United States

Securing the decks For a country renowned for churning through ministers, perhaps the most remarkable thing about Japan’s new ministry under freshly appointed leader Fumio Kishida is that it is getting a fresh finance minister for the first time in nine years. The departure of 81-year-old

Upon the recent announcement of the new AUKUS defence pact between Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison described the arrangement as a “forever partnership”, one based on “the oldest of friendships, the strongest of values and the

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

Much is made of Iran’s use of proxy or allied groups to exert “hard power” influence throughout the Middle East where Tehran believes its interests are under threat (Lebanon), or sees an opportunity to exert greater influence (Syria, Iraq), or to act as a spoiler (Yemen). But far less is made

Donald Trump himself may have disappeared from our TV screens and smartphones, but Trumpism is alive and well. US President Joe Biden is doing all the right things to fracture the Trump coalition and pave the way for responsible Republican leaders to repudiate Trumpism. Since winning the election,

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

Diplomatese papered over the political turbulence in India during US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s two-day official visit to the country on 27 and 28 July. Narendra Modi’s government has been stigmatised not only by the Indian public and the opposition parties for its excesses against

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

Centres of power such as Beijing, Washington and Taipei have generated most of the headlines as the Taiwan challenge gets ever hotter. But, while these cities clearly have plenty of input into how events develop, it is a much less known centre of influence that may hold the key to the future of

At the conclusion of US President Joe Biden’s one-week visit across the continent and to the United Kingdom, Europeans appear to believe in the need to push back against the authoritarian China of Xi Jinping – a faith evident despite their mutual economic interests with Beijing along with a fear

Susannah Patton and Ashley Townshend argued in The Interpreter last week that the Morrison government should steer the Biden administration away from a coalition of world democracies since that would narrow Australian and American influence in the Indo-Pacific. An inflexible insistence that

Joe Biden is about to fly to the United Kingdom on his first foreign visit as US President. Biden will attend the G7 summit in Cornwall from 11–13 June, head to Belgium for summits with NATO and the European Union on 14–15 June, then meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Switzerland the

US President Joe Biden and South Korean President Moon Jae-in held their first in-person summit in Washington last month, signing a lengthy joint statement that underscored the linchpin alliance forged in the battlefields of the Korean War and a shared vision governed by democratic norms, human

Beijing has long been anxious about the popularity of the Dalai Lama, and Tibet remains a principal source of international vulnerability for the Peoples Republic of China. After the Dalai Lama relinquished political responsibilities in 2011, the position of Sikyong, considered president of the