China’s use of coercive statecraft against Australia — disinformation, economic threats, covert foreign interference etc. — is and will remain the day to day reality of international affairs in our region. It’s not the product of a mishandled... 1/ abc.net.au/news/2020-06-1…
...China relationship; it is the way Beijing seeks to advance its interests against countries, like Australia, that do not comply with its preferences and are active in defending their own. So we must approach this grey zone challenge in a bipartisan and whole of society way. 2/
The government is right to pursue multiple internal and external groupings to boost Australia’s resilience and reduce our dependence on China where possible. Five eyes is one promising venue for promoting new tech and R&D partnerships while protecting this from Chinese ties. 3/
Crucially, as my colleague @BrendanTN_ has argued, the US must and can do a lot more to facilitate the role of allies, like the Five Eyes, into its own national technology and innovation base. Failing to do this restricts alk of our ability to collectively boost resilience. 4/
Finally, on Chinese foreign students being used as leverage by Beijing there’s a potential role for Five Eyes too. One option: an agreement by all five to not permit a surge in Chinese enrolments in their own country as a result of a coercive decline in enrolments in any other 5/
This would be the logic of collective resilience at work. Obviously, much thought on details and how to maintain competition at the same time is needed but the basic contours if this approach is the kind of thinking we will need to explore in this era of competitive statecraft 6/
We have explored some of the above ideas in our annual @USSC @PacificForum Indo-Pacific Deterrence Dialogue. See the latest report here and stay tuned for more work in this space from our researchers 7/7 ussc.edu.au/analysis/opera…
