{"title":"Coming into the Cold: China’s interests in the Antarctic","authors":"A. Press, A. Bergin","doi":"10.1080/10357718.2022.2057921","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10357718.2022.2057921","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT China took its first tentative steps into the Antarctic around 1980, travelling South with other nations’ Antarctic programs. Australia hosted the first Chinese scientists to travel to East Antarctica to conduct research in the early 1980s. China signed the Antarctic Treaty in 1983 and became a Treaty Consultative Party in 1985. Since its first small forays, China’s Antarctic activities have grown considerably: it now has two permanently occupied Antarctic stations, other Antarctic facilities and is currently building a station on in the Ross Sea region. China’s Antarctic science program is broad; it has economic activities in the region include fisheries and tourism, and has expressed longer-term interest in resource extraction. In recent years, China has become an assertive participant in Antarctic governance. This paper analyses the geopolitical origins of the Antarctic Treaty, China’s growing Antarctic presence, and the implications this has for the region, including the policies and strategies of Australia and key Indo-Pacific partner states in the Antarctic.","PeriodicalId":51708,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of International Affairs","volume":"76 1","pages":"340 - 358"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-03-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47623423","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Legitimating the Antarctic Treaty System: from rich nations club to planetary ecological democracy?","authors":"Patrick Flamm","doi":"10.1080/10357718.2022.2056876","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10357718.2022.2056876","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Like other international institutions, the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) relies on the goodwill and self-binding commitment of its members. Legitimacy, understood as the belief in the ‘rightfulness’ of a governing arrangement by its stakeholders, lies at the heart of the ATS’ success as a multilateral institution. Global warming and geopolitical power shifts are poised to challenge established forms of Antarctic legitimacy and effectiveness, with external calls for Antarctic democratisation and reform increasing. Using the concepts of input, output, and throughput legitimacy, this paper explores how the ATS has been legitimated as the only authoritative decision-making context for Antarctic matters, internally amongst Treaty Partners as well as externally towards the rest of the international community. It argues that the increase of input legitimacy through the inclusion of more consultative parties led to a perceived lack of output legitimacy for some especially environmental critics which illustrates the importance but also the limits of maintaining consensus about throughput legitimacy: the agreed upon processes and rules of decision-making. Finally, the analysis problematises the inhibiting centrality of nation states and the logic of sovereignty during times of global ecological and geopolitical change and asks how an ambitiously democratic future of Antarctic governance in the Anthropocene might look like.","PeriodicalId":51708,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of International Affairs","volume":"76 1","pages":"266 - 285"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-03-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42420595","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The diplomatic power of small states: Mongolia’s mediation on the Korean peninsula","authors":"Shinae Hong","doi":"10.1080/10357718.2022.2056577","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10357718.2022.2056577","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT With its Ulaanbaatar Dialogues (UBD) initiatives, Mongolia has emerged as one of the most increasingly influential diplomatic powerhouses in northeast Asia, despite its small size. Moved by the mixed interests of garnering global influence and a small-state security strategy, the country has positioned itself as an honest neutral peace broker in the Korean conflict since 2013. Mongolia has demonstrated itself to be a successful third party in defusing tensions and, more crucially, jump-starting declining regional multilateral mechanisms for the Korean peace process. This study explores the undiscovered potential of small-state power. Mongolia shows how small states effectively increase their transnational appeal and expand their foreign policy reach through diplomatic mediation. This article examines the sources, strategies, and mechanisms of Mongolia’s mediation efforts, looking at the core features of Mongolian foreign policy and its diplomatic relations, and then focuses on the UBD initiatives – the country’s efforts as a third party to mediate the Korean Peninsula peace process. Thereby, this study contributes to the knowledge on the practice of international relations by reflecting on the burgeoning role of the Global South.","PeriodicalId":51708,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of International Affairs","volume":"76 1","pages":"415 - 431"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49459071","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rediscovering the importance of Antarctic Law for the early twenty-first century","authors":"Bruno Arpi, Jeffrey McGee","doi":"10.1080/10357718.2022.2056875","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10357718.2022.2056875","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT International law provides a system of legal order for the conduct of international relations. Within this system, states may constitute regional legal regimes in a continuous geographical