantly different I think both from many great powers in the past but also from certain other great powers in the world today needs to be stated very strongly if it is in a war as in Afghanistan today the U.S. military want to win it or at the very least not to be seen to lose it to preserve the appearance of victory and that by the way is as it should be I mean God forbid that the United States should possess a military composed of natural losers however especially if one looks at the Bush administration especially its later years it's very clear how the uniformed military became a force for moderation and that was true on two issues in particular firstly the rather strong moves in the last year of the Bush administration for an attack on Iran that was essentially vetoed by the chiefs of staff and by Admiral Matt Fallon first and then by Admiral Mullen even more strikingly though less well known the role of Admiral Mullen in blocking the desire of Vice President Cheney in particular to actually send U.S. troops to Georgia during the Georgian-Russian War of August 2008 now Cheney was not proposing to send troops into action with the Russians but one could easily see how a deployment of that kind could have got out of hand and certainly drastically increased international tension over the issue and the Pentagon wouldn't wear that and I think that that will go on being the case and of course the reason why it will be the case is that the U.S. military far more than the politicians have a sense of the limitations of American power and strain on U.S. resources they were not enthusiastic about the Iraq war and how right they turned out to be they are acutely aware even if naturally they do not say so in public of the extremely problematic state of the mission in Afghanistan well the chances of success or failure whatever that means are still of course very much in the balance and insofar as they are now committed which they very strongly are I think to a pivot to the Asia Pacific by definition for any halfway sense of the strategist that means trying to limit or at least not increase your commitment elsewhere and so I think that if some of the wilder rhetorical plans or desires of elements of the Republican Party were attempting to put into policy under along the administration they would find pretty dogged and effective resistance from in the uniform military and resistance which especially after Iraq would be very difficult for an administration to remove or overrule so my concern about along the administration is not so much about radical changes in policy except perhaps when it comes to Israeli attack on Iran though even there one sees a very interesting alliance between the US uniform military and large sections of the Israeli uniform military in opposing such a move but apart from that I don't think that as a matter of settled strategy one necessarily see enormous differences what I worry about more is differences in temperament and response to events and of course 9-11 was the classic event of that kind the British Prime Minister Harold McMillan asked what was his greatest challenge in formulating foreign policy or by events we've seen so many events over the past generation unexpected ones or these unpredictable ones which have had enormous effects and which US administrations have responded in very different ways I would be more concerned about an extreme response from a Republican administration responding to a Republican base than about a continuum of armor administration so that's on the subject of the elections when it comes to the overall and ongoing US strategy including in Sapporo as it is at least operationally designed within the Pentagon there are of course reasons which will be far better known to you than to me for a pivot towards the Asia-Pacific region there are also very major obstacles the classic historical example of a pivot on a global scale was of course the British Empire's pivot towards containing Germany which was not by no means an immediate thing but a progressive thing in 20 years before the First World War obvious difference today America has no power standing behind it no friendly power which can take over any of its responsibilities or secure its interests in particular parts of the world the closest it has to that is the European Union the European Union has proved a very very theme of force indeed at least the European Union probably still does mean that the US is not facing a massive security crisis in western and central Europe clearly unlike most of the 20th century but you know there is in before the First World War not merely was America ready to exclude Britain strategically from the Americas but to guarantee British investments and open trade and so forth and through alliance with France and Russia the British Empire essentially secured and pacified a variety of issues in other parts of the world and allowed Britain to concentrate on Germany and of course in the far East Japan I'll come at the end to why pivots even when strategically successful at the short term may not turn out for the best in the longer term for the moment just to note that Britain was able to do this that's one difference the second difference is that the pivot to contain Germany was in the end agreed by the British strategic class as a whole by the British ruling classes and one could speak of British ruling classes in those days with a common commitment to the British Empire on one hand it's true that the American political classes have a common commitment to American leadership and power in the world but whether they would be capable as I've said there is a bipartisan consensus on a range of issues but whether they would be capable of radically changing their existing commitments that is a very different question and then beyond that there is the question whether the US can in fact abandon its commitments firstly something which I find verging on the alarming or would do if I were an American there has been the fact that America's global commitments over the past 20 years or so have led to a dangerous neglect of its own backyard in Central America a dangerous decline in American aid since the international communist threat has disappeared there has been just much less attention to the internal decay of countries in that region despite the fact that this decay has direct impacts on US society in a way that many issues elsewhere in the world do not so certainly it is it will be difficult to see it happening and it will be dangerous if it did happen that the US would neglect its own region still further in Europe it is possible to pivot away from a commitment essentially to contain a world like Russia for many years now this has ceased to be in any way a Viking US interest one can certainly say that it was up to the borders of Central Europe and Baltic states but quite frankly the idea of the United States becoming engaged in territorial disputes in the Caucasus would have seemed to previous generations of American strategists to have been not just verging on the lunatic but actually clinically insane and since 2008 we have seen the US backing away from that quite considerably now that has been ferociously attacked by the Republicans which is a sign of just how difficult it is in fact to diminish existing commitments especially when they have very major entrench lobbies behind them in Washington but nonetheless it can be done and I think that any attempt to revive NATO expansion for these regions would once again meet a measure of quiet but pretty determined opposition from the US Uniform Military it would also meet enormous opposition within Europe and indeed the weakness of Western Europe as an ally makes it even more visibly dangerous as a strategy so there it is possible to diminish the commitment in the Middle East this looks much much less like the US will not diminish its commitment to Israel its direct national interest in Middle Eastern energy may diminish as a result of the development of America's own energy reserves but how far the