The Interpreter is on holidays until 3 January, but if you want some distraction between now and then, something completely unrelated to international policy, here are two online hits from 2010 which really tickled me.

The first is an epic 7-part video review of The Phantom Menace (start here), George Lucas' first Star Wars prequel. The review is not only funny and inventive, it is absolutely devastating in the way it pulls apart the film's glaring inadequacies. Watch this one at home — definitely NSFW.

Second, try comedian Zach Galifianakis' celebrity interview series, Between Two Ferns. (Also NSFW.)

The only thing left to do now is to wish you all a Merry Christmas and happy new year, and to leave you with this flash mob scene from a shopping mall in Canada, a moment of genuine beauty in the most prosaic of settings. It's heartening to see that this video has had over 25 million views. Enjoy.

H/t WRM.

The New START arms control treaty was ratified overnight after months of wheeling and dealing on Capitol Hill over a lot more than just the substance of the treaty. The ratification will chalk up a foreign policy victory for President Obama, all the more remarkable given that Congress is in its lame duck session and will cede to Republican control in 2011 after the Democratic Party's thumping in the Congressional elections earlier this year.

The ratification of New START, considered by most arms control experts to be a common sense and uncontroversial treaty which requires neither Russia nor the US to cut their arsenals in a strategically compromising way and re-establishes bilateral verification measures, gives rise to both optimism and pessimism for Obama's two major arms control challenges in 2011. It shows that while politicking may hold up a treaty, it did not prevent enough Republican senators from voting in favour of the treaty and against their party leadership.

Presidents Obama and Medvedev at the signing of New START in April 2010. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

Obama faces a much more difficult challenge in achieving ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) by a Republican-controlled Senate, which he vowed to pursue 'aggressively' in his 2009 Prague speech calling for a nuclear weapon-free world. The Republican-controlled Senate rejected the treaty in 1999, for reasons of both partisan politics and genuine concerns about the security implications. Both of these obstacles must again be surmounted before the Senate will ratify the CTBT.

Obama's second major nuclear arms control challenge will be to negotiate a follow-on treaty to New START, but this time dealing with far more strategically sensitive topics such as further cuts to warhead numbers and delivery systems, reductions in tactical nuclear weapons, and (at Russian insistence) missile defence.

Pursuing this tricky agenda in 2011 would not have been possible without the ratification of New START, so let's take a break over Christmas and let President Obama and arms control advocates the world over enjoy this last minute gift for 2010.

The Nuclear Reactions column is supported by the Nuclear Security Project of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, as part of a wider partnership between the NSP and the Lowy Institute.

One thing I have not changed my mind about this year is the value of constantly questioning one's own assumptions and assessments.

1. India's prospects: India's image has had a shocking year, and I am increasingly convinced that this potentially great nation will not progress far as a global power without some serious governance reform. In its handling of Kashmir, the Maoist insurgency, the Commonwealth Games and some major business deals, India's flaws have this year been grossly exposed. The threads of power and influence in New Delhi remain far from transparent, as the so-called Radia-gate scandal has revealed.

Indian democracy retains a great propensity to muddle through, but with massive challenges of energy, employment, education and mass political empowerment looming — not to mention external challenges from China and Pakistan — New Delhi's leaders will have to do a whole lot better.

2. Peace in East Asia: Those of us who have monitored Asian geopolitics for many years have long worried about the fragility of East Asian peace and prosperity. But this year it has become clear how fragile the good times really are. Conflict on the Korean Peninsula is a starker possibility than in many years. And right around China's maritime periphery, we have seen needless confrontations with risks of escalation.

It is now clear that managing the power shift in Asia as China rises is going to be a constant test of diplomacy. The Lowy Institute's Power and Choice publication was unpleasantly prescient.

3. The limits of security engagement with China: I have long been an advocate of engaging with the PLA in activities like disaster relief and counter-piracy. I still am. But my assessments have been somewhat altered by this year's tensions in East Asia, and the confusing dynamics behind them.

Were incidents like the PLA Navy's helicopter buzzing of a Japanese warship the result of accident, deliberate Chinese policy, PLA-wide or fleet-wide adventurism, or the rogue behaviour of an individual officer? China and other navies do not even have regular channels of communication to try to find out. In Washington, such episodes have left the China engagement lobby nursing a quiet sense of betrayal and embarrassment. I now fear that we are already seeing the limits of partnership with the PLA, and the choice is proving to be China's.

On those cheery notes, I wish Interpreter readers a peaceful and hope-filled 2011.

