Tag Archive for: United States of America

British public opinion on foreign policy: President Trump, Ukraine, China, Defence spending and AUKUS

Results snapshot

President Trump

  • Britons support an open and engaged foreign policy role for the United Kingdom. In light of the re-election of President Donald Trump, 40% believe Britain should continue to maintain its current active level of engagement in world affairs, and 23% believe it should play a larger role.
  • Just 16% of Britons support a less active United Kingdom on the world stage.
  • When asked what Britain’s response should be if the United States withdraws its financial and military support from Ukraine, 57% of Britons would endorse the UK either maintaining (35%) or increasing (22%) its contributions to Ukraine. One-fifth would prefer that the UK reduces its contributions to Ukraine.

UK–China relations

  • Just a quarter (26%) of Britons support the UK Government’s efforts to increase engagement with China in the pursuit of economic growth and stabilised diplomatic relations.
  • In comparison, 45% of Britons would either prefer to return to the more restricted level of engagement under the previous government (25%) or for the government to reduce its relations with Beijing even further (20%).
  • A large majority of Britons (69%) are concerned about the increasing degree of cooperation between Russia and China. Conservative and Labour voters share similarly high levels of concern, and Britons over 50 years of age are especially troubled about the trend of adversary alignment.

Defence and security

  • When asked whether the UK will need to spend more on defence to keep up with current and future global security challenges, a clear two-thirds (64%) of the British people agree. Twenty-nine per cent of Britons strongly agree that defence spending should increase. Just 12% disagree that the UK will need to spend more.
  • The majority of Britons believe that collaboration with allies on defence and security projects like AUKUS will help to make the UK safer (55%) and that partnerships like AUKUS focusing on developing cutting-edge technologies with Britain’s allies will help to make the UK more competitive towards countries like China (59%).
  • Britons are somewhat less persuaded that AUKUS will succeed as a deterrent against Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific, although the largest group of respondents (44%) agree that it will.

Brief survey methodology and notes

Survey design and analysis: Sophia Gaston

Field work: Opinium

Field work dates: 8–10 January 2025

Weighting: Weighted to be nationally and politically representative

Sample: 2,050 UK adults

The field work for this report was conducted by Opinium through an online survey platform, with a sample size of 2,050 UK adults aged 18 and over. This sample size is considered robust for public opinion research and aligns with industry standards. With 2,000 participants, the margin of error for reported figures is approximately ±2.3 percentage points at a 95% confidence level. Beyond this sample size, the reduction in the margin of error becomes minimal, making this size both statistically sufficient and practical for drawing meaningful conclusions with reliable representation of the UK adult population. For the full methodological statement, see Appendix 1 of this report.

Notes

  1. Given the subject matter of this survey, objective and impartial contextual information was provided at the beginning of questions. There are some questions for which fairly substantial proportions of respondents were unsure of their answers. All ‘Don’t knows’ are reported.
  2. The survey captured voters for all political parties, and non-voters; however, only the findings for the five largest parties are discussed in detail in this report, with the exception of one question (6C), in which it was necessary to examine the smaller parties as the source of a drag on the national picture. The five major parties discussed in this report are the Conservative Party, the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats, Reform (formerly the Brexit Party and UKIP), and the Green Party.
  3. This report also presents the survey results differentiated according to how respondents’ voted in the 2016 referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union, their residency within the UK, their age, their socio-economic status, and whether they come from White British or non-White British backgrounds. The full methodological notes are found at the end of the report.
  4. Some of the graphs present ‘NET’ results, which combine the two most positive and two most negative responses together – for example, ‘Significantly increase’ and ‘Somewhat increase’ – to provide a more accessible representation of the balance of public opinion. These are presented alongside the full breakdown of results for each question for full transparency.

Introduction

There’s no doubt that 2025 will be a consequential year in geopolitical terms, with the inauguration of President Donald Trump marking a step-change in the global role of the world’s largest economy and its primary military power. The full suite of implications for America’s allies is still emerging, and there will be opportunities for its partners to express their agency or demonstrate alignment. For a nation like the United Kingdom, whose security and strategic relationship with the United States is institutionally embedded, any pivotal shifts in American foreign policy bear profound ramifications for the UK’s international posture. The fact that such an evaluation of America’s international interests and relationships is taking place during a time in which several major conflicts – including one in Europe – continue to rage, only serves to heighten anxieties among policy-makers and citizens alike.

Public opinion on foreign policy remains an understudied and poorly understood research area in Britain, due to a long-held view that the public simply conferred responsibility for such complicated and sensitive matters to government. Certainly, many Britons don’t possess a sophisticated understanding of the intricacies of diplomatic and security policy. However, they do carry strong instincts, and, in an internationalised media age, are constantly consuming information from a range of sources and forming opinions that may diverge from government positions.

The compound effect of a turbulent decade on the international stage has made Britons more perceptive to feelings of insecurity about the state of the world, which can be transposed into their domestic outlook. At the same time, their belief in the efficacy of government to address international crises, or their support for the missions being pursued by government, isn’t guaranteed. This creates a challenging backdrop from which public consent can be sought for the kind of bold and decisive actions that may need to be considered as policy options in the coming months and years.

This study provides a snapshot of the views of British citizens at the moment at which President Donald Trump was inaugurated for a second time. It shows a nation which, overall, continues to subscribe to clear definitions of its friends and adversaries, carries a sense of responsibility to Ukraine, and greets the rise of a more assertive China with concern and scepticism. Underneath the national picture, however, the data reveals some concerning seeds of discord and divergence among certain demographic groups and political parties. The UK Government must build on the good foundations by speaking more frequently and directly to the British people about the rapidly evolving global landscape, and making the case for the values, interests, and relationships it pursues.

Sophia Gaston

March 2025

London

The future of US Indo-Pacific policy

How might US policy in the Indo-Pacific change over the next four years? In anticipation of a new US administration and Congress in 2025, ASPI USA held an “alternative futures analysis” exercise in mid-October 2024 to explore the drivers of US policy and how they might evolve through to November 2028. The workshop involved seven Indo-Pacific experts, who discussed a range of factors that could determine US policy and assessed how key factors could drive different outcomes.

The participants determined that the two key drivers affecting the US role in the Indo-Pacific over the next four years that are simultaneously most uncertain and most determinative for US policy are:

  1. Washington’s perception of China’s strength in the Indo-Pacific
  2. the level of US attention to the region.

The former is a key determinant of Washington’s threat perception, and the latter is a key determinant of Washington’s capacity to sustainably engage in the region. The nexus of those drivers produced a skeleton of four potential scenarios:

  • Failing to walk and chew gum: Perceived high China power and a low level of US attention. In this scenario, Beijing continues to advance its interests across the region while Washington fails to prioritise imperatives in the Indo-Pacific amid ongoing conflicts in Europe, the Middle East, and elsewhere.
  • Follow US: Perceived high China power and a high level of US attention. In this scenario, the possibility of Chinese regional hegemony is growing, but the US adopts a focused, harder-edged security strategy and leads like-minded states to confront the challenge.
  • The Peaceful Pivot: Perceived low China power and a high level of US attention. In this “stars align” scenario, the perception of diminishing competition and conflict with China couples with the US implementing the decade-old promise of a pivot to Asia.
  • Leading from behind: Perceived low China power and a low level of US attention. China’s capacity to project power falters in this scenario, but the US—pulled into global events elsewhere and distracted by its own domestic politics—does not provide forceful leadership in the region and leans on allies and partners to carry the load.

The Pacific cocaine corridor: A Brazilian cartel’s pipeline to Australia

Australia faces an emerging national security threat from Brazilian transnational crime groups. Once a domestic concern, Brazilian organised crime has evolved into a powerful narco-insurgency with transnational reach, making Brazil the world’s second-largest player in the cocaine trade after Colombia.

While Brazilian organised crime previously posed little threat to Australia, this report, The Pacific cocaine corridor: A Brazilian cartel’s pipeline to Australia, examines how Brazil’s expanding role in global cocaine supply, rising criminal network sophistication, and growing demand in Australia’s lucrative cocaine market are increasing the presence of Brazilian organised crime on Australian shores.

The report highlights how Brazil’s Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) has become a major transnational criminal threat, exploiting weaknesses in political, legal, and economic systems. It explores Brazil’s geography and criminal networks with South American cocaine producers and examines the PCC’s global distribution networks, with a focus on how the Pacific is increasingly used to transport drugs destined for Australia. A recent case study demonstrates the prioritisation of the Australian market in these operations.

The report concludes with recommendations for strengthening police cooperation, enhancing financial surveillance, and proactively detecting and disrupting PCC activities. By addressing key enablers of the PCC’s resilience and closing gaps in international information exchange, a coordinated approach will not only mitigate the immediate threat but also bolster Australia’s long-term defences against transnational organised crime.

Lessons in leadership: Interviews with 11 of Australia’s former Defence Ministers

In a time of growing strategic uncertainty, 11 of Australia’s former defence ministers have shared valuable lessons they learned over decades running one of the toughest portfolios in government.

In this compendium, the former ministers from both sides of politics give their views on topics ranging from the complexity of dealing with a massive department, to the grief they shared with families at the funerals of slain soldiers.

The pieces are drawn from interviews with former ASPI executive director Peter Jennings and links to the original video interviews are available in the posts on The Strategist site.

The future of intelligence analysis: US-Australia project on AI and human machine teaming


Dr Alex Caples is Director of The Sydney Dialogue, ASPI’s annual summit for critical, emerging and cyber technologies.

Previously, she was Director of Cyber, Technology and Security at ASPI.

Alex is a former diplomat and national security official whose career spans over 20 years’ in Defence, the Office of National Intelligence, the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and the Department of Foreign Affairs, including postings to Canada and Afghanistan.

Between 2019-2023, Alex was an Associate Director, Operations Advisory and Director, Policy Evaluation and Public Impact at professional services firm KPMG, supporting Commonwealth and State Governments on policy and program design and implementation.

Prior to this, Alex held various senior policy advisor roles in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet’s National Security Division, including Director of Law Enforcement and Border Security, Director Cyber Security Policy and Director Crisis Management. In this capacity Alex provided advice to Government on a wide range of security legislation, policy and operations, including critical infrastructure security, foreign interference, cyberspace, telecommunications security, digital identity management, intelligence and border security.

During 2011-2012, Alex was a Senior Analyst for Transnational Issues at the Office of National Intelligence, where she provided senior executives and Ministers with all-source analysis on people smuggling, regional law enforcement and transnational crime.

Alex is an Australian Defence Force Academy Graduate. She holds a PhD in International Relations from Monash University (2007).

When China knocks at the door of New Caledonia

China’s covert foreign interference activities in the Pacific are a very important, and yet under-researched, topic. This report uses New Caledonia as the case study to examine China’s hidden front, 隐蔽战线, throughout the wider Pacific.