importance of the region as a whole will diminish is not at all clear and certainly there is an absolute consensus in the US establishment that the US must retain responsibility for the security of the Persian Gulf and of course this is a very volatile region Admiral Mullen said famously last year or the year before any US president proposed to send troops into a land war in Asia in the future would need to have his head examined and of course in principle I entirely agree with that but the problem is that you heard similar statements after Vietnam it ignores two things one it's the president who makes that decision not the candidate in the end and secondly it ignores events at the other side nobody in the aftermath of 9-11 or what would come after that so the question is yes the US can pull back a great deal from the military deployment on the ground that we've seen under Bush but whether it can pull back from retaining the capacity to make such a deployment that's a completely different matter so the US will go on being nailed to this region to a considerable extent so the ability to pivot will be limited finally and very briefly when it comes to the Asia Pacific just one brief comment the greatest strength of the US in this region lies it seems to be not in its armed forces but they are but even more important is the US alliance system something that China of course completely lacks the only problem about alliance is that when I come back to Britain in 1914 again is of course that allies have their own national interests their own agendas and their own disputes so on one hand actually in the case of Japan and South Korea potentially in the case of other countries in the region positions to assess the threat or otherwise the importance of Chinese development of anti-ship ballistic missiles but of course what one can point out is that while aircraft carriers can be sunk Japan cannot be nor can the American bases there cannot be sunk at least not without massive air attacks but of course as we've seen these countries now have had but it's become much more their own territorial disputes with China engagement in which may or may not and I leave that question open partly because I'm sure you have thought about it you know so much more than it happened to me but may or may not be in the interest of the United States and indeed the West in general and from that point of view I think it is worth recording in 1914 the British Empire's alliance with the Russian Empire was absolutely essential to containing Germany it couldn't be done without it both because the Russian army was necessary to pin down a very large part of the German army between 1914 and 17 but also of course reconciliation with Russia was necessary in order to diminish Britain's commitment to defend India against possible Russian attack the problem is the alliance that Russia went into alliance with Britain while retaining an alliance with Serbia and Serbia had a territorial dispute with Austria which in the end dragged the continent and the world into war a war which Britain won just about on paper but which of course fatally weakened the British Empire and destroyed the entire international order thereby laid the basis for another and even more catastrophic for 20 years down the line I'm not saying that of course that that will necessarily happen or indeed will probably happen but I think it is worth remembering that even a successful U.S. strategic pivot towards Asia is not a solution in itself to either America or anybody else's security dilemmas that we need. Thank you. So I have also been invited to widely speculate on what's going to happen after the next elections and I will try to by looking at three essential questions first of what are the big issues in U.S. strategic and defense policy related to the Asia Pacific basically that question that has already been raised well can the United States implement the pivot whatever that pivot means I think it can secondly then and that's really the speculative part and I might well be very very wrong well if Romney gets elected what would be some of the continuities but also potential changes when compared with what we have heard and what we have seen from Obama and so far and that's of course rather difficult and well the way to approach this is by having looked at some of Obama some of Romney's speeches and particularly his white paper that was produced in 2011 and thirdly then the basic question for us well what are some of the implications for Australia's strategic policy because as you are well aware Australian strategic policy Australia's security, Australia's prosperity has so long depending on American leadership in the region including through its forward deployed military presence and now with the rise of China the basic question is well what if that ability and willingness to underwrite Asia's security on the American part will remain what if the Americans are no longer able and we have seen the emergence of a very heated debate and I'm happy that my colleague Professor White is in the back whom I am sure most of you will know and he has put some very challenging questions in front of us but then are key issues for America's strategic policy I think at the strategic level is really that key question well can the United States sustain its leadership in Asia in the face of China's rise so there is this whole debate about US declinism and there are some who predict that the United States it is inevitable bound to decrease in terms of potential simply because also its domestic economic problems are so great that we will be able to master the same degree of commitment then and before and at the same time we have seen a remarkable and unprecedented rise of China over the last years and some predict that this rise rather than slow down will continue for quite some time to a point where China might be able to overtake the United States as the most powerful player in the region and the question then really is will the US in the face of these domestic and external challenges be able to sustain its leadership position and as I said there is a heated debate some say it might be forced out of the Asia Pacific it might be wanting to assume the role of an offshore balancer some such as my steam-coldic hue argue that the United States should try to share power with China or as others argue say well look first of all it is not inevitable that the United States will decline and it's also not inevitable that the rise of China will go on and go on and go on because that's rather unprecedented that has never ever happened in history seeing the argument goes substantial problems by China to sustain its economic growth and then the argument is no the United States has no good reason to share power to accommodate China at any costs and in some degrees the United States should actually be prepared to resist Chinese quest for dominance in the region and that also is well what will be the strategic relationship of the United States with other important Asian players such as Japan or even more importantly from an Australian perspective with Indonesia on the military operational level of course the question then is can the United States sustain its military presence to reassure its allies and its partners its military presence simply because it does no longer command the resources that have underwritten its ability to forward deploy aircraft carriers to sustain forward deployed forces for example in Japan or even more importantly as China's ability to put forward deployed American troops at risk increases might the United States be willing to sustain that risk to its troops and thirdly defense budget simply will the United States be able to finance it because after all a great power substantially depends on economic foundations what if the United States enters into a prolonged period of economic control so at the strategic level a Romney government would the United States be willing to share power with China and as I said I'm really depending here on Romney's