Leaving aside the potentially adverse strategic implications of Australia’s nuclear-powered submarine decision, for those who think a submarine capability is important, it is simply bad defence policy. Australian governments are now certain to be bedevilled by submarines for generations.
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US President Biden’s proposed virtual Summit for Democracy looks like an enormous gamble at a time when the biggest challenges facing the global community will require the engagement, coordination, and cooperation of all states, not only democratic ones.
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As an ally of the US, Australia should be reflecting deeply on America’s third major postwar strategic fiasco. In each, the allies have been let down or suffered. In Afghanistan, in the final analysis, US domestic politics and US interests determined its actions. Allies were left to make do.
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Is the Australian Strategic Policy Institute advocating that Defence policy should be outsourced to weapon system manufacturers? Commercial organisations responsible to shareholders, often foreign interests, should not be responsible for identifying and pursuing Australia’s national interest.
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US political factions seem to have moved beyond seeing each other as legitimate competitors in a democratic marketplace of ideas. The other side is perceived as the holder of totally unacceptable moral, economic, and political ideas and values, and only their total overthrow will suffice. Each side sees the other as the “enemy inside the gates”. Can the divisions in America be resolved in a pluralistic compromise?
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The key judgement Australian decision-makers need to confront concerns the sustainability of the United States’ great power status. Is America reaching a tipping point; an inflexion point where the upward great power trajectory it has been on for over a century is reversed?
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Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison might have gone to Europe with the Indo-Pacific region “is the epicentre of renewed strategic competition” mantra on his lips, but the NATO communique reflects the reality that it is Russia, not China, that fills Europe’s strategic horizon.
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Despite expectations in some quarters that the Americans would stamp their world view and priorities on the G7, it is clear from how the communique deals with Russia and China that the European concern for strategic autonomy was influential in its drafting. President Biden’s hopes for a strong position against China did not materialise as Russia received greater attention.
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To bring about the far-reaching behavioural changes necessary for the transition to a zero carbon economy, will governments be able to rely on the go-to tools of public policy – rational choice theory and behavioural economics, with its so-called ‘nudge’ techniques?
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Australia’s Indo-Pacific obsession hides a radical global geopolitical shift, and denies the reality that US hegemony has passed a tipping point. Increasingly, the decisive great power actor(s) in any situation will be context specific, with delineation of spheres of influence and shifting balance of power arrangements requiring Australia to be nimble, smart, and independent.
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What are the ‘drums of war’ that senior Australian public servant, Michael Pezzullo, can hear? His words have been understood as echoing anti-China warmongering found among some commentators and hinting strongly at the current hysteria around Taiwan. So how did the Australian government deal with a senior public servant stepping into the political limelight in this way?
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Does the Covid-19 vaccine response foreshadow how well the market-based capitalist system will address global warming? If so, and unless governments determine that saving the planet and avoiding a dangerous future for coming generations is at least as important as corporate profits and shareholder dividends, there is little chance of success in the time available.
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The Europeans won’t join with the like-minded allies massing behind America’s banner of democracy militant. While they will add theirs to other voices standing up for human rights, international laws and norms, and multilateralism, the EU won’t follow Biden’s clarion call into an all out multi-spectrum confrontation with China. Is there a lesson here for Australia?
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Thailand has announced that the head of Myanmar’s military government, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, will attend an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Indonesia on 24 April 2021.
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Vaccine nationalism is small-minded, self-centered, and ultimately self-defeating, because COVID-19 will not cease to be a problem until no one has it. This is the moment to think big, the moment for generosity and big ideas. When a majority of American adults will have had their first dose of a vaccine, what if the US then begins to pivot from mass-vaccinating its own citizens to mass-vaccinating the rest of the world?
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With vaccine manufacturers not able to meet the urgent health needs of the global pandemic, it is argued that the US should transfer technological know-how and facilitate the setting up of mRNA vaccine production lines around the world. This, it is suggested, would save lives, revive economies, protect Americans from both the risk of variants and new threats, and restore the U.S. position as a reliable and trustworthy partner while advancing global health security and diplomacy.
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The US has imposed a range of sanctions on Russia, including curbs to its sovereign debt market, to punish it for allegedly interfering in last year’s U.S. election, cyber hacking, bullying Ukraine and other alleged malign actions. Russia denies the allegations, and considers the sanctions hostile steps.
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The US is said to be pushing for Japan to sign off on a joint statement of support for Taiwan, to be issued after the visit of Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga to the White House on Friday, 16 April 2021. It would be the first time that Taiwan is mentioned in a joint US-Japan statement since 1969.
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This article explores the reasons why South Korea has been unwilling to join ‘the Quad’, suggesting that here the issue is not just about balancing diverging economic and security interests, but the reality that progressing South Korea’s key security priority – North Korea – requires a more accommodating approach to China.
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United States President Joe Biden will leave US troops in Afghanistan past the current May 1 deadline agreed with the Taliban but will withdraw them by September 11, US officials said on Tuesday [13 April 2021]. President Biden is expected to lay out his plan during a speech on Wednesday, 14 April 2021.
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