Successive months of violence and unrest in New Caledonia in 2024, have heightened regional and international awareness of the uncertain future of the territory, and the role of China in that future. The unrest erupted after France pushed through legislation extending voting rights in the territory.

The CCP has engaged in a range of foreign interference activities in New Caledonia over many decades, targeting political and economic elites, and attempting to utilise the ethnic Chinese diaspora and PRC companies as tools of CCP interests. Local elites have at times actively courted China’s assistance, willingly working with CCP front organisations.

Assessing the extent of China’s foreign interference in New Caledonia is a legitimate and necessary inquiry. The debate about China’s interests, intentions and activities in the territory has lacked concrete, publicly available evidence until now. This study aims to help fill that lacuna. The report draws on open-source data collection and analysis in Chinese, French and English. It was also informed by interviews and discussions that took place during my visits to New Caledonia and France in 2018, 2019, 2022 and 2023, as well as conversations in New Zealand.

My research shows that the French Government and New Caledonian authorities are working to manage risks in the China – New Caledonia relationship. Moreover, civil society, the New Caledonian media, many politicians, and Kanak traditional leadership have also had a role in restraining the extent of the CCP’s foreign interference activities in New Caledonia. Few Pacific Island peoples would welcome a relationship of dependency with China or having the Pacific become part of a China-centred order.

The report concludes by recommending that New Caledonia be included in all regional security discussions as an equal partner. New Caledonia needs to rebalance its economy and it needs help with the rebuild from the riots. Supportive partner states should work with France and New Caledonia to facilitate this.

Ice panda: navigating China’s hybrid Antarctic agenda

Antarctica is often overlooked in strategic discussions, but its role in geopolitical competition deserves attention.

This report assesses the continents importance to Australian security, China’s hybrid Antarctic activity, and the need for Australia to develop a balancing strategy capable of bolstering the Antarctic Treaty and ‘pushing back’ against growing Chinese power in Antarctica.

Antarctica offers significant strategic advantages for the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Although Beijing’s actions in Antarctica may not overtly violate the Antarctic Treaty (AT), they effectively undermine its principles and, by extension, Australia’s strategic interests. Currently, the PRC is adeptly navigating the AT System to challenge the status quo without explicitly breaching the treaty.

China’s domestic policies, which merge civil and military sectors, appear to contravene the spirit of the AT’s military prohibitions, even if they have not yet resulted in direct military activity on the continent. This evolving dynamic underscores the pressing need for Australia to safeguard the existing Antarctic status quo.

With robust Australian foreign and security prioritization, the AT can counter Beijing’s growing ambitions, which may directly impact Australian interests. We must protect and uphold the principles of the AT.

With diverse domestic and international priorities, Australia must not neglect Antarctica, as Beijing continues to exploit the strategic gap left by our limited focus. Australia, with its rich history and commitment to Antarctica, must assert its role as an Antarctic claimant and clarify that China’s presence is contingent on Australian and other claimants’ cooperation. It’s time for Australia to lead in Antarctica and protect our strategic interests.

Deterrence, escalation and strategic stability: Rebuilding Australia’s muscle memory

To build an effective deterrence strategy, Australia needs urgently to improve its skills and understanding of deterrence, and raise the topic’s profile in our public and policy discussions. Despite having previously been a global thought leader on nuclear weapons and deterrence half a century ago, Australia today doesn’t have a strong grasp of the basics of modern deterrence.

Knowledge of and literacy in deterrence are vital for adapting and applying such concepts to meet today’s extraordinarily complex, multidomain and multidimensional requirements. A lack of understanding of deterrence can critically undermine the ability to get strategy and policy right. The implications for Australia’s national interests are urgent and serious. The limited debate in Australia about what good deterrence strategy looks like and its key components can’t be advanced without better understanding of key terms and ideas that are fundamental to deterrence theory and practice.

There are, of course, obvious limits to what Australia can achieve alone. Our ability to integrate and combine our military capabilities with those of the US and other critical partners is fundamental to our ability to achieve our security objectives, but some of our partners are working more closely together on building deterrence strategies. We have some catching up to do.

This report explains what deterrence is and why it matters. It looks at Australian deterrence policy in practice and at deterrence efforts by some of our partners and allies and it highlights a number of gaps in Australia’s strategic and deterrence planning.

The report makes a series of policy recommendations for government, and especially for the Department of Defence, to rebuild Australia’s position as a thought leader on deterrence.

Reclaiming leadership: Australia and the global critical minerals race

Climate policy, geopolitics and market forces are coalescing to deliver Australia a global leadership opportunity in critical minerals. To grasp that opportunity, Australia needs both to utilise its domestic mineral endowment and its mining knowledge and technology and to leverage the global footprint of Australian companies to help build a global supply chain network.

How Australia responds will not only determine economic benefits to the nation but will also affect the world’s ability to achieve minerals security and the sustainability required for the global energy transition and inclusive economic growth.

The global energy transition and other high-technology applications have increased demand for critical minerals, particularly in countries that have strong complex manufacturing industries. At the same time, the concentration of production of many critical minerals, the dominance of China in supply chains and its actions to restrict supply and influence markets, are disrupting both minerals production and availability.

In response, developed nations have formulated critical minerals strategies and entered into bilateral and multilateral agreements, involving supplier nations and customer nations, to build alternative supply chains that are more diverse, secure and sustainable. Australia has committed in multiple agreements to work with like-minded nations to achieve this.

This report is intended to provide the government with a road map to ‘step up’ to (re)activate Australia’s global mineral leadership.

Deterring an attack on Taiwan: policy options for India and other non-belligerent states

India has a vital role to play in deterring China from unifying Taiwan by military force, a new Australian Strategic Policy Institute report finds, highlighting New Delhi’s significant economic, diplomatic, legal and strategic narrative levers.

The report looks beyond traditional thinking on military preparations to dissuade Beijing from taking the island by force and offers six ways for India, with its great strategic and economic weight, to “help shape Beijing’s calculus away from the use of force”.

The author writes that the use of such long-term measures is vital to New Delhi’s own interests, as the economic and regional security impacts of a major war would be devastating for India itself.  India and other “non-belligerent states” could apply a range of measures to persuade Beijing that the time is not right for a military attack. The aim would be to convince Beijing that “its ducks aren’t quite in a row… so that it defers military action to some uncertain point in the future”.

The report states that China remains deterrable. While it is determined to assume control of the island as a paramount strategic priority, it knows a military invasion would be enormously costly and uncertain.

Tag Archive for: United States of America

The dangerous collapse of US strategic sealift capacity

The US Transportation Command’s Military Sealift Command (MSC), the subordinate organisation responsible for strategic sealift, is unprepared for the high intensity fighting of a war over Taiwan.

In the event of such a war, combat commanders would look to MSC’s approximately 125 ships to transport about 90 percent of US Army and Marine Corps equipment into the Western Pacific for combat operations: fuel, ammunition, vehicles, missile launchers, spare parts and more.

MSC readiness levels have dropped to 59 percent, due mostly to vessel material condition and age. Most of its sealift ships are reaching an age at which maintenance and repair costs are ballooning, and service-life extensions won’t improve readiness.

Most alarmingly, current estimates indicate that the sealift fleet will lose 90,000 to 180,000 square metres (1 million to 2 million square feet) of capacity each year as ships reach the end of their useful life. That compares with the current capacity of about 840,000 square metres (9 million square feet).

Recent fleet exercises also indicate that most of MSC’s vessels cannot complete long voyages or are completely non-mission-capable. Without immediate investment, sealift will remain largely incapable of supporting major sustained combat operations.

US planning takes for granted that sea lines of communication will be contested from homeport in the United States to theatre in the western Pacific. Contested logistics add an additional layer of complexity for war planning, specifically because MSC’s strategic sealift fleet, already stretched thin and atrophied, would be subject to attack. Ships and their cargoes would be lost.

The US Transport Command will likely have to activate its Voluntary Intermodal Sealift Agreement (VISA), which allows access to civilian commercial shipping to supplement military sealift capacity. While VISA enables increased lift capacity on paper, that comes with an implied trade-off: every commercial vessel seconded to military service is lost to US commercial capacity and revenue. There is also a risk that commercial shippers will suffer grievous losses in maritime combat. The government could compensate them, but their businesses would be badly damaged.

In 2017, the US Maritime Administration estimated that US civilian merchant shipping was 1800 qualified mariners short of requirements. Since then, that number has almost certainly increased. Obviously, in the event of a major mobilisation, the US will need sailors for its merchant ships.

The MSC’s strategic sealift fleet is woefully inadequate. While VISA may ease some of the inadequacy, it is unclear how effective civilian vessels would be in wartime. Moreover, even if the transport command activated VISA, the civilian merchant fleet would likely be crippled by a potentially fatal lack of interoperability among crews for want of shared experience. The US also faces a critical shortage of trained personnel.

The US Transport Command must take immediate steps to mitigate US sealift’s capability and capacity gaps. Failing this, the US and its regional allies and partners that also rely on US sealift face defeat. This is not because the US military cannot fight and win, but because the US military cannot support and sustain itself at scale on the other side of the Pacific.

Recapitalising the sealift fleet must be the MSC’s primary focus. The US needs to breathe new life into its domestic industrial base and revitalise its ability to rapidly construct ships. Fleet modernisation will obviously require building ships, but the US should also consider buying foreign vessels to bolster its merchant fleet until production capacity improves.

The US Merchant Marine must improve mariner recruitment and retention. No amount of new shipping or industrial capacity will make up for a lack of qualified sailors. The maritime administration should consider new incentive programs to bring talent to crews and vessels.

While it is vital to reinvigorate the US shipbuilding industry, and to attract and retain qualified sailors, these actions alone are not enough. The MSC must also conduct regular theatre-level exercises to train the sealift force and develop interoperability in the event VISA is activated. Fleet exercises lay bare problems in peacetime, providing the advantage of time to think through those problems.

In a war, any level of sustained attrition would quickly turn catastrophic without sufficient sealift. Underpinning all of this is the need to develop a comprehensive national maritime strategy. Such a strategy must align US policy objectives with resources and reality in the Pacific. This process is likely to be uncomfortable and require trade-offs, but it is fundamentally necessary. The alternative is almost certainly humiliating defeat for want of weapons, ammunition, fuel and equipment.

General John J Pershing, himself keenly aware of logistics, said ‘infantry wins battles, logistics wins war’. His axiom has likely never been truer. It is time to recognise that the US maritime logistics problem must be solved.

ASPI USA roundtable: Trying to understand US economic statecraft

Governments are outraged, industry leaders are keeping a low profile, and economists and analysts are confused as they work to understand how the Trump administration’s approach can make the United States simultaneously safer, stronger and more prosperous.

In its first month, the Trump administration has shaken up the world trading system as it uses tariffs to try to promote US investment, productivity, industrial and technological advantage; defend US economic and national security; and help US workers.

