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Foreign Exchange

A Government podcast

#11 in Government · 🇿🇦 #99 in Government · 🇳🇿
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Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective.

Newest episodes

MIDTERMS: America can just walk away from the Middle East

36 min

Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective. “My counterargument to that is that if America's imperative to defend its other Asian allies—Japan, South Korea, Australia—was clear and strong, then the fact that it chose not to defend Taiwan wouldn't matter that much. ” “But the fact that America’s imperative to defend Japan, South Korea and Australia seem to me to be inherently quite weak because it's fundamental US interests don't require it to do so, then the fact that it doesn't defend Taiwan, I think, reveals the weakness of its motivation across the whole theater.” “So counter-counter argument, in that in that scenario, what America would be revealing is that it is not prepared to fight a big war against China, but it would not be entirely undermine its deterrence position because it would still be capable, I think, in Chinese eyes and willing to fight a small war.” Compelling conversation, engaging debate and insightful perspectives. This series provides expert insights into Australia’s future in a changing world. Foreign Exchange. Brought to you by Australian Foreign Affairs.

MIDDLING POWER: Can we handle being alone in the Pacific?

44 min

Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective. “I never took never took the Chinese military bases in the South Pacific very seriously as a a military factor, leaving aside the broader political questions, because it's always seemed to me that compared to where we were, for example, when we were worried about Japanese bases in the South Pacific in the decades before the Second World War.” “You know, if Australia plays its cards right, if we build the right sort of armed forces we need, it shouldn't be very difficult for us to be able to neutralize a Chinese base operating within the inner arc of islands for conflict.” “But that doesn't mean they're not useful in a peace time setting, as a kind of a global network or at least a regional network.” “There is a tendency here that I think, you and I, as former intelligence analysts would both be familiar with the problem of mirror imaging. The idea that just because we want something, the other side must want it as well.”

PLAN B: Counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen on how to defend Australia without submarines

32 min

This week, counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen joins Hugh White to discuss his article in Australian Foreign Affairs, Plan B: How to defend Australia without submarines, by David Kilcullen “There's two ways it could fail.  “One could be that the US Virginia class submarines, which we were supposed to start seeing arrive from 2032, are simply not transferred across by the US government. And there's language in the agreement that allows the president to—sorry—requires the president to certify that the submarines can be transferred without any loss of capability to the United States, and Congress then has to sign off on that” “And earlier in the year, Elbridge Colby expressed concern that US ship builders are not building US submarines fast enough. So, I think that is a flag that even the United States is thinking ‘okay, what if things do not transpire in such a way that we can actually transfer the submarines across.” Compelling conversation, engaging debate and insightful perspectives. This series provides expert insights into Australia’s future in a changing world. Foreign Exchange. Brought to you by Australian Foreign Affairs.

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All episodes

MIDTERMS: America can just walk away from the Middle East

36 min

Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective. “My counterargument to that is that if America's imperative to defend its other Asian allies—Japan, South Korea, Australia—was clear and strong, then the fact that it chose not to defend Taiwan wouldn't matter that much. ” “But the fact that America’s imperative to defend Japan, South Korea and Australia seem to me to be inherently quite weak because it's fundamental US interests don't require it to do so, then the fact that it doesn't defend Taiwan, I think, reveals the weakness of its motivation across the whole theater.” “So counter-counter argument, in that in that scenario, what America would be revealing is that it is not prepared to fight a big war against China, but it would not be entirely undermine its deterrence position because it would still be capable, I think, in Chinese eyes and willing to fight a small war.” Compelling conversation, engaging debate and insightful perspectives. This series provides expert insights into Australia’s future in a changing world. Foreign Exchange. Brought to you by Australian Foreign Affairs.

MIDDLING POWER: Can we handle being alone in the Pacific?