Photo by Flickr user Joe_Andrews.

Other Interpreter regulars have offered you serious and worthy tomes for your end-of-year best books consideration. This column goes the other way, with cop shop potboiler Xmas reads, maintaining the Interpreter mantle by picking Asian sleuths.

First up, some rattling good reads from Singapore — tales of murder in Southeast Asia that throw off the bite of chillis, the miasma of curry and a pungent hint of durian. Meet Inspector Singh, the creation of Shamini Flint, who started her professional life as a lawyer in Malaysia and later worked for an international law firm in Singapore.

Inspector Singh offers the kaleidescope of ASEAN in the guise of a police procedural. Surely ASEAN is becoming more than just an elite political construct if it can offer up its own gumshoe genre? The first three Singh books are based in Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore. With enough sales, Flint can work her way through the other seven ASEAN countries.

As a Singapore Sikh, the Inspector has the eye of an outsider for Southeast Asia, even for aspects of his city-state home. The Inspector is a fat foe of crime; finding the crim is important, but there must always be time for a good lunch. Imagine Horace Rumpole as a Singapore detective with a turban rather than the wig of an Old Bailey hack. Rumpole's philosophy is shaped by the courts; Singh's by corpses. Like Rumpole, Singh is fat, hen-pecked, and ever at odds with his superiors.

The place to start the series, for Australians, is 'Inspector Singh investigates: A Bali Conspiracy Most Foul' (the books all have such titles, using the ornate English of an Indian sub-editor tippling from Rudyard Kipling). Singh is dispatched to Bali in 2002 as Singapore's contribution to the investigation of the Bali bombing. That means he spends as much time working with officers from the Australian Federal Police as the Indonesia police.

I have for some time been relatively sanguine about the rise of China in the Pacific. I believed that, like most powers which engage with Pacific Island countries, China wanted a stable and prosperous Pacific region. Chinese trade, aid and investment in the Pacific were good if they created wealth and improved infrastructure. China's truce with Taiwan over the race for diplomatic recognition in the Pacific offered an opportunity for China to mature as a donor.

It is also vital for the Pacific to have access to a greater range of advice than that provided by Australia and New Zealand, and to have advice from other developing countries. China provides an alternative development model that offers some useful lessons for decision-makers in Pacific Islands.

But I am no longer convinced that China is a force for good in the Pacific:  

• Chinese infrastructure aid does not usually use local suppliers or employ many local citizens, thus constraining opportunities and creating seeds for anti-Chinese sentiment which has, in a number of countries, already resulted in racially-motivated violence.
• Pacific Island nations are experiencing or will experience difficulties repaying Chinese loans, resulting in higher debt-to-GDP ratios and downgrading their credit ratings.
• China has shown little interest in aid coordination and its methods of aid delivery could undermine the efforts of other donors in some Pacific countries.
• The Fiji Government has invoked the Chinese model of development as justification for censoring the media and ruling by decree. This interpretation of the China model, particularly if replicated by other Pacific Island countries, has the potential to wind back progress across the region in governance and transparency.
• China's inability to curb illegal Chinese immigration in Papua New Guinea and elsewhere, or to encourage Chinese companies to improve their relations with local communities or address Chinese organised crime, is likely to create more local resentment. 
• The rapid increase in China-Pacific Islands trade means that the two major trading partners (Australia and China) of most Pacific Island countries are strategic competitors, posing some potentially difficult choices for countries which benefit from the security umbrella provided by Australia.
• China's desire to project a global presence through its economic might, diplomacy and its ability to project power into the 'second island chain' raises the possibility that it will come into conflict with US, French, Australian and New Zealand military interests in the Pacific.

I am delighted that my humble blog post speculating on the consequences of cablegate has prompted a full-blown debate on The Interpreter, covering everything from the ethics of WikiLeaks to whether there can or should be such total transparency in international relations.

I am less thrilled that some of my original ruminations might have been so misunderstood or misinterpreted. In particular, some contributors seem to have become confused between my speculative analysis of what might occur and some perceived notion of what I think ought to occur. 

It seems that simply offering the assessment that governments are likely to react in ways inimical to transparency makes the assessor's democratic credentials suspect. (Admittedly, my choice of words — libertarian righteousness — may have been a tad undiplomatic, even though, technically, each of those words could be applied to many who applaud Wikileaks, and neither is exactly an epithet; surely being righteous is part of any self-respecting crusader's ethos?)