An ASPI USA discussion with Claire Chu, Aaron Glasserman, Kimberly Donovan, Phil Rogers and William Alan Reinsch this month focused on what this approach means for US-China relations. This is the first in ASPI USA’s series of Chatham House roundtables to consider the Trump administration’s approach to geoeconomics.

The administration has imposed a 10 percent general tariff on Chinese imports, adding to economic measures established under the previous Trump and Biden administrations.

It has threatened to impose 25 percent tariffs on aluminium and steel not made in North America, reciprocal tariffs on all countries, 25 percent tariffs on automobile imports, and tariffs of at least 25 percent on pharmaceuticals and semiconductors. The US will also place 25 percent tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada, unless these countries can further appease Trump. This is all before considering retaliatory tariffs levied on the US.

If a country adds a tariff to protect an industry, it does so by making foreign goods more expensive and domestic goods relatively more attractive. If the protected local companies then enjoy a larger market, they may expand their workforces.

But tariffs could also lead to job losses in non-protected industries. When companies pay more for imported inputs, they may pass on the higher cost to consumers. They may shrink their workforces, too. Costs would rise for US imports with no domestic alternative, affecting businesses downstream. For example, placing a tariff on coffee would increase prices for cafes. This might then affect bakeries that supply the cafes, as some consumers decide not to buy coffee.

The administration wants businesses to invest in domestic manufacturing, but this will take time. Tariffs and export controls, together with incentives, have led to reduced US investment into China, with some returning to the US. However, Donald Trump has questioned the value of mechanisms incentivising business to relocate. He suggested he might abolish the CHIPS and Science Act, a law that provides funds and incentives for semiconductor research and production in the US. He has also paused disbursement of grants under the Inflation Reduction Act, which seeks to do the same with renewable energy.

Broad tariffs increase production costs, which in turn inflate consumer prices. They also undermine US export competitiveness by increasing production costs and strengthening the dollar, leading to inflation and fewer jobs in the short to medium term.

The US must also consider how applying tariffs on allies and partners will affect its reputation. Imposing tariffs on any country the US perceives as having an unfair trade deficit, including when this is for a single sector within a broader trade surplus (for example, aluminium from Australia), signals a shift toward purely transactional economic relationships.

An apparent US disregard for decades of strategic and security cooperation will erode trust in US leadership, particularly among allies. This will reduce its ability to rally international partners for broader strategic objectives.

The proposed tariffs might also affect the US’s ability to counter China in the Indo-Pacific, particularly regarding Taiwan. Tariffs on Taiwanese goods, targeting its world-leading semiconductor industry, could impact Taipei’s calculus about whether its alignment with the US is in its best interest.

US tariffs could also affect Taiwanese public opinion, influencing voters to reconsider the viability of self-determination and strategic alignment with the US. This would be a gift to China as it works to lure Taiwan to unite with it.

The loss of Taiwan would undermine US national security; isolate key US allies and trade partners; make the 80 percent of global trade that passes by Taiwan and the South China Sea vulnerable to Chinese manipulation; and reduce US commercial access to 60 percent of global GDP.

Further, the Trump administration’s use of economic measures to elicit political outcomes—such as against Mexico to get action on the southern border or Columbia on illegal migrants—undermines its ability to call China out when it does the same.

Campaigning for election, Trump and his supporters boiled his trade proposals down to creating jobs and lowering prices, which would make the country safer, stronger and more prosperous. If the above principles of economics stand, then we must ask why the administration is using tariffs in contradictory ways.

At the roundtable, some experts pointed to Trump’s long-held view that allies and adversaries had taken advantage of the US for decades on trade and security. Others noted that with the national debt at more than US$36 trillion and still climbing, Republicans were willing to back Trump’s deal-making skills to lift revenue and get more favourable trade and political outcomes. While Elon Musk’s effect on trade policy was unclear, maybe the tariff on China being set at 10 percent instead of the foreshadowed 60 percent was because of his investment in the country.

At this stage, it is hard to see a strategy behind the tactics being employed.

The trials ahead for Pete Hegseth

Donald Trump’s new defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has enormous challenges ahead of him—challenges that could seriously affect Australia by upsetting key elements of our ally’s defence position, including its ability to deliver the Virginia class submarines that are so crucial to our AUKUS plans.

At the heart of problem is Trump’s hallmark tax cuts and the space he needs to clear in the federal budget to enable the cuts without driving the deficit much deeper into the red. The Republicans are aiming to get their program through Congress by bundling everything together into one or two big omnibus bills. This should help them manage their narrow majorities in the Senate and the House of Representatives, but it creates potential problems among the deficit hawks on their own right flank who will be stripped of the ability to debate the cost of individual programs.

This group of Republicans insist that changes to taxes and spending must be at least budget neutral. They are deeply disturbed by the fact that, since the end of the Cold War, government debt has grown from about 40 percent of GDP to 123 percent today and is still rising at about 9 percent per annum.  Unchecked, it could get to about 195 percent of GDP by 2050.

The principal threat to an ability to balance the budget is Trump’s desired tax cuts. The Committee for Responsible Federal Budget calculates that they would cost between US$5 trillion and US$11.2 trillion through to 2035, counting both the permanent extension of Trump’s first term tax cuts—which are due to expire at the end of this year—and new cuts he has promised. These have both been flagged as top administration priorities.

Although Trump seems intent on using tariffs to boost revenue—unlike in his first term, when he was motivated by protecting American industry—it is clear his tariff policy will not resolve his deficit problem should he press his tax changes.

The Tax Foundation, an independent non-profit organisation, estimates that a universal 10 percent tariff would raise $2 trillion through to 2034 and a 20 percent tariff $3.3 trillion—though it would be less if, as expected the tariffs shrink the US economy. This would ‘fall well short of what is needed’ to cover the permanent extension of Trump’s first term tax cuts, let alone the new cuts.

Meanwhile, Trump has outsourced the task of cutting spending to self-proclaimed ‘first buddy’ Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.  It reportedly is staffed mostly by young men Musk has brought across from the tech sector who have the job of eliminating programs and public servants. Musk suggests that any serious problems arising from haste will be fixed later. Sometimes, as with the sacking of many of those assigned to the supervision of the nuclear weapons stockpile, they have had to be fixed sooner rather than later.

This is one part of the headache Hegseth will soon have to deal with.  He is responsible for the most complex and expensive department outside those that handle social payments. Defence also has the deepest and strongest cultural disciplines—particularly in the armed services—and the most complex and expensive technologies in the world. Going into the November election, the approved outlays for defence were US$895 billion. Trump promised an increase but has since pointed the DOGE directly at defence.

In an interview on Super Bowl day, Trump said he expected to find ‘billions, hundreds of millions in fraud and abuse’ in defence. His national security advisor, Mike Waltz, suggested in a separate interview that ‘the Pentagon in general is full of unnecessary bloat’ and directed aim particularly at shipbuilding, which he said was ‘a mess’.  Yet that program is at the heart of American power.  It is also quantitively, and increasingly qualitatively, challenged by Chinese programs. The shipbuilding industry and the systems supporting the United States Navy are among the most sensitive that the US has.

They are also particularly vital for Australia. The rate at which the US can build submarines needs to improve if they are to deliver Virginia class boats to the Royal Australian Navy in the 2030s, as planned under AUKUS. Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles made a $500 million down payment to enhance the US submarine industrial base as part of the AUKUS package during his positive meeting with Hegseth in early February—the first Hegseth had with a foreign counterpart. Hegseth committed himself to the AUKUS programme including the sale of Virginias, which will be a formidable deterrent and a critical part of Australia’s defence.

Senior Pentagon official Robert Salesses said in a statement this week that Hegseth had launched a review to find 8 percent of the defence budget for the 2026 financial year—about $50 billion—in offsets that would realign spending towards priorities such as border security, an Iron Dome-style aerial defence system. Hegseth had also ordered an end to ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ type programs. The Washington Post reported the existence of a memo indicating these offsets—which the news report called ‘cuts’—would continue for five years, though it noted that submarine acquisition was among the categories listed for exemption.

The US submarine output rate has been gradually coming up to the levels of production necessary for the AUKUS timetable. What will happen now?

The shipbuilding program, the assertive posture of DOGE and any cuts to the Pentagon overall, represent for Hegseth a massive difficulty. A defense secretary doesn’t have to be loved, but he or she does have to be respected.  This includes respect for the values the armed services evince. The military is proud of its capacity to incorporate women and people of colour in all facets of command and recruitment. Above all is a requirement that its manifold security arrangements cannot be put in the hands of people not qualified and cleared. The youngsters of DOGE are not. The Pentagon will look to Hegseth for that protection—as indeed will we and all the military allies of the US.

If it is thought in the Pentagon that Hegseth can’t cope with the need to protect both secrecy and capability, he will be lost. For any defense secretary, such a failure would be intolerable. It will be particularly so for congressional Republicans who have had to swallow a great deal to approve the appointments of Trump’s choices in the national security area.

All this will be playing out in an environment in which one or two omnibus bills will be hotly contested in Congress.

It has to be remembered that the US is not at the peak of post-World War II spending.  Were that to be the case, defence spending would not be at $895 billion; it would be closer to $2 trillion. Chinese and Russian expenditures are at least as great as they were during the Cold War.

The US is looking for a massive increase in allied spending. Trump has set targets of at least 3.5 percent of GDP, hopefully 5 percent. The allies are nowhere near these targets. Australia is increasing to 2.4 percent of GDP—far short of what Trump wants. We can expect the US administration to come at us. But our challenge is miniscule compared to that facing Hegseth.

What Donald Trump can learn from allies on foreign aid

There are smarter and more effective ways to streamline and re-strategise US foreign aid.

The Trump administration is not the first Western government to envision a stronger, safer, and more prosperous country by integrating foreign aid with strategic objectives. The experiences of the United States’ Five Eyes partners, particularly Australia and Britain, offer encouraging evidence for reform, having achieved tightly targeted development programs supporting diplomatic and strategic priorities. They also offer sobering lessons about implementation pitfalls, including the abrupt disruption of established programs, especially those already aligned with strategic policy, loss of critical skills among government personnel and heightened unease among international partners.

The logic driving aid integration is compelling. In an era of great power competition, maintaining separate tracks for diplomacy and development is an unaffordable luxury. China has harnessed development, along with trade and financial investment, as an instrument of strategic influence through both soft and hard means. Both Australia and Britain recognised this reality, merging their aid agencies into their foreign ministries to create more strategically coherent development policies. Having made clear its intent to fundamentally reshape USAID, the Trump administration has the opportunity to learn from its allies in the pursuit of the American national interest.

