The 2021 Lowy Lecture was delivered by US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. Mr Sullivan is one of the sharpest and most influential policymakers in the world and a trusted adviser to Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Mr Sullivan spoke on the Biden administration’s foreign and security policies in an era of pandemics, growing climate risk and competition with China and Russia.

His Lowy Lecture was followed by an extended Q&A with Lowy Institute Executive Director Dr Michael Fullilove. The Lowy Lecture is the Lowy Institute’s flagship annual event, at which a prominent speaker reflects on Australia and the world. Past Lecturers have included German Chancellor Angela Merkel, UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, author and broadcaster Fareed Zakaria, and three Australian prime ministers, including Scott Morrison.

Jake Sullivan is the National Security Adviser to US President Joe Biden. Mr Sullivan served as Senior Foreign Policy Adviser to Hillary Clinton's 2016 election campaign, National Security Adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, Director of Policy Planning at the US Department of State, and Deputy Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In 2017, Mr Sullivan served as the Lowy Institute’s Distinguished International Fellow.

Dr Michael Fullilove AM is the Executive Director of the Lowy Institute. He writes widely on global affairs in publications such as The New York Times, The Atlantic and Foreign Affairs. Dr Fullilove is the author of several books, including Rendezvous with Destiny: How Franklin D. Roosevelt and Five Extraordinary Men Took America into the War and into the World (Penguin).

The Covid-19 pandemic has delivered one of the most severe global economic shocks since the Great Depression. In the Pacific, as in the rest of the world, economic activity has collapsed as a result of lockdowns to contain the virus. Without a strong domestic and international response the Pacific faces the prospects of a lost decade of economic development. Alexandre Dayant, Research Fellow and Project Director of Development Economics in Asia and the Pacific, discusses these issues, the response to date, and the economic support still needed, with a panel of Lowy Institute and regional experts. This event will coincide with the release of the fourth edition of the Lowy Institute Pacific Aid Map and will showcase the map’s new features and findings. Recorded on 29 September 2021

Australia’s decision to cancel its French submarine contract in favour of partnering with the US and the UK on nuclear-powered boats has provoked local and international controversy. The decision has implications for US, Chinese, European and Southeast Asian diplomacy and defence policies. Richard McGregor, the Lowy Institute’s Senior Fellow for East Asia, talks with three experts: Bilahari Kausikan, the former head of the Singapore Foreign Ministry, Yun Sun, of the Stimson Centre in Washington DC, and Nadège Rolland, of the National Bureau of Asia Research in the United States.

A discussion with two of Washington’s most insightful commentators on a defining moment of the Biden presidency: the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Lowy Institute Executive Director Michael Fullilove hosted this discussion with The New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser and Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Thomas Wright about the implications of the US withdrawal for the fight against terrorism and America’s role as the leading global power.

Susan Glasser is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where she writes a weekly column on life in Washington. Glasser has served as the top editor of several Washington publications, including Politico and Foreign Policy. Ms Glasser co-authored Kremlin Rising: Vladimir Putin and the End of Revolution as well as The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III, both written with her husband Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times.
  
Dr Thomas Wright is the director of the Centre on the United States and Europe and a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He is also a Nonresident Fellow at the Lowy Institute and a contributing writer for The Atlantic. Dr Wright is the author of All Measures Short of War: The Contest For the 21st Century and the Future of American Power. His new book, Aftershocks: Pandemic Politics and the End of the Old International Order, co-authored with Colin Kahl, is released this month.  
 
Dr Michael Fullilove AM is the Executive Director of the Lowy Institute and a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Dr Fullilove is the author of several books, including A Larger Australia: The 2015 ABC Boyer Lectures and Rendezvous with Destiny: How Franklin D. Roosevelt and Five Extraordinary Men Took America into the War and into the World, which won the NSW Premier's Literary Award for Non-Fiction.

In conversation with leading US foreign policy practitioner and thinker Richard Haass, the President of the Council on Foreign Relations. Lowy Institute Executive Director Michael Fullilove speaks with Dr Haass about President Biden’s foreign policy, China, Russia and the international implications of the coronavirus pandemic.

Dr Richard Haass is a veteran diplomat, a prominent voice on American foreign policy, and an established leader of nonprofit institutions. He is in his nineteenth year as President of the Council on Foreign Relations, an independent, nonpartisan membership organisation, think tank, publisher, and educational institution dedicated to helping people better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other countries. He previously served as an adviser to President George H.W. Bush and as the Director of Policy Planning in the State Department during George W. Bush’s first term.

Dr Michael Fullilove AM is the Executive Director of the Lowy Institute. He is the author of several books, including Rendezvous with Destiny: How Franklin D. Roosevelt and Five Extraordinary Men Took America into the War and into the World, which won the NSW Premier's Literary Award for Non-Fiction. In 2019 Dr Fullilove was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for significant service to international relations.

Recorded on Wednesday 4th August 2021

China’s ruling communist party celebrates the 100th anniversary of its founding on 1 July 2021. Not only is it the world’s largest political party, with over 90 million members, it is also the richest, presiding over an economy en route to surpass that of the US.

Richard McGregor, Lowy Institute senior fellow, hosted a discussion with three leading China specialists about the anniversary and what it means for Australia and the world.

Chris Buckley is an award winning New York Times China correspondent.

Melinda Liu has spent more than a quarter century living and working as a foreign correspondent in Beijing; she is Newsweek's Beijing Bureau Chief.

Steve Tsang is director of the China Institute at SOAS university in London.

Papua New Guinea has been contending with a Covid-19 outbreak that has put its fragile health system under intense pressure. Case numbers have in recent weeks stabilised but there are concerns that vaccine hesitancy and limited resources are leaving the country facing the threat of a third wave of cases.

Since early 2020, Police Commissioner David Manning has been at the forefront of the Papua New Guinea’s pandemic response. First as the Emergency Controller and since the middle of last year as the designated Pandemic Controller, he has been at the centre of responses from public health orders, travel requirements and quarantine through to coordinating testing and tracing efforts.

In Conversation event with PNG Police Commissioner and Pandemic Controller David Manning, hosted by the Australia-Papua New Guinea Network’s Shane McLeod.

A conversation with one of the foremost chroniclers of American life. Author Lawrence Wright discussed his new book, The Plague Year, which tells the story of Covid-19 on a global and an intimate scale, illuminating the medical, economic, political and social ramifications of the pandemic.

Lowy Institute Executive Director Michael Fullilove interviewed Wright about his writing and journalism career, and the state of US politics.

Recorded on 22 June 2021.

A conversation with Ted Hui, the pro-democracy politician who made the tough call to abandon Hong Kong and seek refuge in Australia. How did the crackdown on the city’s democratic freedoms affect him and his family? What happens to Hong Kong now? How will he fight for his city’s freedoms from his home in Adelaide? This event was recorded on 18 June 2021.

Ben Bland, Director of the Lowy Institute’s Southeast Asia Program and author of Generation HK: Seeking Identity in China’s Shadow, moderated this conversation with Ted Hui.

Ted Hui is a Hong Kong politician in exile. He served in the Hong Kong Legislature for four years and the District Council for ten years before fleeing to Australia in 2021. Hui is an advocate for Hong Kong’s freedom, initiated the 2021 Hong Kong Charter, and has been placed on a wanted list in Hong Kong for allegedly breaching the National Security Law.