... relations with other countries and international organizations within and beyond the region, and major guidelines for financing security activities.
The Defense Issues Paper explains the need for the new defense strategy by the swift transformation of the Asia-Pacific region. The government is ready to raise military spending to two percent of GDP in as little as three years, finally topping AUD 32 billion (currently AUD 27 billion, i.e. 1.8 percent of the GDP). The two-percent figure will be maintained ...
Will economics trump politics?
Last Wednesday I delivered a paper on the issues and challenges facing the ASEAN Economic Community, which should be operational in 2015. I spoke guardedly of what lies ahead for the region given that goods, services, investment and skilled labor will transect 10 jurisdictions, rendering the usual attributes of the nation state all but obsolescent
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The Asia Pacific region is today a key focal point for the world’s three political and economic giants: the...
... and Asia’s Choice”, with the 2014 theme being “Asia Transforms: Identifying New Dynamics.” By the invitation of organizers of the Forum, RIAC Director General Andrey Kortunov made a
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Cooperation for Security in Asia-Pacific
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Conference Programme
Andrey Kortunov: Security cooperation in the Asia-Pacific
A typical discussion of the security agenda in the Asia-Pacific region almost inevitably involves making comparisons between Asia and Europe with a logical ...
... security across the entire region. The Pentagon believes that any potential conflict can only be deterred through a multilateral security architecture based on ASEAN mechanisms, with Australia, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia and India as key actors. Asia-Pacific countries generally seek to establish regional norms and strive for a stable military balance. However, according to US defense analysts, the key source of instability there is the North Korean nuclear programme, which serves as the main ...