A unified strategy: Australia 

The Australian government integrated the Australian Aid Agency (AusAID) with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) in 2013 with the stated goal of better aligning Australia’s development, foreign policy, trade priorities, strategies and objectives while bringing an enhanced focus on the Indo-Pacific. The integration accompanied a reduction of Australia’s development funding. After reaching a peak of more than $5 billion in 2013–14, or 0.33 percent of gross national income, Australia’s development budget has progressively declined. In 2023-24, the budget was $4.8 billion, or 0.19 percent of gross national income. This change is also stark in terms of the slice of the Australian budget spent on foreign aid compared to defence expenditures.

An independent review of the integration in 2019 found that 90 percent of the Australian government’s strategic targets for the integration had been met, driving development allocations towards infrastructure and the Pacific. The review also found ‘examples of development goals being more strongly advanced through joined-up, whole-of-department efforts.’

These initial efforts—such as the Pacific Seasonal Worker Scheme and the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific—have since grown to enable more ambitious and innovative integrated development and strategic initiatives. Key among these are the Falepili Union with Tuvalu (which provides Australia with strategic denial rights and Tuvalu with climate resilience monies and opportunities for migration), the agreement between Australia and Papua New Guinea (which encompasses development and security elements) and Telstra’s acquisition of Digicel Pacific, the largest mobile provider in the Pacific, with the Australian government’s support amid rumors of interest from China Mobile. While the review stepped carefully around the issue, it found integration had increased Australia’s ability to counter efforts to overshadow Australia’s influence, like China’s Belt and Road and Digital Silk Road initiatives.

However, the review also found several areas of concern. Early morale problems among staff arising from the abrupt way the integration was implemented had largely dissipated by 2019, but a ‘pronounced deterioration in skills and systems’ remained. The review found that ‘almost 1000 years of experience left [government service] shortly after integration.’ Additionally, ‘estimates suggest another 1000 years of experience’ left the department in the five years before 2019 due to the department underestimating the capability needed to design and deliver development programming.

This loss of know-how continues to hamper effectiveness over a decade later. While development is now firmly accepted as a tool of statecraft, best wielded as part of a whole-of-government strategy, an article by the review’s author 15 months ago suggested DFAT still had room to improve in terms of fully harnessing its development delivery.

Strategic prioritisation: Britain

The merger between Britain’s Department for International Development and its Foreign and Commonwealth Office occurred in 2021. The principal intention behind the merger was to better align Britain’s development activities with its wider diplomatic, trade and geopolitical interests, both in strategic terms and in terms of in-country representation. The merger coincided with a decision to reduce the Britain’s development funding commitment from the 0.7 percent of GDP enshrined in law to 0.5 percent of GDP. Notably, the integration occurred while Britain was experiencing the economic slowdown of the Covid-19 pandemic, which resulted in a double blow to funding in absolute terms, constituting a 30 percent reduction overall.

Alongside the budget reductions, a strategic prioritisation of development initiatives was pursued, in which Britain focused on bilateral funding to a smaller group of countries where measurement of effect is often easier to determine, but at the expense of some wider bilateral and multilateral commitments which were deemed to deliver less tangible value to Britain.

In addition, Britain identified a select set of issues for its development focus, namely climate investments, girls’ education, and global health, where it had demonstrated expertise and where funding would have constructive spillover effects. For example, improving girls’ education is found to reap positive dividends for local security, prosperity and governance. These initiatives, concentrated in Africa, the Indo-Pacific and South Asia, are all areas in which Britain’s adversaries were harnessing development as an instrument of influence, dependence and coercion.

Britain’s National Audit Office (NAO) review of the progress of the merger in 2024 found positive evidence ‘of where a more integrated approach has improved the organisation’s ability to respond to international crises and events, which has led to a better result.’

Two such examples were Britain’s coherent humanitarian, diplomatic, and military response as the leading European power supporting Ukraine after Russia’s invasion, and the joint humanitarian and political response to the Ebola crisis in Uganda. The findings supported the rationale for the merger and the modernisation of the department as fit-for-purpose in sharpening the Britain’s geopolitical interests. However, the NAO also noted that ‘the indirect costs’ of the merger ‘in terms of disruption, diverted effort and the impact on staff morale should not be underestimated.’

The NAO also reviewed the effect of the overseas development aid reduction and found that while the prioritisation compelled in the government’s activities had some positive dividends, ‘the speed and scale of the budget reduction, and the lack of long-term planning certainty, increased some risks to value for money.’

What can the US learn?

These cautionary tales suggest some considerations for the Trump administration:

First, pace matters more than may be immediately apparent. While decisive action has its advantages, too rapid a transformation risks institutional damage that could take years to repair. Recipient partners need to be assured about the value of the relationship, as reputation matters when development partners have the luxury of choice. A phased integration that maintains critical expertise while gradually aligning strategic direction would likely prove more effective in the long term.

Second, capability preservation requires active management. Both Australia and Britain learned the hard way that development expertise isn’t quickly or easily replaced. The technical knowledge required for effective commissioning, procuring, financing and managing of development programs, while not unique to the aid world, is distinct from traditional diplomatic and geostrategic policy skills. Any US reforms must include concrete plans for retaining and developing each of these specialised capabilities and empowering them to work together to deliver coherent whole-of-government priorities.

Third, funding stability enables strategic coherence and builds influence with partners. Britain’s experience shows that simultaneous organisational and budgetary upheaval can undermine even well-conceived reforms. While efficiency gains are desirable, treating integration primarily as a cost-cutting exercise risks strategic self-harm. With strategic competitors snapping at our heels, such interruptions cannot always be remedied.

Fourth, clear metrics for success must encompass traditional development indicators and strategic effects. Australia’s focus on its immediate neighbourhood and Indo-Pacific infrastructure and Britain’s emphasis on areas of demonstrated expertise and reputational value offer useful models for linking foreign aid and development assistance to broader national interests.

The stakes for getting this change right are immense. China has outflanked the West in harnessing foreign aid as a strategic tool of statecraft, having learned from the experiences of Western development agencies. The US cannot afford to unilaterally disarm in this arena and sacrifice its many areas of retained advantage through poorly executed reforms.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s framework of strength, safety and prosperity provides useful guideposts. Development programs should demonstrably enhance US security partnerships, expand trade relationships that benefit US workers, or strengthen allies facing authoritarian pressure. Programs that cannot do this should be reconsidered.

Achieving these goals requires maintaining the US’s development capabilities even as they are more tightly aligned with strategic objectives. The experiences of Australia and Britain suggest this balance is achievable but demands careful attention to ensure areas of national strength and influence are strengthened, not squandered.

With US funding freeze, China nonprofits are facing extinction. They need emergency assistance

An entire ecosystem of vital China-related work is now in crisis. When the Trump administration froze foreign funding and USAID programs last week, dozens of scrappy nonprofits in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the United States were immediately affected. Staff are losing their jobs; some organisations face imminent closure due to lack of funding; others are paring back their programming.

In many cases, these organisations provide our last window into what is actually happening in China. They do the painstaking and often personally risky work of tracking Chinese media censorship, tallying local protests, uncovering human rights violations, documenting the Uyghur genocide, and supporting what remains of civil society in China. They provide platforms for Chinese people to speak freely; they help keep the dream of democracy in China alive. I’m not listing the names of any specific organisations at this time, because some prefer not to disclose that they receive foreign funding. Beijing believes funding that supports free speech and human rights is interference by ‘hostile foreign forces’.

As China’s President Xi Jinping has squeezed Chinese civil society and expelled journalists, information from inside China has gotten harder and harder to access. The 2017 Chinese foreign NGO law crushed US and other foreign nonprofits based in China. Some moved to Hong Kong or elsewhere. The spending freeze may deal them a death blow.

The research and other work done by these nonprofits is invaluable. It largely isn’t replicated by think tanks, universities, private firms, or journalists. If it disappears, nothing will replace it, and Beijing’s work to crush it will be complete.

As a journalist who covered China for more than 10 years, I took for granted the numerous organisations I could turn to when I needed certain kinds of information. But Donald Trump’s foreign spending freeze has revealed how dependent these organisations are on a single government for their survival—and, by extension, how fragile our sources of information about China really are.

The US must immediately grant emergency waivers to China-focussed nonprofits. If the US is not able to do this, governments around the world that value democracy, human rights and truth must step in and find a way to restore funding to these organisations now. It wouldn’t take much; a few million dollars spread across a handful of donor nations would be enough to preserve the research, expertise and networks these organisations represent.

Regardless of whether the US continues funding this work, this crisis should serve as a wake-up call for democracies everywhere. Funding from a single government should not be the only thing standing between us and an information blackout on Chinese civil society. That is not a model of international democratic resilience.

Providing funding for China nonprofits operating outside of China is directly aligned with the core interests of democratic nations. We base our security on the idea that democratic systems are the best way to guarantee the long-term stability, prosperity and wellbeing of citizens. Government budgets exist to preserve the democratic systems that make these goals possible; we don’t sacrifice these ideals to shave off a few numbers on a budget.

A key part of China’s agenda is to persuade its own citizens and the world, falsely and through deception and coercion, that democratic systems are not better. Beijing claims its system is the best way to guarantee economic prosperity and stability. It claims its one-party system is a meritocracy.

It is difficult and time-consuming—though not particularly expensive—to do the work that proves Beijing is lying, and that what it offers is smoke and mirrors. Tools that allow us to uncover the flaws of China’s own system and the actual struggles Chinese people face, directly support the goals, security and resilience of democratic governments.

Without the work that China nonprofits do, it will be much harder to show that China’s domestic model of economic and political governance is deeply flawed. If we can no longer prove that, it becomes much harder to understand why democracies are worth fighting for in the first place.

Donald Trump, Jon Voight and the paths to transformation or upheaval

At a breakfast meeting in a well-known restaurant a stone’s throw from the White House on Saturday, I noticed the veteran actor and Oscar-winner Jon Voight across the room. Two days out from Donald Trump’s inauguration, the incoming President’s newly minted ‘Ambassador’ to Hollywood was no doubt in town for the big occasion of Trump’s return to the Oval Office.

As I made eye contact with Voight and got a smile in return, the moment encapsulated for me the remarkable situation we’re living through: the transformation of US politics and the study in contrasts that Trump’s return to the presidency represents, with a mix of familiar faces and new allies in tow.

The pre-inauguration weekend in Washington exemplifies great American traditions: NFL playoffs, biting winter weather, and gatherings of friends and family either celebrating or commiserating over the incoming president. But this year, the atmosphere in DC carries a unique tension after a week of confirmation hearings ranging from the mundane to the bizarre.

Voight is a case in point: a rare movie star who is comfortable among the Republican elite, the MAGA hats and the Trump paraphernalia dotting the wintery landscape outside, but who has also attracted controversy for comparing ‘leftists’ to Satan. The mere fact of appointing special envoys to Hollywood—the others being Sylvester Stallone and Mel Gibson—shows Trump’s extraordinary approach to transforming even sections of the nation that have generally viewed him with scepticism or antipathy.

