South China Sea: What next?
With a new Philippines President, an arbitral ruling and a new US administration soon to take office, where stands the tension over competing claims in the South China Sea?
In Canberra on November 23 ACRI presented a first-rank panel: Hugh White, Professor of Strategic Studies, School of International, Political & Strategic Studies, ANU; Greg Austin, School of Engineering and Information Technology Australian Centre for Cyber Security; and Allan Gyngell, Visiting Fellow at the National Security College and an Adjunct Professor at the Crawford School of Public Policy.
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Speakers
Hugh White
Hugh White AO is Professor of Strategic Studies at the Australian National University. His work focuses primarily on Australian strategic and defence policy, Asia-Pacific security issues, and global strategic affairs especially as they influence Australia and the Asia-Pacific. He has served as an intelligence analyst with the Office of National Assessments, as a journalist with the Sydney Morning Herald, as a senior adviser on the staffs of Defence Minister Kim Beazley and Prime Minister Bob Hawke, and as a senior official in the Department of Defence, where from 1995 to 2000 he was Deputy Secretary for Strategy and Intelligence, and as the first Director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI). In the 1970s he studied philosophy at Melbourne and Oxford Universities.
Greg Austin
Dr Austin is a Professor in the University of New South Wales (Canberra). He concurrently serves as a Professorial Fellow with the EastWest Institute (EWI) in New York. He has a career of achievement in international security affairs. He has published six books on Asian security affairs (five are on China), each with a strong interdisciplinary focus, and one additional edited volume on energy security. His 1998 book, China’s Ocean Frontier: International Law, Military Force and National Development, has been widely cited. He writes regularly on South China Sea issues for prominent media outlets, such as the Diplomat. His current research interests in cyber strategy and diplomacy, security policies of China and Russia, countering violent extremism, and national security ethics. He has held research leadership posts in leading NGOs or think tanks. Dr Austin travels widely for consultations with business and government (e.g. office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense in 2014, and the IISS Track 1 Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore in 2015). He regularly speaks in prominent forums (such as the Brookings Institution in December 2014, the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence in Estonia in May 2015, IDSA Annual Conference in New Delhi in 2016). Dr Austin has held posts in Australian security policy as Ministerial adviser, parliamentary committee secretary, international intelligence liaison officer and intelligence analyst. He has worked and lived in London, Brussels, Washington DC, Hong Kong and Canberra. Dr Austin has held research leadership roles in globally prominent NGOs, including as Vice President of the EastWest Institute and Asia Program Director in the International Crisis Group.
Allan Gyngell
Allan Gyngell is Director of the Crawford Australian Leadership Forum and an Adjunct Professor in the Crawford School of Public Policy.
He was the Director-General of the Australian Office of National Assessments (ONA) from 2009 to 2013.
Before his appointment to ONA, Mr Gyngell was the founding Executive Director of the Lowy Institute for International Policy (2003-09) in Sydney. He has a wide background in international policymaking and analysis and has written and spoken extensively on Australian foreign policy, Asian regional relations and the development of global and regional institutions. He is co-author with Michael Wesley of Making Australian Foreign Policy (Cambridge University Press).
Between 1993 and 1996, he was Senior Advisor (International) to the Prime Minister, Paul Keating. He worked earlier in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and ONA. He served as an Australian diplomat in Rangoon, Singapore and Washington.
He was appointed as an Officer in the Order of Australia in 2009 for service to international relations and is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of International Affairs.
He is a graduate in history and political science from the University of Melbourne.
