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subscribe to our youtube channel and press the bell icon to get the latest updates [Music] i'm with peter vergies chancellor at the university of queensland in australia um a former super bureaucrat he retired from for australia's department of foreign affairs and trade he was the director of um the office of national assessments which is australia's key intelligence agency and dr c raja mohan director of the institute of south asia studies at the national university of singapore in singapore uh gentlemen welcome to the print debates good to be here um thank you for your time we are connecting brisbane in australia with uh peter vergies and uh rajya mahan in singapore and i'm in new delhi so you can see both these gentlemen are in cotton sort of uh shirts ambassador buggies may i start with with you um i'd like you to explain to the indian viewer about the joe biden administration it's taken power now a full 24 hours how do you see it uh going ahead especially where you sit well thank you jody well i guess the first point i'd make is that we're not going to mourn the departure or the end of the trump administration but the biden administration is still in some ways an unknown quantity um america has a new president but it is still the old america that he has to preside over and by that i mean the currents that uh threw up donald trump as president are still running deeply within the country and so how president biden manages that is obviously going to be his single biggest challenge and it was clear from his inauguration speech that uh uniting a very divided nation is and must be his top priority uh but that said i think uh we are going to see a different style uh compared to what we dealt with in the trump administration uh he has made some very good appointments in my view particularly in the foreign policy and the national security field he has set set out a fairly ambitious program for his first 100 days inevitably i think the focus will be domestic which means that foreign policy will uh need to take not a back seat because i don't think a power of the weight of the united states can afford to give foreign policy a backseat but the bandwidth of any administration is necessarily limited and if you combine the virus the economy and the disunity of the united states it's easy enough to see where that bandwidth is going to be used on foreign policy i think it's easy enough to say that biden will depart from trump and i think for many countries that would be a welcome departure but it's also the case that he's not going to be able to just go back to the obama days or to pick up where obama left off and um the single biggest challenge particularly from an australian perspective is going to be uh the u.s china relationship and how that is managed right and really how the biden administration can retain a measure of engagement with china and resist the temptation of going down a full-blown containment path then i'm sure we'll get into uh how that might pan out and what that might mean from my perspective i think a framework which is engage and constrain uh is uh probably uh the most effective way of approaching the china relationship we need to engage china it is too integrated into the global economy even if there is a measure of de-globalization and decoupling going on right uh also we're dealing now with the strategic implications of a strong chinese economy getting stronger and that is going to require us to think hard and creatively about how we constrain some of china's behavior which is not acceptable behavior while continuing to maintain a relationship with them right i should have said peter that you're in brisbane where india just won this amazing test and and carried the series 2-1 but we'll you know let it go for the time being doctor dr raja bohan you're sitting in singapore another neighbor of china india has been indian troops have been um not eyeball to eyeball but in very close proximity in the dark for the last eight months so as um winter draws down and spring comes around in the next couple of months how do you see this relationship um unfolding especially in light of the new biden administration i think from what we've heard of from from biden's inaugural lecture uh sorry you know this inauguration of speech as well as the testimonies of anthony blinken who's going to be the secretary of state and lloyd austin who's going to be the secretary of defense yeah we see i think broadly you know on foreign policy you know when it comes to asia and china there seems to be a broad sense of continuity and with a greater competence that the kind of people that peter talked about that is brought people are experienced who are close to him and who have the you know who have demonstrated intellectual bandwidth and i think all that they've said about trump and china the earlier policies seems to suggest a measure of continuity the change in foreign policy is going to be on climate change on multilateralism and those kind of areas and the rebuilding the u.s alliances and during his campaign and since his advisors have talked about biden bringing together the allies in order to deal with the chinese power that is the strategy of engage and constraint which peter talked about would necessarily involve greater cooperation rebuilding uh you know alliances and partnerships in asia i think that basic framework i think india would have no dispute with and but india is not expecting the americans to come and fight in the himalayas no one is going to but i think we've seen both the us and australia extend solid support for india when the crisis began and uh us has been and i think been providing some intelligence some of it probably is useful so i think the the the real question for india of course is the chinese power poses a lot more problems than the border conflict and i think that's where on the maritime side on intelligent sharing side and on creating new a framework in asia and the indo-pacific is where our cooperation with with the u.s would matter and there uh the quad i suspect will continue and that's where the u.s and its allies today become very very important for india and there's nothing to at this point to suggest that framework is going to be derailed by the administration and on the multilateralism side india would welcome the return to climate change india would welcome the return of the