On the one hand, the administration’s statements promise disruption to bureaucratic inertia—the very reason a majority of Americans voted for Trump and a recognition that widespread global tensions and conflict mean a business-as-usual approach is totally inadequate. On the other, some pronouncements have caused sharp intakes of breath among Washington’s politically attuned population, who watch with a mix of fascination and dread, unable to look away from what they fear might become a slow-motion train wreck or a fast-paced wrecking ball. This duality—the potential for both transformative change and concerning upheaval—defines Trump’s leadership style.

My morning meeting with an Australian venture capitalist focused on the future of AUKUS under Trump’s second term. Despite the uncertainties that come with any administration change, the mood was surprisingly optimistic. The sense is that AUKUS—the trilateral security pact between Australia, Britain and the US—still holds the promise we’ve hoped for. There’s a prevailing belief that under Trump, capital markets will surge, potentially accelerating the defense technology collaboration that underpins the agreement.

Walking around after my meeting and close encounter with a Hollywood star, I could see the extent to which the capital has transformed in preparation for the inauguration. Downtown Washington, locked down for security, has taken on the air of a Republican stronghold. The traditional pre-inauguration ‘People’s March’ forming in Farragut Square, usually a robust demonstration, appeared subdued and diminished—a visible sign of the shifting political winds.

Mother Nature, however, has her own plans for the inauguration. An Arctic front will bring the coldest temperatures in decades, forcing the ceremony indoors to the Capitol rotunda. This weather-induced change may be a blessing in disguise, rendering moot any potential debates about crowd size—a contentious point from Trump’s first inauguration. The limited capacity of the indoor venue will naturally constrain attendance, despite the million-plus supporters and observers who flocked to DC to attend.

I’m acutely aware of the unique responsibility that a think tank such as ASPI has in Washington. We serve as a bridge, injecting Australian and regional perspectives into American national security and defense discussions. Our mission isn’t to influence but to inform and diversify the debate while providing crucial insights back to the Australian people about policies that will affect our region.

This mission has become more complex with the recent defunding of our Washington office by the Australian government. Yet the importance of our work hasn’t diminished. If anything, in these uncertain times, the need for clear-eyed analysis and regional perspective has only grown.

Looking ahead to Trump’s second term, I find myself holding mixed emotions: hope tempered by trepidation, optimism checked by concern. But above all, I’m grateful to be here at this pivotal moment, positioned to contribute unique insights that few others can provide. As the world watches America’s political transition, the view from Down Under in Washington offers a valuable perspective on this historic moment and its implications for the Indo-Pacific region.

In these early days of Trump’s return to power, one thing is certain: the dynamic and unpredictable nature of his approach will continue to challenge conventional wisdom and traditional diplomatic frameworks. For those of us working in Washington to strengthen international partnerships, the task ahead is clear—to navigate this new landscape while maintaining the robust alliance relationships that have long served both American and Australian interests.

The TikTok boomerang

Few predicted that TikTok users in the United States would flock to the Chinese app RedNote (Xiaohongshu) in defiance of a US government ban. And yet in the space of just two days this week, RedNote became the most downloaded app in the US, gaining 700,000 users—most of them American TikTok refugees.

Since US data security was the rationale for the TikTok ban, American users’ migration to other Chinese apps only amplifies those concerns. Unlike TikTok—a platform that does not operate in China and is not subject to Chinese law—RedNote is a domestic Chinese app bound by strict Chinese regulations. Moreover, while TikTok says that it stores US user data exclusively within the US, with oversight by a US-led security team, RedNote stores its data entirely in China.

In recent years, China has introduced a series of data protection laws ostensibly aimed at safeguarding user information. But these regulations primarily target businesses, imposing far fewer constraints on government access to personal data. Chinese public authorities thus have wide discretion in requesting and accessing user data.

Beyond the issue of data privacy, US authorities also worry that TikTok might be used to influence public opinion in the US. But TikTok’s algorithms are closely monitored by Oracle, as part of a deal to address security concerns. In contrast, RedNote’s algorithms operate under the close scrutiny of the Chinese government, and the app is subject to China’s stringent content-moderation requirements, which could further shape the opinions of the TikTok refugees now flocking to the platform.

Given the rationale for the law banning TikTok, it is hard to imagine RedNote escaping similar scrutiny. Now that the US Supreme Court has upheld the TikTok law, the president will have the authority to designate RedNote as a national security threat, too. But this process may quickly descend into a game of Whac-a-Mole. As US users migrate from one Chinese platform to another, regulators will find themselves locked in an endless cycle of banning Chinese apps.

As the list of banned apps grows, the US risks constructing its own Great Firewall—a mirror to the censorship strategy long employed by China. Even if Chinese apps are removed from US app stores, tech-savvy users can easily bypass such restrictions with VPNs, just as Chinese users do to access foreign platforms. That means the US government will soon confront the limits of its ability to ban Chinese apps.

Moreover, each new restriction risks fueling defiance, driving even more users toward Chinese-controlled platforms. Instead of mitigating national security concerns, this strategy may inadvertently exacerbate them, introducing the kinds of vulnerabilities that the original ban was supposed to address.

The TikTok ban thus puts the US government in a near-untenable position, which may explain why Donald Trump is reportedly weighing options to spare TikTok (despite having initiated the ban during his first term).

Yet reversing the ban carries its own risks. As legislation passed by congress, it cannot be repealed by executive order. In theory, Trump could direct law enforcement agencies not to enforce the ban; but that would have far-reaching consequences, not least by calling into question America’s commitment to the rule of law (again mirroring a charge the US has long leveled against China).

An alternative to banning TikTok is a forced divestiture of the app’s US operations, but that solution hinges on one critical factor: China’s approval. In 2020, China implemented restrictions on the export of technologies such as recommendation algorithms—the core of TikTok’s operations—effectively giving the Chinese government veto power over any potential deal.

The TikTok dilemma thus now serves as a powerful bargaining chip for China’s leaders, granting them significant leverage in their dealings with Trump, who campaigned on a promise to impose higher import tariffs on Chinese goods. Not surprisingly, he turned to Chinese President Xi Jinping for help just hours before the Supreme Court was set to weigh in on the ban.

At the same time, the TikTok saga has handed China yet another strategic gift. Friendly interaction between TikTok refugees and Chinese netizens on RedNote has created an unprecedented opportunity for cultural exchange, something China’s rulers have long aspired to but struggled to achieve.

For more than two decades, the Chinese government has aggressively tried to promote its culture and expand its influence in the US. But while it has purchased ads in Times Square and established Confucius Institutes on US university campuses, these efforts have largely failed to gain traction. Remarkably, what RedNote has achieved in just a few days seems to have eclipsed the cumulative impact of all these prior initiatives.

As I explored in my recent book, High Wire, centralised decision-making frequently results in fragile, rather than resilient, regulatory outcomes. The TikTok saga offers a stark reminder that an over-concentration of presidential power in shaping US foreign policy—particularly toward China—can lead to similar outcomes. With Trump expected to consolidate executive power, surround himself with loyalists and operate with fewer institutional constraints during his second term, this trend seems likely to intensify, generating vast unintended consequences.

The 2024 US Elections and the Pax Americana

Under a new US president, will the United States stand by Ukraine, potentially risking war with Russia? Will it stand by its NATO treaty obligations? Will it support Israel to properly defend itself, potentially risking war with Iran? Will it prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, including by using force, if necessary? Will it defend Taiwan, should China seek to use force to annex that democratic society? Will it defend the Philippines, or Japan, or other Indo-Pacific treaty allies in the event of their being attacked by China? Will it defend South Korea were it to be attacked? Will it continue to shield its non-nuclear allies under the protection of extended nuclear deterrence? Will it continue to protect the world’s sea lanes? Closer to home, will it honour its commitment to supply nuclear-powered attack submarines to Australia, as doubts swirl around its industrial capacity to meet US Navy requirements?

These and other similar questions will be on the agenda over the course of the coming presidential term, irrespective of who wins on 5 November. While these questions are vitally important in their own right, what is of greater interest is how the result of the election might affect the future shape and structure of world order which, since the end of the Second World War, has been underpinned by the ‘Pax Americana’—the ‘American peace’ which links and frames all of these issues, and more besides. This ‘peace’ has meant the avoidance of a catastrophic nuclear war. It has not meant the absence of confrontation, conflict, or war otherwise.

Without the assertion and projection by the United States of its stupendous economic and military power after the Second World War, a Eurasian hegemon would have emerged in the strategic heartland of the world. Since 1948, when it broke the Berlin blockade, the United States has been the crucial actor in the prevention of the emergence of such a hegemonic power in Eurasia. Were it ever to emerge, such a power, with strategic and military dominion over the population, resources, and economic might of Eurasia, would be the leading global power, and today we would be dealing with entirely different questions.

By the end of the coming presidential term in 2028, the future world order will be clearer in three crucial respects—namely, will the United States have the wherewithal, whether on its own or in partnership with others, to continue to counter the rise of such a power; will it have the interest and inclination to do so; and will the Pax Americana hold?

A Eurasian hegemon would itself not have the wherewithal, initially perhaps, to subjugate the United States, which would be secure in its hemispheric citadel, protected by the geographical barrier of great oceans, a vast arsenal of nuclear weapons, and advanced defensive shields to deal with missile, cyber, and space attacks. Such a United States would, from its citadel, project power selectively and only in relation to strictly defined interests and narrowly couched objectives. It would have few, if any, alliances. It would still be a powerful economic actor, fuelled by a massive domestic market, deep sources of private wealth, leading edge innovation, healthy population growth, and the enduring role of the US dollar as a favoured store of value. A Eurasian hegemon would be satisfied with such a world order, pleased that a materially-focused United States, which was more interested in making money than waging war, would not be an obstacle to its strategic designs, unless it were to be threatened directly.

To glean the future of the Pax Americana, it would be helpful to consider its development and evolution. Initially, in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, the United States appeared to be willing to place its faith in the dual promise of the United Nations and the new economic architecture that became known as the Bretton Woods system. While the yearning for a universal order that would see the prevention of war seemed to be within reach, after the horrors of 1914-45, it became soon apparent to the Truman administration that the possibility of Soviet Russia achieving hegemonic mastery in Eurasia would both stymie this noble vision, and be detrimental to the interests of the United States.

Under Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy (two Democrats and a Republican), the United States countered Soviet Russia, to the point of risking nuclear war, in October 1962.  Under Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter (two Democrats and two Republicans), the United States chose the path of co-existence and eventually détente with Soviet Russia, while contesting it in proxy struggles around the world. Under Reagan, there was a marked departure in US policy. The United States began to act on the radical policy premise that a state of confrontation with Soviet Russia, which carried with it the risk of global nuclear war, need not be accepted as a permanent condition. Then with the collapse of Soviet Russia, Bush senior, Clinton, and Bush the younger (two Republicans and a Democrat) sought to refashion global security arrangements, including by bringing post-Soviet Russia and Communist China into a globally integrated economy, where greater trade and investment flows, and reformed multilateral institutions, would engender a more peaceful world.