By the same token, there seems to be a large dose of wishful thinking mixed into the critiques offered by correspondents such as Scott Burchill and Stephen Collins, and this leaves the reader a little confused as to where their analysis ends and their 'wouldn't it be nice' musings begin.

Yes, my initial interest was more in charting consequences than inspiring hopes for change. In the untidy realm of international politics, I find proclamations of truth without a hint of self-doubt troubling. I wanted to encourage the libertarian (and other) fans of the WikiLeaks phenomenon to put themselves into the shoes of responsible policymakers — people whose chosen vocation it is to make, or make the best of, unenviable decisions — and to think twice about the counterproductive and perhaps unintended impacts of classified information dumps like cablegate.

CBS News reports:

The CIA has launched a task force to assess the impact of the exposure of thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables and military files by WikiLeaks. Officially, the panel is called the WikiLeaks Task Force. But at CIA headquarters, it's mainly known by its all-too-apt acronym: W.T.F.

The CIA has a sense of humour? NFW.

(H/t Daily What.)

This year I've been thinking about a few related ideas; rising power, appeasement, containment, negotiation and political leadership. These themes show up in the books that have made the biggest impression on me this year.

In Greece in spring I reread Thucydides from cover to cover for the first time in many decades, and was rather taken aback by how good it is. I also read a wonderful little book called Why Socrates Died, by Robin Waterfield, which gives as good a picture as I've found of the workings of 5th century Athenian society and added a lot to my grasp of the whole deal.

In Munich I found a book called Munich: The 1938 Appeasement Crisis, by David Faber, which freshened up my thinking about this much-abused historical metaphor and has lots to tell us about present predicaments. Also a very interesting biography, Stanley Melbourne Bruce: Australian Internationalist, by David Lee of DFAT's Historical Section, which has a lot to say both about appeasement as a policy, and about Australia's remarkable efforts to shape British policy in the 1920s and 30s.

Thinking about how to deal with a rising power led me to read – for the first time, I'm ashamed to say – John Lewis Gaddis' Strategies of Containment, which explores the complexities of America's approach to the Soviet Union in great detail and with great insight. And that led me to Coral Bell's old classic, Negotiation from Strength, which is, in its clarity and power, rather a model of strategic writing, and very pertinent to our present concerns.

Below, a response from Stephen Collins to Sam's recent post. But first, Will Grant:

I'm glad to see the senior Canberra security insider's view of WikiLeaks.Though I'd quibble with a number of her/his particular points (particularly on the conflation of individual privacy and state privacy, which Scott Burchill has dealt with previously), the thing that I'm most thinking about now is the framing of the argument.

It's neither ironic nor unpredictable that insiders like the 'senior Canberra security insider' would line up to attack Wikileaks, while outsiders to this security edifice would line up to defend it. It's the job of an insider to defend the inside. 

But what I'd like to know is this: is this argument about WikiLeaks an argument about security, or is it an argument about governance and democracy? If security is paramount in your thinking (something clearly evident in the senior Canberra security insider's view) then it seems you're going to see the defence of the state as paramount, and WikiLeaks as a direct attack on the state. If, however, democracy and democratic governance are paramount in your thinking, then your approach to WikiLeaks is going to be rather different.

• We have recently published posts by Prakash Mirchandani on Defence media relations. We failed to disclose that Prakash previously worked as a media and communications consultant to the ADF and other Federal agencies. The posts will be amended to make note of this.
• The centre of gravity of the global aviation industry is moving to the Asia Pacific.
• Timor's e-volution: Facebook is big in Dili, and Twitter is catching on too.
• Blogger and lawyer Peter Timmins looks at Fergus Hanson's e-diplomacy paper and calls for cultural change at DFAT.
• The world is close to eradicating the Guinea worm, a thin, meter-long worm living inside the human body, crawling between muscles and bones. A remarkable achievement by Jimmy Carter.
• 'The World's Toilet Crisis' is a shocking documentary about the lack of sanitation in many developing countries. It is a story of one of the world's deadliest killers, filmed in India but representative of many other countries.
• Brilliant musical history of the Soviet Union. (If you're asking yourself, 'Why the Tetris symbolism?', the answer is, it was a Soviet invention.)

The WHO has called on rich nations to do more in the fight against malaria. Substantial progress has been made in cutting malaria cases and deaths in the last three years, but the hard economic times have stalled additional funding commitments. To keep the momentum going, US$4.2 billion is needed on top of the current US$1.8 billion international funding. Is it time for a Robin Hood Tax to raise these funds?

