Stop the World

Today we speak with China military scholar Elsa B. Kania about China’s military modernisation. How good is the People’s Liberation Army? Where has it progressed? Where is it still deficient? And the big ones: can it match the US and how ready is it to take Taiwan by force if Xi Jinping gives the order?Much of Elsa’s recent work has focussed on the role of technology in the PLA’s capabilities, doctrine and command structure. She talks about the role of artificial intelligence, the concepts of informatisation and intelligentisation, and the Chinese view of the ethics of automating lethal force. She also talks about China’s military rehearsals around Taiwan, its concept of “peace disease”, and China’s overall strategy with its growing military assertiveness.Elsa is a PhD candidate in Harvard University's Department of Government, where she’s just recently defended her dissertation, "China's Command Revolution." Her research focuses on China's military strategy, defense innovation, and emerging capabilities. She is an Adjunct Senior Fellow with the Center for a New American Security's Technology and National Security Program, and she was also a Fulbright Specialist and Non-Resident Fellow with the International Cyber Policy Centre at ASPI.

Julia Ebner is a leading researcher in the area of extremism, radicalisation and conspiracy theories. She’s spent time undercover among incels, anti-vaxxers and neo-nazis, and combines this brave reportage with a deep understanding of politics.In today’s episode, Julia explains the unsettling trend of kooky and dangerous ideas making their way into the political mainstream, as fringe ideas are repackaged as successful populist weapons. She talks about conspiracy theories such as QAnon, the idea of “identity fusion” which brings together people with a wide range of anti-establishment grievances, the psychology behind conspiracy myths, the anxieties that modern society creates, and the state of US politics.Finally she talks solutions, promoting four elegant principles of “critical thinking, lateral reading, self awareness and emotional intelligence” — a useful lesson for us all.

Bethany Allen explains her investigation into a British university’s joint venture campus in China and the risks of critical tech collaboration. Recently an ASPI team led by our head of China investigations and analysis Bethany Allen published a report on a joint venture university campus between Xi’an Jiaotong University in China and Liverpool University in Britain. Their findings raise serious questions about research collaboration into sensitive technologies, including those with military applications.  In today’s episode, Bethany talks through the findings, including the joint university’s partnerships and close links with entities sanctioned by Britain, the US, the EU and other nations for supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and helping with China’s military modernisation. She explains the risks that these partnerships create, how widespread they might be, and what more needs to be done by universities themselves by way of due diligence into their partnerships, but also the need for governments to set clearer rules and guidelines about what defines unacceptable risk. Read the article A British university’s technology entanglements with Russia and China, by Bethany Allen, Danielle Cave and Adam Ziogas.

Executive director Justin Bassi and resident senior fellow David Wroe discuss issues of the week, including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s visit to China, US President Donald Trump’s overdue but welcome change of heart on support for Ukraine, and the clashes in Syria that prompted Israel to intervene on behalf of the Druze population and strike Syrian targets including in Damascus.They talk about risks that Australia becomes once again vulnerable to economic coercion despite lessons from the recent past, and that we send Beijing the signal that we are prioritising short-term economics over security. They discuss their tentative hopes that Trump might hold to his changed position that Russia finally needs to be pressured to come to the peace table. And they unpack their views on the complex flareup in southern Syria during the week that has reportedly left hundreds dead.

This week on Stop the World, we were delighted to host Sir Stephen Lovegrove, the UK Prime Minister’s special representative on AUKUS. Dave speaks to Sir Stephen about the UK and US reviews of AUKUS, what success looks like for pillars one and two and where we need to move more quickly, including focusing on specific capabilities in pillar two.It’s a frank conversation and Sir Stephen conveys a vigilant confidence that AUKUS is on a good track provided it gets the attention and nurturing that it deserves. He describes AUKUS as the most monumental strategic partnership in decades and, although it will evolve over time,  with commitment from all three countries, the partnership will succeed.

For a brief spell after the Cold War, the idea of an international community that would coordinate and intervene in conflicts for the global good felt like an aspiration on the move. It feels distant today, but all is not lost. Comfort Ero, the President and CEO of the International Crisis Group, gives us her take on the toughest conflicts plaguing humanity in recent times. Rather than feeling dispirited and paralysed by dysfunction at the global level, we should concentrate on tackling each crisis with the tools available and making a difference one step at a time, whatever it takes. It’s a tough but ultimately inspiring message as Comfort talks about some of the conflicts that rarely trouble the front pages—Sudan, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo—as well as the bigger picture amid the collapse of the rules-based order. Practicality and pragmatism, not magic multilateral wands, are what organisations like the Crisis Group have to work with.

Seasoned diplomat and politician Jüri Luik, who has one of the more impressive CVs we’ve ever seen, gives us his readout on last week’s NATO summit in the Hague and the perspective from the Baltic nations that border Russia to the north of Ukraine.Estonia has an impressive defence spending record, currently at 3.4 percent of its GDP, with a plan to raise that to 5.4 percent starting next year. Jüri discusses shifts already underway in NATO, further modernisation plans, the trajectory of the war in Ukraine and the rising levels of public concern about Russia’s intentions towards the rest of Europe.He also discusses the realities of the US presence in Europe and how to manage its gradual withdrawal. Along the way, Jüri offers up an interesting fact about Portugal.

In a huge week of international news, NATO members agreed to lift their defence spending to 5 percent of GDP. Today’s guest, Canadian career defence and intelligence official Raquel Garbers, has some strikingly clear views on the value of the spending increases but also the way they need to be paired with a stronger focus on economic warfare by hostile states, particularly China.  Raquel, who is currently a visiting executive at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, talks about the rationale for more defence investment, Canadian and Australian public opinion about military spending, the two countries’ strategic circumstances and how Donald Trump plays into Canadian thinking. Raquel shares her deep concerns about Chinese economic warfare against open economies such as Canada’s and Australia’s, the need for democratic nations to work together through industrial policies such as friendshoring, and how Nato members — and anyone else including Australia who might be looking to up their defence spending— need to ensure a defence boost doesn’t ultimately play into China’s economic warfare campaign.

Donald Trump’s calculated gamble in bombing Iran’s key nuclear facilities sparked a series of extraordinary outbursts this week from the US administration amid conflicting assessments of the damage that the US strikes did to the regime’s nuclear program. Trump meanwhile was feted in a downright theatrical fashion in the Hague as NATO leaders gathered to agree on defence spending increases. David Wroe and ASPI executive director Justin Bassi discuss these developments with a view to how policymakers including allied leaders might approach dealing with Trump. When might the best course of action be to roll with his personality and identify opportunities amid the bombast, and when do people with influence, including his own administration, need to steer him away from his personal and political grievances towards good policymaking?  With a weakened but not defeated Iran considering its next steps, and with questions about the extent to which its nuclear program has been set back, telling Trump straight up that there’s still work to do might avert a future catastrophe.

Please note, this episode was filmed as a video interview and is available on ASPI's Youtube channel here: https://youtu.be/sg32zmJKk70In today’s episode of Stop the World, we hear from Emmanuel Bautista, a retired Philippines general who served as Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces in 2013 and 2014 and who spoke at ASPI’s recent defence conference on preparedness and resilience. General Bautista gives his frank views on the Philippines efforts to stand firm against China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea, the opportunities for deeper defence cooperation between the Philippines and Australia, and the merits of an Asian security pact, which some influential strategists have proposed.He talks about the Philippines’ own military evolution and the enormous importance of rules to encourage stability in the Indo-Pacific.