speeches and on his 2011 white paper which was called an American Century and I might well be wrong and New York Times article recently said recently argued that actually the differences in the outlook between Obama and Romney are not that great there are more similarities than differences I would argue yes there are similarities but at least judging from his speeches from his rhetoric there are also some distinct differences both Obama and Romney obviously emphasize the importance of America's leadership in Asia they make it quite clear the city upon the hill is an exceptional country and therefore that is in America's interest but also that other countries in the region expects America to continue that leadership role but it seems to me that Romney is at least inclined to take a much tougher stance against China and now I'm relying on reporting from his 2011 white paper starts with this notion that U.S. global leadership is indispensable and the first line reads America does not have the option of abandoning a leadership role in support of its national interest it's quite clear that America is intent to continue to play in that role and then when it comes to China it comes up with what I at least view as quite stark words in terms of making clear that the United States will resist will seek to actively resist any potential Chinese question and to replace the United States as the most powerful player in the region and I quote China must be discouraged from attempting to intimidate or dominate neighboring states if the present regime is permitted to establish itself as the Honduran power in the western Pacific it could cause off large parts of the region to cooperative relationships with the United States and the West Romney will implement a strategy that makes the path of regional hegemony for China far more costly than the alternative plan of becoming a responsible partner in the international system or quite a clear statement that no the United States will not, is not automatically willing to accept China as a peer player or an equal partner in the region and certainly will not accept China's attempt to replace the United States as also a strong ideological underpinning in his program where he quite clearly states that sharing power with a non-democratic China is not an option and again I quote a nation that represses its own people cannot be trusted, cannot be a trusted partner in an international system based on economic and political freedom if sharing power between the United States and China is under certain circumstances dependent on the United States accepting China's communist government as a legitimate actor then this is quite a clear statement that the hegemony is rather disinclined of going down that route it's also quite interesting what the White House at least says about Taiwan and how Romney government would approach Taiwan because as you know that is quite a contentious or one of the key flashpoints between the United States and China and again I quote we should be coordinating with Taiwan its military needs and supplying them with adequate aircraft or other military platforms basically indicating that the United States under his government might be willing to selling military equipment to Taiwan which would not go down well with the Chinese government it's also interesting to look at this in my view at the advisory board those people who have had an influential role in drafting and the White Paper they include people such as Robert Kaepern or Aaron Freedberg and they all have written at large about the upcoming Sino-U.S. great power competition and they have all come to the conclusion that the United States has an opportunity to if necessary confront China's quest for Germany so my conclusion here is that Obama's pivot seem to indicate a somewhat tougher line towards China yet reading Romney's speeches and documents it sounds like China is under certain circumstances seem much more in even adversarial terms in both cases however I think this will aim at maintaining its leadership position in cooperation with his allies and partners now what about military presence both candidates make it quite clear that they intend to increase U.S. naval presence in particular in the region Obama and his pivot speech and Panetta at the Shanghai Lada dialogue where he announced that the United States would deploy 60% up from 50% of its naval fleet in Asia Romney goes a step further and announces in his program that the United States under his leadership would not only maintain but also expand the naval military presence and he announces or at least he intends to increase Navy's ship building rate for 9 to annual shipbuilding rate for 9 to 15 per year Romney doesn't say much about the potential allies such as Japan or Australia but interestingly what the paper says it explicitly mentions Indonesia as a potential counterweight to China and this is where it gets really interesting also from an Australian point of view because if the United States somehow manages to draw Indonesia more into its forward the question is well where Australia left in all of this again in both cases I think it is fair to say that the United States will take a very clear decision to stay engaged in the region finally the budget as you know the severe talk about the economic crisis and Obama has announced defense budgets cuts over the next decade of almost 500 billion dollars and there is potential for much more if Congress cannot agree and if we will face some kind of sequestration Romney in his at least in his papers I use that if I am being elected I will reverse the Obama defense cuts and he also announces that he will return to a budget baseline established by former Defense Secretary Gates in 2011 at a score of 4% per GDP well I looked at the numbers and 4% of GDP would be roughly the level of the 2007 budget which stood at 585 billion dollars that would actually be a decrease of 0.8% compared to 2010 and I think in the mind of Romney and his advisors there is an assumption that these reductions will be possible without putting new equipment at risk because the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq are winding down and because potentially there could be additional efficiency measures and be found in terms of well restructuring the defense bureaucracy shall we say question however there is well would Congress not want to go back under certain circumstances to pre-war pre-war on terror rates because you can make the argument ok the large increases in the defense budget after 2001 where the budget stood at roughly 385 billion dollars only 3% of GDP why should we as the operations of Afghanistan and Iraq wind down continue to invest so much money into defense but obviously it also depends who controls the Congress after the next election a key question therefore also when it comes to the defense budget is whether the United States can make tough capability decisions and whether for example there will be a greater shift towards air force and naval capabilities and you can already see the battle between the two services and army and Marine Corps in particular getting more heated and I like what the professor said I think when it comes to the pivot to Asia there will be at least on part of Navy and Air Force a clear support for that strategy because simply it favors them the Asia Pacific is a maritime environment and the air sea battle concept is all about Air Force and Navy so it makes very much sense for these two services to say well this is really a good program we support that strategy so I think you can expect some very hard fights into service rivalry by a large however I think the United States will be able if it takes the political decision to do so to fund its presence in Asia finally implications for Australia just quickly running through I think the United States will retain a strong military presence as part of its goal to maintain its leadership position in Asia which is at least in my view in Australia's interest and which has also been welcomed by