Meanwhile, fake and dangerous malaria drugs are becoming an increasingly serious health problem. But the mPedigree scratch card could offer a cheap and effective solution to distinguish between life-threatening and life-saving drugs. 

A non-conventional approach to the eradication of malaria is the genetic engineering of a malaria- and dengue-proof mosquito (study here). While some 3 million genetically modified mosquitoes are already loose in the Cayman Islands, the imminent start of two pilots programs in Malaysia has caused a debate over safety and effectiveness.

Photo by Flickr user Gustavo. 

Catherine Chan is an environmental lawyer and journalist in Beijing.

Beijing and Shanghai spring to mind when most non-Chinese think of China. But the real and untold story of China is the development of the 2nd, 3rd and 4th tier cities. The fact is that China, with its internal competing economies, vast geographical differences and cultural and social variances, can be likened more to a group of nations within a larger framework, like the EU.

China's tiered city system is characterised primarily by a city's economic scale and population size, with Shanghai and Beijing vying to top the list with permanent populations (excluding the migrant worker populations) of 20 million and 22 million people respectively. 

Wuhan (pictured), the inland capital of Hubei province, is one of the lesser known stories. A major transportation hub commonly recognised as one of the Three Furnaces of China for its spectacularly hot summers and the presence of heavy industry, Wuhan is home to the Wuhan Iron and Steel Group (WISCO), which has recently engaged in an Australian joint venture. The province best known for its filthy black skies and putrid waterways will soon lay claim to the world's third tallest building, which will stand 606m (the world's tallest Burj Khalifa Tower stands at 800m).

Until this year, I fairly successfully avoided joining the cult of Apple. I've been more than happy to stick with a PC and (partly just because I dislike mobile phones in general) have had no interest in owning an iPhone. I did have an iPod, but since that was an unsolicited gift, I'm going to claim it doesn't really count.

This year I bought an iPad. Pretty much an impulse purchase, but now I'm hooked. I still reckon I'm not a cultist. But I do like it. Quite a lot.

This is also the first year I've bought and read an e-book. I really like the feel of actual books, especially hardbacks, and I really, really like browsing in actual bookstores. So I have always resisted the idea of going digital. But the combination of iPad ownership, rapidly tightening space constraints, and sheer cost have together convinced me to change my ways, at least a little bit. (I'm still buying most of my books the old-fashioned way.)

Reading highlights of the experiment so far? Frances Spufford's excellent Red Plenty followed by Charles Yu's How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe.

Photo by Flickr user Photo Giddy.

Stephen Collins' complaint about the Lowy Institute's unwillingness 'to extend the set of viewpoints into the wider, progressive and non-insider arena' is laughably easy to refute. After all, his argument, along with a previous post of his, was published on the Lowy Institute's blog. As were the views of Scott Burchill, who I think would also class himself as a progressive of sorts.

As for the Lowy Institute's 'narrowness', Stephen has quickly forgotten that both Mark Thirlwell and myself have written in defence of WikiLeaks. Although, speaking for myself, this is not at all from a 'progressive' perspective. It is rather sad that the political right has come to be so closely associated with authoritarianism that it is thought to be impossible for anyone from the right to defend WikiLeaks. But a healthy scepticism of government and the defence of a free press are for me essential components of modern conservatism.

Having said that, James Brown's post has helped me define the limits of my enthusiasm for WikiLeaks. One reason conservatives are so sceptical of revolutions is that conservatives are modest enough to realise that they themselves might not fully recognise the importance of institutions that have survived for centuries. No single generation has a monopoly on political wisdom, so we should be extremely reluctant to tear down age-old practices (such as international diplomacy) on the grounds that we know better than all who have come before.

Judging by Julian Assange's own writings, he is guilty of just that kind of arrogance.

Gulf Arab states can be divided roughly into two camps — those that see Iran as a threat (be it existential, irredentist or ideological), and those that, for rather more pragmatic reasons, see Iran as a permanent geographic reality which needs to be engaged. Selected excerpts from the diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks suggest Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE fall into the former category while Qatar and Oman fall into the latter. Kuwait appears to waver between the two.

Relations between the Gulf states and Iran are, however, more complex than the WikiLeaks cables allow, as this Lowy paper illustrates.

For its part, Qatar has once again shown its willingness to swim against the Arab diplomatic tide, with the Qatari Emir paying his sixth visit to international pariah Iran yesterday, coming on the back of a naval visit by Iranian ships to Doha on Monday and visits from Iranian provincial governors and education specialists in the coming weeks.

