It is striking to hear an Indian analyst identify why India should take a leading role in cooperating with China in the Indian Ocean, a line contrary to some of the more defensive and fearful arguments coming out of New Delhi's security commentariat. 

'The Indian Ocean: Navigating Beyond Rivalry' was the topic of the Lowy Institute's fourth annual Australia-India Strategic Lecture, held last week in Perth. The speaker was Siddharth Varadarajan, strategic affairs editor of The Hindu newspaper and one of India's sharpest foreign policy commentators and thinkers.

We will be posting the full text of the lecture on the Lowy Institute website soon, but in the meantime, here's an interview I recorded with Mr Varadarajan, capturing some of the key arguments as well as some perceptive thoughts on the Australia-India relationship.

Whether one entirely agrees with Varadarajan or not, there are some refreshing counterpoints here and in the longer lecture to claims aired famously last year in an over-rated essay by Robert Kaplan that the region is doomed to rivalry.

I should add that holding the lecture in Perth was a deliberate step by the Lowy Institute towards developing a more active profile in Western Australia, a state which, with its massive resource exports, has a more direct stake than any other part of Australia in economic and strategic ties with Asian powers. 

We acknowledge the support of the Australia-India Council in bringing the speaker to Australia, and of the Australian Institute for International Affairs (WA branch) and Australia-India Business Council (WA chapter) in helping to make the well-attended lecture such a success.

Some commentators are being too gentle on former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's foreign policy legacy.

Or is it too soon to speak of a legacy? Rumours and hints that he will replace Stephen Smith as foreign minister continue to circulate – and if this does indeed transpire, we will see a strenuous bid for policy continuity, with all the mixed results that will entail.

The very fact that Rudd brought to the leadership his own substantial knowledge and experience in international affairs underlines how disappointing many of the outcomes turned out to be. Graeme Dobell is right to emphasise Australia's admission to the G20 as the redeeming international accomplishment of Rudd's prime ministership. It will always be an open question whether this was something that only Rudd could have achieved.

I have to differ, however, with Andrew O'Neil's assessment that one of new PM Julia Gillard's biggest challenges will be 'ensuring that she maintains her predecessor's impressive management of Australia's key relationships in Asia and Washington'. Yes, Rudd and Obama hit it off as fellow centre-left intellectuals with big ideas. The alliance was a positive story for Rudd – and the Australian public agrees. But Gillard is well poised to manage the alliance, and one of her first moves as leader was to underline her commitment to this cornerstone of Australian security.

But Asia? Here Rudd's diplomacy was at its most bewildering and disappointing.

Sometimes what is left unsaid is more profound than what is said. This was very much the case at the 2010 Asian security dialogue held at the Shangri-La Hotel in Singapore at the weekend. For me, there were at least three palpable and troubling silences.

Silence number one: extraordinarily, China thought it could get away with saying precisely nothing about the sinking of the South Korean ship Cheonan, now internationally proven to have been by a North Korean torpedo. General Ma Xiaotian made no mention of this in his public address.

When pressed in question time, he instead tried to focus the room's attention on the Gaza flotilla bloodshed; awful, but half a world away. Nor did General Ma make any effort to address directly the fact that the PLA's decision to suspend military dialogue with the US in recent months will raise the risks of confrontation and miscalculation during what are set to be tense times ahead in Asia.

It is welcome, of course, that Beijing these days is willing to field a senior and articulate general to address a regional security gathering. But the gulf between Ma's obfuscations and US Defence Secretary Gates' plain talking was disappointingly stark and does not bode well. In nine years of Shangri-La dialogues, this was the first with the faintest whiff of new Cold War.

I had an uncomfortable moment last week while being interviewed by a Japanese journalist seeking Australian views on the controversy over the US airbase at Futenma.

No doubt the Australian security establishment dearly wants to see the US maintain a strong defence presence in Asia. So too – as the new Lowy poll indicates – does a growing majority of Australians spooked by, among other things, the implications of rising Chinese military power. Yet it felt awkward, not to mention hypocritical, for me to say that Australia would want Japan to keep hosting US forces on its soil – even though this is hardly something we are offering.

If Australians are becoming more positive (and needy) about America's strategic role in Asia, and want to encourage this to endure at a time when some other allies seem to be having mixed feelings, where might this logic ultimately lead? Is it really too early to begin contemplating what for decades has been unthinkable: a US military presence on Australian soil?

