I couldn't resist linking to this item at Foreign Policy's Passport, which notes that Australia's navy is struggling for recruits.Why?It can't compete with Western Australian mining companies that are expanding operations to take advantage of growing Chinese demand (and accordingly, rising prices) for commodities.This may be the single best illustration of why the simplistic, "arc …
Tag: US-Australia-Japan-India cooperation
The three stooges
At the tail end of the APEC summit, Messrs. Abe, Bush, and Howard met for a much-vaunted security summit that came in the wake of the US-India-Australia-Japan-Singapore exercises in the Indian Ocean (the "quad" + one?).Commentator Richard Halloran believes that the quad is shaping up to be a "informal defensive pact based on shared national …
In Asia’s future, flexibility first
In the week since Prime Minister Abe called for an organization of democracies that would implicitly encircle China, his proposal has been met with deafening silence from the capitals of the countries that would be involved, illustrating just how out of touch with new realities the prime minister's foreign policy thinking is.As I've argued before, …
Does an "Asian NATO" serve US interests?
Prime Minister Abe has made his speech in New Delhi, visited the descendants of Subhas Chandra Bose and Radhabinod Pal (the judge who criticized the Tokyo tribunal from before it began, making him a favorite of Japan's right), and is now off to Malaysia on the last leg of his Asian tour.But what of the …
Tobias S. Harris 