Rules-based order confusion

Sometimes, I kind of wish strategists could just say what they think in real simple terms.

The Shangri-la Dialogue is where openness and transparency builds confidence and security. Though… not always. Justin Bassi, the Executive Director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) wrote an aticle in The Strategist, strangely entitled with a full sentence: “Sorry, Mr Carney. At Shangri-La, Indo-Pacific countries backed the rules-based order.”

Now this piece, in its descriptive and somewhat sarcastic title targeted at Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, highlights the author’s perception that most of speeches at the Dialogue supported a rules-based order. As he noted “...the region was rejecting Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Davos declaration that the rules-based order was over.” So the author is pro rules-based-order???

Mark Carney, has been going around the world saying the US-led liberal-international order (a rules based order) ended because of Trump’s actions, such as threatening Greenland, upsetting NATO, attacking allies, and weakening the international trading system. He argues that middle powers must step up and work together to revive the rules-based order. So then, he is also pro rules-based-order???

Hmmm… Confused yet??? Just wait.

Justin Bassi is the Executive Director of the Australia Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI). Well known in the strategic space for being rather pro-American, and attracting Chinese ire. So, accepting the “rules based order” is in his view, being pro-American, and rather anti-Chinese.

Carney on the other hand, believes the rules-based order needs to be revived by middle powers, making it implicit that this can be done without the U.S. It requires European states, ASEAN states, India, Australia, South Korea, Japan—essentially anyone who’ll listen. Based on his closing words, and at the risk of putting words into his mouth, Bassi would likely find this anti-American—maybe even pro-Chinese.

So in sum, the rules based order with America, is pro-American, and anti-Chinese; and the rules-based order without America, is anti-American, and pro-Chinese.

Now, going a step further, a major speaker at the Shangri-La Dialogue was Pete Hegseth. Hegseth praised Indo-Pacific nations for better arming themselves to support ‘peace and prosperity’. More weapons helps peace. He also said that the U.S. was a Pacific nation and wouldn’t be pushed out by China.

Now putting China aside for a moment, Hegseth justified continued U.S. involvement in Asia without having to defend the broader and more contested proposition that the United States is inherently an “Indo-Pacific” nation. That wording is noteworthy. It suggests that even while discussing the Indo-Pacific region, he grounded America’s legitimacy in the older and less controversial identity of being a Pacific nation, not an Indo-Pacific nation. That is a subtle but potentially significant distinction.

So, the rules based order with America, is pro-American, and anti-Chinese; and the rules-based order without America, is anti-American, and pro-Chinese, and you’re either a Pacific nation that’s not getting pushed out of Asia, or an Indo-Pacific nation that needs to better buy more weapons for peace in Asia.

Now turning to China and what Justin Bassi calls the elephant in the room, even though India was also in the room and is often associated with elephants.

America, which is Pacific nation, but by specific exclusive labeling, not necessarily an Indo-Pacific nation, will apparently not be pushed out of Asia by China, which does not call itself a Pacific nation, nor of course does it call itself an Indo-Pacific nation.

Now America is currently being pushed out of West Asia by Iran and not China, but most people know it’s in a global competition with China. Now, the U.S. will soon decide on selling arms to Taiwan, so that America—a Pacific nation—doesn’t get pushed out of Asia. Taiwan, is a middle power, but not a state nor a nation, so can’t be a Pacific or an Indo-Pacific nation, and is inherently part of China.

America can’t defend Taiwan because it’s a small island just under 3000 kms from Guam and 8000 kms from Hawaii, and recent evidence shows that continental defence is much more effective than maritime attack. America doesn’t even have enough armaments to defend Taiwan but does want South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, and Australia to buy more armaments, but at the same time, can’t fill it its own needs. Instead, it’s selling second hand submarines to Australia and postponing Tomahawk missile deliveries to Japan, while South Korea is filling its own orders and looking to sell more.

Now, in-between push-ups, Pete Hegseth has previously rejected the rules based order and its accompanying and annoying rule-of-law and international norms. One shouldn’t be distracted by “empty globalist rhetoric about the rules-based international order...” unless you have more guns. If there is a rules based order, he basically doesn’t want America to be part of it—but a rules-based order without America, is anti-American, and pro-Chinese?

According to Bassi “If the US doesn’t sell arms to Taiwan, it will confirm that the old democratic order has been replaced by a new Sino-led order and that we are all playing by Chinese rules.” This would be a rules based order—but a rules based order with America, is pro-American, and anti-Chinese; and the rules-based order without America, is anti-American, and pro-Chinese. So, he sees the future of the rules based order assured, but just which rules based order uncertain and dependent on whether the U.S. sells arms to Taiwan. But if they do sell arms, this would be upholding the rules based order, and Hegseth is opposed to this, unless you have lots of guns, and America can’t sell any guns, meaning it’s anti-American, and pro-Chinese?

This all happened because of the Shangri-La Dialogue. The Shangri-La Dialogue is held at the Shangri-La Hotel, which is a swish place just off Orchard Road in Singapore, named after Shangri-La, a fictional paradise described in the 1933 novel Lost Horizon by James Hilton, but the dialogue is hosted by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), not the Hotel.

The irony, of course, is that the modern Shangri-La Dialogue bears the name of a fictional romantic refuge from geopolitics high in the mountains. In reality, it’s a high-class business hotel a few hundred meters from the seaside island city’s more sordid, infamous hooker tower that was meant to be cleaned up but wasn’t so much if you’re in intelligence. It’s here that military leaders and arms dealers debate the Pacific, the Indo-Pacific, middle powers, arming for peace, the rules-based order, America and China—usually at the former not the latter.

Mr. Carney, who is the evil-incarnate of both Bassi and Hegseth, is clearly similarly anti-American and pro-Chinese. He was not at the Shangri-La Dialogue, but his spiritual presence clearly was because Justin Bassi wrote an article about it.

Any questions? Confused?

Sometimes, I kind of wish strategists could just say what they think in real simple terms. It’d make it a lot easier. Anyways, read the article and see if you can make sense out of it.

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