 I'm delighted to be back again. It was a great discussion last year, and I couldn't have been to better panel for today. We've got John Blacksland, Professor Blacksland, a former Australian Army officer, Director of the A&U Southeast Asia Institute, head of the Strategic and Defence Study Centre in the Bell School. Dr Hoon Lee too, currently a visiting fellow in the Bell School, educated in Poland, PhD from Taiwan, until recently based at the Institute of Southeast Asia Studies in Singapore, and third Professor Hugh White, former senior government official and ministerial advisor, including in this building over many years, who headed the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and then the Strategic and Defence Study Centre. We're here to talk about Australia's changing place in a changing world. So let's get stuck into it. John Blacksland, first to you. How is Australia traveling? I'm a glass half full kind of guy. I'm actually reasonably upbeat about the place of Australia in the world. We are doing remarkably well despite all of the naysayers and the gloom predictors. We seem to be able to weather storms pretty well. Our political system has an obsession with narcissism, very much focused on froth and bubble in terms of where we're heading, and that is arguably a big detractor from our political system and it's bringing questions about the appropriateness of our democratic model. But when we step back and we compare Australia to many other countries, our own neighbours and people in other predicaments, we are actually, you know, and Senator Penny Wong had talked about this in passing about Donald Horn's psychastic comments about the lucky country, but we still are in that predicament. You know, we are still extraordinarily fortunate we have things very much going our own way. And that is, I think partly because of institutional factors. You know, as Winston Churchill says, democracy is the worst form of government, apart from all the others. And yes, we can really be hard on ourselves about the short termism of our political system. And yet, despite that, we do seem to still manage to muddle through and come up with a country that people are dying to get to, literally and metaphorically. Now, you know, that in itself is controversial, but that speaks to one of the things about Australia that is so darn detractive, that is still so resilient, that is still so welcoming and so positive. So I'm very much a glass half full person. Yes, there are big security challenges and I'm looking forward to grappling with them in our conversation. But my sense is that we have lots of good reason to be pretty upbeat about our future. Wong, your thoughts, half full, half empty? I can offer a perspective maybe from the outside. And where I travel, whether it's Southeast Asia or Northeast Asia, I think all the perception about Australia has been positive, that has been quite consistent for a long period of time. And I agree with John, there are reasons to be proud of for Australia, good governance, you know, support for the rule-based order, support for international law and free trade. All of those are really meta. And to put it in the perspective on the context right now, I think from the Asian, Southeast Asian particularly region, there are a lot of anxieties about China's rise, about US presence or commitment to the region or not. And in that context, I think Australia really emerges as an oasis of stability. And there is consistent foreign policy, consistent image that Australia puts out. And I think in this time of uncertainty, especially for the regional neighbours smaller and little sized countries, that stability is really important. So this is a very positive trajectory that Australia has had. Professor White, your thoughts on that in the context of the short termism in the politics that John touched on, but are we living off the rewards of previous generations of our political leadership? Yes, Kieran. I think we are. I'm a little bit less optimistic than my fellow panellists. It's not because I don't think Australia's achieved very good things over the last few decades. I think we have. But I think a very significant factor in that has been that we've been living in a very stable region and we've been very closely aligned with the leading power in that very stable region, which has made it extremely easy for our region to work well for us. And that's provided the foundation. We're both politically and economically. We've been able to make the Asian story a very successful story for us. And I think overall we have. But the circumstances which have underpinned that, I think are changing and changing faster than our political system and for that matter our broader public discourse is acknowledging. And the key shift there, there are several of course, the most important one is the rise of China and what that means for America's role in the region. And I don't think our political system at the moment is yet grappling with the significance of what's happening in the shift in the distribution of power between America and China and what that means for America's role in Asia and China's role in Asia and so on. I think we're still coasting on in the hope that what's worked for us so well for the last 40 odd years, 45 years, is going to keep working in future and I think that looked implausible 10 years ago and looks frankly ludicrous now. We're in the midst of a huge shift in the way Asia works and we're still pretending to ourselves that it's not happening. You've written about it, discussed it for a long time, the