United States

The importance of “peace and stability” across the Taiwan Strait featured in joint statements issued after US President Joe Biden’s meetings in May with South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. This was the second time in consecutive years that Taiwan

Book review: Diplomatic: A Washington memoir, by Joe Hockey with Leo Shanahan (Harper Collins 2022) In September 2015, Malcolm Turnbull toppled Tony Abbott as leader of Australia’s Liberal party, and consequently as the country’s prime minister. Turnbull immediately told Joe Hockey that he

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi last month set out on a tour of the Pacific, carrying a plan for a big new region-wide agreement and scores of bilateral ones. At the same time Australia’s newly elected Foreign Minister Penny Wong conducted her own Pacific tour, just four days into the job.

At the first in-person leaders’ summit of the Quad in Washington in September last year, the four member countries came forward with an ambitious space agenda. A working group was giving the task of advancing a number of key strategic areas, including the exchange of satellite data with the

The second EU-US Trade and Technology Council meeting took place in Paris at the weekend. An outcome of the EU-US Summit in June 2021, the TTC was established to strengthen and coordinate transatlantic cooperation and develop values-based approaches to global trade, economic and technology issues

The clear intention of AUKUS is to tip the military balance in the Indo-Pacific in favour of the United States. The various initiatives in the pact between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States are headlined by cooperation to develop a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines for Australia

Book Review: The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict between the US and Xi Jinping’s China, by Kevin Rudd (Hatchette 2022)  The rise of a strong and confident China has had more implications for Australia than perhaps any other advanced country apart from the United States

Negotiations in Vienna to revive the Iran nuclear deal have dragged on through nearly a dozen rounds for more than a year now. The Biden administration’s hopes for a quick restoration of the 2015 agreement, unilaterally abandoned by Donald Trump, have been hampered from the outset. By simply

Following Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February, there has been ongoing controversy over the response by the Vietnamese government, which has refrained from naming Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war an “invasion”, abstained from the United Nations resolution condemning Russia’s

The essence of diplomacy is communication. Madeleine Albright excelled at delivering a message. And as a woman of firsts, she encountered the all-too-typical obstacles of a male-dominated field, suffering a focus on her dress and appearance. So Albright took the challenge and flipped it,

Is it possible for the United States to be both righteous defender of Ukraine’s right to self-determination and prudent decisionmaker? The combination of an experienced president and a well-informed US Congress bode well for ongoing crisis management. But judging likely outcomes requires a

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had posed difficult questions for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and exposed the costs of pursuing a more diversified series of diplomatic, economic and military relationships. The two Gulf states are in effect experiencing the “diversification dilemma

Aside from Donald Trump’s bluster about “fire and fury” and Kim Jong-un’s similarly theatrical replies in the manufactured “crisis” of 2017, serious nuclear threats made during an international crisis have been happily MIA for the better part of the past 40 years. Not so now. Less than

The Biden administration played a critical role in assembling the European and global coalition to punish Russia’s unprovoked invasion of neighbouring Ukraine, and in so doing displayed American diplomatic power at its best: leading without dominating.   The White House overcame well-

Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has seen a return to the political alignments of the 20th century, with the United States as the leader of a grouping of democracies against a Russian dictatorship uneasily partnered with China. But Donald Trump has offered a radically different response,

In September this year, UN member states will cast their votes for the next secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). While elections for bureaucratic positions in obscure, technical UN bodies normally pass unnoticed, the ITU has emerged as the major battleground in

In early January this year, US military bases in Okinawa, Japan, were again the subject of criticism after the Omicron variant of Covid-19 was detected among US base personnel and subsequently spread to locals. Hostility towards the presence of the bases has existed since the 1950s and the anti-base

Antony Blinken’s visit to Fiji on Saturday will be the first by a US Secretary of State to the island nation in 37 years. The timing of this trip is not the most convenient for the region. While Blinken has invited leaders of neighbouring Pacific states to Fiji to participate in his visit, it is

US President Joe Biden’s regrettable and somewhat rambling comments on the tense situation in Ukraine during a 19 January press conference understandably drew the attention of America’s allies and foreign policy analysts. But for those of us with the patience to listen to two hours of “pure,

The buzz about an impending big announcement started the night before. But when the leaders from Australia, the United Kingdom and United States stood in a virtual press conference on 16 September to reveal Australia would eventually acquire nuclear-powered submarines, Sam Roggeveen’s first

The jury in New Delhi is still out on AUKUS, the new trilateral security agreement between the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. Three months after its announcement, the issue continues to split India’s security experts, with little consensus over whether it benefits New Delhi or is

Prospects for US-China arms control run hot and cold. China continues to vociferously oppose the recent Australia-UK-US agreement to cooperate on Australia’s acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines. And over the past six months there have been three significant revelations by open-source

Santa clauses The value of global goods trade during the biggest pandemic in a century last year dropped about a third less than it did during the biggest financial crisis in a generation in 2008. But internet searches about “economic resilience” are running more than twice as high these days

Veteran US official Kurt Campbell has long championed more American engagement in Asia and is credited as the architect of Barack Obama’s 2015 “Pivot”. He is often referred to as President Joe Biden’s “Asia Tsar” and has been influential in shaping the “Quad” grouping and the recent