The conspicuous absence of American leadership during the pandemic has emboldened the narratives about the United States’ decline and the weakening of the international order. The result has been a proliferation of commentary on the …
There’s a wrestle underway between Australia’s universities and the government over funding, priorities and the future. Right now it looks like a Mexican standoff, not a negotiation. There are grounds for a deal, although getting …
Sea state The US Navy has stepped up its presence in the Indo-Pacific, in a rare deployment of three aircraft carriers to the region. USS Theodore Roosevelt has been deployed near Guam, USS Nimitz near …
The United States finds itself confronting several daunting challenges simultaneously. There is the Covid-19 pandemic, which has already claimed nearly 120,000 American lives and shows little sign of abating in large swaths of the country. …
Long waits can let cooler heads prevail and reverse hot-headed decisions. In January, President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines threatened to terminate the 1998 Philippine–US Visiting Forces Agreement—a treaty-level pact that provides the operational framework …
On 29 May, The Times reported that the British government was set to propose reforms to the G7, an organisation established in 1975 to coordinate policy between the world’s largest and most advanced market economies. …
The Australian government must take very seriously the threat to the Manus Island joint naval base project outlined recently by a senior minister in Papua New Guinea’s government. The fact that the man concerned—Foreign Minister …
On 5 June, China’s National Ministry of Culture and Tourism issued a travel alert to visitors to Australia warning of ‘a significant increase’ in racial abuse and violence. Four days later, the Ministry of Education …
The beat Demands to reform US policing Minneapolis City Council’s decision to ‘dismantle’ its policing system has provided momentum to the ‘defund the police’ movement in the United States. Proponents advocate major changes to policing …
In my study of 14 presidents since 1945, Do morals matter?, I found that Americans want a moral foreign policy, but have been torn over what that means. Americans often see their country as exceptional …
The US undersea deterrent is the most survivable leg of America’s nuclear triad of ground-, air- and sea-based nuclear capabilities. The sea-based leg, however, is also the most brittle of the three. If an alert …
Chinese diplomats have long had a reputation as well-trained, colourless and cautious professionals who pursue their missions doggedly without attracting much unfavourable attention. But a new crop of younger diplomats are ditching established diplomatic norms …