Nobody is seriously talking about it yet, but we could be seeing the first intimations that a day will come when a durable alliance with Washington demands nothing less. Then it will be much easier for us to preach to Japan about how to be a good ally.

• Just a few years ago the wisdom among quite a few China experts was that the odds were against the PLA Navy seeking a serious power-projection role, given that this would be such a departure from Chinese military tradition and 'strategic culture'. Now long-range Chinese naval missions are the subject of mainstream and high-profile news reporting. And the open debate in Beijing is not whether to project maritime power, but how: submarines or aircraft carriers? 
• If I seem to pay inordinate attention to China-India strategic relations, it is partly because this strikes me as such an under-examined 'dyad' (as international relations scholars like to say). The denial that there is a problem – especially China's insistence that India is not a strategic rival — carries its own dangers. Which is why it is such welcome news that the two rising Asian powers have recently agreed to a security hotline between their leaders – a level of crisis communication that eludes the Washington-Beijing relationship.
• I've commented elsewhere about Australian Opposition leader Tony Abbott's recent national security speech, the good and the bad of it. I'm still baffled why he did not try to capitalise on Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's non-attendance at President Obama's Nuclear Security Summit, and opted instead for a promise to 'disband' the Australian-Japanese commission on nuclear disarmament (odd, given that its main task was concluded with the launch of its main report last December). Abbott can hardly object to the prevention of nuclear terrorism.
• Looks as if the recent sinking of a South Korean corvette – with heavy loss of life – was an act of war by the North. Nobody is suggesting that escalation is likely. But nor can we pretend that peace on the Korean Peninsula is just Seoul's or Washington's problem. If you are from Australia, Canada, Turkey, Colombia, Ethiopia, France, Britain, South Africa, Belgium, Greece, Thailand, the Netherlands, New Zealand or Luxembourg, then strictly speaking the Korean War – which ended with an armistice that Pyongyang claims no longer to honour — is your country's unfinished business too. 
• Still, if major hostilities ever did break out again across the Demilitarized Zone, South Korea could claim at least one lethal new ally.

Some surprises in Indian media coverage of Australia this week, one welcome, one anything but – and both by the same journalist. 

Dileep Padgaonkar, a veteran writer with the Times of India, seems to have been on a visit down under recently. He produced this extraordinary piece offering a different angle on the attacks on Indian students. There is some blunt talk here, of the kind Australian voices would be reluctant to express publicly. I cannot vouch for its accuracy in all respects, but the piece as a whole serves as useful balance to much of the reportage claiming racism to be behind the violence.

Yet within days the same author followed up with a column alleging that Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has some secret agenda of independence for Kashmir, which somehow explains such decisions as withholding uranium exports to India. Absolutely no evidence or source is offered. I have no idea which confused soul in the Australian or Indian foreign policy commentariat might have put this idea into the good Mr Padgaonkar's head.

But the idea is not just downright weird; it is groundless.

President Obama has just released the long-awaited US Nuclear Posture Review; world leaders are due to meet in a few days to talk about preventing nuclear terrorism and proliferation; a new START treaty between the US and Russia will soon be signed; and a crucial five-yearly Review Conference for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty will take place next month.

All of which makes this a perfect time for the Lowy Institute to launch its new blog column, Nuclear Reactions. 

In this column, Lowy Institute research staff and a widening range of international expert contributors will offer original insights on the big challenges in reducing nuclear dangers: the disarmament and non-proliferation agenda, new approaches to arms control – especially in Asia – and the implications of the global revival of interest in nuclear energy. And, despite the title, we won't be purely reactive: we will respond to key events but also try to anticipate and influence the debate.

I'll open with a few immediate reactions to the US Nuclear Posture Review and its context. You can read the full text here. 