americans to who so i don't think we have a quarrel with those front but for the actual climate change negotiations i think india has also suggested it's open for some creative ideas so that of course biden will have huge problems domestically in his own congress and how he navigates that i just want to add one point to what peter said the problem is not only trump and the 74 million supporters that are going to pose a problem but byron's own coalition there's a large number of radical elements who are seeking political revenge wants to punish those who are aligned with trump and i think so restraining them is going to be a challenge for him and that's where his capacity to build a coalition in the middle will matter a lot i think we've known him i mean he was always ideologically flexible could reach across the aisle probably is better equipped than many other leaders in the us today to be able to build a reconstructive center that can hold against the extremes on both sides but it's going to be one but who are these police sorry to interrupt you who are these people seeking political revenge do you want to take this is the progressive there is the left and the the whole lot of people in the okay within the uh democrats those who wanted vigorously foreign him that's one part of the problem second part of the problem is many of his supporters want radical economic change i mean the progressives higher taxes yeah uh the minimum wage those are the kind of things that is promised but that's exactly the kind of thing the business doesn't like and the business too backed him i mean uh the silicon valley the wall street none of them want to see a fundamental you know costs of networks going up yeah but what is interesting for me is that both australia and india were quite was seen to be quite close to the trump administration and uh both of you of course are moving on very quickly which is great because that's what uh you know powers do but peter vergies you know especially with australia and the trump administration and there's a headline in the global times and in the newspaper that we all love to hate which says that beijing was saw australia as a lap dog of the u.s and it must now free itself what do you make of that well we're going through a difficult period in our relationship with china and whenever we have difficulties in bilateral relationships um the other side tends to use this idea of australia as a lap dog or a cat spore of the united states as a as a debating point um i don't think um the issues that lie at the heart of the difficulties we're having with china all relate to the u.s australia relationship we have done a number of things that the chinese have taken umbrage with and they relate to legislation that we introduced into our parliament on foreign interference they relate to keeping huawei out of our 5g network they relate to a series of decisions that australia has taken in our view in our own interests um some of those decisions have put australia in the vanguard of some of these issues that have been been taken up by other countries like what and well we were we were one of the very earliest to move on 5g for instance and it uh it was a consistent uh position because earlier we had excluded far away from national broadband network similarly on foreign interference legislation i think australia moved ahead of many other countries to deal with foreign interference legislation um so there are a number of irritants in the chinese embassy famously issued a list of 14 such irritants which they thought should be fixed before the relationship could resume now that's not to say that a close strategic relationship with the united states isn't something which is also part of the mix when it comes to china but we've had a close strategic relationship with the united states for a very long time and we've built a very strong relationship with china simultaneously um and i just think it's going to take a bit of time before we can find a new equilibrium in the in the relationship i don't want to downplay the seriousness of our current tensions but i think i think an improvement in the u.s china relationship will create a slipstream effect for us i think it will have some benefit to us but i also think that um the dynamic of australia and china is going to run around along a separate a separate rail um and how that pans out let's see so is there going to be an improvement in the u.s us-china relationship is that inevitable uh i think there will be a different u.s china relationship in some respects now um like raja i see a bit of continuity on china between the trump and the biden administrations but i also think the way in which the relationship is managed will be different under biden i think we'll see a more familiar style of american diplomacy i think it'll be more predictable i think it'll be more considered i think biden is also looking to develop a level of multilateral cooperation with china on the big issues and i think the biggest in his mind will be climate change and so that represents [Music] something on the positive side of the ledger between the us and china i think where the relationship we'll find uh find it difficult to stabilize is that at its heart now in geopolitical terms we are seeing two competing ambitions for preeminence so the united states is determined to hang on to the preeminence that it has held since the second world war and china i think is uh determined to secure preeminence in the indo-pacific if not more broadly um and they are not two competing ambitions that can be easily reconciled i mean you can't really split the difference on something like this right so that is going to change i think the way in which the united states seeks to manage its relationship with china and i think it will involve uh an element of loose coalition building on the part of the united states i think the us will want to work closely uh with both its formal allies such as australia and japan but also it's its strategic partners such as india in finding a new strategic equilibrium in the indo-pacific and one that has the capability to go back to my earlier point of constraining china's behavior in areas where that behavior can be problematic and by that i i mean um what it's doing in the south china sea um and china's sort of increasing willingness to use economic leverage to achieve strategic objectives so this is going to be quite a complicated