A group with the potential to capture the state appears to be forming in the US – coalescing around a set of illiberal and authoritarian ideas. Australian observers, commentators, and policy-makers need to watch this movement closely.
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A group with the potential to capture the state appears to be forming in the US – coalescing around a set of illiberal and authoritarian ideas. Australian observers, commentators, and policy-makers need to watch this movement closely.
Read moreArguably, the Americans have brilliantly played successive Australian governments by casting the shiny lure of nuclear submarines out somewhere in the distant future and reeling in control of Australia’s defence policy.
Read moreFormidable illiberal forces are emerging in the US, which, in power, could have profound consequences for America domestically and for America’s position in the world. After the 2024 US presidential election, America’s reliability, predictability, and compatibility as an ally could even be less than under Trump.
Read moreOn PM Albanese’s watch Australia has, without explanation, agreed to host US B-52H Stratofortress aircraft: “a nuclear stand-off platform with global reach”. The recent US National Defence Strategy provides the missing context, and effectively confirms Australia’s role in American nuclear war planning.
Read moreB-52s are part of the US’s nuclear capability. Basing these aircraft at RAAF Tindal draws Australia into America’s nuclear war planning. How did Australia come to this? And why?
Read moreThe US’s proposed Taiwan Policy Act of 2022, if approved, would bring the prospect of war in the Asia-Pacific closer. The draft legislation foreshadows radical changes in US policy, amounting to abandonment of the one-China policy and de facto recognition of Taiwan as a state. What does this mean for Australia?
Read moreThe rebirth of a lost innovative technological utopia requires a vibrant, stable polity that tolerates debate, dissent, and difference; and supports objective research standards. America looks nothing like this.
Read moreBidenesque tales of a beneficent and wise ruler, who only wants his land to be the richest and strongest nation because of the benefit that it would bring to all, can’t be allowed to obscure the real situation in America, nor its brutally realist pursuit of its own interests through power.
Read moreCredit is due to Australia’s new Prime Minister and Foreign Minister for moving swiftly to correct the foreign and climate policy failures of the Morrison era. But shouldn’t there be a similar rethinking and resetting of strategic policy?
Read moreUS President Biden could be succeeded by a democratically elected illiberal administration beholden to violent and bizarre supporters. What would the implications of an illiberal America be for Australia?
Read moreThe nuclear submarine issue is simply a blind. AUKUS is just a distraction. The AUSMIN 2021 Joint Statement reveals the extent to which Australia is now entwined in US military war preparations.
Read moreLeaving 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.
Read moreUS 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.
Read moreUS 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?
Read moreThe 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?
Read moreAustralia’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.
Read moreVaccine 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?
Read moreWith 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.
Read moreThe 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.
Read moreUnited 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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