Qatar is a classic 'hedger' — maintaining friendly relations with Iran while hosting US and coalition aircraft at the enormous al-Udeid air base. Mind you, with a tiny population and military, abundant gas reserves and unresolved maritime border issues, it has little choice but to be the ultimate international relations pragmatist, maintaining cordial relations with everyone. And having resolved the Lebanese political crisis in 2008, created an internationally regarded media organisation (al-Jazeera) and won the rights to the 2022 soccer World Cup, who could argue against their approach?

Photo by Flickr user Doha Sam.

Hugh White has already written about China's growing maritime assertiveness in 2010, but there's also the question of hardware. It's barely two-and-a-half months ago that I wrote a blog post which described China's naval modernisation as 'methodical' and 'modest'. I even used the phrase 'slow and steady' in the headline, and threw in a picture of the tortoise and the hare to drive home the point.

But the evidence that has emerged since that time — mainly from Chinese military-themed blogs and forums — throws that characterisation into serious doubt. Shipyard photos posted online lately support the claim that the PLA Navy is entering another building boom. Given the capacity of Chinese shipyards and the low cost of labour, we could see China comfortably outstrip US naval shipbuilding in the next five years.

Of course, this latest building boom could be followed by another 4- or 5-year lull, as happened the previous time. But with China now officially confirming that it intends to build aircraft carriers, you would expect the escort ships — destroyers, frigates, submarines, supply vessels — to follow.

Photo shows one of two Type 052C destroyers in PLA Navy service; four more are under construction. Courtesy of Sinodefence.

It seems I accidentally hit a raw nerve yesterday by suggesting WikiLeaks and Julian Assange represented why the hacker mentality was bad for democracy. Stephen Collins was kind enough to explain why I was profoundly misinformed and making a fool of the Lowy Institute and myself. Normally it takes much less than 200 words for people to realise that about me, but I digress.

The gist of Collins' argument is that all hackers are not equal — there are evil hackers (script kiddies and crackers), sure, but most hackers are ethical, trying to understand the world through a commitment to open government and a collaborative effort to 'chip away at the edges of a closed system'.

For the sake of the argument, let's accept that premise, noting that the hacker community itself hasn't quite resolved this definitional dilemma. What is it that lies at the core of all of these groups, then? It's right there in Stephen's post where he derides the Lowy Institute for only hiring insiders and suggests his colleagues are 'chipping away at the edges of a closed system'. And it's all throughout the hacker manifesto that Stephen referred me to, with the hacker's sense of alienation from the mainstream and persecution by a world that 'murders, cheats and lies'.

In today's SMH, Tanveer Ahmed has an interesting psychiatric analysis of 'anomia' — a sense of alienation or dissatisfaction with the system which seems to underpin both hacking and conspiracy.

We're suckers for a good spy thriller here at The Interpreter, and this trailer for Hanna looks very promising. Here's the synopsis:

Hanna is a teenage girl. Uniquely, she has the strength, the stamina, and the smarts of a solider; these come from being raised by her father, an ex-CIA man, in the wilds of Sweden. Living a life unlike any other teenager, her upbringing and training have been one and the same, all geared to making her the perfect assassin. The turning point in her adolescence is a sharp one; sent into the world by her father on a mission, Hanna journeys stealthily across Europe while eluding agents dispatched after her by a ruthless intelligence operative with secrets of her own. As she nears her ultimate target, Hanna faces startling revelations about her existence and unexpected questions about her humanity.

OK, its strictly a genre flick and it looks a little derivative (they might almost have called it 'Hanna Bourne'). But I'm loving that Chemical Brothers soundtrack.

Regardless of what you think about the WikiLeaks release of US diplomatic cables, its nuclear revelations have certainly delivered some surprises and occasional amusement. But I  have found them deeply concerning for the most part, particularly those recounting lapses in nuclear security and the efforts of some to take advantage of those lapses. My top five nuclear (and related) leaks are as follows:

• An Egyptian Ambassador casually remarked that Egypt had been offered nuclear scientists, materials and weapons from the former Soviet Union, which it refused.
• A US briefing on the Nuclear Posture Review to NATO allies last year disclosed exact numbers of US nuclear warheads, numbers that analysts are usually estimating. The US believes fewer than 1300 warheads would compromise US deterrence, and the US has 180 tactical nuclear weapons in Europe, against Russia's 3000-5000.
• A doctor's note can be used  to smuggle uranium across the Georgian border from Armenia, although you should keep the story consistent when you cross back over, otherwise the FBI gets on your case.
• Does Myanmar have a nuclear weapons program? Your guess is as good as that of Australian and American diplomats posted in Rangoon, but at least it’s pretty clear where the nuclear assistance is coming from. Right, North Korea?
• A Chinese official signaled support for a reunified Korea if North Korea collapses. The cable illustrates the divides within the Chinese foreign policy community, especially given the official's harsh criticism of China's man in the Six-Party talks.

