The Americas

The Australian government’s announcement today that it will contribute assets to a maritime coalition force in the Persian Gulf comes as no surprise, given the very public way the US request was delivered in Sydney at the recent AUSMIN meeting. Washington doesn’t make those type of requests

Switch hitting If Australia’s senior international ministers were surprised by the sharpness of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s approach to economic dependence on China at the recent AUSMIN talks, they should have studied the US trade data the previous day. A great divergence

In aligning himself with US President Donald Trump with regard to policing the Persian Gulf, new British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has abandoned any pretence that his type of Brexit would exclude security and defence matters. This is in sharp contrast to the position of Theresa May before him,

Barely a month after the historic handshake at the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), North Korea returned to provocations by unveiling its new “strategic” ballistic missile submarine and testing short-range ballistic missiles. US President Donald Trump and North Korea Chairman Kim Jong-un had

Last month’s Oval Office meeting with US President Donald Trump was Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s first US visit since taking office in August last year. During the meeting, Trump hinted at resuming aid to Pakistan, as well as making a broader and surprising offer to mediate between

While President Donald Trump’s bull-in-a-China-shop approach to reforming international trade doesn’t appeal, it is possible that some of his objectives might make sense. This was the logic behind comments by former Barack Obama adviser Daniel Russel, suggesting that Australia

Richard Nixon wasn’t fond of US intelligence, and neither was his alter ego, Henry Kissinger. But none of us who have served in intelligence could have imagined a president like Donald Trump with no interest in facts of any sort, who talks of “reining in” a US Intelligence Community that has

On Wednesday former Special Counsel and former FBI Director Robert Mueller testified before the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees on the findings of his two-year investigation into coordination between the Donald Trump 2016 campaign and the Russian government. These findings have been

Last week Paramount Pictures released the trailer for its much-hyped Top Gun sequel, Top Gun: Maverick. The new movie sees Tom Cruise reprise his role as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, now an aging fighter pilot facing the political and technological realities of a world in which there may no longer

The third meeting between US President Donald Trump and North Korea Chairman Kim Jong-un has come and gone, again without much substantial progress, but its symbolism has continued to dominate Korea watchers’ assessments of the event. Trump last month became the first sitting US president to set

The last abortion clinic in Missouri is running on borrowed time. At the end of May, the state let the license lapse for Planned Parenthood of St Louis. On 21 June, the Missouri Health Department denied the clinic’s application for a permit to perform abortions. A preliminary court injunction

Iran has announced that it has exceeded its enriched uranium limit under the nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA. This follows the decision in May 2018 when the Trump administration unilaterally pulled the US out of the deal and reimposed economic

The Australia women’s national soccer team bowed out of the Women’s World Cup this past weekend following a dramatic loss to Norway on penalty kicks. It was the end of a rollercoaster campaign, with the highlight coming from a comeback victory against a Brazilian side led by Marta – whose goal

Ambiguity in foreign policy is no bad thing, and on Iran, the only certainty Donald Trump has displayed after a week of heightened tension was his weekend declaration that “the only one that matters is me”. So the debate is on, hawks versus doves, over messages and intentions. Was

Last month Alabama passed a law that would imprison doctors for up to 99 years for performing abortions, with no exceptions in cases of rape or incest. Even televangelist Pat Robertson, who in 2005 suggested Hurricane Katrina could be God’s punishment for allowing abortion, has said Alabama’s

Rare earth minerals have emerged as the latest front in the escalating US-China trade war. Nearly a decade after the Chinese government controversially suspended rare earth exports to Japan during the 2010 Senkaku dispute, similar threats are now being made if the bilateral trade dispute with the US

When US President Donald Trump and former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull held their infamous, protocol-smashing phone call in the president’s first week in office in January 2017, largely lost in the international headlines about the exchange was the actual topic of conversation. Now,

Midway through Lee Hsien Loong’s keynote speech at the Shangri-la Dialogue, I found myself turning to others on my table to register my surprise at how critical he seemed to be about China. Afterwards, talking to many of the Americans who had travelled from Washington for the annual Asian

Donald Trump’s tariff threat against Mexico may end up signaling a lot more than just the President’s latest twitter-launched policy tirade. By eroding any of Trump’s remaining trade negotiating credibility, it points to much darker times ahead for the global economy. The Trump

Leaders of the Republic of Palau, Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) and the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) are well used to seeing each other. They share a neighbourhood in the North Pacific and meet annually at the Micronesian Presidents’ Summit to discuss strategies on key issues

Washington’s attempts to isolate Iran economically and politically rely largely on whether it can get Tehran to opt out of the 2015 nuclear deal. As long as the Trump administration is the only signatory to withdraw from what is known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA),

For American author F. Scott Fitzgerald, the test of a great intellect was the ability to “hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time.” By this measure, Australian foreign policy has been very smart for decades. Australian leaders have long used a duality to describe and guide our

As predictable as Big Ben striking the hour, as subtle as a battering ram, the final stages of the US-China trade negotiations involve upping the ante with a further tariff increase, as seen last week. Tariffs are the negotiating instrument, not the objective. For financial journalists needing an

The Irish campaign to gain access to the E-3 visa in the United States has roared back to life.  Currently, Australia is the only country with access to the 10,500 E-3 visa slots. Yet Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives, who led a delegation of US legislators on a visit to