both the Gillett government and the opposition Australia also secondly needs to prepare for future Asia in which the United States will not accommodate China's rights at any costs and by the way at least from my point of view this would also not be in the interest of Australia but which could consequently turn out to be much more competitive and under a President Romney relationship with China could not necessarily would but could become much more contentious and then potentially also complicating Australia's strategic relations with China unlike my colleague Hu I would argue that the Australian government does not have to make a choice between China and the United States because my argument would be in the event of an existential conflict Australia has already chosen and it would always go with the United States and it can enter into heated arguments of why that is the case or not finally ending on a happy note I think even this if Romney is elected Armageddon is not around the corner and I think how the future relationship between the United States and China pays out also depends very very much on how China will behave thank you very much I've been told to speculate whether it is likely that the presidency will change hands in November I'll speculate but I won't forget I don't think political scientists have got any capacity for prediction Malcolm Keres is an engineer there is a gross industry in the United States amongst political scientists who use econometric models to do election forecasting they spend a year before the election publishing articles telling you how long it's going to work and who's going to win and they spend two years after the election telling you publishing articles telling you what they got it wrong and you know you don't need to be a specialist at the moment to know that the race for the presidency is a close one so what are the prospects of the presidency changing hands well because it's a close race and you only have to look at the opinion polls there is a prospect that Obama could lose there's also the prospect that Ronny could lose I happen to think both candidates are vulnerable and in the 15 minutes I've got I'll try and explain why but when I've talked about the presidential election I also want to move on to talk about the congressional elections as well I mean we've been reminding you over the last few days that there is one Republican candidate for a Senate seat who discovered new medical evidence about women's bodies that there is in fact congressional election going on in some ways I think that could be really quite consequential and I don't know that Armageddon isn't going to happen but I think if certain things happen at congressional level you can get pretty close to it anyway, okay let me explain very briefly why I think both candidates are intellectually vulnerable and in order to understand the vulnerability you have to look at that part of the American electoral process that nobody understands that Americans can't explain the electoral college but which is vital and although very often the winner of the popular vote also wins the vote in the electoral college and elected so we don't really focus on the electoral college, we think of what happens in the popular vote when it's cast at the beginning of November I think by looking at the way the electoral college works you begin to see some of the vulnerability let me look at Obama first because I actually think Obama's electoral base when you look at it through the perspective of the electoral college is surprisingly weak in many ways we were all captured by the euphoria of the 2008 election and you kind of half imagine that he won that election against McCain by a last night well he did pretty well but the reason Obama won the election was because in the end he won a number of critical states by very narrow margins and I think his performance in office hasn't been significant enough to enable people to say well he's going to do the same again in 2012 let me explain if you take all the states that John carried the Democratic candidate won in 2004 when he lost the election you'll find that Obama carried every single one of those states in 2008 in addition to those states that carry one Obama wins nine more the nine more were all or at least most of them highly marginal and I'm calling them the carry plus states because I think they're pivotal and I think what goes on in those states and where those states electoral college votes go is really quite crucial the nine states the carry plus states Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Iowa Nevada, New Mexico North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia in one way or another seven of those nine states can be classified as marginal they're marginal either because Obama's share of the vote was within 5% of the McCain's share of the vote in 2008 or because his share of the vote was under 55% and his margin of victory was within 5% of McCain's vote if you look at those states you'll see Florida Indiana Iowa North Carolina Ohio and Virginia very marginal and very vulnerable to swinging back to the Republican Party and virtually all of those states have voted Republican in the recent past or in the recent past that have been sold in the Republican now you need 270 votes in the electoral college to win in 2008 Obama won with 365 electoral votes so he had 95 votes electoral votes in excess of what he needed take six of the most marginal of those states Florida Indiana Iowa North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia if they all went back Republican he would lose from those states 92 electoral votes he can only afford to lose 95 from his 2008 total and I'm making a big assumption that all the states that carry mine in 2004 and that Obama won in 2008 apart from the Kerry Plus states will stay Democratic that's an assumption but if he loses just those six states out of the nine he's going to lose 92 electoral votes he can only lose 95 unfortunately on top of those 92 Obama's already lost six electoral votes from 2008 because there's been an American census there's been a reapportionment of seats in the House of Representatives and the formula for apportioning electoral college votes to the states is their representation in Congress so if a state loses seats in the House of Representatives it's subsequently going to lose electoral votes and Obama's total in 2008 as a result of the apportionment is six votes down so if he lost just six of those marginal Kerry Plus states he's lost the six electoral college votes he would actually come out with 267 three votes less than he needs to win so I know this is a strange way of looking at it but it does illustrate the weakness of his electoral base simply because he did very well in a number of states where he was not expected to do well in 2008 I mean in North Carolina he won by 0.3% of the popular vote in in Florida it was 2.8% Florida is pivotal this time around and in fact because of the reapportionment Florida is even more important because it's got two more electoral votes so I think the math make it difficult for Obama and as I said I think his performance in office probably doesn't compensate for the marginality of those states I'm not saying his performance in office has been bad I mean when you look at it there are some very creditable achievements he got the economic stimulus package through healthcare reform not quite what he wanted the Dodd-Frank Act in the finance industry in America has passed a huge achievement he got America out of Iraq started pencil withdrawal from Afghanistan actually making I think fairly sensible proposals about budget cutting given the enormous budget deficit that America is facing most recently showed some leadership on the immigration issue I think generally his conduct reform policy has been a marked change from the Bush years and something worth crowing about but it hasn't gone across to a lot of Americans the American voting population is publicized people are saying the outcome of the election is