Bidenesque 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.
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Credit 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?
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US 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?
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The 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.
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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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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 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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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 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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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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George Floyd’s death has had an international impact and the vision of him dying shocked people everywhere. For outsiders this trial is an small insight into the reality of systemic racism. It not only occasionally kills. It is a constant presence. It puts whole communities in a state of perpetual preparedness, where the worst is always to be anticipated.
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In ‘It’s still hard to be America’s ally’, Richard Fontaine writes about the post-Trump challenges for US allies. Biden’s welcome celebration of US alliances, he writes, raises its own set of ambiguities and contradictions which pose new dilemmas for long-term allies.
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On Wednesday 31 March 2021, US President Joe Biden announced a plan described as “the largest American jobs investment since World War Two” – intended to “create millions of jobs”, “grow the economy”, “make [America] more competitive”, “promote [US] national security interests, and put [the ¨US] in a position to win the global competition with China”.
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US President Biden has today [26 March 2021] invited 40 world leaders to the ‘Leaders Summit on Climate’ he intends to host on 22 and 23 April 2021.
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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken addressed NATO members in Brussels on Wednesday 24 March 2021 calling on them to work with the US to counter China. However in a shift of tone from that of recent weeks, he also said that the US “won’t force allies into an ‘us-or-them’ choice with China,” and acknowledged that the US knows “that our allies have complex relationships with China that won’t always align perfectly”.
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Two-day talks between the US and China, the first under the Biden administration, concluded on 19 March 2021. The unusual exchanges between the delegations were showcased the nature of the tensions between the world’s two largest economies.
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Russia is to host on Thursday [18 March 2021] the first of three international conferences aimed at jump-starting a stalled Afghanistan peace process ahead of a May 1 deadline for the final withdrawal of U.S. and NATO troops from the country.
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