The United States-Australia alliance has been an important component of the US-led system of alliances that has underpinned regional security in the Indo-Pacific since 1945. However, recent geostrategic developments, in particular the rise of the People’s Republic of China, have posed significant challenges to this US-led regional order. In turn, the growing strategic competition between these two great powers has generated challenges to the longstanding US-Australia alliance. Both the US and Australia are confronting a changing strategic environment, and, as a result, the alliance needs to respond to the challenges that they face. The US needs to understand the challenges and risks to this vital relationship, which is growing in importance, and take steps to manage it. On its part, Australia must clearly identify its core common interests with the US and start exploring what more it needs to do to attain its stated policy preferences. This book consists of chapters exploring US and Australian perspectives of the Indo-Pacific, the evolution of Australia-US strategic and defence cooperation, and the future of the relationship. Written by a joint US-Australia team, the volume is aimed at academics, analysts, students, and the security and business communities.

The United States-Australia alliance has been an important component of the US-led system of alliances that has underpinned regional security in the Indo-Pacific since 1945. However, recent geostrategic developments, in particular the rise of the People’s Republic of China, have posed significant challenges to this US-led regional order. In turn, the growing strategic competition between these two great powers has generated challenges to the longstanding US-Australia alliance. Both the US and Australia are confronting a changing strategic environment, and, as a result, the alliance needs to respond to the challenges that they face. The US needs to understand the challenges and risks to this vital relationship, which is growing in importance, and take steps to manage it. On its part, Australia must clearly identify its core common interests with the US and start exploring what more it needs to do to attain its stated policy preferences. This book consists of chapters exploring US and Australian perspectives of the Indo-Pacific, the evolution of Australia-US strategic and defence cooperation, and the future of the relationship. Written by a joint US-Australia team, the volume is aimed at academics, analysts, students, and the security and business communities.

"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.

In the early 1970s, two titans of Australian and American politics, Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and President Richard Nixon, clashed over the end of the Vietnam war and the shape of a new Asia. A relationship that had endured the heights of the Cold War veered dangerously off course and seemed headed for destruction. Never before—or since—has the alliance sunk to such depths. Drawing on sensational new evidence from once top-secret American and Australian records, this book portrays the bitter clash between these two leaders and their competing visions of the world. As the Nixon White House went increasingly on the defensive in early 1973, reeling from the lethal drip of the Watergate revelations, the first Labor prime minister in twenty-three years looked to redefine ANZUS and Australia's global stance. It was a heady brew, and not one the Americans were used to. The result was a fractured alliance, and an American president enraged, seemingly hell bent on tearing apart the fabric of a treaty that had become the first principle of Australian foreign policy.

Australia has always been reliant on 'great and powerful friends' for its sense of national security and for direction on its foreign policy—first on the British Empire and now on the United States. Australia has actively pursued a policy of strategic dependence, believing that making a grand bargain with a powerful ally was the best policy to ensure its security and prosperity. Dangerous Allies examines Australia's history of strategic dependence and questions the continuation of this position. It argues that international circumstances, in the world and in the Western Pacific especially, now make such a policy highly questionable. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States has also changed dramatically, making it less relevant to Australia and a less appropriate ally on which Australia should rely. Malcolm Fraser argues that Australia should adopt a much greater degree of independence in foreign policy, and that we should no longer merely follow other nations into wars of no direct interest to Australia or Australia's security. He argues for an end to strategic dependence and for the timely establishment of a truly independent Australia.

A head of title: Council on Foreign Relations, International Institutions and Global Governance Program.

In an era of great power competition, the role of alliances in managing escalation of conflict has acquired renewed importance. Nuclear weapons remain the ultimate means for deterrence and controlling escalation, and are central to US alliances in Europe and the Indo-Pacific. However, allies themselves need to better prepare for managing escalation in an increasingly challenging geostrategic and technological environment for the US and its allies. While the challenge of great power competition is acute at both ends of Eurasia, adversary threats, geography and the institutional context of US alliances differ. This book brings together leading experts from Europe, Northeast Asia, the United States and Australia to focus on these challenges, identify commonalities and differences across regions, and pinpoint ways to collectively manage nuclear deterrence and potential escalation pathways in America’s 21st century alliances. ‘Nuclear weapons play an important role in deterrence and preventing military conflict between great powers, while also posing an existential threat to humanity. It is vital that we have a nuanced understanding of this important challenge, so that such weapons are never used. This book offers many important perspectives and makes a significant contribution to the overall debate about these powerful weapons.’ — The Hon Julie Bishop, Chancellor, The Australian National University, Former Foreign Minister of Australia ‘This timely book identifies a wide range of challenges US alliances both in the Indo-Pacific and Euro-Atlantic face as they seek to ensure the value of US extended deterrence, particular the US nuclear umbrella, against China and Russia. This unique collection of chapters written by experts in US allies in both regions presents widely varying security perceptions and priorities. To understand such differences is the key to globally strengthen the US alliance systems, which are a significant advantage Washington enjoys over the two competitors.’ — Yukio Satoh, former President of The Japan Institute of International Affairs (JIIA) ‘This is a timely and thoughtful collection of essays that should serve to jumpstart public discussion and debate—the absence of which is widely noted and much bemoaned. Each contributor examines an aspect of the complicated, multifaceted nuclear debate by discussing the range of dilemmas from deterrence to disarmament. The various views set out here are more relevant than ever as Russia, China and the United States flex their nuclear muscles in new and sometimes dangerous ways. This book should be read by anyone interested in the preventing the use of nuclear weapons and understanding complexities of alliances in an increasingly dangerous world.’ — Madelyn Creedon, former Principal Deputy Administrator of the US National Nuclear Security Administration and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Global Strategic Affairs

The global system of alliances that the United States built after the Second World War underpinned the stability and prosperity of the postwar order. But during the 20th century, the multilateral NATO alliance system in Europe and the bilateral San Francisco alliance system in Asia rarely interacted. This changed in the early 21st century, as US allies came together to fight and stabilise conflicts in the Middle East and Central Asia. This volume presents the first-ever comparative study of US alliances in Europe and Asia from the perspectives of US allies: the challenges, opportunities and shifting dynamics of these fundamental pillars of order. This volume is essential reading for those interested in contemporary and future regional and global security dynamics.

Disruption has blown the old world apart. The rise of China, Trump's America First policies, division within Europe and successful defiance by authoritarian states are affecting the shape of the emerging new order. Human rights, rule of law, free media and longstanding global institutions all seem set to be weakened. Autocracies are exercising greater control over world affairs. Australia will need to engage heightened levels of diplomacy to forge relations with countries of opposing principles. It will need to be agile in pursuing a realistic foreign policy agenda. China's Grand Strategy and Australia's Future in the New Global Order contains answers for how Australia must position itself for this possibly dystopian future.