Conflict in the East China Sea: would ANZUS apply?

This paper analyses the circumstances under which conflict in the East China Sea could occur and the implications for Australia. Executive summary Tensions between China and Japan have ratcheted up in recent years to the point where their territorial dispute over islands in the East China Sea is seen as among the region’s most dangerous flashpoints. The prospect of Sino-Japanese conflict over these islands is one that cannot be taken lightly by Australia. Economically, three of our four leading trading partners are located in Northeast Asia, while sea lanes vital to Australian trade run through the waters of the East China Sea. Strategically and politically, two US allies are based in this region and America retains a strong forward military presence there. This paper starts from the premise that insufficient attention has been given to the potential ramifications for Australia of conflict in the East China Sea, particularly in terms of whether Australia’s alliance obligations with the United States could embroil Canberra in a conflict. The paper is motivated in part by Defence Minister Johnston’s June 2014 remarks stating that the ANZUS alliance would not commit Australia to a conflict where the US had sent forces to support Japan. While reminiscent of remarks made a decade earlier by then-Foreign Minister Alexander Downer in relation to the prospect of Australian involvement via ANZUS in a Taiwan contingency, Johnston’s assessment has not attracted anywhere near the same level of attention and analysis as those made by Downer in August 2004. The purpose of this paper is to begin to fill this gap in Australia’s public and policy debate by analysing the circumstances under which conflict in the East China Sea could occur and the implications thereof for Australia. The paper answers three questions: 1. What does Australia’s alliance relationship with the US commit Canberra to in the event of conflict in the East China Sea? 2. What are the risks that Australia faces as a result of ANZUS and other associated international commitments? 3. What can be done to better understand and manage these risks

I thought you’d never become one of us

In this paper, I describe a collaborative process in which  a class of grade 6&7 students made and performed two plays, and also transformed their learning. In this process, a reconfiguring of the spaces of learning,  the students and I adapted a variety of literacy and drama practices; a key change in practice was the shift away from an instrumental mode of dialogue in which the teacher occupies the superior position of knower and evaluator, towards a Bakhtinian mode in which dialogue, as heteroglossic, moves between all the participants, and becomes the main purpose of learning. In a dynamic combination of linguistic, theatrical, and relational meaning making, the students moved clear of the outcomes-based learning that had hitherto stultified their interactions and language. As a result, they developed a new creative agency, both singly and as a collective, and an authoritative discourse. They left this discourse open for me to join, and also continue afterwards, as I have done here, by presenting and interpreting their voices, and including new ones.[1][1] EDITORIAL NOTE: Charles Bisley’s article is an unusual and brave attempt to transcend the current norms of scholarly and academic genres and create a polyphonic article in which he describes a year long educational event through the voices of all of its participants – among which he counts not only his students and himself, and their audience of parents and the school authorities, but also includes educational, literary and philosophical authors who inspired him and whose thoughts guided him in his actions and reflections during and after his project in creating dramatic spaces and times with his students. His writing has elements of reflective auto-ethnography, Woolfian lyrical stream of consciousness, dialogic double-voicedness and a storytelling narrative that is intended to transport the reader into an experience of the dramatic enfolding of the events and their protagonists, actors and directors: his students and himself. Although, his work doesn’t follow what is currently assumed to be the scientific criteria regarding form, length or standard components, we find it interesting and valuable as a polyphonic approach and qualitative study

Protests and the Chinese President - an Index of Freedom

In 1999, the police disrupted several protests aimed at Jiang Zemin, President of the Peoples' Republic of China, during the APEC Leaders Summit held in New Zealand. In this article, the author considers whether the protesters' rights under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 were infringed by police actions. In doing so, the author traverses relevant international and domestic jurisprudence on freedom of speech, movement and association, including the recent decision of the High Court in Police v Beggs. After concluding that the rights of the protesters were prima facie infringed, the author goes on to consider whether the infringements were justified in a free and democratic society in terms of section 5 of the Bill of Rights Act

Government Cloud Computing Strategies: Management of Information Risk and Impact on Concepts and Practices of Information Management

Research Problem The objective of this research is to investigate the extent to which the government cloud computing strategies of New Zealand, Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Ireland are supported by defined processes for considering the information risks of shifting to cloud computing, and assessing the impact of these approaches on concepts and practices of information management. Methodology The study undertook a qualitative analysis of published policies, strategies and guidance documents published by regulatory agencies within the target jurisdictions, investigating these documents for evidence of a process to assess and manage information risks. Results The study provides an assessment of the adequacy of governments’ guidance frameworks in preparing government organisations to properly assess the risks, opportunities, and necessary controls for information in a cloud service. Implications The gaps in guidance demonstrated by the study identify opportunities for a more rigorous assessments of the effectiveness of information management controls and privacy safeguards implemented by government organisations, and points to characteristics which could be assessed against in more specific case studies

Defence diplomacy: is the game worth the candle?

