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Australia's former prime minister and federal Member for Cook Scott Morrison speaks to media during in Sydney.
What We're Watching: An Australian scandal, Israel and Turkey restore ties, North Korea in the Donbas
A rare scandal Down Under
Australia’s former Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, who lost general elections in May, is back in the spotlight after it was revealed this week that, at the height of the pandemic, he secretly appointed himself to head five additional ministries. (The Governor General – the Queen’s representative that formally presides over the executive – signed off on this.) Documents reveal that in 2020, Morrison, who now remains in parliament in the opposition, tapped himself to head the health and finance portfolios, followed by several other ministries the following year, including energy and resources. Making matters worse, Morrison’s colleagues in the Liberal Party didn’t know their boss had assumed these powers. In a defiant press conference Wednesday, Morrison said that he took this drastic move because of the public health emergency, and that he never acted as minister despite being secretly sworn into those positions. But the former PM remains in hot water: a mining company is accusing Morrison of “bias” for killing a permit to explore and drill for gas off the coast of New South Wales when he was secretly acting as head of the energy portfolio. Anthony Albanese, Australia’s new PM from the opposing Labor Party, said he is seeking advice on what – if any – the legal implications are. Meanwhile, several members of Morrison's own party have called for his resignation from parliament.
Israel-Turkey ties are back on
Israel and Turkey announced the restoration of full diplomatic ties on Wednesday, four years after withdrawing their respective ambassadors. Ties between the two countries had been fraught for years, but Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan cited the Trump administration’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in 2018 as the latest trigger for pulling Turkey's top diplomat from Israel. Relations had been improving for months: In March, Israel’s President Isaac Herzog visited Ankara, marking the first visit of an Israeli president to Turkey in 14 years. In recent months, Turkey has also worked closely with Israeli security officials to thwart Iranian plots against Israeli diplomats and tourists in Turkey. But why the detente now? Israel and Turkey have several mutual strategic interests in the region. Crucially, both see the Iranian presence in Syria as a threat to their respective national security interests and have a tricky time navigating the Russian presence there, too. What’s more, Turkey’s economy is flailing, and repairing ties with Israel – a tech hub – presents Ankara with new economic opportunities. We're watching to see whether this latest rapprochement can hold.
Will North Korea rebuild the Donbas?
The so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), the Russian puppet state created by separatists in eastern Ukraine, doesn’t have many friends. Though it declared independence from Ukraine in 2014 with Moscow’s financial and military backing, it was only in 2022 that Russia, Syria and then North Korea moved to recognize its existence and to open relations. (Other Russian client states have recognized Russia’s recognition.) The neighboring Luhansk People’s Republic remains in the same international limbo, and the entire region faces devastation from the war’s heaviest fighting. But DPR head Denis Pushilin is already thinking ahead to the problems of post-war clean-up and of establishing profitable relations with his government’s few foreign friends. On Monday, Pushilin sent a request to North Korea’s Kim Jong-un for “equally beneficial bilateral cooperation.” The message was probably welcomed since North Korea’s ambassador to Russia has already said he sees great potential for trade and “labor migration” between the DPRK and the DPR. Separatists in Luhansk also appear to be courting North Korea, which seems eager to send workers to help dig the Donbas out of the rubble of war.A guide to Australia’s lackluster election
Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced that Australians will head to the polls on May 21 to decide whether to keep his Liberal Party in power. (Time was ticking on his first term and he had to call a vote.) He’s facing off against Anthony Albanese, the low-profile leader of the Labor Party, which has served in opposition for a decade. Labor is currently leading by around 14 points, according to the Roy Morgan poll.
Australians have gained a reputation abroad for being amiable and easygoing, reflecting the country’s fair dinkum spirit. But Australian politics are notoriously cut-throat, long defined by back-stabbing, ad-hominem attacks and accusations of bullying – on both sides of the aisle. (Morrison is the first PM to complete his full term in 15 years because most leaders have been ousted by their own parties.)