With the global financial crisis of 2008, and the onset of war weariness in the United States under Obama, Trump, and Biden (two Democrats and one Republican), strategic restraint became increasingly the organising principle of US policy. This has not been without benefit in terms of the struggle for mastery in Eurasia. Allies have been challenged to do more, which has seen a degree of strategic awakening in Europe and in the Indo-Pacific. In Europe, modest rearmament and mobilisation is underway, especially in the wake of Putin’s illegal invasions of Ukraine in 2014 and 2022. NATO has become more active and re-engaged on its core mission, after years of searching for relevance after the demise of Soviet Russia. In the Indo-Pacific, which lacks the organising structure of NATO, the ‘latticework’ of US-centred alliances and security partnerships is being steadily strengthened, including by way of the basing of US combat forces in northern Australia.

The United States is unlikely to ever again play the role of preponderant power, as it did in the period 1948-62. For analytical purposes, there are interesting questions to examine, such as the nature, dimensions, and actuality or otherwise of ‘US primacy’; the relative power balance between the United States and China; and the lessons of historical patterns of how ‘rising’ and ‘declining’ powers compete with, and confront, one another. For policy, the more relevant question is this: will the United States leverage its own power (however measured in absolute and relative terms), and that of allies and partners, to ensure that no globally powerful, hegemonic power can establish itself in Eurasia, while at the same time ensuring that the Pax Americana endures.

The United States has always ‘pivoted’ in accordance with its interests and capacities, and its resolve. There is nothing new in that. For instance, in July 1969, Nixon made clear at Guam that the United States had a different—and more restrained—sense of its obligations in terms of security assurances in Asia, as compared with its iron resolve to deter a Soviet attack on Western Europe, and to wage war on Soviet Russia if necessary.

What is different today is the advent of the formidable Axis of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, which presents the United States with a choice: knowing that it cannot hold the entire strategic perimeter of Eurasia without leveraging the significant military and economic resources of the European Union, Japan, India, Australia, South Korea, and others, does it seek to reset the burden sharing parameters of the Pax Americana—including by demanding that allies and partners increase defence spending to at least 3 percent of GDP, and possibly more—while still leading in countering the emergence of a Eurasian hegemon, or does it commence the process of withdrawing into its citadel?

Preferably, we will see continued US leadership, with greater contributions from its allies and partners. However, a weary and divided United States, which was concerned with its strategic solvency—where it was spending more on the cost of servicing its federal debt than on defence—might well recalculate its interests, taking a dim view of those who consume US security without contributing meaningfully. The United States might well decide to revert to what it did for the first 170 years of the republic—pursuing abundance at home, and restraint abroad. Could one blame the United States for pursuing such a course if those whom it seeks to protect refuse to make greater sacrifices in order to better defend themselves, having grown accustomed to the protection of the Pax Americana? Unless US allies and partners, Australia included, do more for themselves, this might be more than an academic question.

Trump’s meaning for America, win or lose

See Donald Trump as a symptom, not a cause.

Trump has a massive ego, the appetites of a supreme narcissist and the language of a fascist. But he has a finely tuned popular antenna that has again taken him to the gates of the White House. He is an extraordinary symptom of tectonic shifts in geopolitics and geoeconomics.

Win or lose on 5 November, Trump as a phenomenon tells us much about where the United States is heading as ‘the dysfunctional superpower’.

If he wins, Trump will have another four years to turn the popular mood into policy. In defeat, though, Trump is still a symptom that signposts the future. The trends he expresses will endure to shape the temperature and tone of US politics and foreign policy.

Trump revolutionised the Republican Party. America’s conservative party is transformed into a more rabid beast. Republican grandees shake their heads in woe and wonder. America’s trade policy is remade, even as US economic influence in Asia declines. The protectionist consensus is at its strongest in American politics since the Great Depression, nine decades ago. The economic instinct feeds an isolationist mood that will push at US strategy and alliances. The one international question that unites Washington is the new cold war with China.

Turn to a couple of Republican grandees to see how this shapes America’s future. The ‘dysfunctional superpower’ label is from Robert Gates, who served as defence secretary in both Republican and Democrat administrations (an unimaginable double in these fevered times).

Gates fears that a divided America has no long-term strategy to prevail in the struggle with Russia, China, North Korea and Iran. He judges that ‘dysfunction has made American power erratic and unreliable, practically inviting risk-prone autocrats to place dangerous bets—with potentially catastrophic effects.’

The diagnosis from Condoleezza Rice, national security adviser and secretary of state to president George W Bush, is that the ‘new four horsemen of the apocalypse—populism, nativism, isolationism, and protectionism—tend to ride together, and they are challenging the political centre.’

Rice says the US needs an internationalist president, explaining ‘what the world would be like without an active United States’. Looking beyond Cold War II, Rice sees analogies with today’s dilemmas in

the imperialism of the late nineteenth century and the zero-sum economies of the interwar period. Now, as then, revisionist powers are acquiring territory through force, and the international order is breaking down. But perhaps the most striking and worrying similarity is that today, as in the previous eras, the United States is tempted to turn inward.

Globalisation may not be dead, but the Trump symptom says it’s ailing. The US has given up on free trade. In the region that matters to Australia, the Indo-Pacific, the US has gone AWOL on trade issues since Trump withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership the day he became president in 2017.

Trump’s campaign promise this time is to boost tariffs on all US imports by 10 percent and increase tariffs on China by 60 percent. A Republican candidate who gets his history from television brandishes the beggar-thy-neighbour protectionism of the 1930s.

Asia wants the US to help achieve strategic balance, not deliver trade war. A rich new era of Asian commerce arrives, marked by the decline of US economic influence. As Asia trades with itself, China wins, trumping the US almost by default.

The ‘stark reality’ is that the US ‘will not be a partner in East Asian regionalism or show leadership on trade and global economic governance, for at least the next few presidential terms’, according to Peter Drysdale and Liam Gammon, writing in the East Asia Forum. The Democrats have offered no intellectual response to the slide into protectionism, Drysdale and Gammon observe, so Trump has defined the policy terrain:

The ‘America First’ trade policy has won a strategic victory over the past eight years, shifting the US bipartisan consensus towards the idea that globalisation was a lousy deal for Americans.

The Trump effect has pushed at Washington’s Blob in profound ways. The Blob was an Obama-era description of the settled outlook of the foreign policy establishment. Trumpism points to generational change in the Blob’s operation. This is one of the deep differences between Joe Biden and Trump.

In foreign policy, Biden has repaired alliances and delivered traditional sermons on America’s central role in the world. Yet he will be the last US president whose policy instincts are rooted in Cold War I. In contrast, one of Trump’s few consistent messages is that the US was stupid to spend all its blood and treasure overseas while allies got a free ride. ‘No more lousy deals,’ he proclaims.

The generation that is stepping into the top jobs in Washington was in high school or heading to university when Cold War I toppled with the Berlin wall in 1989. Their understandings are shaped by the 9/11 attacks, America’s longest war in Afghanistan and the Iraq morass. For 20 years, until the last American aircraft left Afghanistan in August 2021, US soldiers were at war.

Trump’s message is that the era of war and global responsibility is over. And that view will weigh on America’s course, even if Trump fails.

China sharpens the BRI with better risk management, ESG focus

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) for investment abroad has been revamped with a greater focus on risk management and governance, and it is on the cusp of winning important new members.

Brazil is expected to announce it will join the program when China’s President Xi Jinping makes a state visit to the country following a G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro in late November. Colombian officials, meanwhile, have confirmed their government’s intent to join.

US Trade Representative Katherine Tai warned last week that Brazil should be ‘objective’ about the risks of joining and consider how best to protect its economic resilience.  But Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has declared his interest in the scheme, as have several ministers.

Once Brazil and Colombia join, the only significant emerging nations outside the BRI will be Mexico, which would face a conflict with its trade agreement with the United States and Canada, and India, which has a difficult relationship with China and objects to the BRI project for a Pakistani economic corridor passing through contested territory in Kashmir.

The scheme’s membership of approximately 150 nations also includes several developed economies, including South Korea, Singapore, Saudi Arabia and 17 of the European Union’s 27 members. (G7 member Italy withdrew last December.)

China’s lending to developing countries now exceeds US$1.3 trillion (A$2 trillion). This makes it a larger official creditor to the developing world than the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund or the combined advanced nations, according to AidData, a research institute attached to the William & Mary university in the United States, which has the most comprehensive database of Chinese lending.

AidData says the scheme has significantly tightened its financial risk management and its environmental, society and governance (ESG) performance after its first five years of lending left at least 57 nations overdue on repayments or at risk of default.  There was also community and political backlash in many countries following poorly conceived and executed projects.

New lending reached a peak of US$142 billion in 2016 but had dived to US$74 billion by 2020. There was a small increase to US$79 billion in 2021.

The scheme has cut lending to the highest-risk countries and increasingly supports private rather than public projects. It is participating in syndicated loans with private lenders to spread risk and has begun lending to multilateral institutions, such as the African Export-Import Bank and the Africa Finance Corporation.  BRI loans now need to be backed with collateral, and they carry penalty interest rates for late payments. Most deals now have legally enforceable ESG safeguards.

Motivated by the number of borrowers in financial difficulty, China has been providing emergency balance-of-payments lending, most of which is denominated in yuan rather than US dollars.

‘It is learning from its mistakes and becoming an increasingly adept international crisis manager,’ AidData researchers commented, arguing that Western critics had failed to understand the extent to which the BRI had been reworked, and risked devising policies to compete with a version of the BRI that no longer existed.

The West was slow to respond to the BRI.  It was only in 2021 that US President Joe Biden announced a program, initially branded as Build Back Better World but then renamed the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII), to combine G7 lending to developing countries.

The US contribution over a five-year period was to be US$200 billion, with a further US$400 billion to come from the other G7 members and the private sector. ‘We’re showing democracies can deliver,’ Biden said.

The PGII has a number of major projects, led by a transcontinental rail link from Angola’s Lobito port to the Katanga province in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Copperbelt in Zambia on the east of the continent.  A less advanced plan would develop a Trans-Caspian transport corridor linking central Asian nations with Europe, while plans for an India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor were announced in late 2023.

China was lending up to three times as much as the United States until recently, but the margin has narrowed. US loans to the developing world reached US$60 billion last year, compared with just under US$80 billion from China.