No doubt there will be more stories of nuclear smuggling and strategic bargaining emerging from WikiLeaks in 2011, underscoring the complexity and importance of nuclear diplomacy. Damaging as the leaks are in many respects, the nuclear cables show the gravity of nuclear threats worldwide and the sincerity of efforts to combat them, which might just translate into support for strengthening those efforts.

The Nuclear Reactions column is supported by the Nuclear Security Project of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, as part of a wider partnership between the NSP and the Lowy Institute.

Ed. note: Last week I put out a call for readers in Canberra's national security community to write to us anonymously about WikiLeaks. Below is a response from someone we can only describe as a 'senior Canberra security insider'.

Rory Medcalf's Interpreter post on the real world fallout from WikiLeaks' so-called 'cablegate' is spot on. Sure, there may be some positive consequences along the way, but the broader impact will be overwhelmingly negative. It will make the job of national security harder, and more expensive. Lives will be unnecessarily put at risk.

One of the greatest contemporary challenges for agencies involved in national security (the number of which is growing) has been information sharing. The events of 11 September 2001 were avoidable if the right information had reached the right people at the right time. And as if we needed a reminder, it was only last year on Christmas Day that Northwest Airlines Flight 253 avoided by only the narrowest of margins being bombed out of the sky over the US. It was another incident that could have been prevented if information had been shared adequately, and acted upon.

So how do government agencies and their people now respond to a world with WikiLeaks? They have no choice. Corporately, they must move to protect their information from wholesale disclosure on the internet. They'll expend scarce resources strengthening information security and will need to monitor employees more carefully. They'll need to ensure other agencies (including international partners) with access to their information can protect it, and in the meantime may well restrict access. 

It's too early to be sure that China has done badly out of the crises on the Korean Peninsula over the past few months, and that America has done well. We should at least consider the possibility of the opposite outcome. Let's look at the two powers in turn.

America's robust support for South Korea has strengthened the alliance with Seoul and enhanced US standing as a strong and reliable ally in Japan and elsewhere in Asia at a time when China's rise is challenging American power. 

But does the benefit last? What happens next time the North stages a provocation, as it most likely will? America's strong stand has gone down well in Asia because it has carried a strong implication that America will take military action next time. But will it? That seems unlikely, because the US has no military options without risking a major war, and the costs of major war are not justified to prevent the kind of small-scale provocations that North Korea is doling out. 

So next time the North strikes the South, America will say the same things and issue the same warnings. This will not stop North Korea, and will not impress the South Koreans and Japanese.   

Of course, the US could think about a military response next time. It could look for a military option which inflicts real punishment on Pyongyang without provoking a full-scale counterattack. The US would calculate that the North's threshold for major war is quite high, given Pyongyang must recognise that war would destroy the regime.

But the North Koreans can make the same calculation about Washington and Seoul; their threshold for general war is high too, so North Korea could make an escalated counter-response to America's escalated response, still (they hope) stopping short of an attack large enough to provoke all-out conflict. The result would be an escalated, protracted and very risky exchange of blows, which the US could not bring to a decisive end without escalating further to major war. 

So America would be very unwise to escalate. That means it will have real trouble making a credible response to the next provocation. South Korea and Japan will be disappointed. Does Washington look like a winner then?

First, a sermon: any international affairs analyst who does not read fiction is weakening their ability to consider discontinuities and, most of all, to understand the sometimes critical role of idiosyncratic human agency in world events. It is not all big structural forces; leaders' (and yes, sometimes citizens') choices matter too.

Anyhow, my favourite novel of the year by far was Jonathan Franzen's Freedom, the great American family saga for the first decade of the 21st century. What's it about? Well, at the risk of sounding anti-libertarian for the second time in recent days: sometimes there is such a thing as too much freedom.

