Event Date: October 3, 2022
Location: online

Part 1:

Part 2:

A full-day hybrid workshop. The audience is welcome to join via Zoom.

Presented by CIPS, in collaboration with Mobilizing Insights in Defence and Security (MINDS)

“Seismic.” “Tectonic.” “Earthquake.” We cannot fault the media for using geological metaphors to describe AUKUS – the security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States announced via video conference on September 15, 2021. The Australian government’s move to cancel a multibillion- dollar contract for the construction of 12 conventional Barracuda submarines for 8 nuclear-powered ones to be built with US-UK technology was unexpected. Viewed from France, it was also humiliating – a point President Emmanuel Macron made 48 hours later by withdrawing France’s ambassadors from Washington and Canberra. Also upset were several other governments – the communist one in Beijing above all, but also the democratic ones in Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur, who voiced legitimate concerns about the pact’s effects on nuclear proliferation and the regional arms race. Some harsh criticisms of the pact came from within its member states, too – in Australia they have included two former prime ministers. And here in Canada, the feelings were mixed: a happy disinterest in nuclear-powered submarines, together with a certain fear of missing out. Taking stock of the agreement on its first anniversary, this workshop will bring together diverse Canadian and international security experts to address the key questions AUKUS poses for the strategic positions and policy discourses across the Indo-Pacific as well as for International Relations theories of conflict and cooperation.

Organizers:

Alexandra Gheciu and Srdjan Vucetic (University of Ottawa)

Schedule:

Speaker bios:

Alexandra Gheciu is a Professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, and Associate Director of the Centre for International Policy Studies. Her research interests are in the fields of international security, international institutions, Euro-Atlantic relations, global governance and the liberal order, the Global Right, state (re)building, and International Relations theory. 

Srdjan Vucetic is a professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa. His research interests are in international security and foreign & defence policy.

Amoz Hor is a PhD Candidate in Political Science at the George Washington University, a KSI US-Asia Grand Strategy Fellow at the University of Southern California, and a Hans. J. Morgenthau Fellow at the University of Notre Dame. His broad research agenda concerns emotions and racialization in international politics.

Yui Nishimura is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at Rice University. Her broad research interests center on human rights and international cooperation and ongoing projects focus on causes and consequences of international activism through international institutions. 

Atsushi Tago is a professor of International Relations at the School of Political Science and Economics, Waseda University (Ph.D. in Advanced Social and International Studies, University of Tokyo, 2007). He is specialized in a scientific study of international politics. He is also a Global Fellow at the Peace Research Institute Oslo.

Ahmad Rizky M. Umar is an Associate Tutor at the School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland. He is also an External Research Associate at the ASEAN Studies Center, Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM), Indonesia. His main research interests span across three broad areas: International Relations Theory, Politics and Security in Asia, and Global Environmental Politics. 

Yulida Nuraini Santoso teaches at the Department of International Relations and Managing Director of the ASEAN Studies Centre, at Universitas Gadjah Mada. Prior to this, she worked at the ASEAN Secretariat facilitating political cooperation of the ASEAN member states. Her areas of interest include transnationalism, regionalism, and ASEAN in its political-security context.

Hoo Chiew Ping is a Senior Lecturer in Strategic Studies and International Relations at the National University of Malaysia (UKM). She is concurrently a member of the Consultative Council on Foreign Policy at the Ministry of Foreign Affarirs, Malaysia; Adjunct Lecturer at the Malaysian Armed Forces Defence College and the Institute of Diplomacy and Foreign Relations of Malaysia. While her main research focus is on the Korean peninsula security, she also works on the security and economic linkages between Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia, Southeast Asia and smaller states’ response to power and security issues, and external powers’ influence (US, China, Japan, Korea, Australia) in Southeast Asia. 

Jon Caverley is a professor of strategy in the Strategic and Operational Research Department of the Naval War College’s Center for Naval Warfare Studies and a research affiliate in the security studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the inaugural director of the Bernard Brodie Strategy Group.

Christina Lai works at the Institute of Political Science, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. She was a post-doctoral fellow in China and the World Program at Princeton University, and she was a lecturer in Global Security Studies at Johns Hopkins University in 2017-2018. She is interested in U.S.- China Relations, Chinese Foreign Policy, East Asian politics, and Research Methods.

Jack Holland is Professor of Global Security Challenges at the University of Leeds. His work makes substantive contributions on US, UK, and Australian foreign and security policy as well as theoretical contributions to (critical) constructivism and methodological contributions to discourse analytic approaches. 

Nick Pearce is Professor of Public Policy and Director of the Institute for Policy Research (IPR) at the University of Bath. He leads the Institute for Policy Research (IPR) across the range of its research, teaching, policy programmes and public engagement activity. He has extensive experience in policy research and government policymaking and writes on a wide range of issues, from contemporary British politics, public service and welfare state reform, to Britain’s place in the world. 

Caroline Dunton is a Research Associate at CIPS and a Senior Policy Analyst at Global Affairs Canada. She received her PhD from the University of Ottawa in 2022.

Laxman Kumar Behera is an associate professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University. He has worked as a member and/or co-coordinator of a number of Committees/Task Forces/Study Groups set up by the Indian Ministry of Defence and other government agencies.

Hans Mouritzen is a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies. He has developed theory on the autonomy of international organisations; small states’ foreign policy in a spatial context (‘constellation theory’); how external danger affects domestic cohesion; and how historical memory impacts foreign policy decisions (‘presence of the past’ theory).

Justin Massie is Full Professor of political science at the Université du Québec à Montréal and Co-Director of the Network for Strategic Analysis. He was the 2019 Fulbright Visiting Research Chair in Canada-U.S. Relations at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, DC. His research focuses on the global power transition, multinational military coalitions, and Canadian foreign and defence policy. 

Maxandre Fortier is currently studying International Relations at University of Québec in Montréal (UQAM) under the supervision of Justin Massie. His research, funded by SSHRC and FRQSC, focuses on how American allies perceive the decline of the United States and the rise of China, as well as the strategies put in place to deal with this change. 

Stephanie Carvin is an Associate Professor of International Relations at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs. Her research interests are in the area of national security and international security and international law. Currently, she is teaching in the areas of critical infrastructure protection and national security.

Thomas Juneau is an assistant professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa. His research focuses mostly on the Middle East, in particular on Iran and Yemen. He is also interested in Canadian foreign and defence policy, in the relationship between intelligence and policy, and in international relations theory. 

Brendon O’Connor is jointly appointed between the US Studies Centre and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney as an Associate Professor in American Politics. He was a Fulbright Fellow at Georgetown University in 2006, a Visiting Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC in 2008 and 2015, and life member of Clare Hall at University of Cambridge.