• The US and Russia are on the verge of finalising a treaty to dramatically reduce numbers of deployed strategic weapons, but here's some less inspiring news on nukes: Kevin Rudd has missed a chance to send signals to Washington that Australia would accept – even endorse – a more relaxed US nuclear weapons posture, for instance a No First Use policy.
• Still on nukes: some reasons to worry about Asia's nuclear future, and the obstacles to dialogue among the major powers. (Incidentally, this is the first in a new series of Lowy Institute lectures in Melbourne.)
• US and allied strategists are understandably concerned about China's ability to target US aircraft carriers with a 'new' anti-ship ballistic missiles. But in this fascinating piece (subscription needed to read the whole thing), former US Navy captain Sam Tangredi suggests the threat is not so new – and that there is plenty that can be done to reduce it. (By the way, although the author is no dove, he does not see US nuclear first-strike threats as part of the solution.)
• Turning to non-state threats, I've belatedly been guided to this important speech by India's Home Minister, from last December, in which he outlines the huge challenge India faces in fixing its counter-terrorism capacity after the debacle of Mumbai. I'm glad he's on the case – but it is disturbingly clear that most of these changes will be far from complete when the Commonwealth Games open in New Delhi this October.

• The recent US Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) emphasised the need for a new 'AirSea Battle' strategy to deal with growing Chinese and Iranian maritime anti-access capabilities. Andrew Krepinevich explains the why in this new paper. As for the how, you'll need to wait for the sequel.
• Still on the QDR (which went largely unreported in the Australian media) here is one aspect that drew surprisingly little public attention: a fairly blunt commitment to developing capabilities and plans for intervening in failing states in possession of weapons of mass destruction. As it says on page 35, the US military will need to be able to 'locate and secure WMD and WMD components' in situations where 'responsible state control' is at risk.  Names are diplomatically avoided, but this basically means potential intervention in Pakistan and North Korea. The good news is that the US military recognises the need to prepare for such scenarios, and is training for them. The bad news is that such scenarios are not fanciful.
• Australia and other US partners rightly worry about the growing per-unit cost of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. But what if India became an additional — and presumably big — buyer? It is certainly not being ruled out.
• Also on India, the recent Bangalore Air Show (pictured) was the venue for arms manufacturers to show off their wares to the Indian military. And Russian Prime Minister Putin's visit has also led to new arms deals.
• Still in India: in the lead-up to the October 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, the mass mobilization of paramilitaries and police to guard the Hockey World Cup and cricket's Indian Premier League suggests that India really can protect major sporting events. Whether tourists as well as terrorists will be deterred by this crude style of security — with everything from cameras to coins to water bottles being confiscated at the door — is another matter.

Photo by Flickr user kshgarg, used under a Creative Commons license.

India is smartening up its naval diplomacy in the great maritime game with China. New Delhi is showing signs of a new spirit of cooperation with Beijing in the Indian Ocean, offering to protect Chinese oil shipments or even cooperate with the Chinese Navy.

This is not capitulation. It is cleverness. As I have argued previously, India needs to be on the front foot in building maritime security cooperation in the Indian Ocean, in a way that locks in India's own advantages as being the only great power actually located there. That's why India should have offered last year to refuel China's anti-piracy patrols, rather than letting the French do it at Djibouti. Maybe the Indians were spurred into engagement by their worries about China recently taking a lead role in patrolling a zone in the Gulf of Aden.

Well, better late than never. By making a show of taking the lead in engaging with the Chinese, India can test China's intentions, and weaken China's rationale for a 'string of pearls', in the form of the permanent bases some Chinese analysts are now advocating.

This is not to deny that India might face a direct military threat or wider strategic competition from China in the Indian Ocean. Alongside proactive engagement, India should continue to hedge – asymmetrically, as Admiral Suresh Mehta has wisely argued.

Photo by Flickr user Preters, used under a Creative Commons license.

Amid all the heat and worry over how the student safety crisis is affecting Australia-India relations, here are some angles that deserve more attention:

• The Indian Express, consistently one of India's sharpest newspapers, brings a few breaths of fresh air to the overheated Indian media debate, pointing out that an over-reaction is not in India's interests.
• Maybe India's External Affairs Minister still has a balanced view of the situation after all.
• The Indian High Commissioner to Australia explains her view.
• And the Australian High Commissioner to India explains his.
• Australia — or at least Victoria — certainly has to do a better job of getting accurate information on crime into the public domain.
• One Indian magazine, Outlook, put a downright prejudiced spin on its recent investigation into the student issue. The story itself had a few notes of balance buried within the text, but the front page headline misleadingly screamed 'WHY THE AUSSIES HATE US'. Instead of linking to that piece, which has already had more attention that it deserves, I'd like to bring some prominence to this article, written by an Indian-origin journalist who is actually based in Australia.
• And some even-handed opinion in the Australian press too.
• Finally, since we can all be forgiven for not believing what we read in newspapers, here are the views of some Indian students in Australia, and of some young Australians visiting India.

