Strategic capitalism – Here and there

Rare earth elements: why there is no green future without China

14 March 2021 Online editor Analysis and comment

Rare earth elements (REEs) are vital for communications, the green energy transition and defence. They are produced almost exclusively in China, and it will be very difficult to challenge China’s dominance of the global REE market.

ASEAN: central to whose vision for the Indo-Pacific?

24 February 2021 Mike Scrafton Australian focus, International relations

Australia places ASEAN “at the heart of our vision for the Indo-Pacific”. But a powerful dynamic, unrelated to the Indo-Pacific concept, is drawing ASEAN countries closer to China. In future, Southeast Asia may at best be neutral, or may possibly be more closely aligned with China. ASEAN could then be central to China’s “vision”.

The Indo-Pacific is a distraction: economics not geography is the strategic arena

19 December 2020 Mike Scrafton Global, International relations

Australia’s fixation on the South China Sea, and policy-makers’ indulgence of the fatuous Indo-Pacific concept, is obscuring the major developments in the strategic environment and misdirecting the public debate. While military power will continue to play a role in international relations, the fierce competition over the technologies and materials crucial to the next economy should be preoccupying strategic policy-makers.

Strategic capitalism, strategic autonomy and Australia

5 December 2020 Mike Scrafton By Mike Scrafton, Global, Strategy, defence and security

The Biden administration will be unable to avoid continuing America’s fierce competition with China. It also will find that, like-minded and democratic or not, most states will have distinct national interests and will seek to act autonomously, dancing between the feet of the battling giants, trying to extract or leverage the best price for their allegiance and alignment in the Chinese-US competition. With a deep past investment in the US hegemony, Australia is awkwardly placed as this new age of strategic capitalism unfolds.

Strategic capitalism, geoeconomics and Australia’s choices

26 November 2020 Mike Scrafton Australian focus, By Mike Scrafton

As market-based economic globalisation gives way to a system of state relations based largely on strategic capitalism, the Australian government seems to be using an outdated operating system. The demise of the multi-lateral, rules-based and open world will pose problems that demand imagination, innovation and deft and agile policy and diplomacy. In this environment Australia has a difficult course to chart.