Okay, that is ridiculously simplistic; just read it. Everything from the compromises of environmentalism to the stultifying consensus of real-life 'Stuff White People Like' to the corruption of private security companies in Iraq gets a satisfying look-in, though the deeper story is about people, decisions, love, regret, and a just maybe a few surprising spots of wisdom.

Second, India. Australians are increasingly well-served by homegrown books on the baffling complexities of this rising power. Hamish McDonald's Mahabharata in Polyster lifts the lid on India's richest family, the Ambanis. Feuds, politics, violence and dazzling wealth come into play, and some of the hidden threads of influence within India's power elite are laid bare. The Indian edition has a few wee redactions, so make sure you get the Australian one. This is a much updated edition of The Polyester Prince, originally banned in (mostly democratic) India.

As the Indian private sector rises on the world stage and in relations with Australia, this book should become essential reading for Australian diplomats, journalists and business people. The allusions to Hindu mythology are clever too.

Finally, on international security, and still on India, Arming without Aiming: India's Military Modernisation, by Stephen Cohen and Sunil Dasgupta, is by far the best objective analysis of Asia's other rising military power, and the often self-made hurdles it faces.

Peter McCawley is a Visiting Fellow at the Indonesia Project, ANU, and former Dean of the Asian Development Bank Institute, Tokyo.

Annmaree O'Keeffe's comments about the Canberra launch of the UNDP's Human Development Report (HDR) drew attention to some of the issues that surround the preparation of international reports. She noted that that HDR has survived the criticisms that have been levied at it over the years.

Observers offer all sorts of comments about the production of communiqués and reports from international agencies. Several years ago, the Financial Times offered a useful antidote to pomposity by providing a guide on how to 'Write your own Summit Report!' On the positive side, there is little dispute that the best of the statements and reports from international agencies (which surely includes the HDR) make a valuable contribution to the quality of public debate about global issues.

But certainly there are critics of the process. As Annmaree O'Keeffe noted, Emeritus Professor Ron Duncan of the ANU voiced one set of criticisms at the Canberra meeting. Professor Duncan startled the meeting by suggesting that the HDR is part of a 'naming and shaming' process of selected countries carried on by UN officials. Listening to Professor Duncan, it was not quite clear whether he objected to the process of naming and shaming selected recalcitrant countries, or rather, to the cost of using the HDR as the vehicle for doing so. One of his main points was that the naming and shaming process could usually be arranged much more cheaply than through the preparation of the HDR.

Stephen Collins is an open government advocate and board member of Electronic Frontiers Australia. He is the founder of communications consultancy acidlabs.

I have a great deal of respect for the Lowy Institute. But when one of their staff writes a fundamentally flawed, badly misinformed piece on hacker culture, it really is time to scratch one's head and ask why the viewpoint within public policy think tanks seems so narrow. I suspect it's to do with where they do their hiring — ex-military, ex-intelligence, ex-policy wonks, largely from a narrow set of fields. Their willingness to extend the set of viewpoints into the wider, progressive and non-insider arena seems to let them down.

James Brown's piece, 'Democracy and the hacker mentality', is so misinformed and fundamentally flawed, I have to wonder whether there's any research or fact-checking going on. Let me make an attempt at countering some of the misinformation Brown puts forth.

Brown first fails to understand what a hacker is. Perhaps he didn't bother to read the Hacker Manifesto (which would have taken all of a couple of minutes to find), the 1986 seminal document that forms the basis for ethical hacking. He conflates, by misunderstanding hacking, the actions of those who attack systems and organisations (what hackers would refer to as script kiddies) with a desire to better understand the world and what makes it tick.

He seems to think that those with a hacker mentality (to which I proudly raise my hand) aren't interested in working on the inside. Or hand-in-hand with government. Has he looked at Defence Signals Directorate lately? Or CERT Australia? I'm guessing those folks would be delighted to be tagged as (white hat) hackers.

Brown also fails to understand the true hacker mentality and its deep connections to open democracy and open government.