idea of the China choice. We've heard so often our modern political leaders, you might say, we don't need to choose. We don't need to choose between our economic partnership of China and the strategic partnership of the United States. Why is that not right in those simplistic terms? Well it's right at one level and that is it's right that we don't yet, haven't yet had to choose between America and China in a sort of fundamental binary way, the way countries in the Cold War had to choose between the Soviets and the Americans. We haven't faced that choice yet but we might face that choice in future if strategic rivalry between the US and China continues to escalate as it has over the last few years, for the next few years then they will, both of them will increasingly, even more than they have so far, start to require Australia to make choices and the other point of course is that although we don't have to make that fundamental binary choice we're making smaller choices all the time. A whole drift of Australian foreign policy today is to try and position ourselves between America's desire for us to side with America in resisting China's growing power and China's insistence that we not do that and I think a great deal of Australian foreign policy is already focused on making that series of choices. The other way of thinking about it is that we do have a choice. It's actually the choice that Penny Wong mentioned as being framed in the opening paragraphs, opening passages of the Asian Century White Paper. The choice as to whether we as a country try and shape our destiny in a changing Asia or pretend it's not happening and I thought it was slightly ironic that she cited that because it does seem to me that on both sides of politics our political leaders are stepping back from our choosing not to try and really address this challenge as it confronts us and our choosing instead to pretend that it's not happening is a historic mistake. I think it would be interesting to extrapolate on that in the context of ASEAN and we'll get to that in a moment but Huang, in terms of the perspective from one of China's neighbours I'm interested in your thoughts on how Vietnam handles the China choice as Hugh describes it. Well, it's been a choice that already thousands of years that have been pondering and Vietnam always prides itself among regional neighbours. It knows China the best because of proximity because of cultural and political similarities but also because of trajectory of historical encounters yet I think leaders in Hanoi are everyday struggling how to respond to China and I think if to put the content into the context of choice and China choice I think Vietnam would choose a peaceful China would like to choose China a peaceful and responsibly rising China and prosperity China because that would mean that Vietnamese economic model also can succeed and also that political model can succeed as well but when it comes to assertive or even aggressive China and China that is actually threatening with Vietnam sovereign claims that wouldn't be the choice of course and I think Vietnam just like other regional countries perhaps also including Australia faces a double challenge one is that it must be very agile and very responsive to the changing China very fastly changing China it's not a peaceful China that is eager to participate in regional architecture multilateralism the peaceful benign neighbour from the 1990s it's a very different China today so that constant reimagination of strategies towards China needs to be there the second simultaneous challenge for Vietnam I think in other countries as well is to have in mind that everything that Chinese government do is with a longer term view so they have a long term vision so having that in mind both midterm and short term challenges as long as long term responses is I think the biggest challenge for smaller neighbours just like Vietnam and what about Professor Blacksland you were the defence attache earlier in your career in Thailand and Myanmar how do those nations handle the rise of China and that parallel superpower of our region the United States it's a good question and it's fascinating to see how countries like Myanmar and Thailand are responding both Theravada, Buddhist countries the narrow path very much have parallel experiences and interesting enough politically have come to almost the same point formerly Burma was a pariah state under the junta the slawk that wonderful Anumatopeic word slawk I love that term in a state law and order restoration council gave a sense of this brutish military regime that was Burma and they have come down this path of the road to democracy and Americans Obama went a couple of times, loved it of course butted up against the economic realities of the fact that Myanmar sits right next door to China and China has an extraordinary amount of influence over Myanmar it's got an oil and gas pipeline through to Chakpo from connecting to Yunnan it's got enormous investment there and sitting between India and China it's very clear that Myanmar is now seeing that its economic basket is very much tied to China and Aung San Suu Kyi's presence in Beijing repeatedly speaks to that interestingly in Thailand a country which still a US treaty ally and still has exercised Cobra Gold held in Thailand with American forces and coalition forces as well has got increasingly Luke Warm and my colleague Dr Greg Raymond and I have been on a very exciting Minerva Research Initiative project looking at through the prism of the Thai military how they view China and the United