Australian Defence Minister Senator John Faulkner has a reputation for speaking plainly. Not yesterday, when he told the Seapower 2010 conference that the availability of the nation's Collins class submarine fleet was 'less than optimal'.

When you get below the surface, that actually means our island-continent with vast maritime interests has been reduced to having just one operational submarine.

What an embarrassing contrast to the 12 promised in the current Defence White Paper – not to mention the 18 or 30 which some prominent defence analysts think we need. Thank goodness that the forbidding strategic environment envisaged in the White Paper – great powers poised for military confrontation in the sealanes, or perhaps even contemplating the coercion of Australia — has not yet come to pass.

Yet for all this, the government seems determined to press ahead with its plan to create the Son of Collins, a uniquely Australian boat, meant to be the most potent diesel-electric sub ever made. All the Minister had to say yesterday was to remind us that the RAND corporation had been commissioned to 'examine the nature of the required design capability' and report on whether Australia has the ability to produce this fleet domestically.  (The uncharitable might guess at a one word answer.)

Meanwhile, although the idea of Australia buying submarines off-the-shelf remains off the agenda, that has not discouraged Navantia (already contracted to build much of the country's future surface fleet) from including a model of its Scorpene class submarine at the Pacific 2010 defence expo being held alongside the Seapower conference — just in case.

Photo courtesy of the Royal Ausralian Navy.

An intriguing session at the Seapower 2010 conference in Sydney today involved Chinese and Japanese admirals giving their national perspectives on counter-piracy operations off the coast of Somalia. A promising topic, though alas, they left a lot unsaid. Then again, perhaps that was for the best. If China-Japan security relations can always be as cordial as the public camaraderie of these two sailors – lots of on-stage quips and handshakes – then Asia's future will be peaceful and prosperous. Admittedly, that is a rather large if.

Anyway, I was struck by the slickness and confidence of PLAN Rear Admiral Xiao Xinnian's presentation about Beijing's use of special forces in its anti-piracy patrols off Somalia. He emphasised the fact that these commandos are often placed as guards onboard Chinese merchant vessels for the transit of the Gulf of Aden. What he did not say is whether they have actually done any shooting. It is widely believed that they haven't. So far, for all the big talk, Beijing has been seriously wary about using force as an alternative to paying ransoms. 

Rear Admiral Xiao said positive things about the level of communication and information-sharing between the PLAN and other navies in the counter-piracy patrols, but was less forthcoming when I asked him what lessons China might draw from this for the prevention of incidents-at-sea in East Asia.

Japan's Rear Admiral Izuru Fukumoto, meanwhile, said that 'rule sharing' and confidence-building measures were indeed a positive spinoff from the anti-piracy patrols, noting that the Chinese navy had escorted ships with Japan-bound cargoes and vice versa. Not surprisingly, he did not place much emphasis on the possibility that Japan would have to use force against pirates – instead underlining the presence of Japanese coast guard officers on board Tokyo's destroyers in order to handle arrests which, by law, Japanese military personnel are forbidden from making. 

But his comments still had an undercurrent of national interest. He may not have said it explicitly, but clearly the JMSDF is becoming increasingly experienced and confident at protecting the distant sealanes on which Japan's economy depends.

Photo by Flickr user U.S. Coast Guard, used under a Creative Commons license.

• Latest on the question of whether Japan is comfortable with the US reducing the role of its nuclear weapons in East Asia: the Japanese Foreign Minister denies that Tokyo has a problem with the Washington retiring its nuclear Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles.
• Jaw-jaw or war-war? North Korea's signals are always mixed. The best recent guide to understanding Pyongyang remains this piece by former US Six-Party Talks negotiator Victor Cha in The Washington Quarterly.
• The timing of China's reported anti-ballistic missile test may have been to signal anger with Washington over exporting advanced missile defence batteries to Taiwan, but there are some longer-term strategic and diplomatic messages: China is interested in both anti-satellite capabilities and missile defences. And it sees little benefit in continuing to claim the moral high ground of rejecting the 'militarisation of space'. Oh, and India is getting into the satellite-shooting game too.
• India has a new National Security Adviser, former Foreign Secretary Shiv Shanker Menon. Not before time. New Delhi desperately needs some fresh thinking in fusing its foreign and security policies, as well as someone who will shake up the domestic security apparatus after the debacle of the Mumbai terror attacks. But can he do both?
• Public debate intensifies in India about Afghanistan policy. And two of my favourite Indian strategic analysts – Kanti Bajpai and Nitin Pai — are in very different corners.
• One for our American readers: it is said that Australians always stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the US. But it wasn't always so…

Two events in the past few days – one positive, one negative – have the potential to act as circuit-breakers in the crisis over the welfare of Indian students in Australia.