44 min

Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective. “I never took never took the Chinese military bases in the South Pacific very seriously as a a military factor, leaving aside the broader political questions, because it's always seemed to me that compared to where we were, for example, when we were worried about Japanese bases in the South Pacific in the decades before the Second World War.” “You know, if Australia plays its cards right, if we build the right sort of armed forces we need, it shouldn't be very difficult for us to be able to neutralize a Chinese base operating within the inner arc of islands for conflict.” “But that doesn't mean they're not useful in a peace time setting, as a kind of a global network or at least a regional network.” “There is a tendency here that I think, you and I, as former intelligence analysts would both be familiar with the problem of mirror imaging. The idea that just because we want something, the other side must want it as well.”

PLAN B: Counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen on how to defend Australia without submarines

32 min

This week, counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen joins Hugh White to discuss his article in Australian Foreign Affairs, Plan B: How to defend Australia without submarines, by David Kilcullen “There's two ways it could fail.  “One could be that the US Virginia class submarines, which we were supposed to start seeing arrive from 2032, are simply not transferred across by the US government. And there's language in the agreement that allows the president to—sorry—requires the president to certify that the submarines can be transferred without any loss of capability to the United States, and Congress then has to sign off on that” “And earlier in the year, Elbridge Colby expressed concern that US ship builders are not building US submarines fast enough. So, I think that is a flag that even the United States is thinking ‘okay, what if things do not transpire in such a way that we can actually transfer the submarines across.” Compelling conversation, engaging debate and insightful perspectives. This series provides expert insights into Australia’s future in a changing world. Foreign Exchange. Brought to you by Australian Foreign Affairs.

MINI-EPISODE: Should Australia go to war with China over Taiwan?

23 min

Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective. “This is an extraordinarily serious choice. “Now, we might feel uncomfortable about the idea of the Chinese getting control of TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited), for example, the chip fabs. “But boy, you wouldn't pay that price to prevent that. “If you're really worried about that, by the way, what you do is you bomb the fabs yourself, to deny them.” Compelling conversation, engaging debate and insightful perspectives. This series provides expert insights into Australia’s future in a changing world. Foreign Exchange. Brought to you by Australian Foreign Affairs.

‘Hoovering up’: How Australian spies operate

23 min

Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective. “All of those styles of intelligence except the last one —HUMINT—  is, of course, undergoing fantastically rapid change in the last few decades and that doesn't look like ending. I mean, SIGINT, when I first got into the business SIGINT was still largely a matter of, well, intercepting high frequency transmissions — if you go back to the sort of World War One, World War Two era. And, you know, then getting into satellites and so on.”  “But these days, intercepting other people's or intruding into other people's computer systems has become a vast part of the process. And so, the whole shape of what we used to call SIGINIT hardly seems an adequate word anymore” “Signals is a very World War two word.” “You know, it used to be the case that when you're trying to intercept other people's signals, you either had to get alongside a cable like the British splicing into the transatlantic cable at the beginning of World War One, sp they could they could intercept what the what the Germans were doing, or listening to high frequency radio, which is a very geographically based business where you could set up your antenna to listen became really critical. “These days, that being what it is, the geography has almost become irrelevant.”

MIDDLE EAST: The US is losing, so why isn’t Iran winning?

39 min

Subscribe to Australian Foreign Affairs: https://www.australianforeignaffairs.com/subscribe Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective. “Can I just finish this sector on one observation, which might seem a little bit impertinent, and that is I don't think, in the grand sweep of history, what happens in the Middle East matters very much.  “The future of the global order, the future of America's role in the global order, will be decided in Europe and Asia, where it always is decided, because that's where the big power is. “A great secret about the Middle East is that in the end, it's always kind of marginal. During the Cold War, it wasn't one of the central fronts. It wasn't until 1980 that the Carter Doctrine declared that the Americans would keep them out.  “During the post-Cold War era, the fact that the Middle East was the only part of the world that didn't seriously sign of, least for for a while, seriously sign on to the idea of American primacy didn't get in the way of the fact that American primacy became, for a while, the sort of, focus of of global order.” Compelling conversation, engaging debate and insightful perspectives. This series provides expert insights into Australia’s future in a changing world. Foreign Exchange. Brought to you by Australian Foreign Affairs.