States and seeing the waxing and waning of enthusiasm both for China and the United States in Thailand a country that is clearly they've made some concessions they're now going to buy Chinese submarines the prime minister has exercised a superpower clause in the interim constitution to, sorry, the new constitution to overrule objections and approve Chinese investment in a major part of the Belt Road Initiative into Thailand very interesting to see that but at the same time we're seeing very keen, the prime minister of Thailand very keen to stay in touch with the United States not wanting that relationship to wither and also seeing the significance of ASEAN the work we're doing is very interesting to see the enthusiasm for keeping America engaged in Asia and making sure that ASEAN doesn't unravel is very, very telling interestingly also how they're very interested in what we in Australia say and do what it appears to me and this is my hypothesis is that Australia we kind of set the regional benchmark so where Australia goes others in the neighborhood are prepared to go just short of because then you won't quite invoke the ire of China and I think that's a very interesting perspective about what that means for us and how important what we say and do is because it's not just about us we are studied closely in the neighborhood our actions, our thoughts, our speeches have repercussions in the neighborhood and the neighbors all seem to be very interested in seeing what Australia does and then acting accordingly Well, the ire of China Professor White we've seen what it can mean in terms of the in the context of the THAAD missile system the South Korean the economic boycotts of various South Korean goods they can put their foot down and quite swiftly if we fast forward to say a decade how do you see the Chinese presence in the Asia Pacific under the most powerful leader for decades likely to extend many people believe beyond two terms as president of China Look it's a really critical question and you can look at it two ways what does Xi Jinping want I think we know he wants what he calls a new model of great power relations and that means that he wants China to be the leading power in Asia I think if he had his druthers it would be the only leading power in Asia I think he'd like to see the United States effectively cease to play a significant strategic role in Asia whether he achieves that is going to depend partly on what the United States does and partly what the rest of us does it's not at all impossible at the United States because it remains a very powerful country could sustain a strong leadership position in Asia I don't think it can sustain the dominance that's enjoyed for so long in future because I think China is too strong to be pushed back into its box but it could sustain a strong leadership role and help to balance China's power and that's I think what the rest of us in the region would very much want but that will depend on America being willing and able to use its power effectively that would be a very tough ask whoever was in the White House it would have been a very tough ask if Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush or somebody else have won the election on the 8th of November last year under Donald Trump it's not an outcome you can bet on and the second possibility is the United States withdraws now most of us, most of the time find that almost impossible to imagine including me the United States power in Asia has been a fact for so long that we can hardly imagine a region without it but then again we used to think that about the British and the other Europeans and Boris Johnson in Sydney a couple of weeks ago notwithstanding they're not coming back and so it's possible that we could live in a region within the time frames that are relevant perhaps not to my career but relevant to most of yours that we live in a region in which the United States no longer playing a significant role is what Japan does more than anything else and to a certain extent what the rest of us what other countries in the region do but Japan more than anybody else and I do think there's a chance that the Japanese will decide to live with China's power in which case we will all of us live in a region dominated by China that's not a statement of what I'd like I find it a bit scary all the reasons that one mentioned very scary we have to contemplate and if Australia doesn't like it we have to ask ourselves what are we going to do about it what can we as a country do to avoid China acquiring more power in Asia than we would like them to have and that's a conversation which we've not even begun to have in Australia John Blacksland your thoughts on that in terms of how well placed we are as a nation how do you deal with that scenario and not just on our own but as you alluded to with our regional our neighbours and others more broadly you know here's right to point out to the problem but I do think we actually are beginning to have that conversation I don't think it hasn't started it has started I certainly my engagement with the government officials in private has been very strongly championing the fact that Australia is seeking in effect to do its own pivot back to Asia has been placed on rethinking its engagement with the Philippines and this isn't just about Marawi it's about our place and the significance of the neighbourhood and I'm the director of the South East Asia Institute at ANU one of the reasons why I took on the job is because I really believe in the importance of ASEAN to Australia it's the 50th