The negative event was the suggestion by the extremist Shiv Sena Party that Australian cricketers should be banned from Mumbai. Why might this threat actually do some good? I have explored the reasons in more detail in this opinion piece, but the short answer is that most Indians – including many who have been worried about questions of race and safety in Australia – consider the Shiv Sena to be the last people they want on their side. 

This development is at least a reminder that every society has its share of bigots and that irresponsibly accusing entire nations of racism plays into their hands.  

The positive event, meanwhile, was the free public concert by Bollywood maestro A R Rahman in Sydney's Parramatta Park on Saturday night.

This will be remembered as a watershed moment for Indians in Australia. It was both the biggest gathering of the Indian community in this country's history – much of the crowd of tens of thousands comprised people of Indian or South Asian origin – and a dynamic expression of Australia's openness to multiple cultures.

I can attest to all of this because I was lucky enough to be there. The show was broadcast live across the Asia-Pacific by Australia Network and could go a long way in reducing misperceptions that Indians are not welcome in this country.

Admiral Suresh Mehta (pictured, at a 2008 event at the Lowy Institute) has one of the wiser minds in the Indian strategic community. This speech last year was the most sensible and balanced piece of advice on Indian defence policy uttered publicly by a military officer. It has also been one of the most misunderstood. He did not argue that India should not try to protect itself from Chinese power. He argued, rather, that India should adopt a clever strategy of asymmetry – just as China has done against the US.

So why has this former Chief of Navy and Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee (in other words, India's head of the defence force) been sent as High Commissioner to New Zealand? Is he being sidelined, rewarded or both? Somehow I doubt it signals a New Delhi-Wellington strategic axis.

• What is the Royal Australian Navy going to use its great big strategic projection ships for? Are they as much for the Army as the Navy? Go to the Seapower 2010 conference to find out. 
• It's a bad sign for the supposed ruddy health of the Australia-US alliance that the 2007 bilateral defence trade agreement crafted under Howard and Bush still has not made it through Congress. One hopes there will be words about this at the AUSMIN talks next week. Mind you, there were words about it at the last few AUSMIN meetings too. 
• Speaking of AUSMIN, and Hillary Clinton's visit to the region, it is fascinating that she is including a visit to Papua New Guinea. There can only be one fundamental reason: China's growing influence in Port Moresby and the South Pacific more generally. The last time this part of the world was of real strategic significance to Washington was almost seven decades ago. 
• India-China security relations have come under serious strain in the past year. About time they talked about it.
• Vietnam's decision to acquire Russian Kilo submarines is surely entirely understandable given China's naval buildup. This shrill Thai editorial last month seemed to miss that point entirely. That, and any sense of ASEAN solidarity.

Australia's reputation in India — and worldwide — has suffered greatly in the past week. The storm of outrage in the Indian media over the safety of Indian students in Australia has gone global.

The catalyst for this furore has been the murder in Melbourne of a young Indian-born graduate. This was a brutal crime, but there is no proof yet of a racist motive. This has not stopped some Indian media organisations, driven by a mix of commercial sensationalism and heightened national pride, from leaping to conclusions and fanning fear in the Indian diaspora. The young man's cremation in India on Sunday provided another focus  for grief and anger, with the nationalist BJP trying to make political mileage.

And just when the Australian and Indian governments seemed to be making some progress in moderating the bad press — with the Indian Foreign Ministry urging its country's media to show some restraint – two more stories of grievous misadventure involving Indians in Australia seized the headlines.