What agenda items will be at the heart of the election campaign over the next six weeks, and what – if any – are the foreign policy implications?
What do Aussies care about?
For the average Australian, the election is all about the economy. Australians experienced some of the most grueling rolling lockdowns in recent years because of the pandemic. Things got intense: for the better part of the past two years, Western Australians were banned from traveling to other states without a 14-day quarantine. This has put a massive strain on Australian businesses, including the expansive tourism industry.
While the unemployment rate remains relatively low compared to other developed states, the country continues to experience inflation, and the cost of living is surging.
Morrison and Albanese (dubbed ScoMo and Albo, respectively, because Aussies love nicknames) are gunning to show voters they can best deal with inflation, cost of living pressures and the tightest labour market in many years. Meanwhile, the nation’s biggest banks have warned that interest rates could rise several times over the next few months. Even a small(ish) increase will feel significant for Aussie borrowers who haven’t faced such rate hikes since 2010.
However, neither the incumbent nor the leader of the opposition want to spend much time talking about policy issues.
Morrison, for his part, is trying to focus on Albanese’s lack of leadership experience (he’s been in politics for 26 years, though served in cabinet for only six of them) to position himself as an old timer and a steady hand. And Albanese, uncharismatic and bespeckled, makes that sort of easy to do, especially when he makes cringeworthy gaffes, like in recent days not remembering the national unemployment and interest rates.
The Labor Party, on the other hand, could probably cruise through the next six weeks simply by playing up infighting within the Liberal Party and disdain for the PM from within his own ranks. In recent weeks, an outgoing Liberal senator called Morrison a “bully with no moral compass,” accusing him of appointing buddies to run for safe seats in the state of New South Wales rather than letting rank-and-file Liberal members decide. This came just weeks after a bombshell revelation by a former Morrison rival of Lebanese descent, who said that the PM used a racist smear campaign against him in the 2007 election.
The foreign policy of it all. Canberra’s foreign policy is centered almost entirely on Beijing, its largest trade partner. In recent years, the two have been at loggerheads over a range of issues, including trade, telecomms, human rights, and surveillance.
There’s little daylight between the Liberal and the Labor parties on China policy. Both reject Beijing’s retaliatory trade sanctions, which have hurt Australian producers, and agree on the need to work with allies to push back against Beijing’s bellicose activities in the South China Sea. Indeed, whatever happens on May 21, both Albanese and Morrison will show the Quad alliance and AUKUS – the US-UK-Australia Asia-Pacific security partnership – lots of love.
One point of departure, however, is on climate change. While the Morrison government peeved allies at last year's COP26 climate forum by refusing to commit to an overhaul of the country's lucrative fossil fuel sector, and making a less-than-ambitious carbon reduction pledge, Albanese has pledged a more ambitious reduction target of 43% by 2030. Still, there are many doubts about whether Labor’s backing of a hydropower plant north of Sydney – key to its climate plan – is economically viable and will significantly reduce emissions.
Aussies have had a very rough few years with deadly bushfires, flooding, and a pandemic that gutted morale – and livelihoods. They are now emerging from a post-pandemic malaise with a protest spirit.
“I get it, people are tired of politics,” Morrison said at a press conference Sunday. But are they tired of politics, or tired of you, ScoMo?
The other big elections of 2022
A few days ago we previewed five major elections to watch in 2022. Here are some others we'll be paying close attention to in the months ahead.
South Korea (March). South Korean voters will choose between two very different options to replace Moon Jae-in, the term-limited incumbent. The candidate from the ruling center-left party is Lee Jae-myung, a former civil rights lawyer and governor known as the South Korean Bernie Sanders because he backs a universal basic income. Lee’s rival and center-right hopeful is Yoon Seok-youl, a former prosecutor who helped convict former president Park Geun-hye of abuse of power in 2016.