us-china relationship some areas of cooperation some deep strategic competition at the heart of it and probably a measure of loose coalition building to manage the relationship so we're heading for a different type of strategic equilibrium and i think it'll take us some time to get there right doctor rajapur tell me you know these words like engage and constrain how does india engage with china it's it's been so bitter for the last eight or nine months how do you see this unfolding at this point india's engagement has largely been limited to disengagement shall we say in the himalayas where we've kept up that thing they'll keep the channel of communication between the diplomats and the military commanders on on both sides of the line of actual control going right but elsewhere it has been enough actually of uh attempting to decouple on the economic front uh greater scrutiny on chinese investments or chinese procurement contracts some will still come through some which have come through multilateral financial institutions but i think the direction has been how do you raise the economicals because the limits on escalating the conflict on the ground in the military level meant india had to find options on the economic front the indian escalation has been on the economic fund by trying to disconnect from the chinese economic embrace as well as on the digital side to take some series of actions which complement it of course later what the australians have done on 5g and the right americans have done i think india is good india is so dependent on the chinese economically that first of all it's there is no dependence that can't be undone i mean and that's where i think what the chinese probably miscalculated and in fact one level india is less integrated with china than the australians where the chinese occupy such a central position on imports well in indian case the problem is india is importing from china and uh so the costs that we can diversify so i think they will be paying but i think india is probably better off disconnect you know in limiting those costs than say japan or australia the rest of asia which is far more tightly integrated in the u.s itself is far more tightly coupled but for the indian case the politics of china has provoked indian nationalism and i think the government had too few choices so i would say the disconnection will go on and i don't see how this can be repaired you know even if you disengage on the himalayas then chinese so show no signs of it i think the damage is going to be quite difficult to overcome but i just wanted to say something about black dog terminology uh india we are quite familiar with that i mean i think going back to the 60s maha certainly used the same language against nehru a nero probably who was out of weight out of his way to support the chinese uh he got his rewards by when he they accused him of the running dog of the imperialists so so i think the chinese have returned to an abusive language of discourse they've returned to the world four year diplomacy which is again abusive uh threatening others i mean that i think they're probably overestimating their own capabilities and probably they also believe that they can be no counter coalition be found because you can pick each one of them apart but i think beyond the point when you see uh people will react and i think i just want to make one final i think in asia asia is also nationalist china is not the only nationalism in asia other countries while they might the elites might defer to the chinese economic connection the others are going to find ways to stand up so i think the chinese course over the longer term i think would be similar but in near term i agree with peter they enjoy a lot of advantages but so it depends on who can end your pain longer and how we build this coalition and can we really succeed in that right so you're advocating a greater deep coupling rather than an engagement i'm not advocating i'm seeing that happening so that's what is going on okay peter i wanted to ask you about the region you know the asean nations now it's interesting if you look at the kobe vaccine diplomacy that the chinese are pushing using the covet vaccine as leverage to push or expand influence but cambodia which is seen as perhaps one of the closest allies of china in that part of the world has said that it will not take the chinese vaccine what do you make of that are even smaller countries getting increasingly nervous well i think there's a level of nervousness across southeast asia about china but there's also a level of nervousness about the state of the u.s china relationship and where southeast asia positions itself into the future as we see the united states reaching out to develop a um a more considered balancing of china i think is going to be a very interesting question i don't see southeast asia wanting to make a choice between the us and china i i think i think southeast asia would rather be on the sidelines uh i think they uh are very comfortable with the idea of developing a greater balanced vis-a-vis china but they won't formally be a part of it so they may they may quietly barrack from the sidelines but i don't think they uh as a grouping are going to position themselves on one or the other side of that balance now individual southeast asian countries may uh lean more forward in that process but i i find it hard to see asean as a grouping making a choice one way or the other i mean i think they see their interests as being served by a stable balance between the us and china and where that balance may be moving too far in one direction i think they'll want to see it corrected so their position would be i think a little bit quieter and more subtle uh perhaps than some of the uh quad members right so you know i interviewed kishore bani some weeks ago and he talked about um the asean nations looking for alternatives and perhaps india could be one of course it's proving to be more difficult than it that it should should have been but what do you think uh sitting in australia peter do you think that india should do more and and what can it do well i i think a stronger india southeast asia relationship would be a very good thing i think it would be a good thing for india and i think it would be a good thing for the region as india's own economic interests pull it more towards east asia and southeast asia i think this is a relationship which is going to