• Washington is in a muddle over its nuclear weapons: the much-awaited US Nuclear Posture Review has been delayed by a month, presumably to allow more time to resolve deep differences between the Pentagon and the White House over the future of the US arsenal and doctrine. Don't hold your breath for a US No First Use policy.
• South Korea is sending 500 personnel to Afghanistan — a large provincial reconstruction team plus protection. This more than fills the gap left by the humiliating withdrawal of Korean forces after a hostage crisis in 2007, and adds substance to the Lee Myung-Bak Government's claims of a global role for the ROK. Perhaps Seoul may yet become the global ally to Washington that Tokyo, it seems, cannot. 
• Should India expand its security role in Afghanistan, perhaps even sending counter-insurgency forces? The thoughtful Indian foreign policy magazine Pragati is kindling this debate. (The current issue is also worth reading for a piece by my Lowy colleagues Andrew Shearer and Fergus Hanson on what the Chinese people really think of India.)
• Loose lips and Chinese ships: a retired Chinese senior naval officer has called for a Chinese naval supply base in the Gulf of Aden. This looks like yet another trial balloon by Beijing. As this excellent post on World Politics Review notes, the powers-that-be were quick to distance themselves from the idea, or were they? Note that this official Chinese television report says an overseas supply base 'might be an option in the future, but it's not being considered at this time'. Interesting also that the PLA Navy has been using a French facility at Djibouti to resupply its anti-piracy patrols.
• Still on China's anti-piracy efforts, China's state media cannot admit to the Chinese public that a massive ransom had to be paid to Somali pirates to free a Chinese crew. Instead, this China Daily report speaks euphemistically of an 'emergency response procedure'. It seems the PLA Navy lacked confidence in its ability to use force to rescue the sailors, but does not want the Chinese people to know that.

I have abandoned much of my earlier hope that China can be persuaded to apply much more pressure on North Korea to renounce the nuclear weapons path. Arguments like those made by Zhu Feng – despite their excellent, interests-based logic — appear to be on the losing side in the internal Chinese debate over what to do about the errant little brother.

Unfortunately, without an end to North Korea's WMD ambitions, North Asia's nuclear tangle will remain thorny, wicked and an obstacle to global nuclear disarmament.

Still on the subject of bad news, I began the year will a few lingering hopes about the ability of India and China to get proactive in establishing a modus vivendi for security cooperation, including in the Indian Ocean region. But security relations between these two rising giants – never good — have soured badly this year. Read, for instance, this blast in China's state media. Beijing seems keen to keep border differences simmering, not least because it worries that a particular monastery in territory claimed by India might have the right to identify the next Dalai Lama. 

Not sure if it makes for ideal holiday reading, but a list of the best books I've encountered this year would have to begin with the masterpiece I neglected to mention in a recent essay about new books on India. Ramachandra Guha's India After Gandhi is the definitive account of how Indian democracy has evolved and survived. Don't be deterred by its length (as I was – which is why I can only praise this 2007 publication two years later). This is highly readable, engaging and accessible – but with plenty of the colour, spice and sheer detail that characterises India.

Usually I prefer short books. David Malouf's newest novel Ransom brings fresh life to The  Iliad in a bittersweet tale of fatherhood, loss, revenge and atonement, against the backdrop of the original total war. All this character, viscera and geopolitics in just 200 pages.  Homer meets Hemingway.

Photo by Flickr user StrudelMonkey, used under a Creative Commons license.

Forget The (other) Interpreter. Here are two must-see movies for those who love a good dose of international conspiracy with their entertainment. Both are big-screen versions of some of the sharpest British television ever made. Both open in Australia in January. One is a seriously dark tragedy about nasty goings-on in the nuclear underworld. The other is a darkly serious comedy about media spin, wars of choice and the US-UK special relationship. 

Edge of Darkness, in my view the best BBC thriller of all time, has finally made it to cinema (trailer above). I'm not yet sure about the casting of Mel Gibson in the lead role, and have to wonder how a story set in Cold War Britain will survive the transplant to an American setting circa 2009. I'd hate to see too much meddling with the late great Troy Kennedy Martin's dialogue – long before The Sopranos, here was someone who knew that TV scriptwriting could be high art.

It's out, all 294 pages of it: the report of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, sponsored by Australia and Japan, is in the public domain.

The report provides a menu of informed ideas for improving international cooperation at next year's NPT Review Conference and beyond. While some may find the rather wordy style distracting, it amounts to an impressive exercise in consensus-building among policy thinkers from countries such as the US, Japan, China and India. It's also a valuable reality check in identifying the many serious impediments to nuclear abolition.