As with last year, I present this list not as my all-time favourites, but as a short commentary on the best blogs I have discovered this year. I see dozens of new blogs each month, but very few become permanent additions to my reading list. These are the ones that have stuck in 2010:

• The Melbourne Urbanist: Not at all a foreign policy blog, but the themes Alan Davies discusses — infrastructure, planning, population, employment, housing — are universal. Given the pace of urbanisation around the world, The Melbourne Urbanist is really a global blog that just looks local. While never doctrinaire, TMU has a nicely contrarian spirit to it, questioning some accepted wisdom about public transport and urban sprawl. 
• Nick Bryant: The BBC's Sydney correspondent uses his blog to explain Australia to his non-Australian audience. Sympathetic, but with a very sharp eye for Australian foibles and weaknesses.
• 3 Quarks Daily: This site doesn't produce a lot of original content, but with aggregator sites such as this one, the real test is, 'Have I already seen this link elsewhere?'. When it comes to 3QD, the answer is invariably 'no', because the editors find stuff that other don't. There's so much fascinating reading here — from politics to science to culture, high and low — that it's a wrench to pull yourself away in order to get some work done.
• LiveFist: An even odder name than '3 Quarks Daily', but if you're interested in Indian defence and strategic issues, this site is compulsory reading. Nothing gets past this blogger; he even breaks stories occasionally.

Meh. Past their best, I reckon.

Since writing just three weeks ago about political shenanigans in the Pacific, the intrigue in the region has only become more intense — and then there was the political earthquake that shook Papua New Guinea last week.

PNG Prime Minister Somare's decision to step aside while a Leadership Tribunal is established to investigate allegations that he failed to submit a number of annual financial statements to the Ombudsman Commission (as required by PNG's Leadership Code) was a surprise even to a PNG public long inured to political shocks. 

But like his colourful counterpart in Italy, Somare is a survivor. His decision last week to remove Deputy Prime Minister Don Polye — a potential challenger to the top job — and install Sam Abal, a more reliable, non-threatening supporter, was a clear indication that Somare expects to return to office soon.

If this wasn't enough, PNG's Supreme Court ruled last week that the Parliament's re-election in June this year of Sir Paulias Matane as Governor-General was invalid. Acting Prime Minister Sam Abal is resisting the Court's direction to reconvene Parliament before 20 January, leaving the country without a Governor-General. 

Hackers like Julian Assange and many of his supporters have no patience.

In the hacker mindset, a single clever individual is pitted against a complex system designed to keep them out. The hacker wins if he can spot a flaw in the complex system and exploit it. End of game. Outcomes, like the systems used in the hacker's world, are binary. You either win or the big bad complex system defeats you. Hackers want to believe that government and its minions are involved in obfuscation and that they have been somehow excluded from the decision-making process.

How many of these hackers have ever applied to join DFAT, the ADF, or our intelligence agencies? How many have ever run for political office? How many have involved themselves in the painstaking and lengthy process of fact-checking and background research that sets proper investigative journalism above the stolen-information fencing that WikiLeaks represents?

What sets democracies apart is that anyone can apply to work for government or be a politician and have an equal chance of being successful. But it takes patience, hard work, and an ability to work with others. Hackers want quick results for little investment, and they work alone.

As Sam mentioned earlier, the voices absent from this debate are the thousands of Australians working in government agencies. They are prevented from commenting on WikiLeaks – but more importantly, they're getting on with the business of government. Democratic governments like those in Australia and the US won't always get everything right but at least they're trying to build society in ways that are complex and take time. Thoughtless destruction of complex systems helps no one but the hackers themselves.

Photo by Flickr user José Goulão.

• A great blog post linking together corruption, cooperation and size of governments in developing countries. (via @chrisberg, Institute of Public Affairs.)
• Is vertical farming going to transform the way cities feed themselves? While it sounds like a sustainable path to food security in large crowded cities, the comments below this Economist article are hugely sceptical. One mathematical guru points out that, in order to feed New York City, 70,000 'Empire State building sized' vertical farms would have to be constructed at a cost of approximately $4.3 billion. 
• Every time I look at the Gapminder 2010 map, which logs life expectancy at birth vs. GDP per person, I learn something new. I was struck by the divergence of results from countries of the Asia Pacific. Having recently spent some time in Bolivia I was shocked to see the poorest country in Latin America performing better than many of our nearest neighbours.
• Sam recently featured a presentation by Gapminder founder Hans Rosling about global income inequality. One blogger says the video is seriously misleading.
• New Zealand's Parliament has published a report on Pacific Island relations that admits Wellington's aid efforts have yielded 'disappointing results'. Some of the main recommendations of the report, which doesn't seem to be online, are listed here.
• The US State Department, in conjunction with USAID, has finally released 'The First Quadrennial Diplomacy & Development Review: Leading through Civilian Power'. The executive summary starts with, 'somewhere in the world today, a jeep winds its way through a remote region of a developing country', and proceeds to tell a story that seeks to explain how development fits into US foreign policy. Hillary Clinton says in her introduction that the US is 're-establishing USAID as the world's premier agency'.