area to address their own regional problems. In Antarctica, states active in the region have developed a sui generis regional legal regime (conceptualised here as ‘Antarctic Law’) to address problems of the Antarctic. During most of the twentieth century, Antarctic Law played a central role in understanding human interaction within, and international ordering of, the Antarctic region. However, over the last two decades, understanding the importance of the legal and regional nature of Antarctic law has become less prominent. Instead, Antarctic scholarship (including legal analysis) has moved towards a universalist perspective, interdisciplinary scholarship and critical approaches. We argue these approaches have under-appreciated the importance of the legal ordering of the region. New challenges within the region will require responses that draw on this regional legal ordering. This paper therefore aims to be a first step towards rediscovering the importance of the concept of ‘Antarctic Law’ as a regional and legal regime with a key role in providing successful international order within the Antarctic region to meet the challenges of the early twenty-first century.","PeriodicalId":51708,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of International Affairs","volume":"76 1","pages":"248 - 265"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-03-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43225936","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The changing strategic significance of submarine cables: old technology, new concerns","authors":"Hilary McGeachy","doi":"10.1080/10357718.2022.2051427","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10357718.2022.2051427","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The strategic significance accorded to submarine cables has never been a static concept, but it has been homogenous: a focus on protecting cables from external threats. This article argues that because submarine cables have long had strategic value, they provide a means to examine the emerging concept of strategic technology competition between the United States and China. To do so, this article examines major changes to the submarine cable sector since 2015, including the success of Chinese company Huawei Marine, and US and other western government interventions in several cable projects. It characterises the strategic considerations exhibited by submarine cable activity in that period – influence building in third countries, a changing perception among the US and its partners of threat and protection priorities, and closer attention to cable security and surveillance considerations – and compares them with the traditional strategic values attached to submarine cables. It concludes strategic concerns about undersea cables includes a new concept: the construction and installation of cables as a strategic threat, and which adds complexity to a sector in which it is difficult to project influence. This article seeks to make a contribution to scholarship on strategic competition in emerging technologies.","PeriodicalId":51708,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of International Affairs","volume":"76 1","pages":"161 - 177"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43187333","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
N. Bisley, R. Eckersley, Shahar Hameiri, Jessica Kirk, George Lawson, Benjamin Zala
{"title":"For a progressive realism: Australian foreign policy in the 21st century","authors":"N. Bisley, R. Eckersley, Shahar Hameiri, Jessica Kirk, George Lawson, Benjamin Zala","doi":"10.1080/10357718.2022.2051428","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10357718.2022.2051428","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT What ideas and concepts might be used to reinvigorate a progressive approach to Australian foreign policy? In contrast to the clarity of the international vision provided by right-wing movements, there is uncertainty about the contours of a progressive approach to contemporary Australian foreign policy. This article outlines the basis of a ‘progressive realism’ that can challenge right-wing accounts. Progressive realism combines a ‘realistic’ diagnosis of the key dynamics that underpin contemporary world politics with a ‘progressive’ focus on the redistribution of existing power configurations. Taken together, these two building blocks provide the foundations for a left-of-centre foreign policy agenda. We apply progressive realism to four policy areas: pandemic politics, aid and infrastructure in the Pacific, climate change, and a crisis in the Taiwan Strait. This analysis, in turn, highlights the challenges and opportunities for progressive political actors in crafting foreign policy both within and beyond Australia.","PeriodicalId":51708,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of International Affairs","volume":"76 1","pages":"138 - 160"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48571707","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Existential threats, shared responsibility, and Australia’s role in ‘coalitions of the obligated’","authors":"Toni Erskine","doi":"10.1080/10357718.2022.2040424","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10357718.2022.2040424","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In the face of the current proliferation of existential threats-the risk of nuclear war, anthropogenic climate change, COVID-19, and (arguably) disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence-it is imperative that Australia embrace the notion of shared responsibility in international politics. Individual states have limited capacities to effectively tackle such large-scale, complex emergencies on their own. Highlighting the moral implications of the philosophical notion of joint action, this commentary makes the case for a particular type of responsibility, which can only be discharged when