develop more strongly and i think india's own geopolitical interests will lead it to want to have a stronger relationship with with southeast asia both as a grouping and uh and bilaterally and of course there's a very strong historical connection between india and southeast asia upon which i think both sides can can build so as as as india becomes a much more significant player in the broader indo-pacific i think inevitably a part of being a bigger player in the indo-pacific is having bigger relationships into southeast asia and from an australian perspective we would certainly welcome that southeast asia is going to be a crucial part of an emerging new strategic equilibrium and i think the stronger its relationship is with countries like india and japan and australia and the united states the better um i think peter's um it seems to me that peter's hesitating about um offering india up as an option but raj do you think that india could be an option or is it too premature to say that no it's not an option against something look i think if everyone tries to diversify their relationship then you know india can play a role and i think at this point india has problems too we're not in the arecep we're not in any of the pre-trade agreements in the region so that's going to be an issue that which has caused a lot of disappointment but that does not mean there would be no economic engagement i mean now we have to see whether india can do things with australia with japan with these bilateral trade arrangements and india australia japan has started a conversation on resilient supply chains of providing alternatives to total dependence on china you can't eliminate the dependence on china but you can create alternative supply supply chains and make progress with our friends and partners in the region then i think that's what i said locations don't want to simply roll under a chinese you know dominance so anybody who can offer some balancing capability is welcome so for all the criticism of the us and they would also want to see a strong us and uh and a strong japan and australia would all provide a basis so i think the trick for us is to keep up the economic engagement i think on the defense again there is a lot of suppressed demand for india security cooperation with india we have not been able to service it hopefully some of the reforms currently underway uh indian military organization will hopefully allow us to do that and we do more partnering with australia say in the eastern indian ocean if you work with japan and australia in the indian ocean uh providing for example in alternative finance and models for sri lanka's infrastructure projects i'm just giving sri lanka as an example people want choices so i think we can if we can get our act together that that you can provide some alternatives but none of us individually can match the kind of resources china brings to the table on the economic side increasingly on the military side but together we can produce some breakthrough so for india i think india is to break out of the lone rangers syndrome and work in coalitions that is the big test for delhi and if you succeed in that i think a lot more space will open up for india so peter i want to ask you about rcep now india uh infamously or famously refused to join our set but australia is very much a part of this block now how do you see the joe biden administration do you think that they would return to a larger trans-pacific partnership a tpp type of arrangement how do you think this will unfold i don't think there'll be an easy slipping into tpp mark ii on the part of the united states but i think the concept of a multilateral framework is something which would be instinctively appealing to a biden administration and certainly from my perspective um i i think it was a missed opportunity for india not to take up the invitation to join asap and that invitation remains and i hope at some point india might review its position because there are both good economic and geopolitical reasons to bring india into a cross-regional framework like asset and what like what kind of reasons well um rcep is a trade liberalizing arrangement and india's ability to act as a strategic player is going to be determined more than any anything else by its economic heft so anything which contributes to india's economic growth and its economic weight in my view is a geopolitical plus for the region given the role that we see india playing in the region and look the history of india's economy has been that when it continues to open its economy it does well and i think it would be a great shame if that trend line of an opening economy were in any way to change in in uh in a post-covered world because all of us all of us are dealing with a different set of um political and other considerations um in the light of covert and in as a result of the slowing of the economy i mean the appeals of protectionism everywhere right i get stronger the ideas of self-sufficiency are getting stronger the caution about globalization is deepening i mean these are all um these are all political economy trends which are working in the wrong direction in my view because they will make us all poorer so um anything which can which can get us in the other direction i think would be would be a great plus so i you know i hope i hope india will will continue to move down the path of trade liberalization uh obviously it's never a linear movement but nevertheless it's important that it just continues to do that and i hope the united states will look seriously at um at joining tpp mark ii i mean this was after all an obama administration initiative right although although it should be said that there was no certainty had hillary clinton won the uh 2016 election that um that she would have been supportive of tpp but tpp mark 2 is uh it's it's it's a platinum trade agreement it's a platinum status trade agreement it's the direction in which trade liberalization needs to move um and i think ideally if you can get both china and the united states into tpp mark ii you will serve both an economic and a geopolitical objective with that dr raja mohan will isolate india much more and my other question is um about afghanistan pakistan i mean you know the it seems that the biden guys will have the hands full dealing first with problems at home and then with china and and the climate change and other issues but it but we're also seeing