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11. Southeast Asian-Pacific Frameworks: What Do They Frame and What Work Do They Do?

Author:
Donald Emmerson
Publication Date:
10-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
Although these pages feature Southeast Asia, our topic is spatially far-flung. Pictured as sets of participating countries highlighted on a map of the world, regional and interregional frameworks that include some or all of Southeast Asia run a vast and complex gamut of partly concentric and partly overlapping yet distinctive and sometimes changing memberships or attendances. MALSINDO spans three contiguous Southeast Asian states. ASEAN encompasses all ten. ASEM is inter-regional. FPDA offers a fourth pattern, linking as it does two adjacent Southeast Asian countries with three distant partners—two in the far-southern Pacific, one in far-western Europe. The hub-and-spoke dialogue arrangements known collectively as ASEAN Plus One illustrate a fifth schema.
Topic:
International Relations and Diplomacy
Political Geography:
Asia, Australia/Pacific, and Southeast Asia

12. Geeing up the G-20

Author:
Mark P Thirlwell and Dr. Malcolm Cook
Publication Date:
05-2006
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Lowy Institute for International Policy
Abstract:
Globalisation implies a big increase in the payoffs from successful cross-border economic cooperation. Yet the main international institutional mechanisms designed to facilitate such cooperation, the G7 and the IMF, are not up to it. Both the G7’s membership and the IMF’s governance structure significantly under-represent several key players in the modern global economy, a potentially fatal handicap when it comes to tackling some of the most pressing challenges now facing policymakers. Moreover, neither gives Australia a permanent seat at the top table.
Topic:
International Relations, Development, and Economics
Political Geography:
Australia/Pacific

13. Fuelling confrontation: Iran, the US and the oil weapon

Author:
Anthony Bubalo, Mark P Thirlwell, and Dr. Michael Fullilove
Publication Date:
05-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Lowy Institute for International Policy
Abstract:
The Iranian nuclear issue has entered a critical phase. A draft UN Security Council resolution has been circulated that could pave the way for political and economic sanctions. Should these fail to change Iran's position, the likelihood of military action will grow towards the end of 2006 and into 2007. At the same time, high oil prices have bolstered Iran's ability to defy demands that it give up uranium enrichment and provide greater transparency with respect to its nuclear program. Given current supply, demand and price indicators, oil provides Iran with a very potent weapon with which to respond to punitive measures. However, the economic and political fallout produced by the use of the oil in this way makes it likely Tehran would use such a weapon cautiously.
Topic:
International Relations, Energy Policy, and Nuclear Weapons
Political Geography:
United States, Iran, Middle East, and Australia/Pacific

14. The testament of Solomons: RAMSI and international state-building

Author:
Dr. Michael Fullilove
Publication Date:
03-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Lowy Institute for International Policy
Abstract:
The phenomenon of state failure and its remedies constitute a growth area of international politics, partly because of the recognition that state failure generates security threats and partly because it is so very difficult. This Lowy Institute Analysis identifies the critical elements of one small but significant case, about which there is growing international interest: the Australian-led Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI). The background to the mission was the long-standing tension between the peoples of the two main islands, Guadalcanal and Malaita, which developed in the period 1998-2002 into militant violence which then mutated into widespread criminality and thuggery. Acting on a request from Honiara, the Australian Government and its regional partners elected to lead a new kind of statebuilding intervention.
Topic:
International Relations and Development
Political Geography:
Australia/Pacific

15. U.S.-Australia Alliance Relations: An Australian View

Author:
Paul Dibb
Publication Date:
08-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Abstract:
Australia is America's oldest friend and ally in the Asia-Pacific region. The two countries fought alongside each other in World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the 1991 Gulf War, and most recently in Afghanistan and Iraq. The closeness of the two nations today is without precedent in the history of the relationship. Australia is now America's second closest ally in the world, after the United Kingdom.
Topic:
International Relations and Defense Policy
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, Iraq, United Kingdom, Vietnam, Australia/Pacific, and Korea