BAMBOO DIPLOMACY: Vietnam and the art of not picking sides

37 min

Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective. “But there's another layer on top of this which is the Treaty of Rarotonga—the South Pacific Free Zone Treaty. And that treaty, to which Australia is a signatory, says that nuclear weapons shall not be stationed on the territory of any signatory of that treaty. And so, we get around that by talking about a rotational arrangement.  “And as Mike Pezzullo, former colleague of yours, Deputy Secretary in the Defence Department, has helpfully pointed out in The Australian in recent weeks, come 2032 or thereabouts, the United States is going to be once again putting nuclear weapons on board its fast attack submarines. “And some of those fast attack submarines are going to be stationed, or I should say rotating, through Submarine Rotational Force West at HMAS Stirling. “So that raises a thorny problem for Australia: if those nuclear armed vessels are going to be rotated through HMAS Stirling. Does that put us in breach of the treaty?" Compelling conversation, engaging debate and insightful perspectives. This series provides expert insights into Australia’s future in a changing world. Foreign Exchange. Brought to you by Australian Foreign Affairs.

‘Why would China even bother to attack if you don’t taunt her’: Sam & Hugh answer your comments

51 min

Subscribe to Australian Foreign Affairs: https://www.australianforeignaffairs.com/subscribe Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective. “And great powers do use armed force against countries that obstruct their vision of regional, or for that matter, global order. And, you know, it's worth remembering that that's why the United States has a great power went to war with Vietnam and Iraq and Iraq again, and Iran and Afghanistan.  “So, you know, Australia, thinking about its strategic future in Asia, can't afford to overlook the possibility that if Australia does effectively and sort of systematically oppose China's vision of regional order, then we can expect to get some pushback, and we can’t rule out the possibility that pushback includes military pushback.” Compelling conversation, engaging debate and insightful perspectives. This series provides expert insights into Australia’s future in a changing world. Foreign Exchange. Brought to you by Australian Foreign Affairs.

AUSTRALIA: China’s ballistic missile test has strikingly little to do with us

44 min

Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective. “I don't think we should also underestimate our capacity to overplay our hands here.  “There is a bit of a bullying tone to some of this stuff. I mean —leaving aside the fact that article two of the Ocean of Peace treaty declares our shared values, including the party's commitment to free and democratic institutions — that’s a bit rich when you’re signing the treaty with Sitiveni Rabuka— you know, leader of two coups. “But also there's language about about not permitting, and this is not just in the in the Fiji agreement, but in all of the agreements in different ways, language about not allowing other countries to establish bases and so on. “You know, and it's a bit asymmetrical. In the Vanuatu treaty, for example, it says is not allowed to have foreign bases, but we are. “The sort of cuteness of some of this. I think we need to be very careful that we don't overplay our hand.”

The leapfrog to lithium-ion submarines: "If anyone can do this, it’s the Chinese"

39 min

Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective. “You have to be very clear where the capability trends are going.  “Intentions can change quickly, but it's worth making the point that the broader geostrategic framework within which intentions evolve can change more slowly.  “When we made the foundation of Australian defense policy throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s, even into the 2000, it was that: we didn't have to care much about China's military capabilities because we could not conceive that it would have an intention to use force against us. “Now, what's the big thing that's changed on the intention side is that in the decades ahead, we're expecting China to be much less constrained by American power and therefore to have opportunities, if it chooses, to use force against Australia free of interference from the United States. Which it wouldn't have had, which we didn't conceive it having decades ago.” “There’s an element of intention that changes slowly, too.