anniversary of the forming of ASEAN today ASEAN is easy to be dismissed as a weak read and strategist I've spoken to several you know are quite dismissive of it and yet ASEAN has been remarkably successful over its life and remarkably enduring and yes there are aspects of it that don't quite fit the western mould about how geopolitics should work and how they should balance and you know exercise great power dynamics but it it is a proto great power it's a proto great power 629 million people two and a half trillion dollar economy the gateway that you know what Joko Widodo called the Maritime Fulcrum he was talking about Indonesia but it really speaks to the whole of Southeast Asia if you look at that map and as we do on the STSC logo and just over your shoulder Kiran if you spin that map a bit and you put Southeast Asia directly north of Australia rather than off to the northwest you get a sense of how significant that space is to Australia and how it's kind of the gate between the Indo and Pacific and why Rory this morning you know talks about the Indo-Pacific I know he's got his detractors on that idea I think it resonates from an Australian point of view and from a Southeast Asian point of view because it speaks to that space we live in and when you think about it the most obvious space where we should be investing is in our relationships with Indonesia and more broadly with Southeast Asia but that's really hard because they're so different from us this is a very diverse group you know it demographically linguistically historically culturally legally economically demographically on so many fronts it's very diverse and very different from us but it is important no one's ever going to tow it away you know like and yet we keep on metaphorically and literally skipping over it I've heard many strategic thinkers and talkers talk about great power dynamics and forget Southeast Asia hang on guys it's our immediate neighborhood and this is the as I say a proto great power now it's got also hang ups it's got to hang up with particularly Cambodia it's got a chip on its shoulder about Vietnam and Thailand and I think there's something Thailand and Vietnam could work on because Cambodia is co-opted by China because it doesn't trust its neighbors and because it doesn't feel the United States can be trusted either so these are things that when the neighborhood looks at us they see us to a large extent as a kind of the litmus test for what Southeast Asia should do how hard can we not just should be but how hard can we push back to Chinese hard power and I think that's something where we actually need to there's another point here I think worth making we as a we talk about Australia as a middle power we're a middle power we're small power pretensions we don't like to think of ourselves exercising middle power dynamics we are a middle power we need to think of ourselves as having regional influence that may be waning economically you know in turn relatively speaking but we have it we have cloud we have soft power cloud as well and I think we need to reconceive as we think about that strategic balancing act and we manage a relationship with China and we manage a relationship with the United States a deep broad and we talk about maybe changing that we need to have a clear sense in our minds of how profound that relationship with the United States is it is not just deep it is very very broad we are extremely dependent on that now you can try and unravel that but you want to be very very careful about doing it and think through the implications because even even if American power does go down the path that Hugh has projected as possible and likely you know similarly with me hopefully doesn't happen but it's quite possible America still has an interest in Australia and in that maritime fulcrum that space that's an enduring American interest even if it wanes its influence elsewhere in the South China so there's a lot there but we in Australia I think need to reimagine our role our perspective on the neighbourhood and how we conceive of what we should do with our neighbours. You up until recently were based at the Institute of South East Asian Studies in Singapore what's your view on Professor Blacksland's thesis there is his take on South East Asia? Yes I agree I mean today is the ASEAN's 15th anniversary a big celebration in fact I think we should put a little bit of anthem of ASEAN to salute this remarkable success and I do think this should be recognised if you put it in a context of historical difficulties of the region you do recognise the importance of ASEAN and even today I would like to add on what John said playing a little bit of devil's advocate if I may from a perspective of someone who studies ASEAN and who wishes ASEAN well and I think it's a little bit overwhelming at the moment instead of celebrating ASEAN's successes there is a little bit too much attention to ASEAN shortcomings which is valid concern and should be put out there for constructive reflection and ASEAN probably like any other countries is a little bit obsessed with great power politics so it looks very much every day about to China to the US probably a little bit too much my own concern is not whether China can tear ASEAN apart or whether ASEAN would be confident enough in itself without other great powers support including US and what not but it's I think a little bit missing debate is about how ASEAN sees itself and this is quite worrying because you know they say there are many leaders in ASEAN 10 of them at least right but little leadership and it is true