The Americas

As strategic tensions between the United States and China calcify so too does the conclusion that they have entered into “a new Cold War”. Indeed, the strenuousness with which both countries avow that they must avoid such an outcome would only seem to confirm that judgment. One reason the

With the exception of India, the common thread linking the United States’ Indo-Pacific and broader China strategy so far has been the rallying of long-standing US allies. Early summits with President Moon Jae-in and former Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga are starting to bear results. South

In the 2021 Lowy Institute Poll nearly seven out of 10 Australians expressed confidence in US President Joe Biden to do the right thing in world affairs. But this poll was taken in mid-March when the Biden administration was new. Biden likely benefited from his close relationship with a popular

North Korea is again following its old playbook, alternating between extending an olive branch or thorns, diplomacy or missile tests, all with the aim to extract concessions from the United States and South Korea. After South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in proposed to declare an end to the Korean

When Barack Obama announced the rebalance to Asia in 2011, he also revealed the rotational deployment of US Marines to Darwin. In the intervening decade, however, additional changes to US regional posture have been few and far between. As a result, leading US defence expert Michèle Flournoy has

Today, Canada heads to the polls for its third election in six years. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has come under considerable criticism for his decision to call an early election as the Delta variant surges across the country. He has gambled that his handling of the pandemic will allow him to win

September is an important month for South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in to make a last ditch attempt to revive relations with a recalcitrant North Korea before the presidential election next March. To such an end, his administration has sought to use major inter-Korean anniversaries this month,

When Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne and Defence Minister Peter Dutton land in Washington this week for the annual Australia-United States Ministerial Consultations (AUSMIN), they’ll be at an important juncture for the Australia-US alliance. The “forever wars” in the Middle East are

Erin O’Toole, the leader of Canada’s Conservative party, warned in August that Canadian citizens might not be safe at the winter Olympics to be hosted next year in Beijing. Canada is especially aggrieved over what is widely seen as China’s practice of arbitrary arrest – although in truth “

Indonesia is feeling a little ignored. The recent visit by US Vice President Kamal Harris to Vietnam and Singapore led to speculation that Indonesia was not a priority for the Biden administration. “Snubbed again, Joe?” read one local headline. A few weeks beforehand, US Defence Secretary Lloyd

Twenty years on, there are many different ways to remember 9/11. Many rightly focus on the families of the victims, as Jennifer Senior does in her remarkable article in The Atlantic describing the way grief echoed through the lives of a single family. The Lowy Institute has released a new

Call it a measure of remarkable diplomatic consistency. Every year since 2013, at least one of two familiar faces has represented Australia at the regular “2+2” ministerial dialogue with the United States, more commonly known as AUSMIN. Either Julie Bishop or Marise Payne has been in the room

Book review: Emma Shortis, Our Exceptional Friend: Australia’s Fatal Alliance with the United States (Hardie Grant, 2021) Depending on your perspective, Australia’s China debate might be relatively sophisticated, or resemble shell-churned ground in a war zone. Either way, it’s noisy and

Book review: Michael Lewis The Premonition: A Pandemic Story (W. W. Norton & Company, 2021) Way back in October 2019, before most anyone had heard of Covid-19, a group of experts from the Nuclear Threat Initiative, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and The Economist Intelligence

Despite protests from North Korea, this week the United States and South Korea kicked off their annual joint military exercise. Korea watchers are worried that the decision to carry on with the drill spells trouble for the inter-Korean détente, which was only revived in July with the

Joe Biden is right to get the United States out of Afghanistan. Even as Kabul has been taken over by the Taliban, the case remains strong that after 20 years, the United States has fought its war in the country. It is sometimes easy to forget that the president is also commander-in-chief of the US

President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw all combat troops from Afghanistan in a short space of time aligns with the priorities of the Democratic party, but it would be a mistake to view the decision as ideological and impetuous. Since Biden’s opinion on American involvement in Afghanistan has

In April, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga became the first foreign leader to meet US President Joe Biden at the White House. Suga’s trip marked the return of leader-level travel to Washington after the Covid-19 pandemic. Suga told reporters that his team was so excited to meet their

Recent reports that Australia’s Special Air Service Regiment (SASR) will be redirected to focus on operations in the Pacific Islands signals Australia’s commitment to follow through on prioritising its immediate region in defence planning. In a leaked briefing delivered last year to Australian

The announcement of the Build Back Better World (BW3) infrastructure and investment plan following the G7 summit last month has been greeted with scepticism by some who question its ability to compete with China’s financial outlays for its much-vaunted Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). What

On the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party, President Xi Jinping reiterated the longstanding Chinese goal of strengthening science and technology to help achieve national rejuvenation. China’s advances in areas such as 5G, artificial intelligence, and facial recognition have already