In the latest stop in his regional tour, Foreign Minister Okada Katsuya visited Australia for talks with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Foreign Minister Stephen Smith.Most of the headlines have focused on the exchange of words over whaling — the polite phrasing seems to be that Okada and Rudd had a "frank discussion", and Rudd …
Tag: Kevin Rudd
Middle-power diplomacy in New York
It may be too early to declare that the Obama administration and the Hatoyama cabinet have successfully managed the transition from LDP to DPJ, but this week was clearly a step in the right direction.At the start of the week, Foreign Minister Okada Katsuya and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met in New York City, …
Asia’s future is in the hands of its middle powers
Hugh White, a professor at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, has been waging a determined fight against Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's Asian regional vision in a series of articles and blog posts.The crux of his critique can be found in the title of a speech he gave in Tokyo earlier this month: …
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What if the Australian prime minister came and nobody noticed?
Is there a news blackout on Prime Minister Rudd's visit to Japan?He made a speech on climate change in Kyoto and visited Hiroshima on Monday, and neither Yomiuri nor Asahi have articles online about his activities.It's possible that they have articles in the print edition that aren't online, but if that's the case, why did …
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Rudd’s vision
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, arriving in Japan Sunday for a four-day visit, delivered a foreign policy address on Wednesday of last week that has sparked a major debate in Australia about the future of Asian multilateralism.In the speech, Mr. Rudd laid out his vision for an Asia-centered Australian foreign policy that sounds remarkably like …
Australia and Japan in the same boat
After being criticized at home (and, supposedly, in Tokyo) for failing to visit Japan on a swing through Asia in March, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will be in Tokyo this week for meetings with Prime Minister Fukuda.Andrew Shearer, a fellow at Australia's Lowy Institute for International Policy, has an excellent op-ed in The Australian …
Japan passing, Australian style
Tom Conley and Michael Heazle, writing in The Australian, look back to the 1990s to criticize Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's travel itinerary.In addition to haranguing Japan on whaling, they argueRudd has added insult to injury by snubbing Japan on his coming world tour. The Prime Minister seemingly can find the time to traverse the entire …
New wind in Asia?
Is it me, or in a few short months has the mood in Asia changed?Remember Sydney in early September? A bedraggled Prime Minister Abe, fresh from proclaiming a new era of cooperation among Asian democracies in India, went to Sydney for APEC, where he met with President Bush and Australia's John Howard. It was at …
Asia’s future seen in Sydney
At the OPEC APEC summit in Sydney, the leaders of APEC's twenty-one member states have been holding bilateral talks in the run-up to the final summit this weekend. I don't put much stock in APEC as an organization that will be able to deliver concrete results — it's simply too big and too diverse — …
Tobias S. Harris 