The many ways in which Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is not Teddy Roosevelt

37 min

Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective.“The life type extension of the Collins—keeping as many Collins as possible in service and operationally viable for as long as possible—is really critical to the whole AUKUS[...]for two reasons.”“The first is because we won't have a submarine capability otherwise“But the second is we won't have enough submarines at sea to provide the training opportunities for enough submariners to ensure that we actually have the personnel required to sustain a viable submarine capability when the US boats arrive.“And I've long been of the view that the first hurdle at which we're likely to fall in getting to where the AUKUS plan was meant to take us was that we wouldn't succeed in upgrading, prolonging the life of the Collins sufficiently to keep enough submarines in water, to keep enough trainees going to sea, to give ourselves the personnel required to operate the AUKUS boats when they arrive. And that’s become more likely”

AUSTRALIA: The paradox of our wartime relationship with America

39 min

Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective.“This has been by far the biggest ballistic missile we've ever seen. I don't think we've ever seen anything like this number of ballistic missiles used in anger…”“Now, part of the story of the war so far is that a very high proportion of the Iranian missiles have been shot down… it demonstrates the importance of more sophisticated ballistic missiles that can evade defenses and which is really what the Hypersonics story is about.“But I bet you'll find one of the things that's happening to the Chinese is studying what's been happening, to maximize their chance of getting their ballistic missiles under the targets and avoid the defenses.”

CHINA: Is Trump’s Iran war about a different theatre?

35 min

“I want to bring this home to our part of the world, our region. And your point about this being essentially performative tends to cut against one theory that's become popular among a certain element of the commentariat, which is that this is all about China.“That at the base of all this and the Venezuela operation, as well, and American statecraft, if we can call it that, under Donald Trump, is somehow all explainable by a long term competition with China and that the United States is involved in this very far sighted strategy of trying to isolate China and to deny it allies.“I'd like to say that's rubbish.”

Trumps Iranian cul-de-sac: 'not so much strategic as political'

33 min

Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective.“I want to quote from the speech itself…“The speech begins with a familiar critique. Anti-free trade, anti-mass migration…anti-welfare state, a critique of deindustrialisation in the West. And then Rubio says:“‘ Four, five centuries before the end of the Second World War, the West had been expanding its missionaries, its pilgrims, its soldiers, its explorers pouring out from its shores to cross oceans, settle new continents, build vast empires extending out across the globe.“‘But in 1945, for the first time since the age of Columbus, it was contracting. The Great Western empires had entered into terminal decline. Against that backdrop, then, as now, many came to believe that the West's age of dominance had come to an end and that our future was destined to be a saint and feeble echo of our past.“‘But together, our predecessors recognized that decline was a choice, and it was a choice they refused to make. This is what we did together once before. And this is what President Trump and the United States want to do again now, together with you.”

Sixth generation aircrafts and China's "immense" asymmetrical advantage

32 min

“We have seen in the development of the PLA over the last few decades, as fast an evolution of a military as the world has ever seen.” “You’d have to compare it with what Japan achieved after the Meiji Restoration or what the United States achieved in the late 19th and early 20th century, to have any sort of comparison.”“Certainly bigger than the navy that the Soviets built during the Cold War period.”Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective.Compelling conversation, engaging debate and insightful perspectives. This series provides expert insights into Australia’s future in a changing world.Foreign Exchange. Brought to you by Australian Foreign Affairs.

Responding to Trump: Will Anthony Albanese follow Canada’s lead?

36 min

“We all suffer from availability bias. What's the thing that's moving the world? Well, what's the thing that I can recall quickest now? “Well, it's Trump. Because he's always there. He's always there. But there are bigger forces at play.“So, on Venezuela, for instance, Trump did this very singular thing. But on the other hand, the United States has been intervening in central and south America for generations. That's what the Monroe Doctrine is. It's a 19th century idea. And over the course of, let's say, since the Second World War, there's been Chile, Nicaragua, Haiti, Panama, Grenada, Cuba…”Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective.Compelling conversation, engaging debate and insightful perspectives. This series provides expert insights into Australia’s future in a changing world.Foreign Exchange. Brought to you by Australian Foreign Affairs.

Trying to decipher the ‘wacky’ US National Security Strategy

32 min

“Now, the interesting thing about this national security strategy, it sort of declares the end of great power rivalry by saying, actually, America is content to live in a world with other great powers, and accept that other great powers will have their own spheres of influence."The language is ambiguous. It's very unclear what it hopes to achieve, what the administration hopes to achieve strategically, in Asia, in relation to China. But it certainly seems to me to go a long way towards accepting that China is going to be a much more significant player in Asia than it used to be."

