NewsBite

Foreign Affairs & Security

Yesterday

The US alliance will still be a significant net benefit for Australia and will remain our most important security relationship.

The Trump effect is a wrecking ball, and we’re in the blast zone

As the US president declares victory at every turn, he will leave behind a changed world. The implications for Australia are profound.

This Month

 Neither side is likely to back off when the egos of two strong-man leaders are involved.

Trump’s pause no relief from great power showdown on trade

Australia confronts a worrying dilemma as the economic conflict between our major alliance partner and our major trade partner ramps up.

Donald Trump’s tariffs escalate trad war with China, as Xi Jinping retaliates.

Could Trump’s tariffs decouple Europe from China, too?

The levies may trigger a strategic diversion of Chinese exports from America to the EU, eventually compelling European governments to respond with their own trade barriers.

Former prime minister Scott Morrison (left) is the chairman of Space Centre Australia. He and CEO James Palmer visited NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, in Virginia, United States on the weekend.

Morrison-backed space start-up lands NASA tie-up

A start-up chaired by former prime minister Scott Morrison has huge goals of building an Australian spaceport and developing horizontal rocket launch technology.

In his relentless Make America Great Again drive, Donald Trump has little care for the economic pain inflicted on others and even relishes it when the targets are American allies.

Trump’s colossal misjudgment will cost the US – and the world – dearly

Donald Trump is pretending the sharemarket carnage is all part of his grand plan to use tariffs to reboot the US economy. What happens when Main Street revolts?

Advertisement
Former US treasury secretary Janet Yellen.

Yellen and Hockey ride out Trump tariffs at Cafe Sydney

The former US treasury secretary was spotted lunching in Sydney as tariff news roiled global markets.

Australians woke up on Thursday to the Trump administration’s dissolution of the global trading system on the so-called “Liberation Day”.

Trump’s tariffs call for regional foreign policy response

The political class must resist the temptation to be swept up in the parochialism of current events.

Global leaders had to wait until Donald Trump’s Rose Garden press conference to learn their fate.

How Trump has soured my American dream

There was a chilling edge to the president’s declaration this would be “an entirely different country within a short period of time”.

Donald Trump and “liberation day”.

Trump trade risks go back to the 1890s

The president’s American tariff hero William McKinley shows how this new trade war will go wrong.

The announcement played first and foremost into Trump’s vanity and hunger for attention.

The day the international economic system died in the Rose Garden

It’s hard to say how bad the impact of Trump’s tariffs will be. But there is no doubt a global trade war would have major impacts on geoeconomic and geostrategic settings.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said there was strong support for AUKUS in Trump’s Administration.

Why Malcolm Turnbull is wrong about AUKUS

Rather than repeatedly reassessing the submarine program, we should concentrate our political and intellectual capital on ensuring it stays the course.

March

Trump’s tango with Russia’s autocrat Vladimir Putin over the terms of a ceasefire deal between Russia and Ukraine has sowed doubts.

For Trump, the strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must

The US president’s hastiness to secure peace overlooks the often laborious work usually required for a long-term, stable and durable solution to a conflict.

The Trump administration’s establishment of the National Energy Dominance Council is a central pillar of the US strategic outlook.

Australia should look to uranium as a chance to dodge Trump’s tariffs

Developing processing of the nuclear fuel with American firms would address US national security concerns and also attract significant interest from Japan, Korea and Taiwan.

Defence remains probably the best barometer of the Australian response to Donald Trump so far.

The fundamental problem at the heart of defence policy

Australia is facing its most dangerous external environment since the Second World War. Yet, its capacity to deliver a meaningful capability to meet the hour operates on Old Father Time.

Trump’s direct dealings with Putin in deciding Europe’s eastern front has about it the whiff of a Yalta 2.0.

Trump’s strange affair with Putin and Xi leaves allies out in the cold

The direct dealings between the American and Russian presidents in deciding Europe’s eastern front have the whiff of Yalta in 1945.

Advertisement
Chief Rabbi Benjamin Elton: the silence about deep-seated prejudice towards the Jews is a meeting of medieval and modern attitudes.

Anti-Jewish attitudes are ‘baked into the Western inheritance’

Many of us are advocates for much of what the West has brought to the world, but the portion of its foundations that are anti-Jewish and antisemitic have to be removed and replaced, warns Rabbi Benjamin Elton.

The Chinese flotilla was first detected by a commercial airline pilot.

Three questions about higher defence spending

If the Defence Department is to receive more taxpayer money, it should not be treated as a sacred cow.

US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke for nearly two hours.

Trump’s MAGA dreams conjure a world nightmare

Donald Trump values his relationship with dictators far more than that with democratic allies, making the global economic and national security interests a combustible mix.

USS Halsey, JS Sazanami and HMAS Warramunga on a “regional presence deployment”.

Australia’s allies must step up in the Indo-Pacific

Readers’ letters on dealing with Donald Trump’s isolationism, looking to Congress for tariff relief, Rio’s clean energy move, Peter Dutton’s track record, and a CANZUK alliance.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, centre, and French President Emmanuel Macron, right, are seeking a coalition of the willing to provide military support to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

PM to join world leaders’ talks on Ukraine peacekeepers

Anthony Albanese will take part in a hook-up of dozens of world leaders to discuss ending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov says humans are still critical in the intelligence process, and AI has some way to go to be fully reliable in war.

What I learnt about the future of war in Ukraine this week

The head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, perhaps the best-known military intelligence leader in the world, has three lessons from this war.

Every leader – besides Vladimir Putin – who has turned up to meet Trump has left either humiliated, embarrassed, punished or empty handed.

Australia should take a leaf out of China playbook to handle Trump

Instead of dealing with Washington alone, the new administration should be dealt with as a collective challenge together with our partners and allies.

A woman arranges campaign posters in Nuuk, Greenland.

Greenland election shows it’s global capitalism coming to the rescue

In a political climate that has looked to the far right, it is not the progressive voice that is being sought to counter that.

The Fin Podcast with James Curran and Andrew Tillett.

Khaki election: Trump’s ‘Mean Girls’ diplomacy prompts defence rethink

This week on The Fin podcast, Andrew Tillett and James Curran on how Donald Trump has disrupted the world order.

The real issue is Turnbull’s claim that Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton are engaged in “bipartisan gaslighting”.

Speaking truth to Trump not as easy as Turnbull says

Australia’s leaders simply cannot ignore the possible implications for the US alliance when crafting their public rhetoric about the serving commander-in-chief.

Original URL: https://www.afr.com/policy/foreign-affairs