going to depend on the way the independence go but it will be the way the independent vote the vote is not already fixed by the party or entities it's the way the independent vote goes not across the nation as a whole I mean it really doesn't matter how the independence vote in New York or California they're going to be insignificant it doesn't matter how the independence vote in Texas that state is going to be insignificant it does matter how they vote in Florida and Indiana and North Carolina and Virginia are going to come out the key swing states that's where the election will be so Obama's got problems I also think Romney's vulnerable looking at it in the same sort of way I mean he starts 95 electoral college votes behind Obama based on 2008 so he's going to make up some important around before he's even level what's going wrong with Romney well clearly the primaries show that although he succeeded in securing the party nomination he did it with a significant lack of enthusiasm in his own party I think he did it partly because of the technicalities of the nomination process but his performance particularly in the Republican heartland in the south was abysmal he did not win a single primary in the south with the exception of Florida and a lot of people would say it's not really a southern state until Santorum got out of the race and then the primaries weren't competitive at all he's always had a problem with his conservative credentials he's always had a problem with the core evangelical Christian conservatives I think his selection of Paul Ryan is his response to that problem and I'll talk about that in a moment basically shoring up his conservative base in the Republican party to make sure they get out of it I think so far Romney has a lack of clear cut answers to America's critical economic problems I mean the line that because he's been a successful businessman and he knows how to handle budgets and believe it or me I'll fix it a bit more specific as time goes on and quite honestly nobody has the answers to America's huge economic problems I mean the budget deficit issue even Paul Ryan has proposed a stringent budget cuts to produce a budget surplus I can't even tell you when the budget surplus will be affected he's talking about 2030 I think I think Romney's got a problem with his foreign policy credentials his trip to London which was intended to establish his foreign policy credentials proved to be a bit of a disaster and I think you might be tempted to make up for it by nominating Boris Johnson as Vice President it went really bad Ryan has no established credentials in foreign policy area either and I think that's worrying although I would have to say that I doubt very much whether this coming American election is going to be fought out on any foreign policy issues in fact you've got to have some doubt about whether it's going to be fought out on any issues at all it's been primary personal it's been very negative there are reasons for that as I said on the economy 90 candidates have the arms Sarah Obama is clearly doing his best and probably he might be just about the best any president can do the debate on the Republican side I think is conditioned by a whole lot of new conservative ideology that's not very helpful to problems I think I mean while we're talking about Asia Romney so far has been playing the chime card and it's disturbing I mean I think previous speakers were right there isn't a great deal of difference between the Democrats and the Republicans in how they see the problems of China I mean obviously America has a concern with cut the currency problem with intellectual property with trade and so on but it's a question of how you handle it and some of Romney's rhetoric is clearly pandering to the Republican base not I think to do anything for foreign policy but just to shore up these images of tough conservative and make the folks happy I mean the idea that under a Romney presidency the state department will declare China a currency speculator and all what follows is disturbing I mean you whatever you think about how to deal with China you don't deal with China through the rhetoric of an election campaign and I hope it doesn't go much further because if Romney is elected president I think he's going to be trapped so lastly Paul Ryan I think it was a disastrous choice it seems to me the Romney's immediate need is to win Florida 20,000 electoral votes if Romney wins it and Obama loses it I think the rest of the election will follow it's so close it's so pivotal it's so important initially I thought okay Ryan shore up conservative base and the Republican Party energize it that's what everybody is saying he's doing I actually thought Marco Rubio would have been a better vice presidential pick because I'm almost certain he would have added a few points to Romney's ratings in Florida and possibly had taken that state on the basis of his popularity there ever since Paul Ryan was selected as Romney's running mate the media's attention is Romney and on Ryan's issues which are basically the budget entitlement programs and Medicare and that's a Democrat issue and given that the Democrats have suddenly discovered negative campaigning and are doing it pretty well for the first time in a long time I think that's going to rebound badly and I think it's going to rebound badly in Florida where there are a lot of old people and generally the older you are in American politics and more likely you are to vote Republican not particularly in Florida because of the nature of the elderly population there and where they've come from and and from the urban areas in New York and Medicare is important to them and even if they're conservatives I mean you've got this huge hypocrisy of conservatives in America where they want to slash government spending they're anti-government they want to reduce the budget deficit but they don't want to cut the programs that affect them because Medicare affects everybody so how that translates to electoral votes it's just hard to say I think that's about as far as you can go as I said I don't think the impact of foreign policy on the election is going to be crucial in this election but election campaigns now are kind of boiled down to two major events the party conventions the Republican Party convention is next week the Democrat convention the week after in North Carolina and the presidential election campaign debates and in the past those debates have been structured so that one focuses on foreign policy and that is the point at which I think you'll actually get a clearer picture of the differences between the candidates and I'm actually looking forward to it because I think Romney does have a problem with the hard-line rhetoric and giving a clear indication of what you'd actually do as president and we know from the past remember Clinton on human rights in China that disappeared after the first week in the White House government changes politicians so I think the presidential debates are critical let me just talk very briefly about that other election because I think there's one aspect here that does affect foreign policy I do not expect the House of Representatives to shift from Republican control to Democratic control at the moment the Republicans hold 240 seats in the House Democrats hold 190 there are five vacancies so it is a majority of 50 seats and it's hard to turn around in one election and very few election analysts in America are expecting it in the Senate it's very different if you take the two independent senators who caucus and vote with the Democrats the Democrats have a majority of 51 seats to 47 four seat majority the Democrats have got twice as many seats up for election in 2012 as the Republicans have so they're far more vulnerable and it's quite conceivable that the Senate could go Democratic although thanks to the Republican candidate in Missouri it looks like that highly a competitive seat could now be safe for the Democratic Party one interesting thing about congressional elections is the change of