when you don't have leadership there's lack of unity as well and there are so many so many dynamics now that speak to different interests even you know internally within one country one country you asked me earlier about Vietnam also has many different views even though it's one party and that is similar to any other ASEAN member countries so if within one country you have so many inconsistent views you can imagine how many views in ASEAN within as John pointed out very very diverse group there could be so for me the biggest worry is how ASEAN can uphold its internal values and you know if you want to celebrate another 50 years of anniversary how can it keep commitment to itself among neighbors and I think there is a big change in the generation of leaders in ASEAN and whether the original visions of ASEAN founding fathers who wanted to come together and guard against actually great power rivalry and other forces in the region can this be inherited now and further on and this is the task that ASEAN is really facing how to make ASEAN people excited about ASEAN themselves how to make them commit to ASEAN so maybe a renewal of vows after 50 years okay well given the potential and also the vulnerabilities of ASEAN if you're sitting down with a new Australian foreign minister what would your advice be as to how to try and place Australia over the next 10, 20, 50 years I'd put a big emphasis on our relations with South East Asia but I wouldn't frame that through ASEAN ASEAN as an institution has been extremely successful at a very narrow but very important purpose what we're actually celebrating the 50th anniversary of today was an agreement brokered between the other states of Maritime South East Asia which was intended to manage the end of what had been a very contested era between them ASEAN was all about managing relations between its member states and it's been extremely successful at that and it's been extremely successful in expanding that relationship management process from the original group to include the present 10 other functions effectively as a manager of the relationship between those states and the great powers because its entire history has been framed by an era in which American primacy in Asia has been uncontested and what we've seen over the last few years what we saw just last week again in Manila is the difficulty that ASEAN has in trying to manage a position when it's sandwiched between the two states and I think it's very difficult for ASEAN to as an institution to manage that problem precisely because it is so diverse geography alone tells us that Vietnam or Laos are never going to have the same attitude towards China as Indonesia for example because they're just differently located, Vietnam and Laos have a border with China it makes all the difference in the world and thank God but sharing a land border with a country the size of China changes everything so I think ASEAN as an institution is not going to do much for us but I very much agree that one of the things we need to do is to think very carefully about how we develop our relationships with Southeast Asia I agree with John after decades and generations in which managing relations with the heart of Australian foreign policy for about the last 20 years that's fallen away and I do think that is a historic mistake on our part but I'd caution that the solution to so to speak our China problem is not going to be to work with the ASEAN to try and push China away because it's just not going to be that easy they're not going to be that unified and our interests aren't always going to be aligned with theirs we're not going to subcontract the management of our relationship with China to Hanoi or Vientiane or Bangkok or even Jakarta we're going to have to think for ourselves about what our interests are in managing that relationship and then see how we can work with the others so that requires before we start travelling around the region let's have a really serious debate at home about how we see our relationship with China and for that matter how we see our relationship with the United States which we hope will remain very important but which is not going to look like the relationship we've had I would say for the last 40 years Let's head north now and look at the Korean Peninsula the flash point in the world right now is there any any path forward that you can see some talk that Trump should open a dialogue with Kim Jong-un I can't think of anything much more scary than that well you could sell tickets to it and I'd buy one look I think the reality is that we are going to live with a North Korea that has nuclear weapons and on crescent trends we're going to live with a North Korea that has the capacity to deliver a nuclear weapon on a US city not this year maybe not even next year but soon and that does make a huge difference it doesn't to my mind make much difference to the risk of a nuclear attack on a US city direct because I do have a kind of old fashioned faith in deterrence and I think it would be very hard to persuade Kim Jong-un or his success is that a nuclear attack on an American city would result in a very immediate nuclear attack on the United States what it does do is undermine the credibility of US guarantees to its allies in Asia and that does undermine the strength of America's position in Asia and contribute significantly to the process which is already underway of undermining the US strategic position in our part of the world and so I think that's a significant factor that the worry I have is that the more the United States does