states deliberate and coordinate their actions. Moreover, it explores what this notion of shared responsibility means for Australia-and its international relationships-with respect to responding to climate chaos and COVID-19. Even though Australia, acting on its own, can neither significantly mitigate climate change nor halt the current global pandemic, it nevertheless has demanding moral responsibilities to respond to both. This is because the capacities necessary to affect meaningful change can be created through collaboration with other institutional agents. In the absence of intergovernmental organizations able to respond effectively to such crises, Australia has shared responsibilities to contribute to establishing, and then acting as part of, informal, purpose-driven, climate change and COVID-19 ‘coalitions of the obligated’.","PeriodicalId":51708,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of International Affairs","volume":"76 1","pages":"130 - 137"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-02-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47860166","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Unwanted participation? Defector public diplomacy in South Korea","authors":"Daniel Connolly","doi":"10.1080/10357718.2022.2042482","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10357718.2022.2042482","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT\u0000 The controversy surrounding defector balloon launches into North Korea is often viewed as a bizarre example of Cold War legacies on the Korean peninsula. However, it is also a unique case study of non-state public diplomacy because these groups are attempting to engage in cross-border communication against the wishes of their host government. This article argues that South Korea’s unique interpretation of public diplomacy as a participatory activity has proven vulnerable to non-state organisations with divergent views of the national interest, which has resulted in two different types of public diplomacy being directed at North Korea. Subsequent attempts by the South Korean government to control the dissonant public diplomacy of non-state groups resulted in reputational costs for both sides and ultimately failed to prevent defectors from advancing their claim to a human right to communicate across national borders. Even though this case study broadly supports a polylateral interpretation of public diplomacy, it cautions that human rights discourses may obscure the fact that the traditional diplomatic system was designed to mitigate many of the risks associated with non-state diplomatic actors. Therefore, this paper suggests the need for more discussion about the consequences of a right to communicate across national borders.","PeriodicalId":51708,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of International Affairs","volume":"76 1","pages":"432 - 451"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-02-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44394352","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The state prunes the banyan tree: calibrated liberalisation in Singapore","authors":"Pravin Prakash, W. Abdullah","doi":"10.1080/10357718.2022.2040423","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10357718.2022.2040423","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper investigates the Singapore state’s varied responses toward dissent and explores the modes of control employed by the state towards varied dissent. We argue that any attempt to understand the politics of control in Singapore is incomplete without understanding how the state calibrates liberalisation as a third primary strategy. This study contributes to a more nuanced comprehension of how hybrid regimes can expand their modes of control. It offers a new framework to understand how tools of dominance are calibrated to adapt to a shifting socio-political landscape and calls for viewing liberalisation as a method of extending control.","PeriodicalId":51708,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of International Affairs","volume":"76 1","pages":"379 - 397"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-02-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41790683","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The battle of the Coral Sea: Australia’s response to the Belt & Road Initiative in the Pacific","authors":"S. Hewes, D. Hundt","doi":"10.1080/10357718.2022.2037510","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10357718.2022.2037510","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Australia has not been alone in declining the opportunity to take part in China's Belt & Road Initiative (BRI). Instead, this article contends, Australia launched its own infrastructure initiative in the Pacific that has attempted to reduce the attractiveness of the BRI to the region. The article focuses on Australia’s intervention in the Coral Sea Cable System, an action which vastly reduced the role of Chinese firms such as Huawei in building telecommunications infrastructure in the Pacific. Informed by a postcolonial perspective, we explain Australia’s stance on the BRI in terms of its intimate but at-times problematic relations with Asia and the Pacific. This was reflected in Australia’s unwillingness to acknowledge the legitimacy of the BRI as a foreign policy initiative, in its invocation of the ‘rules-based order’ to justify its intervention in the cable project, and in the design of its regional infrastructure program, which bore some uncanny resemblances to what Australian policymakers have depicted as the worst aspects of the BRI itself.","PeriodicalId":51708,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of International Affairs","volume":"76 1","pages":"178 - 193"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-02-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41521936","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}