party control changes the control over committees and sometimes that can make a difference and interestingly in 2012 I think the committee that would be more effective than any other by changing party control is the Senate Foreign Relations Committee if the Republicans had a majority in the Senate the Senate Foreign Relations Committee would look very different to what it does today and that is because the ranking Republican Senate Foreign Relations Committee Senator Richard Lugo was defeated in a primary in Indiana by a Tea Party Republican so he has lost his seat he relinquishes the championship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee if you look at the membership of the Foreign Relations Committee as it is now on the Republican side minus Richard Lugo it really is disturbing it's the dregs of the Republican right Bob Corker from Tennessee James Rich from Idaho Rubio from Florida James Inhoff from Oklahoma Jim DeMind from South Carolina one of the brains behind the Tea Party Johnny Isakson from Georgia a couple of junior senators John Barrasso from Wyoming Mike Lee from Utah John Barrasso from Wyoming what would happen in so far as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is concerned if that lot were running the show now I'm not suggesting that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee competes for the president for the control of the foreign policy in the United States it doesn't and it often doesn't affect legislation because there's not a great deal of legislation in the foreign policy arena but it can shake the debate and can make things very awkward for Obama I think it's worrying so basically that's how I see it finally the impact on Australia I'm not a foreign policy specialist but it doesn't seem to me that foreign policy or these relations between Australia and the United States is re-elected that much by changes in party control in the White House in America if it's really hard to see how things would be any different at all if Obama is re-elected and Hillary Clinton stays as Secretary of State I suspect that the worst scenario for Australia would actually be wrongly putting the presidency with unified Republican control in Congress because I don't think the Tea Party that actually come to the fore the Republican Party which has gone one way to largely have behest the influence of the Tea Party would be in power at the moment they've just been the Tea Party has been kind of a protest group the Republican majority in the House of Representatives has been a protest movement but it'd be very different if there was actually unified Republican control of the White House the House and the Senate and I think that could affect Australia in that there may just be a harder line on China if the rhetoric actually is an indication of how they would be made in power and who knows how that would play out it would just at least make Australia's position a little bit more awkward so that's about all the speculating I'm doing Well we've heard three excellent presentations here tonight a great range of scope of detail from the very local to the global scale and one of the difficulties our panelists have had they haven't had a chance to read each other's speeches in the way we can here tonight so we're going to have questions and answer sessions for a little while we've got about 20 minutes and we're going to have a roving mic but I thought I'd ask first if any of the panelists wanted to respond to some of the comments of the other panelists First of all these are the China but certainly for the past 25 years it's been unwise to read too much from what parties say in opposition or during election campaigns into what they will do in government that by the way was very true Bush when his policy towards China after 2000 came in on quite a wave of anti-China in fact after some of the hiccups at the beginning pursued very pragmatic policies just a caution but as I say that may be changing as China really moves into the center of of US concerns just one other thing perhaps to reinforce what I said about allies Indonesia potentially as a key US ally twice over the past 50 years Indonesian regimes have collapsed each time that was accompanied by massacres of ethnic Chinese on the streets of Jakarta the first time was much worse of course second time not as bad but then again the second time around you had television cameras there what will China do if that happens again and China has a powerful navy will it tolerate that will Chinese not say America will tolerate that happening to American citizens for a second what will happen then Indonesia at the heart of its security order in Southeast Asia now I mean this is speculation but it's not obviously complete speculation given what's happened in the past it is a reminder to be careful of who you make alliances with would you like to put your hands up for questions Olivia at the back as the microphone if you could please identify who you'd like to ask a question to so that we can put them through their ringer and get them to jump off here so there was a question here in the life jacket thanks very much for that I really enjoyed the discussion I guess my question isn't directed to anyone in particular so if anyone wants to jump in please do I guess it strikes me that a lot of the characterisations of the pivot have really focused on its military elements whereas the way that I guess has been explained to me is a much wider effort spanning across government of which the military is a part presumably presumably the US isn't too keen for the pivot to be characterised as solely in military effort given that that starts looking like a transparent attempt to contain China so I guess my question is do they have the balance of the rebalance right or perhaps should they be articulating their attention a little bit more clearly any other questions you want to jump up yes well the thing is there's a great deal to be said in these circumstances for ambiguity obviously not articulating things too clearly because obviously while on one hand there is a both a desire and interest and strong objective reasons for a certain pivot there are also very good reasons for not portraying it as too hard to see China's policy the problem I think about moving from the purely military aspects of the pivot towards as a political is two fold the first is once again allies after all after Japan South Korea where America already has troops probably the most important ally you would need in containing China is that paragon of international democracy and human rights this kind of Cold War style alliance making can once again lead you into some pretty funny comedy as we saw in this region during the Cold War the second thing is and here I must emphasise as you will note out already I think I have detected my general sympathy with Hugh White on this issue is that to portray the difference or struggle if you want to call it a struggle in ideological terms to turn it politically into a question of democracy versus dictatorship and so forth quite apart from the very often the manifold hypocrisy involved which were so evident during the Cold War which do tend to discredit the whole effort in the eyes of many people who question how alliances with Pinochet or the Greek colonels or Mabuto or others actually constitutes a defensive free world but the other thing of course is that it does tend to increase both the hostility and the intractability of the relationship and this is something which in the past has been very widely criticised by American writers themselves like Richard Hofstadter and Sivan Woodward and so forth but also more widely critics of the Jacobin internationalist tradition if you will, unlike Eli Kaduri if you keep things at and I speak here as a died in the war realist at a level of national interest and yes the interest of national interest embracing the level of the interests of allies it probably does make it easier to resolve not of course it doesn't ensure that you can be able to resolve them but it