what it's done in the last few months to a certain extent for the last 20 years that is repeatedly threaten terrible things to North Korea next time they do a nuclear missile test and then do nothing to back them up and the North keeps on testing and the nuclear capability develops and American political leaders keep on saying it's not going to happen and it does that undermines US credibility and credibility is a very precious commodity in a kind of power political rivalry we're seeing in Asia today not just in relation to North Korea but also in relation to China so the trick is I think that we're going to have to learn to live with a North Korean nuclear capability and think very carefully about how we manage that rather than to undermine our credibility by keeping on pretending we're going to do something about it which we're not as you say it's a deterrent until they use it and become a suicide what's your view on this because China has not helped as much as they could in terms of reigning in Pyongyang but anyone that thought they would I think is probably a little deluded because they want that buffer don't they they want that buffer they don't want an American ally up to their border that's the bottom line well we tend to think about the crisis any crisis in general but this one in particular in terms of again great powers responsibilities US China of course I mean they are key players but if this is the issue that concerns us as a broader region and I guess pretty much everyone of us in the room would be concerned about this are we okay to relieve this responsibility to very unpredictable outcomes I think it's a common concerns and hence it should be addressed multilaterally and I think every state needs to have this responsibility there's no buck passing there and I think there is certain consensus on that given the UN sanctions and even ASEAN has come to the consensus upon that just over the weekend the leaders have issued the statement saying the region is gravely concerned about the crisis so I think it's much more about the possibility of Trump or Xi Jinping in dealing with this matter and John Blacksland we saw China again join with Russia the rest of the Security Council with tougher sanctions on Pyongyang yesterday that's not the first time though is it this has happened a number of times over many years and incrementally Kim Jong-un and North Korea they edged towards that nuclear capacity so what are the options there are no military options are they the agreement we'll see how much of that gets actually implemented because words are words let's see the deeds let's see the implementation because China has enormous influence there but on your question about the military option the bottom line is you know the planners have looked at the North Korean option for years it's been a perennial military exercise option for planners in US Army Pacific and the Korean forces command so what they've what they've found is that there's no way of guaranteeing that they've identified all the potential launch points because many of them are hidden and so while you could you know there's a number of things I could consider special forces operations trying to get Kim Jong-un wherever he's located maybe conduct several raids to get most of the locations and then conduct precision guided munition strikes on the identified potential bunkers or the missile launching pads so what if you miss three and what about the the mobile ballistic missile launches that have that are not liquid field dependent but solid field rockets that can be moved and launched from different locations that maybe the satellite didn't pick up and what about the mass artillery that's hidden and spread out just north of the demilitarized zone the DMZ within range of millions and millions of people in Seoul what do you do? realistically there's not a viable military option so the Americans talk it up they talk it up and they talk about maintaining a military option realistically there isn't one so the question then is how bad would it be? well let's just think about how it's been in the past we thought it was bad that China that Russia got the bomb back in the late 40s but then we thought it was terrible that China got it then we thought it was terrible that India got it then Pakistan got it and then Israel and whoever else and yet none of them have used them why? because as soon as you do there's no way of having any kind of assurance that you will win more than likely you will invoke the opprobrium of the world and you will lose big time most people understand that and then the question is ok is Kim Jong-un a rational actor well my sense is he is a deeply paranoid rational actor and that paranoid is not unreasonable from where he sits if you put yourself in a North Korean shoes country that was bombed effectively to oblivion during the Korean War it sees America not as the great light on the hill but as the devil incarnate so from their perspective I'm not endorsing that perspective but when you think about the world from a North Korean perspective everything that happens is just confirmation of the need to burnish those efforts to make sure you've got the ICBMs you've got the miniaturized nukes you've got it all there as soon as possible lest you fall into the trap that Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein fell into of relinquishing their weapons of mass destruction Hugh White further on this issue do you think that Trump and others were deluded, misplaced in expecting Xi Jinping and China to really put the foot down on North Korea