Would Australia choose Indonesia over America?

36 min

"There was that great quip from Henry Kissinger in the 1970s: if I want to talk to Europe, who do I call? "Now, of course, the answer to that question at the time and for long afterwards was Washington. If you want to talk to Europe, called Washington. In a strategic sense, Washington was the leader."What the United States is doing under Donald Trump is actually forcing that question to the forefront again, because if the Americans really are threatening to pull back, as they realistically might under Donald Trump, then it revives that question. "And you could argue that the European statecraft in this period, even under the the worst, most egregious provocations from Donald Trump and his team, that kind of genuflecting to Washington has been an attempt, an extended attempt to continue to defer that question."Every second Thursday, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective.Compelling conversation, engaging debate and insightful perspectives. This series provides expert insights into Australia’s future in a changing world.

House of Dynamite, ICBMs in flight, and how nuclear deterrence would really go down

34 min

"I really don't think the United States today has a functioning national government."This week, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White break down what Trump and Albanese's visit to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meeting in Kuala Lumpur tells us about the current state of power in Asia. Then, they talk about the new Netflix series A House of Dynamite, how realistic it is, and what it tell us about the current state of nuclear proliferation. Finally, they provide some reading recommendations, on both foreign policy and some personal favourites.For more, check out the latest issue of Australian Foreign Affairs, The Bomb: Will Asia go nuclear?

Should Albanese expect the Zelenskyy treatment from Trump?

35 min

Every second Thursday, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective.Compelling conversation, engaging debate and insightful perspectives. This series provides expert insights into Australia’s future in a changing world."You just have to look at the map. It's embedded in our strategic geography that PNG is always going to be very important to Australia's security. And that's an idea which goes back to the very dawn of Australian thinking about strategy and defense in the 19th century. Yes, it's a significant step to take. But I think in the end there might be less to it than meets the eye."

North Korean ICBMs, Albanese's New York tightrope, and the future of AUKUS

32 min

Every second Thursday, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective. Compelling conversation, engaging debate and insightful perspectives. This series provides expert insights into Australia’s future in a changing world.“I this is this is for real a very genuine weakening of the credibility of US extended nuclear deterrence, towards North Korea in particular, as North Korea develops an intercontinental ballistic missile capability that can hit the United States, that increases the cost and risk to America of a nuclear strike on North Korea exponentially and therefore reduces the credibility of its extended nuclear deterrence posture.”

The budget, the oil shock, the Thucydides trap, and the case for Australian optimism

43 min

Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective. “I don't mind that framing, but my retort would be that the easiest and probably the cheapest and lowest risk way to ensure that China never becomes globally dominant is to ensure that China's own region remains perpetually contested. After all, what was the sort of geostrategic basis of American dominance? It's that it had a totally untroubled and uncontested Western hemisphere.”

The B-21 Stealth Bomber: Does Australia need a weapon to strike mainland China?

32 min

Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective.“A word shall mean whatever I want them to mean, as Humpty Dumpty said. “But I do think it's helpful for clarity to reserve the word alliance for a relationship which carries clear mutual commitments to military support in the event of conflict. And for quite a long time now, going back to a late 90s even, you've seen the evolution of the Japan-Australia relationship in the direction in which would that would appear to be a logical end point.“And obviously, the rise of China and growing doubts about the United States are what's behind that.”

Is $53 billion the price of becoming a middle power?

41 min

Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective. “It's worth bearing in mind that although the US and its partners have been bitterly opposed to Iran’s nuclear capability for decades, it was always clear that there was no military solution to that problem until Donald Trump decided, well, and Benjamin Netanyahu decided to see if there was. And what we discovered—again—is that there isn't. Most of the time, it's very difficult to achieve decisive strategic results through military operations. And even the ones that look like a success don't necessarily look like a success in the longer term.” Compelling conversation, engaging debate and insightful perspectives. This series provides expert insights into Australia’s future in a changing world. Foreign Exchange. Brought to you by Australian Foreign Affairs.

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