This blueprint for reducing nuclear dangers has both strengths and flaws. Here are a few initial observations.

Cutting numbers

Sensibly, the report does not pretend nuclear weapons can be abolished overnight, or even in the space of a decade or two. With something like 23,000 nuclear weapons now in existence, even the nominal target of 2,000 by 2025 is at the boundary of the credible.

With real challenges like climate change, China's rise, nuclear proliferation and the fraying of Pakistan dominating Australia's horizons, you would think that the last thing we need is a prolonged diplomatic fight with a largely likeminded country.

Yet, from the tenor of Peter Hartcher's column in today's Sydney Morning Herald, concerning the recent Australian-hosted conference on a prospective Asia-Pacific 'community', a feud with Singapore is brewing.

It's all about membership of a club: who should be in and who should be out of an idealised future summit to discuss regional challenges. Singapore wants to ensure that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) — of which it is a key member — remains at the core of any future process. Australia seems to have a more open mind. Not, you would have thought, the stuff of which grand diplomatic drama is made.

According to Hartcher's story, Singaporean representatives allegedly tried to embarrass Australian Prime Minister Rudd on a recent visit, by springing an instant electronic audience poll when he addressed a business leaders' event on the regional community idea. If true, it was an underhand sort of stunt, and one can imagine the outrage were Australia ever to try something so undergraduate on a visiting regional leader. 

Culinary delights aside, I am still trying to work out what Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to the United States means for the implementation of the US-India nuclear deal. My impression, so far, is that the Indians are neither thrilled nor dismayed with whatever understandings President Obama may have communicated.

But Singh will at least take heart that, bilaterally, Obama has retreated from one of the more unrealistic points in the UN Security Council Resolution he promoted in September, which had in effect reiterated a call for India to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty: that is, to abandon its nuclear weapons unilaterally. Instead, this week’s Singh-Obama joint statement says:

Prime Minister Singh and President Obama reaffirmed their shared vision of a world free of nuclear weapons and pledged to work together, as leaders of responsible states with advanced nuclear technology, for global non-proliferation, and universal, non-discriminatory and complete nuclear disarmament. Part of that vision is working together to ensure that all nations live up to their international obligations. India reaffirmed its unilateral and voluntary moratorium on nuclear explosive testing.

The United States reaffirmed its testing moratorium and its commitment to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and bring it into force at an early date. Both leaders agreed to consult each other regularly and seek the early start of negotiations on a multilateral, non-discriminatory and internationally verifiable Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty at the Conference on Disarmament …

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If China wants its anti-piracy naval presence in the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden to be recognised as essentially defensive and legitimate, then a recent proposal about creating maritime zones of exclusive national responsibility is precisely not the way to go about it.

As I’ve written previously, China’s naval deployment against piracy provides an excellent opportunity for such countries as the United States, Japan, India and Australia to build patterns of cooperation and trust with the PLA Navy.

But of course we should make no assumptions about China’s willingness to cooperate; rather, the whole point of the exercise is to test and try to expand the boundaries of such willingness.

That is why this recent media report from China contains some disturbing implications. Media reports in China, as in many countries, are often used to trial new thinking underway in official circles.

Thus last year the idea of sending Chinese warships to the Gulf of Aden was raised several times by commentators in the Chinese press several weeks before it was announced as policy. If this new report is a sign of future policy, then other powers should be concerned, for a few reasons.

This is a big week for Australia in its relations with India. Cricket aside, the big news is Kevin Rudd's first visit to India as Prime Minister. As I argue in a new Lowy Institute policy brief, the bad headlines in Australia-India relations in the past year — especially over student welfare — have a silver lining: the two governments are now paying close attention to the challenges and the opportunities in the bilateral relationship.

Speculation is growing that this might translate into a security declaration, along the lines of those agreed between Australia and Japan (2007), Japan and India (2008) and, earlier this year, Australia and South Korea. My policy brief, and an associated opinion piece in today's Indian Express, suggests some of the practical elements such a document might contain, to ensure that it is more than rhetoric. It is good to see some influential Indian commentators taking note.