16. Silencing Guns: Local Perspectives on Small Arms and Armed Violence in Rural Pacific Islands Communities

Author:
Emile LeBrun and Robert Muggah
Publication Date:
06-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Small Arms Survey
Abstract:
At a time when the funding for weapons reduction and armed conflict prevention work is at an all-time high and still growing, the lack of accessible, standard evaluative tools is becoming more and more conspicuous. Though this partly stems from a debate within the disarmament community as to what the right set of measures should be, it is also a reaction to the practical difficulty—in some cases, outright impossibility—of collecting quantitative data on armed violence, especially in rural areas. Clearly, there is a great need for alternative means of assessing and reporting on the impacts of both small arms availability and misuse, and efforts to reduce those impacts.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, International Relations, and Arms Control and Proliferation
Political Geography:
Australia/Pacific and Island

17. Australians speak 2005: public opinion and foreign policy

Author:
Ivan Cook
Publication Date:
03-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Lowy Institute for International Policy
Abstract:
Australians feel positive and self-confident about Australia's place in the world, but we also have a realistic sense of our limitations and vulnerabilities. A vast majority believe Australia is 'a good international citizen' (82%), 'important in Asia' (82%), and 'well-placed to succeed in a competitive world' (79%), while few agree with the notion that we are 'unimportant in global politics' (37%). But three quarters of respondents also think we are 'vulnerable to external threats' (76%), and while the population is evenly split on whether we are 'independent minded', 65% think we are 'a follower not a leader'.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, and Defense Policy
Political Geography:
Asia, Australia, and Australia/Pacific

18. Sensible climate policy

Author:
Warwick McKibbin
Publication Date:
02-2005
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Lowy Institute for International Policy
Abstract:
The Kyoto Protocol enters into force on February 16, 2005. Nearly thirteen years after negotiations began at the Rio Earth Summit and seven years after the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated, this should be a cause for global celebration. Yet the basic tenets on which the Kyoto Protocol are built are flawed and leave it worryingly vulnerable to failure. Already proponents of Kyoto are looking for alternatives “beyond Kyoto”. It is no accident that it has taken so long for the Protocol to enter into force with so few of the major future greenhouse emitters effective participants.
Topic:
International Relations, Energy Policy, and Environment
Political Geography:
Australia/Pacific

19. Whose Oceania? Contending Visions of Community in Pacific Region-building

Author:
Greg Fry
Publication Date:
10-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Australian National University Department of International Relations
Abstract:
In the past year the 'war against terror' and perceptions of state failure within the post-colonial Pacific have sparked an Australian-led initiative to deepen and widen regional integration in Oceania. This paper argues that behind the seeming unanimity of the 2004 Auckland Declaration and agreement by Pacific Islands Forum leaders on a 'Pacific vision' and a 'Pacific plan' are several contending visions of regional community, and of community-building. The political and moral legitimacy of each vision depends significantly on how these visions answer the question of who is Oceania for, and who has the right to speak for it? The seemingly dominant vision (that of the Australian government) is problematic in this regard. Past practice of Pacific region-building suggests that it may therefore not receive the legitimacy it requires for sustainability. This therefore is in danger of producing an unintended consequence: the replication at a regional level of the legitimacy problem associated with the so-called failing state.
Topic:
International Relations, Development, Government, and Politics
Political Geography:
Australia/Pacific

20. The Politics of Environmental Policy with a Himalayan Example

Author:
Piers Blaikie and Joshua Muldavin
Publication Date:
06-2004
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
How we arrive at knowledge—and how we draw on knowledge to make policy—have been the subject of vigorous debate and analysis. Simple models of expertise and action are gradually yielding to a more complex vision of how truth speaks to power and power talks back. The Himalayan region—where scientists, statesmen, and citizens confront a unique set of environmental challenges and political legacies—provides a powerful case study. For more than a century, it was believed that over-use by local farmers and pastoralists threatened fragile mountain and river environments. Beginning in the colonial era and continuing into the present, governments have strictly curtailed traditional land-use practices. In the 1980s, scholars began to question the science on which those restrictive laws were based. But new science has not, in most cases, led to new policy. This disconnect inspires questions about the nature of both science and policy, their influence on each other, and whether each could benefit from greater openness to the insights of people who fall outside the narrow roles of expert and politician.
Topic:
International Relations and Development
Political Geography:
Asia, Australia/Pacific, and Southeast Asia