On foreign policy, Lee wants warmer ties with China, more control over US forces in South Korea, and to play nice with North Korea. For his part, Yoon wants to push back more against China, bolster the US alliance, and deploy US tactical nukes on South Korean soil to deter Pyongyang. Yoon is ahead in the polls, yet not by much. Lee is more experienced and popular with young voters, who could decide the outcome if they turn up in high numbers.
Australia (by May 21). Australians will go to the polls before the end of May. It's a legislative election, so the party that gets a majority of seats in parliament will pick the next prime minister. The approval rating of the current PM, Scott Morrison of the right-leaning Liberal Coalition, is now at its lowest in 18 months due to frustration over one of the world's longest and strictest pandemic lockdowns, which has pummeled Aussie businesses.
Still, the Coalition remains neck-and-neck in the polls with the opposition Labor Party, struggling to capitalize on Morrison's unpopularity. The main campaign issues will likely be climate, but perhaps more COVID and the economy. On foreign policy, both parties want to maintain close ties with the US, support the AUKUS regional military alliance, and have similar views on China — although Labor doesn't want Australia to be in complete lockstep with America as it says Canberra has been under Morrison.
The Philippines (May). Philippine elections have always been deeply polarizing, and next year's will be no different. The current frontrunner in the race to succeed term-limited President Rodrigo Duterte is Ferdinand Marcos Jr., son of the late dictator. Marcos, a staunch Duterte ally, has the president's daughter as his running mate, and right now more than half of Filipinos would vote for him.
But Marcos is reviled by other Filipinos, who remember how his strongman dad embezzled up to $10 billion in his 21 years in power (which the Marcoses deny). With boxer-turned senator Manny Pacquiao polling in the single digits, the anti-Duterte and anti-Marcos opposition has pinned all its hopes on VP Leni Robredo, who beat Marcos in the 2016 Veep contest but at the moment is a long shot.
Kenya (August). Although President Uhuru Kenyatta cannot run for a third term, he will loom large over the 2022 election. Last May, the country's top court junked Kenyatta's planned constitutional referendum in order to make Kenyan politics less tribal in exchange for more executive power. The verdict was a big win for William Ruto, Kenyatta's deputy and current presidential frontrunner.
Ruto — the first candidate not from a political family with a shot at winning the top job — is leading the polls over Raila Odinga, the scion of a prominent dynasty and Kenyatta’s former enemy turned ally. Promising to fight both wealth inequality and political dynasties, the president’s number two styles himself as a "hustler" to appeal to the three-quarters of Kenyans aged between 18 and 35. But he needs to get young people to actually show up at the ballot box, and so far the ongoing registration drive isn’t going well.Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, US President Joe Biden, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi are shown on the screen monitor during the Quad Summit meeting at Suga's office in Tokyo.
Can "the Quad" constrain China?
China is making its neighbors nervous these days. Chinese fighter jets are screaming into Taiwan's airspace. Hundreds of armed Chinese "fishing boats" are plying the disputed waters of the South China Sea. And Beijing is slashing imports from some trading partners because of disputes over political issues.
To push back against this increasingly aggressive behavior, regional powers Japan, India, and Australia, together with the US, are boosting cooperation via a 17-year-old grouping called the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or simply "The Quad." But how effectively can these four countries really work together to counter China? Eurasia Group's Peter Mumford discusses the Quad's future.
What is the Quad?
It has its roots in 2004, when the US, Japan, India, and Australia came together to coordinate humanitarian relief following the Indian Ocean tsunami. Building on this experience, they created the Quad as a forum for discussing security issues among democratic nations in 2007, and held their first joint naval exercises. But the enthusiasm soon fizzled. China was angered by the creation of a grouping that seemed to pointedly exclude it. That prompted Australia to withdraw over fears of damaging ties with its biggest trading partner, China.
But attitudes shifted in the following years, as China began more aggressively asserting its control over disputed territories and waterways in the region. This convinced the original Quad members that they had to stand up to the rising power more forcefully. The grouping was relaunched in 2017, and though it didn't mention China by name, it pledged to promote a "free, open, secure, and prosperous Indo-Pacific" and to defend "freedom of navigation."