and further it's that is it overstated the influence because from my understanding I don't even think Kim Jong-un has ever met Xi Jinping I think they were mistaken in expecting or hoping that China would do their work for them I do think people exaggerate China's control over North Korea this is perhaps an impolite analogy but sometimes talking to American friends I remind them of Australia's relationship with Papua New Guinea you look at Australia's relationship with Papua New Guinea major aid don't even think well Australia should have an awful lot of control over what happens in Papua New Guinea but anyone who knows the Australia B&G relationship knows, no not at all and I think that the Chinese although they have the capacity to turn North Korea off they can flick a switch what they don't have is a joystick which allows them to control what North Korea does day by day it's a very potent and in its weird way effective independent regime with a very strong sense of its own interests and I think the analysis is right that the Chinese are not prepared to do anything which threatens the survival of the Kim regime I don't myself think that's so much because they fear that if the Kim regime collapses they'll have American troops on their border on the Yalu River I don't think the Chinese worry very much about whatever the US Army could do to the PLA on Chinese territory they're pretty confident that don't fight a land war in Asia is the motto that's chiseled in stone over the portals of the Pentagon I so I don't think that's actually a bigger problem for the Chinese I think it's rather that they just think why deal with that problem there'd be chaos in North Korea there are nuclear weapons on the loose they'd rather not deal with that problem and they'd rather just kick it down the road but the other point is that I do think Chinese strategists are likely to calculate that they benefit from the present situation they don't like the idea of North Korea having a nuclear weapon but they do like the fact that North Korea having a nuclear weapon complicates America's relationship with its allies in the western Pacific and the Chinese are hard men playing a tough game this is real power politics for something which is very important to them they are very willing to take risks including strategic risks to help them undermine US standing in Asia and North Korea is doing their work for them so the idea that Chinese would help America solve that problem it wasn't going to happen and Hong if we look at another flash point in the region the reclamation of the reefs and the islands of the South China Sea what's the view from Vietnam and from other affected nations Well I think the South China Sea has been quite a central point at the Asian Foreign Ministers meeting just over the weekend and Vietnamese position on that has been consistent in pursuing peaceful resolution of dispute in relying to the rule of law and international law and it has been emphasising these at the recent meeting Vietnam has been pushing to put an in the ASEAN collective joint statement that is a common concern for the region and it pushes for demilitarisation which also have met with certain pushback from neighbour countries including the claimants allegedly including the Philippines who was chairing the meeting so I think the militarisation and island building in the South China Sea concerns everyone in the region whether they have direct claims or not however how do they respond to diplomatically and open or backstage it's been very different over the past few years we've seen in ASEAN the change of government in the Philippines change a little bit of balance within the South East Asian claimant group because Philippines was the one who really took the legal actions against China and however Duterte's coming to power have kind of deep downplayed the dispute for the benefit of better relations, bilateral relations with China which is concerning for everyone in the region not only because they care about the neighbour's national interest and dispute but it questions the value of international law it questions the value of the system that is supposed to be based on the rule of the law and if this is neglected and despite the arbitral tribunal ruling then what can we expect next for worse scenarios in Hanoi's government is already okay if seas can be manipulated like that what's next maybe air spaces it's all about how you can uphold the international law John Blackstone do you think Australia has a role to play in guarding that international law in the sense of taking part in the freedom of navigation operations within 12 nautical miles of the reclaimed Chinese territory as the Americans up until recently hadn't done under Trump but they've now done as I understand it two freedom of navigation exercises should Australia follow suit my sense is that Australia should be very cautious Australia is already conducting we heard this morning operation gateway which is maritime air patrols over the South China Sea it conducts transits through the South China Sea routinely with the Royal Australian naval vessels but there is a reluctance to go where the United States under Admiral Harry Harris has encouraged us to go I think for very good reason the United States has been effectively behaving like a fickle player lately and it's not at all clear that the United States has our interests all that much at heart now I'm not dissing the Americans here, that's not my point my point is that we're not that important to them what is important is the relationship with China