After Covid-19 Volume 2 Australia, the region and multilateralism Edited by Michael Shoebridge and Lisa Sharland September 2020 STRATEGY After Covid-19 Volume 2 Australia, the region and multilateralism About ASPI The Australian Strategic Policy Institute was formed in 2001 as an independent, non‑partisan think tank. Its core aim is to provide the Australian Government with fresh ideas on Australia’s defence, security and strategic policy choices. ASPI is responsible for informing the public on a range of strategic issues, generating new thinking for government and harnessing strategic thinking internationally. ASPI’s sources of funding are identified in our Annual Report, online at www.aspi.org.au and in the acknowledgements section of individual publications. ASPI remains independent in the content of the research and in all editorial judgements. It is incorporated as a company, and is governed by a Council with broad membership. 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First published September 2020 Published in Australia by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute ASPI Level 2 40 Macquarie Street Barton ACT 2600 Australia Tel + 61 2 6270 5100 Fax + 61 2 6273 9566 Email [email protected] www.aspi.org.au www.aspistrategist.org.au Facebook.com/ASPI.org @ASPI_org ISBN 978‑1‑925229‑62‑2 (online pdf) ISBN 978‑1‑925229‑61‑5 (print) No specific sponsorship was received to fund production of this report Contents Introduction 1 Lisa Sharland and Michael Shoebridge Australia and the region South Pacific perils and positives 2 Graeme Dobell Pacific travel bubble: led by NZ and Fiji, the Pacific family should start without Australia 8 Michael Shoebridge New Zealand’s Covid-19 support to the Pacific islands 11 Anna Powles Australia and Papua New Guinea 16 Jeffrey Wall ASEAN economic and security integration after Covid-19 21 John Coyne Post-Covid-19 Australia and Southeast Asia: aligning more closely or drifting further apart? 26 Huong Le Thu The Bangsamoro Autonomous Region of Mindanao after Covid-19 31 John Coyne After Covid, conflict in the South China Sea and over Taiwan? 36 Malcolm Davis and Charlie Lyons Jones Japan–Australia relations after Covid-19 42 Tomohiko Satake Australia, Korea and Japan: revitalising relationships 46 Tony McCormack North Korea’s missile and nuclear options 51 Malcolm Davis Australia–India relations after Covid-19 56 Aakriti Bachhawat Competence in a crisis: the new marker of soft power in a chaotic world 62 Caitlin Byrne Antarctica: Australia’s forgotten flank 67 Dr Elizabeth Buchanan Multilateralism, Australia and the world China, the United States and the future of the UN system 75 Richard Gowan Post-Covid-19 multilateralism: opportunities and risks for representation, donors and gender equality 80 Amy Haddad Multilateralism in crisis? 84 Genevieve Feely After Covid-19 Volume 2: Australia, the region and multilateralism i Nuclear sharing in a post-Covid world 88 Rod Lyon Is there a place for Europe in Australia’s post-Covid-19 outlook? 91 Bart Hogeveen A unified approach to China: opportunities for EU–Australia partnership 97 Alexandra Pascoe and Daria Impiombato Australia and Africa: building people-to-people links 101 Santilla Chingaipe Keeping the peace: disruptions to UN peacekeeping 105 Lisa Sharland Indo-Pakistan rivalry: business as usual, if not worse 110 Khemta Hannah Jose Security, technology and diplomacy Women in national security: seizing the opportunity 117 Gai Brodtmann Academic freedom and the future of Australia’s university sector 122 Louisa Bochner and Genevieve Feely Chinese soft power 127 Vicky Xu After Covid-19: Propaganda 132 Nathan Ruser Covid-19 will accelerate the surveillance state 136 Kelsey Munro and Danielle Cave Ready, willing and able: national cyber resilience for Australia’s small businesses 143 Max Heinrich CSM, RAAF (Retd) and Alison Howe Conclusion 149 Michael Shoebridge and Lisa Sharland About the authors 151 Acronyms and abbreviations 153 ii ASPI STRATEGY Introduction Lisa Sharland and Michael Shoebridge The global Covid-19 crisis continues to dominate the international strategic environment, fuelling uncertainty about the future. The only thing that’s certain is that this pandemic will be with us for some time yet, meaning that Australia, like other nations, needs to be prepared to manage its response to the pandemic while simultaneously focusing on the future. Since we approached the contributing authors to write for this second volume in May, there’s been a second wave in Victoria, New Zealand has gone back into a temporary lockdown in parts of the country, and the US has experienced a resurgence in different states and a death toll now over 191,000 as it approaches a presidential election. Those developments remind us that the pandemic will continue to be with us for months, if not years, until a vaccine is discovered and globally administered. Covid-19 and the responses to it will also continue to have a disproportionate impact on different segments of the population—such as women, youth, and racial and ethnic minorities—well beyond the crisis phase. This volume of After Covid-19 has built on volume 1 and continued to take a longer term view by looking at some policy settings and identifying likely challenges and opportunities, particularly as they relate to Australia’s role in the region and the multilateral system. The pandemic has simultaneously highlighted the flaws in and need for multilateralism. While some multilateral institutions, such as the UN Security Council, have been crippled with indecision due to geopolitical rivalries, others, such as the World Health Assembly, managed to adopt a resolution on an investigation into the origins of the pandemic. Indeed, those developments highlight the valuable role that Australia can have in engaging in such processes. As Foreign Minister Marise Payne noted in June, multilateral organisations ‘create rules that are vital to Australia’s security, interests, values and prosperity’. At the same time, as this publication has been under development, there’s been greater debate about Australia’s shifting strategic environment. The release of Australia’s Defence Strategic Update 2020 in July underscored how rapidly the global security environment is shifting, particularly within our region. Those developments, coupled with the challenge of Covid-19, mean that Australia will need to invest and work closely with partners in the region to counter those concerns and support responses to build resilient institutions. In the first volume of After Covid-19, John Coyne and Peter Jennings noted that ‘This pandemic has created a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for our nation to critically review and reset many of our policy assumptions.’ While that remains the case, as the contributing authors in this volume note, that will require us to move beyond assumptions about the global strategic environment and Australia’s role in the world, to reimagine what the world and Australia’s place in it might be as we move beyond the pandemic. We offer our thanks to the contributing authors, who offered their analysis and reflections, and to Steve Clark and Emily French, who made the delivery of this volume possible. After Covid-19 Volume 2: Australia, the region and multilateralism 1 Australia and the region South Pacific perils and positives Graeme Dobell The coronavirus pandemic is a first-order threat in the hierarchy of risks and challenges confronting the South Pacific. The perils the islands face mean Australia faces core questions about its interests and influence in the region. Add to the interests equation the values Australia shares with the South Pacific—the many positives of the islands—vividly expressed in Scott Morrison’s embrace of the Pacific ‘family’ (Morrison 2018). Here’s my ordering of the hierarchy of South Pacific challenges: 1. human security and state security 2. climate change 3. natural disasters 4. natural resources 5. China. Consider them in reverse order of importance … 5. China Canberra judges that China wants to become the dominant strategic power in the islands, with military reach and bases to match. This went from a matter of debate to the Canberra consensus about three years ago. Australia today sees its strategic interests in the South Pacific directly challenged by China. Not since World War II and the Cold War have the islands been so strategically relevant. The region and world are waking to the China challenge. In our near region, it’s manageable. That’s good, because China offers plenty of upside, as the Australian economy attests.