certainly makes it easier than if you have cast them in absolutist, moral and political terms as a clash between good and evil that really doesn't help and of course so many of the issues which have to be resolved and this was true in many cases between the Soviet Union and America during the Cold War the overall issue yes, it was a legitimate quite rightly seen as a clash between democracy and a very different system but so many of the issues that had to be resolved in particular areas on the ground had nothing to do with this ideological clash it was very very mixed very murky, very grey and in the end when they were resolved either during the Cold War after the fall of the Soviet Union was resolved along very practical and pragmatic lines you're welcome thank you for the very very informative discussion we did a lot of focus on China but considering that North Korea North Korea has been in the past marked as being on the axis of evil my question is probably to Professor Lee and Dr. Shikriya what foreign policy issues are saving with regards to North Korea in this next election is it much of an issue or oh yeah the question is probably not at all the more as has been said foreign policy issues will absent a major crisis in November in North Korean Peninsula probably not play a role it's interesting when you read Romney Romney's election platform when he talks about North Korea there's a whole section on North Korea and his primary aim is quote to disarm North Korea the question is how do you do that it is quite clear I mean any administration has the goal of disarming North Korea or making at least sure that nuclear weapons don't fall in the wrong hands or that the regime doesn't use it I think Romney is quite clear probably in his mind that this is easier said than done and that probably Stanley will continue even under his watch quite more interesting when it comes to nonproliferation and Obama's global vision of global zero there is quite a strong statement in Romney's white paper that basically says get away with illusionary concepts brackets global zero quite a clear statement and I think what that means is that the United States under Romney will still be more inclined to move away from that agenda so because I'm German I feel this natural inclination to defend the Americans whenever I'm abroad so I wanted to jump a little bit to the help of the support and to the United States in regards to the previous questions I think when it comes to the pivot there is a national inclination of the press media to jump only on the military dimension because Darwin and all this kind of stuff but when you actually read Obama's speech also that he gave here he talked about America's interest to cooperate with China he talked about the interest of the United States to well make China or facilitate China on its way to become a responsible stakeholder so it is not the case that the Americans only recognize the military dimension but it's obviously natural that all the pundits including myself focus on the military dimension I think we should also be fair to say that the Americans the pivot speech was I think by and large not a major radical change of US policy or US strategy it was rather the United States on a rhetorical level responding to reassure allies partners and I think China quite frankly provided them with the best opportunity ever by doing what it did in 2010 and 2011 in the South China Sea because that is basically when Southeast Asian allies and partners came to the United States and said look we criticized you quite a lot in the past few years and we want you of not trying to tell us how to engage the Chinese now we recognize that we might actually not be so happy with Chinese soft power and basically what I think what they told or what they invited the United States to do is to say look we value you despite all your flaws after all not only because of your military component but because of that soft power component and I think that is also what the pivot is all about so I think it is bit of an understatement to say the pivot only focuses on that aspect I have a question back there Professor Lee I am just interested to know there always seems to be the elephant in the room in relation to the United States and China is an issue of Taiwan I am just wondering to what extent the United States especially under Obama or potentially the Romney will compromise the issue of Taiwan because as I understand it the Chinese are most unwilling to compromise on that well there is a difference here of course which also applies to some degree though fading onto the question of the islands there is a difference between compromising in principle and compromising tactically you know as you go along you are quite right of course on the question of principle the Chinese are absolutely unwilling to give us an inch at all on the question of sovereignty over Taiwan then again as we have seen the Chinese have not tried to enforce that by military means nor even in more recent years through forms of economic pressure on the contrary the economic relationship between China and Taiwan has got closer and closer when it comes to US policy the US has operated within a fairly narrow bound I mean the different administrations which is so on one hand there is no question about allowing a Chinese military conquest of Taiwan when it comes to arms sales the US has continued them but has been fairly responsive to Chinese concerns and that has been true once again so far under democratic and republican administrations in principle of course the US supports the idea of a united China so there has not been an absolute fashion principle now the question of course becomes will the US go outside that bound and what would the Chinese do about it will the Chinese go outside the bound and of course finally what will the Taiwanese do now the answer there would appear to be most likely nothing by now I doubt that one will see again major pressure for Taiwan's declaration of independence given rising Chinese power and the fact that that would more or less force Beijing to take military action but of course there is plenty of room for miscalculation there on various sides I mean part of the question here is and I mean I'm a historian by training as well as a journalist by practice so I tend to veer wildly between the short term and the very very long term in the very long term if China if China sticks together and its economic power continuing to increase then in the very long term by which I mean a century also I would regard it as inevitable that Taiwan will rejoin China by one way or another because that will continue to be a central focus of China's policy and sooner or later they'll get it the question is of course in what way and what kind of China will Taiwan eventually join and of course above all can this happen without military conflict my own view would be that a sensible U.S. strategy is to emphasise on all possible occasions that two things one, that the U.S. isn't being committed to the United China and the means that Taiwan should sooner or later rejoin China this has of course to be voluntary and above all peaceful and must involve no military action by China this is what the U.S. has been saying it could perhaps rhetorically emphasise more the line of belief in the United China but it must also continue of course to say that China must not take military action which would be colossally destabilising and damaging to the region and the world China's in The question for our chair might be a different a change I was struck by the picture on the invitation that I received which shows a U.S. carrier strike group majestically sailing along I'm wondering if the panelists can say how much they think the arms race is currently taking place in the region where people buy submarines, aircraft carriers ballistic missile systems and ballistic missile systems will affect what's happening the speaker pointed out Chinese intervention in Indonesia and Australia within 10 years will have its own credible