A world without the USA

Canberra can no longer assume that Washington will underpin regional stability or the rules-based order, the foundational premise of modern Australian strategic planning. Australian policymakers must grapple with the prospect that the destabilising behaviour of US President Donald Trump’s administration is not a temporary aberration.

Master of the universe

Donald Trump’s unfettered determination to wield absolute power at home and abroad in his pursuit of his ever more unhinged agenda threatens to plunge the world into chaos and break the back of American democracy.

Maduro as hell

Donald Trump’s kidnapping of Venuzuela’s President and potential annexation of Greenland may accelerate the splitting of the world into 3 authoritarian spheres of influence, with Russia allowed to take Europe and China to dominate the Pacific in Asia in return for an isolationist, imperialist USA dominating the American continents.

The great power carve up

Rather than oppose the naked aggression of authoritarian states like Russia and China, Donald Trump’s America has chosen to join them, signalling the end of the liberal international order and a carve up of the world into three baleful spheres of influence.

Trump’s battered wife

Donald Trump’s abuse of the political norms and expectations of the United States resembles to coercion and abuse of a battered wife.

How should Albanese handle Trump?

Anthony Albanese will meet Donald Trump in Washington on 20 October, the first official meeting between the two leaders since Trump’s inauguration in January, so how should Australia’s Prime Minister handle the encounter?

Stand back and stand by

Donald Trump’s unchecked descent into authoritarian insanity continues to gain pace with his plan to use America’s military against its own people.

Trump’s contempt for press freedom

United States President Donald Trump is well advanced in his systematic campaign to undermine the American media and eviscerate its traditional function of holding people in power to account.

Trump’s new brand of McCarthyism

The murder of Trumpian activist Charlie Kirk has sparked a coordinated campaign against critics of the Trump regime that echoes one of the darkest chapters in American history.

Trump’s assault on democracy

Donald Trump is never less than brazen in his contempt for democratic norms and he’s been quick to use Charlie Kirk’s killing as a pretext for crushing dissent and demonising any political opposition.

The right hand man’s right hand man

libertarian tech titan Peter Thiel helped make JD Vance. The Republican kingmaker’s influence is growing

The wrong answers to the right questions

New York Times columnist David Brooks once remarked that Donald Trump is the wrong answer to the right questions—a sentiment that captures the core challenge facing US policy in East Asia.