that afghanistan where u.s troops are drawing down in the next couple of months they're all supposed to be gone but there is so much violence in afghanistan pakistan is again playing all kinds of nefarious games in that part of the world do you think that the americans will be interested or will they largely say okay guys we have our hands full we can't do so much just a word on globalization which shall be talked about and i think there is a debate to be unfold about to unfold in the u.s in the democratic party uh do they can they go back to the obama-style policies or do they make adjustments to their foreign economic engagement what we've heard even from jake sullivan who wrote a lot about the domestic policy as well before the uh during the campaign that the need for the us to compete with china you know industrial policy creating domestic capabilities to cope with the chinese competition on technology these are new elements so i think it will be a globalization 2.0 that that the us is talking about democrats are talking about where they can actually get there what does it mean for america's partners what does it mean for asia these are all open-ended questions and i think india should be actively paying attention to those and in some areas like in the multinational the wto side what kind of reforms can we help you can india joins like australia as a major campaign for reform singapore is uh us government i think we'll talk about it so so i think we need to be beyond ourselves there are other things india can do and i think we should at least be able to focus on that and if we can get some good bilateral needs with key partners eu uk us and uh japan and australia and then at least india is in the game you know even without ourselves but question is whether we can actually do that on afghanistan pakistan i think this story is largely over i mean i think uh this testimony lincoln talked about uh you know gender rights you know you can't just seed the kind of things that trump administration are largely seated to talk about but i doubt if there is political support for a renewed push for activism military activism so i think it will be a limited role and my senses events are going to drive it already you can see kabul is under tremendous pressure and it's really there the regional dynamic is going to shape it in pakistan iran russia china uh india to the we don't have a direct border so we will be a secondary rule but but it will be a regional competition i i doubt if the u.s is going to be actively leading the process in that part but i think my sense is it was inevitable i think 20 years close to a trillion dollars i mean we love to have americans fight in the last american but uh i think political traffic in washington is not going to bear that so of course the next obvious question is is that pakistan then expands its influence in afghanistan and what happens to india in that case india has very poor relations with with islamabad look i think pakistan's geography always gives it a position i think we should not grudge that that's a fact of life they have 2500 kilometers of open border with pakistan it gives them the curses that the water seems to be a strategic asset is also a curse for the war in afghanistan is already spilled over into pakistan the restiveness of the questions so i think pakistan hopes it can shape the future outcome in kabul but it can't do it alone and a taliban is not the kind of ideal face you're going to show it to the chinese and say these are my boys going to do economic reform for you and let's uh transform this country my soldier and your money that would be a great solution i mean for afghanistan but i don't know if pakistan is capable of delivering that kind of a framework in the 90s i'm not sure if they can do it for india i think you know we should also be less obsessive about pakistan today pakistan economy is smaller than bangladesh and there's no economic contraction is going to take place in the country india is 10 times larger pakistan has fallen off with some of its friends in the islamic world so i think there is room there for us for india that even if pakistan plays a larger role there's always the next chapter there is always the tomorrow which is the story of afghanistan we're going to enter a new phase of conflict i think they're more wretched probably but but there it is and to think that pakistan is going to rule afghanistan i think it will be complete believe that kind of last question to you uh chancellor peter vergies uh sitting in brisbane in australia how do you see uh india and its neighborhood do you think that india's ex should must expand influence china of course is is sort of reaching you know deeply into south asia do you think india and pakistan should return to a conversation that the sark region should be much more integrated well i think the last point is very important i mean if you if you look at southeast south asia it is the least economically integrated region probably anywhere in the world and if um the countries of south asia are to have a strong and bright future it has to be off the back of a prosperous economy and so anything that promotes the integration of the region and the economic links across the region i think would be a positive and which and and would also i think help with the rather fraught political relationships that uh inevitably uh are going to be in the region so um i mean we tend to think of india uh in its own right rather than india bracketed with south asia in australia and for us the relationship with india is only going to get more consequential as india's own place in the world becomes more significant as india becomes a larger economy as india exerts a stronger strategic presence and as india becomes more prepared to build strategic partnerships with countries that in the past they may have not had as much enthusiasm for so um you know i i see the australia-india relationship as only getting stronger i think we have enough mutual interest at play when it comes to the economy and to geopolitical interests and now we also have a a very strong people-to-people connection so i think taken together um this will be a relationship of consequence for australia right thank you so much uh gentlemen for your time uh chancellor peter vergies in brisbane australia dr c raja in singapore thank you for joining me in the print debates thanks jeremy thanks roger thank you