However, China still appears to be winning the hearts and minds of the governments, if not necessarily the people, of the emerging world.  According to an AidData study, governments of developing countries aligned their voting in the United Nations General Assembly with China 75 percent of the time and with the United States just 23 percent between 2000 and 2023.  A government that increases its UN voting alignment with China by 10 percentage points can expect to see a near-tripling of aid and credit flows.

Tag Archive for: United States of America

Stop the World: A new world order? Ukraine’s Ambassador on Russia, the United States and Europe

In this special episode of Stop the World, ASPI’s David Wroe speaks with Ukraine’s Ambassador to Australia, Vasyl Myroshnychenko, on the morning after US and Russian representatives met in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

The Ambassador responds to the blizzard of recent developments affecting the prospect of a peace agreement to end Russia’s unprovoked war of aggression against its democratic neighbour as we approach the third anniversary of the full-scale invasion. He talks about signs of a turning point in the world order, Ukraine’s hopes of joining NATO, recent remarks from the Trump administration, a security guarantee for the Ukrainian people, and the grim future the world faces if aggression is allowed to go unchecked.

Guests:

David Wroe

Vasyl Myroshnychenko

Stop the World: TSD Summit Sessions: AUKUS – lowering barriers, increasing capability with Abe Denmark

In the latest episode of Stop the World, Justin Bassi speaks to Abe Denmark, former senior advisor to US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin III and now non-resident senior associate with the Asia Program at CSIS. Given their respective roles in the US and Australian governments to establish AUKUS, Abe and Justin discuss the need for the partnership and how it came together. They also outline what the three countries now need to do to make it work to deliver greater regional stability and security, as well as opportunities for broader collaboration with trusted partners.

Beyond AUKUS, they also discuss the global strategic outlook, and the challenges the US and its partners are grappling with – conflict in the Middle East and Europe, and an increasingly assertive China in the Indo-Pacific – and its strategy in managing multiple crises at once.

Mentioned in this episode:
https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/australia-needs-to-engage-its-youth-population-around-aukus/

Guests:
Justin Bassi
Abraham M. Denmark

Stop the World: TSD Summit Sessions: AUKUS – lowering barriers, increasing capability with Abe Denmark

In the latest episode of Stop the World, Justin Bassi speaks to Abe Denmark, former senior advisor to US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin III and now non-resident senior associate with the Asia Program at CSIS. Given their respective roles in the US and Australian governments to establish AUKUS, Abe and Justin discuss the need for the partnership and how it came together. They also outline what the three countries now need to do to make it work to deliver greater regional stability and security, as well as opportunities for broader collaboration with trusted partners.

Beyond AUKUS, they also discuss the global strategic outlook, and the challenges the US and its partners are grappling with – conflict in the Middle East and Europe, and an increasingly assertive China in the Indo-Pacific – and its strategy in managing multiple crises at once.

Mentioned in this episode:
https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/australia-needs-to-engage-its-youth-population-around-aukus/

Guests:
Justin Bassi
Abraham M. Denmark

Stop the World: Understanding AUSMIN, with Kim Beazley and Marise Payne

AUSMIN (Australia-United States Ministerial Consultations) – what is it, how did it come about, and why is it important?

ASPI’s own former AUSMIN attendees, Executive Director, Justin Bassi, and Director of Strategic Communications, David Wroe, reminisce about the annual AUSMIN meeting, its Cold War history and its ongoing significance for the Australia-US relationship, how it has evolved over time, and what you need to know ahead of next week’s 34th meeting.

The episode features reflections from the Hon Kim Beazley AC, an AUSMIN founding member who attended the first five meetings as Minister for Defence, and Marise Payne, one of only two people to have attended AUSMIN as both Foreign and Defence minister throughout six meetings. They provide some behind-the-scenes insights into what the meetings were like, the benefits of the these meetings and some of the most significant moments across the AUSMIN meetings they attended.

For anyone interested in understanding one of the key mechanisms in the US-Australia alliance, this is a useful primer to next week’s meeting!

Stop the World: AUKUS, industry and public support with Sophia Gaston and Eric Chewning

In this episode of Stop the World, we bring you the final interview from our special series recorded from the sidelines of the ASPI Defence Conference ‘JoiningFORCES’. And today it’s all about AUKUS.

ASPI’s Director of The Sydney Dialogue, Dr. Alex Caples, is joined by Sophia Gaston, Head of Foreign Policy at Policy Exchange, and Eric Chewning, Executive Vice President of Strategy and Development at HII.

Alex, Sophia and Eric reflect on the progress that has been made on AUKUS, the role of industry in ensuring AUKUS succeeds, and the ongoing challenges such as workforce. The conversation also focuses on political and public support for AUKUS, which has been made even more timely by this week’s UK election, and the looming presidential and congressional elections in the United States.

Mentioned in this episode: The AUKUS goal: balancing power in the region, by Justin Bassi

Guests:

⁠Alex Caples⁠

⁠Sophia Gaston⁠

⁠Eric Chewning

Stop the World: Japan’s security, partnerships and regional strategic outlook with Narushige Michishita

In this episode of Stop the World, we bring you the penultimate episode in our special series recorded from the sidelines of the ASPI Defence Conference ‘JoiningFORCES’.

This interview is all about Japan and regional security. Dr Euan Graham, Senior ASPI Analyst speaks with Narushige Michishita, professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) in Tokyo and Japan Scholar with the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Asia Program. The conversation covers Japan’s perspective on the strategic outlook in the Indo-Pacific, the role of the US-Japan alliance and the evolution of the Australia-Japan relationship. Euan and Michishita also discuss Japan’s major investments in defence, including a promise to increase defence funding by 60 percent, and opportunities to increase regional cooperation on security, including through AUKUS.

Note: This episode was recorded on the sidelines of the conference, so please forgive the less than perfect audio quality.

Guests:

⁠Euan Graham⁠

⁠Narushige Michishita

Stop the World: Why auld acquaintance should ne’er be forgot

Australia and the United Kingdom have a lot of shared history and values, but not a lot of shared geography. For a long time, that left the strategic relationship feeling a little dusty—a friendship to be taken for granted. But the two countries’ security partnership has a sense of deepening urgency, with the creation of AUKUS, the UK’s Indo-Pacific tilt and the recent signing of a new defence and security cooperation agreement. With Russia’s war against Ukraine and Chinese regional assertiveness, Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific security are increasingly seen as tied.

To unpack these developments, ASPI’s Stop the World podcast is devoting today’s episode to the Australia-UK strategic relationship.

ASPI senior analyst Alex Bristow speaks with UK High Commissioner Vicki Treadell and Alessio Patalano, professor of war and strategy in East Asia at King’s College London. And in the episode’s second session, ASPI senior analyst Euan Graham speaks with Philip Shetler-Jones, senior research fellow in Indo-Pacific security at the Royal United Services Institute.

Guests:

⁠Alex Bristow⁠

⁠Vicki Treadell⁠

⁠Alessio Patalano⁠

⁠Euan Graham⁠

⁠Philip Shetler-Jones⁠

Tag Archive for: United States of America

What Donald Trump Can Learn From Allies on Foreign Aid

There are smarter and more effective ways to streamline and re-strategize U.S. foreign aid.

The Trump administration is not the first Western government to envision a stronger, safer, and more prosperous country by integrating foreign aid with strategic objectives. The experiences of America’s Five Eyes partners, particularly Australia and the United Kingdom, offer encouraging evidence for reform, having achieved tightly targeted development programs supporting diplomatic and strategic priorities. They also offer sobering lessons about implementation pitfalls, including the abrupt disruption of established programs, especially those already aligned with strategic policy, loss of critical skills among government personnel, and heightened unease among international partners. 

The logic driving aid integration is compelling. In an era of great power competition, maintaining separate tracks for diplomacy and development is an unaffordable luxury. China has harnessed development, along with trade and financial investment, as an instrument of strategic influence through both soft and hard means. Both Australia and the UK recognized this reality, merging their aid agencies (AusAID and DFID, respectively) into their foreign ministries to create more strategically coherent development policies. Having made clear its intent to fundamentally reshape USAID, the Trump administration has the opportunity to learn from its allies in the pursuit of the American national interest. 

A Unified Strategy: Australia 

The Australian government integrated the Australian Aid Agency (AusAID) with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in 2013 with the stated goal of better aligning Australia’s development, foreign policy, trade priorities, strategies, and objectives while bringing an enhanced focus on the Indo-Pacific. The integration accompanied a reduction of Australia’s development funding. After reaching a peak of more than AUD $5 billion in 2013–14, or .33 percent of gross national income (GNI), Australia’s development budget has progressively declined, and in 2023–2024 was AUD$4.8 billion, or .29 percent of GNI. This change is also stark in terms of the slice of the Australian budget spent on foreign aid compared to defense expenditures. 

An independent review of the integration in 2019 found that 90 percent of the Australian government’s strategic targets for the integration had been met, driving development allocations towards infrastructure and the Pacific. The review also found “examples of development goals being more strongly advanced through joined-up, whole-of-department efforts.” 

These initial efforts—such as the Pacific Seasonal Worker Scheme and the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific—have since grown to enable more ambitious and innovative integrated development and strategic initiatives. Key among these are the Falepili Union with Tuvalu (which provides Australia with strategic denial rights and Tuvalu with climate resilience monies and opportunities for migration), the agreement between Australia and Papua New Guinea that encompasses development and security elements, and Telstra’s acquisition of Digicel Pacific, the largest mobile provider in the Pacific, with the Australian government’s support amid rumors of interest from China Mobile. While the review stepped carefully around the issue, it found integration had increased Australia’s ability to counter efforts to overshadow Australia’s influence, like China’s Belt and Road and Digital Silk Road initiatives.

However, the review also found several areas of concern. Early morale problems among staff arising from the abrupt way the integration was implemented had largely dissipated by 2019. However, a “pronounced deterioration in skills and systems” remained. The review found that “almost 1000 years of experience left [government service] shortly after integration.” Additionally, “estimates suggest another 1000 years of experience” left the department in the five years before 2019 due to the department underestimating the capability needed to design and deliver development programming. 

This loss of know-how continues to hamper effectiveness over a decade later. While development is now firmly accepted as a tool of statecraft, best wielded as part of a whole-of-government strategy, an article by the review’s author fifteen months ago suggests DFAT still has room to improve in terms of harnessing its development delivery to its full potential.

Strategic Prioritization: The UK

The merger between the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Development occurred in 2021. The principal intention behind the merger was to better align the UK’s development activities with its wider diplomatic, trade, and geopolitical interests, both in strategic terms and in terms of in-country representation. The merger coincided with a decision to reduce the UK’s development funding commitment from the .7 percent of GDP enshrined in law to .5 percent of GDP. Notably, the integration occurred while the UK was experiencing the economic slowdown of the COVID-19 Pandemic, which resulted in a double blow to funding in absolute terms, constituting a 30 percent reduction overall.