Few defence topics have been as prominent or invested with as much optimism in recent years as defence diplomacy. This paper has been created to explore the issue and help guide policymakers. Foreword Few Defence topics have been as prominent or invested with as much optimism in recent years as defence diplomacy (also called military diplomacy or defence engagement). In response to the growing security challenges of Asia, scholars, policymakers and practitioners have looked for ways to build confidence, decrease the risk and impact of accidents and encourage peaceful dispute resolution. Defence diplomacy, namely the practice of military and defence officials engaging their overseas counterparts, is increasingly regarded as a vital way to achieve these aims. Given the importance of this topic, a special Centre of Gravity paper has been created to explore the issue and help guide policymakers. This edition features six short papers, each with a different take and policy recommendation. The authors were asked the same question ‘Is the game worth the candle?’ and while their answers focus largely on Australia there are lessons and implications from their findings for the entire region. Brendan Taylor, the head of the Strategic & Defence Studies Centre begins the special edition calling for a stocktake of current efforts, in a bid to understand what has worked and what resources it requires. He is joined by two colleagues, John Blaxland who argues strongly in favour of an expanded defence diplomacy program and Hugh White who urges caution about the strategic influence of the practice. To complement these views, Nick Bisley, Executive Director La Trobe Asia, highlights the need for realistic ambitions. Lieutenant General (Ret.) Peter Leahy draws on his distinguished career in the ADF to detail how defence diplomacy occurs in practice and why it matters. Finally, See Seng Tan, Deputy Director of the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies in Singapore provides a regional perspective on Australia’s defence diplomacy. The authors of these papers don’t agree with each other, and that was precisely why they were invited to contribute. But some common themes are clear. Such as the need for a clear —and public — strategy along with integrating defence diplomacy into the efforts of other parts of government. Together these six papers provide insight into the practice and potential of defence diplomacy. This special edition also marks a re-launch of the Centre of Gravity Series. While some of the design may change, the focus remains the same: inviting some of the best analysts from Australia and around the world to provide short, accessible papers on the key questions facing Australian strategic affairs

Integrated Asia: Australia's Dangerous New Strategic Geography

Globalization and major power rivalry are creating a China-centric integrated Asian strategic system, drawing together the once-discrete theatres of Northeast, Southeast, South and Central Asia. In his new Centre of Gravity Paper ‘Integrated Asia’, Professor Nick Bisley explores this changing strategic geography. He argues China will sit at the heart of a strategic system which will have maritime and continental dimensions but it will not be able to dominate it or replicate US primacy. US influence in Asia will decline in relative terms and its ability to provide order will be constrained. Nationalist ambition among the region’s giants will make integrated Asia an unstable place where cooperation among the great powers will be much harder to achieve than in the past. As such, Australia needs to reorient its strategic policy to reflect a more integrated Asian strategic system, one that is likely to be much less conducive to its interests than the international environment it has enjoyed over the past four decades or so

To choose or not to choose: how to deal with China's growing power and influence

This paper collects 10 items published on the ASPI blog The Strategist by eight authors on one of the most important public policy issues of this decade and beyond: how to deal with China’s growing power and influence. The hope is that this debate will start to identify points of shared thinking and expose the areas where further work is needed to improve the quality of policy outcomes. ASPI will continue to publish on the topic. There is no more important subject for the future of Australia and for a stable Asia–Pacific

Historical sociology and great power vulnerability: The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

This thesis examines the collapse of Soviet state power from an international perspective. It assesses the extent to which the Soviet Union's international confrontation with the capitalist West, and the end of that confrontation, contributed to the strengthening and weakening of the Soviet state. It shows that the state's international stance of hostility, in both social-systemic and geopolitical terms, became a central component of Soviet state power. Central to this study is the assumption that the continuation of state power is contingent on the successful reproduction of the institutions of political rule. To this end, the thesis develops a historical sociological theory of the state which builds on a critique of neo-Weberian institutional-functional theories of the modem state. Using this theory, the thesis examines the development of Soviet state power and draws out the ways in which the international confrontation with the West reinforced the Soviet state and came to develop and shape its structures and institutions. Following an examination of the end of the Cold War, the thesis considers the way in which the change in international policy undermined elements of Soviet power, particularly in terms of ideology, legitimacy and material-organisational structures. The retreat from this posture, undertaken by Gorbachev through the 1980s, removed the conflict as a structure of the state, contributed to its weakening and helped make the state vulnerable to the challenges of the 1990-91 period. The thesis concludes that the international confrontation played an important ideational and material role in the development and undermining of Soviet state power. Moreover, the international confrontation was a vital part of the architecture of the Soviet state which helped make the state's claim to rule a more robust and effective socio-political mechanism

Explicit Analysis of Kahler Deformations in 4D N=1 Supersymmetric Quiver Theories

Starting from the $\mathcal{N}=2$ SYM$_{4}$ quiver theory living on wrapped $$ branes around $S_{i}^{2}$ spheres of deformed ADE fibered Calabi-Yau threefolds (CY3) and considering deformations using \textit{% massive} vector multiplets, we explicitly build a new class of $\mathcal{N}$ quiver gauge theories. In these models, the quiver gauge group $\prod_{i}U(N_{i})$ is spontaneously broken down to $$ and Kahler deformations are shown to be given by the real part of the integral $(2,1)$ form of CY3. We also give the superfield correspondence between the $\mathcal{N}=1$ quiver gauge models derived here and those constructed in hep-th/0108120 using complex deformations. Others aspects of these two dual $\mathcal{N}=1$ supersymmetric field theories are discussed.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figur

Attention, Intention, and Priority in the Parietal Lobe

For many years there has been a debate about the role of the parietal lobe in the generation of behavior. Does it generate movement plans (intention) or choose objects in the environment for further processing? To answer this, we focus on the lateral intraparietal area (LIP), an area that has been shown to play independent roles in target selection for saccades and the generation of visual attention. Based on results from a variety of tasks, we propose that LIP acts as a priority map in which objects are represented by activity proportional to their behavioral priority. We present evidence to show that the priority map combines bottom-up inputs like a rapid visual response with an array of top-down signals like a saccade plan. The spatial location representing the peak of the map is used by the oculomotor system to target saccades and by the visual system to guide visual attention