and then Japan and then dealing with North Korea and if a deal needs to be struck that requires some kind of compromise perhaps over the South China Sea and if Australia was to be too front footed on a phonop like going within a 12 nautical mile of one of the islands that is claimed by China, occupied by China and recognised by the arbitral tribunal ruling as meriting a 12 nautical mile territorial sea and there are a handful that do and a handful that don't if you do that you are unnecessarily I think in this case that is not in Australia's interests and so I think we need to be very wary about doing that I think we should continue doing what we do but there's another point here I think it's worth noting and that is that we don't want to then just completely vacate the field China will I believe and this is up from a huge amount of debate will take as much as you let it as we give and I think there is a parallel there with the expansion of the British Empire 200 years ago Britain expanded incrementally there wasn't a great plan to conquer the world the British East India Company established itself the military followed there's a parallel there with China's expanding economic interests and therefore looking to secure those economic interests that's actually not unreasonable it's quite reasonable but then how much how they exercise that reasonable right is one that requires a bit of checking Australia needs to be forthright about defending its interests and about cooperating with neighbours in defence legitimate interests of our neighbours that are actually congruent with our interests and in messaging back to Beijing that we respect their role we respect their historical entitlements but we also respect those of our neighbours and we expect China to respect that too and I think that's quite reasonable Professor White what are your overarching views of China and that region in the context of the so-called nine-dash line the view that China is going to be imperialistic and it's growth do you are you pessimistic or are you sanguine about the rise of China in the sense that they are they see themselves as the middle kingdom and they won't overreach I'm pessimistic look I think the key thing to understand about the South China is that we're looking really at an issue which is running at two levels at one level there is a significant issue about ownership of contested reefs and rocks about conflicting claims to maritime areas like the nine-dash line questions about how these issues are resolved but multilaterally or bilaterally all the stuff when he has talked about all the time but underpinning that and the reason why we're talking about it is that that whole set of issues is just a proxy for the strategic rivalry between the US and China which both Washington and Beijing for different reasons believe it to be to their advantage to play out in the South China Sea and it is I think a dangerous situation because it is a point of contention where inherently insignificant issues are directly linked with huge questions about regional order and great power politics and just as if I can use this analogy in 1914 Europe went to war over a relatively insignificant question about the status of Serbs in the Austro-Hungarian Empire it would be perfectly possible for the US and China to go to war of a relatively insignificant issue like who owns mischief reef or whether there should be a base built on Scarborough shoals China is using that confrontation as a way of showing that America is no longer as strong in the region as it used to be America is trying to use that confrontation as a way to demonstrate to the region that China is threatening to their interests and that they should support the United States both believe they can win on that space I suspect China at the moment is doing better than America but there's a very significant risk I think that will be the point at which competition turns into a confrontation and I think the management of that is therefore much more important than the question of who ends up owning mischief reef or who ends up building a base on Scarborough shoals and it's really not appropriate to be handling such a nuanced and precarious situation via Twitter is it as the president exactly it's a worry many final thoughts from you John Blackson before we wrap up thanks my sense is we talk about regional arrangements I think there is one that we haven't quite come up with yet and that's one I call Manis which is the word in Bahasa Indonesia means sweet which is stands for Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia and Singapore I recognise in the limitations of ASEAN while very supportive of ASEAN I think there is space for Australia to reimagine its relations with its immediate neighbours and that's something that I think really needs to be thought through Indonesia, the Indonesians I've spoken to have been quite enthusiastic about it there seems to be a little bit of traction to that idea of sweetening regional ties for Maritime Regional Corporation forum any final thoughts yeah I think as we celebrate again 50th anniversary of ASEAN a lot of thinkers in the region warn each other that we can't take peace for granted because it was hard and for Southeast Asia in particular but I think this is a moment more than ever we can't take peace for granted and each country whether small or middle or great have equal responsibilities in safeguarding the peace so that's why Thanks for listening Dr John Blackson Professor John Blackson Dr Hong Lee Tsu and Professor Huay thank you for your participation