The Quad quickly became one of the few areas of multilateral cooperation favored by former US president Donald Trump, and it is now a key part of President Joe Biden's overriding foreign policy goal of assembling a united front to push back against China's expanding influence. The leaders of the four Quad countries held their first-ever (virtual) meeting last month. That has triggered media speculation that the grouping could someday become an "Asian NATO."
Can the Quad really become a NATO-like military alliance?
Very unlikely. The four countries have not shown any indication of wanting to establish a military alliance of the ambition of NATO, a massively integrated organization that entails military intelligence-sharing, binding defense commitments, and diplomatic representation at a single organizational headquarters. For one thing, Quad members are unlikely to agree to anything like NATO's "Article 5" commitment, which obligates member states to come to each other's aid if attacked. The country perhaps most suspicious of an arrangement like that is India, which has long favored a policy of nonalignment with world powers (following the norm-breaking decision to join the Quad, officials say they wish to maintain "strategic autonomy" for India). Meanwhile, the other Quad members already have bilateral defense treaties in place: one binding the US and Japan and another binding the US and Australia.
If not, what can the Quad do?
The four countries will continue holding joint naval exercises to improve coordination among their militaries. French vessels joined in the latest round of exercises, held earlier this month. And the Quad has ambitions to expand its cooperation into new areas. At their first summit in March, leaders of the four member nations agreed to provide 1 billion vaccine doses (mostly produced in India) to emerging market nations in Asia by the end of 2022, offering an alternative to China's vaccine diplomacy in the region.
And beyond that?
It gets a lot tougher. A climate working group is being established, but it is unclear how it could add value to other global initiatives. And despite the pledges to work together "as democratic nations" to achieve a "free, open, secure, and prosperous Indo-Pacific," the four members have varying levels of commitment to ideals such as free trade, as underscored by India's rising protectionism, and democracy promotion, as shown by diverse responses to the military coup in Myanmar, ranging from India's lukewarm condemnation to new US sanctions.
What do other countries of the region think about the Quad? Could they join it?
The grouping has held several "Quad Plus" meetings to which it has invited outside countries to attend. One of these is South Korea, which as a large democracy and close US ally would seem to be a leading candidate for inclusion in the Quad. Yet Seoul prefers to only slowly deepen cooperation with the Quad and test China's reactions, especially given strong economic ties with China and Beijing's key role in managing the North Korean nuclear threat. Moreover, tensions between South Korea and Quad-member Japan have risen in recent years over thorny trade disputes.
Similarly, it's unlikely any Southeast Asian countries would join the grouping. Most welcome the Quad's efforts to defend freedom of navigation and international law in principle, and they will be the main beneficiaries of the grouping's vaccine initiative. But they face a difficult balancing act. These countries are heavily dependent on Chinese trade and investment and worry that the Quad will antagonize China, making it harder to maintain good relations with both the US and China.
What could China do?
Southeast Asian countries in particular worry that if the Quad provokes China too much, Beijing will lash out through military or commercial channels. Some observers believe that the unprecedented number of Chinese ships swarming disputed waters in the South China Sea is itself a response to deepening Quad cooperation. Others interpret punitive trade action against Australia — with China slapping new restrictions on imports of Australian products ranging from coal to wine and cotton — as a warning shot to other countries not to join the Quad. But Beijing's increasingly assertive foreign policy only stiffens the Quad's resolve
What's next for the Quad?
A key focus will be delivering on its lofty promises on vaccines, which has become more challenging as India experiences a dramatic surge in COVID cases and restricts vaccine exports. Additional joint naval exercises are likely (including with other countries), further "Quad Plus" discussions are possible, and the recently established working groups on technology and climate issues will begin discussions. At some point later in the year, the Quad leaders also hope to gather for their first ever in-person meeting.
Peter Mumford is Practice Head for Southeast and South Asia at Eurasia Group.
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