Strategic diplomacy in Asia

Strategy involves connecting ways and means to specific goals, while diplomacy is one of the key means by which states navigate the chosen paths to their desired policy ends. Yet, the business of national strategy-making is increasingly fraught as many states today lack compelling national narratives such as empire, religion, independence, or the Cold War whereby to order strategic purpose. Thus, strategies themselves have become the object of national and international contest. At the same time, states are faced with a wide range of interconnected risks and threats, making the strategic underpinning of diplomatic practice even more crucial than before, especially because the common reaction to complexity and uncertainty is to seek refuge in tactics. This challenge is especially acute in strategically dynamic regions like East Asia. Hence ‘strategic diplomacy’—diplomacy undertaken with purposeful strategic rationale, with a long-term focus on shaping the complex international system that nation-states must operate in—is a policy tool that needs development and sharpening. The collection of essays in this issue is drawn from our new multi-regional research program on strategic diplomacy. They present brief studies from Southeast Asia, a region evincing significant diplomacy with pronounced strategic motivations. Leading regional scholars and practitioners from a range of disciplines examine the challenges of strategic diplomacy in regionalism, economics, law and security. These eight essays derive from a selection of papers presented at a workshop jointly organised by the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre and the Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy at ANU, and the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore in February 2017. The Asian Review section features essays on the pressures facing the Australia–US alliance, Philippine President Duterte’s tilt to China, China’s changing role in global governance, US–China relations under Trump and their implications for Southeast Asia, as ...