Dialogue won't only be at the government level this week. The Lowy Institute has its own presence in New Delhi at the moment, as joint convener of the Australia-India Roundtable, an informal dialogue among experts, opinion-makers and former officials. Tomorrow we join our Indian hosts, the Indian Council of World Affairs, for two days of talks about how to maximise partnerships and manage differences between the two countries, on such issues as energy, education, defence and the reshaping of the Asian and global strategic order. Kevin Rudd will address the gathering as part of his visit.

The Roundtable is meant to be a candid and closed-door discussion, so I won't be blogging on who said what. But it will be fascinating to hold these talks against the backdrop of leaders'-level discussions. I will report later on the tenor of our dialogue, and especially any new ideas and insights it generates on how to turn a promising but troubled relationship into a strategic partnership in which each power might genuinely assist the other's resilience and influence.

Photo by Flickr user R@VITH, used under a Creative Commons license.

The Lowy Institute poll, out today, suggests that three-quarters of Australians agree — many of them strongly — that nuclear disarmament should be a top policy priority. This would place Australian public opinion in accord with President Obama's aspirations, pursued most recently through an historic UN Security Council summit.

Hugh White may be right to say that the hard political steps on American nuclear disarmament have not yet been taken, but like a realist version of the Nobel jury, he is being seriously premature in judging where all this will end.

Meanwhile, other countries have hard decisions ahead of them too. With the Australian-Japanese International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (ICNND) finalising a major report, Canberra and Tokyo are going to have to consider some tough policy questions soon about their real attitude to nuclear weapons and the US nuclear umbrella. Canberra will also have to stop pretending that the global nuclear energy debate is none of its business.

So it is timely that the Lowy Institute is expanding its coverage of the nuclear field. The Institute has now consolidated its relevant work in a new web page, the Nuclear Policy Centre. Our aim is to make this the authoritative resource for analysis and policy thinking on nuclear challenges facing Australia and the Asia-Pacific, both with regard to weapons and the civilian nuclear sector.

I've just returned from a visit to New Delhi, where, even though my main interest was nuclear disarmament and arms control,  almost every conversation included a reference to the controversy over the welfare of Indian students in Australia. Those discussions clarified a few of my thoughts on the subject.

First, the damage to Australia's image in India is bad but not beyond repair. And playing the issue with a straight bat is precisely the right approach, as new Australian High Commissioner Peter Varghese did to good effect in this interview on India's leading television talk show, Shekhar Gupta's Walk the Talk. Of course, more will be needed than words. With Foreign Minister Stephen Smith about to leave for India, and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd likely to visit before long, some demonstrable policy changes would help too.

I was struck by the difference between the private and public views of many informed Indians about the student issue. While all feel a compulsion to rally around the flag when their nationals get in strife abroad, many privately acknowledge that this was not a problem entirely of Australia's making, that the Indian media wildly overplayed the story, and that, for instance, a tightening of education visa and permanent residency rules would be recognised in New Delhi as an understandable Australian response that might benefit the relationship (and genuine students) in the long run.

What does seem to be unmovable is the commercially-driven cynicism behind the Indian media's treatment of the story. This is such a pity, given that in many ways the media is a bulwark of India's great democratic achievement. Yet the world's most competitive mass media brings its own bad baggage. In this case, editors and reporters generally know that the reality is much more complex than 'racist' Australians versus naïve and helpless Indian students, but are loath to change the storyline given that it guarantees sales and viewers.

Visionary, bold and long-overdue, or risky diplomatic over-reach: however you see President Obama's UN Security Council summit this Thursday on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, there's little doubt it will make history.

Perhaps it will build on the momentum of Obama's Prague speech, the Wall Street Journal op-eds by US elder statesmen, the ICNND and other initiatives, producing the breakthrough needed for a new consensus on reducing nuclear dangers. Or perhaps, by pushing too hard and too fast for commitments from so many powers on so many contested issues — cuts in nuclear arsenals, changes in nuclear doctrine, the future of atomic energy, how to handle Iran and North Korea — the summit will expose how deep and how many are the fissures of competing national interests.

Some might criticise Obama's draft UNSC resolution as largely a repackaging of accepting wisdom. But even if that is so, there is so much of it in one document that many countries might find at least one clause to balk at.  

It is not as if Washington is not willing to lead by example. The US has made concessions on several related fronts lately, including abandoning ground-based missile defence plans in Europe, accepting bilateral talks with North Korea and signaling, it would seem, quite dramatic reductions in the size of the US nuclear armoury.