carrier backing group which would be more than enough to confront that situation how will this change the politics of the region that's a very good question but I'm going to take the chair's board I might hand over to my fellow adventurer who can thank you very good question Ray probably discussed that for hours I think we have to be careful here this whole discussion about this the secret Chinese anti aircraft I don't know what we call it aircraft carrier killer and the United States basically concluding from that oh it's not worth the cost and we are moving away from conflict with China I think that's grossly overstated guess what we certainly will see in the long term when it comes to the maritime environment is a much more contested maritime space so probably you will have no major power including the United States being able to exercise to exert that degree of sea control that it had but nor will China ever be able to exert that amount of influence simply because you will have probably a growing number of powers who can pose risks to such valuable assets such as aircraft carriers however there are some that say that at this point of time American ability to exert influence through carrier battle groups is seriously diminishing that is first of all there is much talk about this Chinese aircraft carrier well, technology is Soviet style 1980s it is quite a difference of whether you have a carrier or a carrier battle group let alone operating such a context system the Americans have over 60 years of experiencing of experiencing operating extremely complex carrier group operations that is not something that you build overnight and I think over the long run at least for 10 to 12 20 years the Americans will be well unchallenged in that area it will take China quite a long time to build anything similar to that second point and here I disagree with some of my colleagues if you ever think that you can sink an American aircraft carrier without serious repercussions that is an equation that is an assumption that will prove fatal in the end of a conflict it is much more powerful which is under certain circumstances much more willing to take risks would think twice to sinking an American aircraft carrier you sink a ship with 8 to 10,000 soldiers on board and name me or give me one example or one apathetic example where then an American president would say oh we all play our hands sorry we are out of here I think there is a serious there will be serious repercussions so the maritime sphere will be much more contested which also makes this need to finding some kind of conflict management at sea even more important that is the problem that we have in the south China sea we have all these countries who are developing we mentioned it etc etc but we don't have conflict mechanisms we don't have the mechanism in place to de-conflict now what happens is a hypothetical scenario in the future a Chinese battle group sails out of Hainan and suddenly one K away a Vietnamese submarine submerges and you have no communication you have no processes well the Americans are well in dealing with these situations I'm not so sure on certain circumstances if we are not in for some serious miscalculations so long answer I don't know if it is satisfactory but I think it is interesting if you look at four structured decisions by the United States that the United States despite all this talk will not reduce the number of its carriers and it will even invest in the next generation carrier class and it probably wouldn't do that if it would not be convinced that it can project some power even in the face of a more contested maritime space we're almost out of time but I'd like to make John's work for his server tonight so are there any questions about the massive politics and the upcoming race thank you I have a question regarding Paul right who is from the state of Wisconsin and recent days there have been records that the Republicans might win the state of Wisconsin so I was wondering if you talk about that in the general record of a vice presidential pick who is from a certain state what is the track record in that vice presidential nominee actually carrying the state for the presidential nominee there's no hard evidence that a vice president will carry on his home stay as a presidential candidate there's just no hard evidence at all I mean if you want the best known example it's going back to 1960 when John Kennedy chose William Johnson as his running mate and possibly Kennedy because of his Catholicism might not have carried Texas had it not been for Johnson but even that everybody tells you that but there's no hard evidence you can't tell any behavior studies just don't enable you to get at that I mean there's a possibility that the Republicans might win Wisconsin because it's being fairly close but every poll I've seen shows Obama in the lead and that's a good sign because believe it or not Americans are still not focused on the election properly I mean the campaign officially doesn't start until the party conventions are over they haven't even begun yet and you're looking at how a very small number of independent voters are going to go probably making up their mind in the last week of the campaign so if you can tell me what's going to happen over the next two months I might be able to say well okay that's going to help Ryan carry Wisconsin if the Republicans carry Wisconsin you're not going to be able to say whether it was Ryan or it was Romney Romney and Ryan or anti-Obama vote it's just very very difficult I mean Wisconsin is a funny state it's elected recently very conservative Republican governors and put themselves into some trouble but there are quite progressive liberal Democrat areas in Wisconsin I mean Ryan is part of the movement that I think has been very successful I can even credit I mean I think Ryan and the other people who associate with the Tea Party have been pretty successful in changing the debate in America and they changed it in this respect they've changed an argument that's been going on for since the 70's 80's the big government is bad into an argument the rule government is bad and that's why I fear them and that's why I really do fear unified government under the Republicans because I think that argument will be elevated I mean personally I think government is a necessity and I think most Americans will think at least parts of government are a necessity and I think there's no way into where that argument is going to go given it's essentially ideological and not very substantial and you know where does it end if government is bad the next target is democracy I think it's very very worrying and Ryan's behind that but in the space of three four years it has decisively shifted some parts of American public opinion I mean the big really big difference between 2008 and 2012 is that the suspicion and hatred of government in America has just got a hell of a lot deeper over the four years and so it's just really difficult to say how it plays out there's no spearheading that and the message catches on in Wisconsin then okay he's going to do well he might carry the state I think it needs an election to sort it out because I think the message from the Tea Party has been very loud and very effective and very successful but isn't widely shared I really do think America needs an election to sort that one out I'm afraid we might have to leave it there and I'm sure we could go on all night American politics is fascinating it's the party of Lincoln and his grandparents and me and my he's standing up for he's also the party of the Tea Party and we're almost petrified by their principles and their desire to hold on and then we look back on to the Australian politics and we say only someone has a principles we can certainly have some very fascinating discussions I'm going to go from that as I said at the opening Anatole's Walk on Pakistan is at the back copies are for sale I highly recommend you pick it up but can I ask you all to please join with me in thanking our three panel story