Alongside the budget reductions, a strategic prioritization of development initiatives was pursued, in which the UK focused on bilateral funding to a smaller group of countries where measurement of effect is often easier to determine, but at the expense of some wider bilateral and multilateral commitments which were deemed to deliver less tangible value to the UK. 

In addition, the UK identified a select set of issues for its development focus, namely, climate investments, girls’ education, and global health—where the UK had demonstrated expertise and where funding would have constructive spillover effects. For example, improving girls’ education is found to reap positive dividends for local security, prosperity, and governance. These initiatives, concentrated in Africa, the Indo-Pacific, and South Asia, are all areas in which the UK’s adversaries were harnessing development as an instrument of influence, dependence, and coercion. 

The UK’s National Audit Office (NAO) review of the progress of the merger in 2024 found positive evidence “of where a more integrated approach has improved the organisation’s ability to respond to international crises and events, which has led to a better result.” 

Two such examples were the UK’s coherent humanitarian, diplomatic, and military response as the leading European power supporting Ukraine after Russia’s invasion and the joint humanitarian and political response to the Ebola crisis in Uganda. The findings supported the rationale for the merger and the modernization of the department as fit-for-purpose in sharpening the UK’s geopolitical interests. However, the NAO also noted that “the indirect costs” of the merger, “in terms of disruption, diverted effort and the impact on staff morale should not be underestimated.” 

The NAO also reviewed the effect of the overseas development aid reduction and found that while the prioritization compelled in the government’s activities had some positive dividends, “the speed and scale of the budget reduction, and the lack of long-term planning certainty, increased some risks to value for money.” 

What Can The U.S. Learn?

These cautionary tales suggest some considerations for the Trump administration:

First, pace matters more than might be immediately apparent. While decisive action has its advantages, too rapid a transformation risks institutional damage that could take years to repair. Recipient partners need to be assured about the value of the relationship, as reputation matters when development partners have the luxury of choice. A phased integration that maintains critical expertise while gradually aligning strategic direction would likely prove more effective in the long term.

Second, capability preservation requires active management. Both Australia and the UK learned the hard way that development expertise isn’t quickly or easily replaced. The technical knowledge required for effective commissioning, procuring, financing, and managing of development programs, while not unique to the aid world, is distinct from traditional diplomatic and geostrategic policy skills. Any American reforms must include concrete plans for retaining and developing each of these specialized capabilities and empowering them to work together to deliver coherent whole-of-government priorities.

Third, funding stability enables strategic coherence and builds influence with partners. The UK’s experience shows that simultaneous organizational and budgetary upheaval can undermine even well-conceived reforms. While efficiency gains are desirable, treating integration primarily as a cost-cutting exercise risks strategic self-harm. With strategic competitors snapping at our heels, such interruptions cannot always be remedied.

Fourth, clear metrics for success must encompass traditional development indicators and strategic effects. Australia’s focus on its immediate neighborhood and Indo-Pacific infrastructure and the UK’s emphasis on areas of demonstrated expertise and reputational value offer useful models for linking foreign aid and development assistance to broader national interests.

The stakes for getting this change right are immense. China has outflanked the West in harnessing foreign aid as a strategic tool of statecraft, having learned from the experiences of Western development agencies. America cannot afford to unilaterally disarm in this arena and sacrifice its many areas of retained advantage through poorly executed reforms.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s framework of strength, safety, and prosperity provides useful guideposts. Development programs should demonstrably enhance American security partnerships, expand trade relationships that benefit American workers, or strengthen allies facing authoritarian pressure. Programs that cannot should be reconsidered.

Achieving these goals requires maintaining America’s development capabilities even as they are more tightly aligned with strategic objectives. The experiences of Australia and the UK suggest this balance is achievable but demands careful attention to ensure areas of national strength and influence are strengthened, not squandered.

DeepSeek is a modern ‘Sputnik’ moment for West

The release of China’s latest DeepSeek artificial intelligence model is a strategic and geopolitical shock as much as it is a shock to stockmarkets around the world.

This is a field into which US investors have been pumping hundreds of billions of dollars, and which many commentators predicted would be led by Silicon Valley for the foreseeable future.

That a little-known Chinese company appears to have leapfrogged into a neck-and-neck position with the US giants, while spending less money and with less computing power, underscores some sobering truths.

First, the West’s clearest strategic rival is a genuine peer competitor in the technologies that will decide who dominates the century and, second, we need to step up our efforts to become less not more reliant on Chinese technology.

More than any other single field, AI will unleash powerful forces from economic productivity through to military capabilities. As Vladimir Putin said in 2017, whoever leads in AI “will become the ruler of the world”.

Marc Andreessen, the influential Silicon Valley entrepreneur and venture capitalist, called the DeepSeek announcement a “Sputnik moment” and “one of the most amazing and impressive breakthroughs” in AI. The US was shocked into action by the Soviet satellite, Sputnik, investing billions into a public-private sector partnership model that helped win back and sustain tech dominance that would play a major role in winning the Cold War.

Andreessen is right but, in many ways, this breakthrough is even more consequential than Sputnik because the world’s consumers are increasingly reliant on China’s technology and economy in ways we never were with the Soviets.

So what does the West need to do now? Above all we need to stop underestimating our major strategic competitor. If hundreds of billions of dollars isn’t enough investment, we either need to redouble our efforts or work more smartly, bringing governments and the private sector together, and working across trusted nations, as we’re doing with AUKUS security technologies – one of which is of course AI.

We also need to dramatically step up so-called derisking of our economies with China’s in these critical technology fields.

When our leaders say they want us to have consumer choice including Chinese-made tech products, they are ignoring the considerable risks of future Chinese dominance, given we have seen the way Beijing is prepared to use its economic power for strategic purposes, whether through 5G or critical minerals.

As it stands, Beijing will have control over the majority of our smart cars, our batteries, the news our public gets through social media and, if models such as the open-source DeepSeek are adopted cheaply by Western companies, the supercharging power that AI will bring to every other sector.

DeepSeek’s breakthrough should actually come as less of a surprise than the stunned market reaction has shown.

In 2015, China told the world its aim was to supplant the US as the global tech superpower in its “Made in China 2025” plan.

At the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) our research in our Critical Technology Tracker has been showing for almost two years that Chinese published research is nipping at American heels.

It surely isn’t a coincidence that at the end of 2024 and the early weeks of 2025, Beijing has shown the world its advances in both military capability in the form of new combat aircraft, and now dual-use technology in AI. Simultaneously we see Beijing’s obsession with keeping Americans and all Westerners hooked on TikTok, which ensures its users see a Beijing-curated version of the world.

Some observers are arguing that the DeepSeek announcement shows the ineffectiveness of US restrictions on exports of advanced technology such as Nvidia’s advanced chips to China.

Far from backing away from such protective measures, the Trump administration should consider stepping them up, along with further investments in data centres – already under way through the Stargate project.

Restricting chips to China is still an important tool in the American toolkit – it’s just not a panacea.

As Donald Trump’s reportedly incoming tech security director, David Feith, argued last year, the US should also target older chips because “failing to do so would signal that US talk of derisking and supply chain resilience still far outpaces policy reality”.

It’s not certain how much direct support DeepSeek and its backers have received from the Chinese government but there are some clues in the way the company is behaving. The DeepSeek model is open-source and costs 30 times less for companies to integrate into than US competitors.

Founder Liang Wenfeng has been blunt that the company is not looking for profits from its AI research, at least in the short term – which would enable it to follow the Chinese playbook of undercutting competitors to create monopolies. And the firm had reportedly been stockpiling the most advanced Nvidia chips before the US restrictions, and has received allocations of chips apparently through the Chinese government.

These facts hint at the lopsided playing field China likes to create. As Edouard Harris, of Gladstone AI, told Time magazine: “There’s a good chance that DeepSeek and many of the other big Chinese companies are being supported by the (Chinese) government, in more than just a monetary way.”

While the West continues to debate the balance between fully open economies and national industrial and technology strategies with greater government involvement, China has already fused its industry with its government-led national strategy and is evidently stronger for it.

China sees the West’s open economies as a vulnerability through which it has an easy access to our markets that is not reciprocated.

DeepSeek is yet another reminder that China’s technology is a force to be reckoned with and one that its government will use strategically to make China more self-sufficient while making the rest of the world more dependent on China.

We must start recognising this era and responding decisively.

How To Ensure AUKUS’ Success

AUKUS is a multigenerational project, and it’s time to admit that the trilateral effort between the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom to develop and share defense technology is still in its infancy. The enabling environment must be tended to before advanced capabilities can be developed and delivered. Progress has been made in this first phase, but concrete steps should be taken to realize the agreement’s potential concerning “AUKUS Pillar 2.”

The goal of AUKUS Pillar 2 is to accelerate the development and delivery of advanced military technology to the militaries of the member nations. To achieve this, it zeroes in on lowering barriers to information sharing and streamlining joint and cross-nation funding pathways while establishing reciprocal export controls. Underpinning these efforts are the continual efforts to strengthen and deepen the culture of trust among the participants. Significant work is underway already. Two new policy recommendations will add to this and help create the enabling environment required for AUKUS to truly thrive and for the successful creation of a more integrated defense industrial ecosystem.

First, independent AUKUS advisory boards should be created to improve institutional knowledge retention. Second, creating AUKUS business parks with shared labs and workspaces would foster closer collaboration between government and industry while lowering entry costs for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), who wouldn’t normally have access to classified networks and government experts. The name of the game is improving collaboration and efficiency to bolster innovation and deliver advanced capabilities.

Creating and Retaining Expertise

Given the sheer scope and complexity of AUKUS, there needs to be dedicated staff focused on implementation over the longer term. Currently, government officials within the partner nations are responsible for all aspects of AUKUS, from problem diagnosis and analysis to implementation. While these individuals are highly competent and driven to see AUKUS succeed, they often wear multiple hats and are tied to pushing official government positions. This does not enable the same freedom of inquiry and debate that an independent advisory board would provide. Additionally, ensconcing this staff exclusively within the government risks not only missing vital information from the industry but also exposing senior staff to electoral churn every few years. Even within the mid to lower levels of government, there is a culture of movement with talented individuals hopping between departments, often as a way to move up in the service. Losing expertise continuously will hamstring efforts at creating the enabling environment needed for AUKUS to succeed.

Thankfully, most of the work is done by career officials and attached military forces on orders or assignments for a few years, and they are, therefore, less exposed to political changes. This ensures some continuity and institutional knowledge retention within the organizations. However, this system can still be improved. Independent advisory boards would allow for institutional expertise to be cultivated and retained and policies pressure tested. Creating budgetary line items to fund these bodies would ensure proper staffing and resourcing of the organizations while avoiding the pitfalls of government agencies, such as bureaucratic bloat and changes due to political appointments or shifts. This should extend past the national level and take a two-tiered approach. A national body within each of the AUKUS partner nations should be complemented by a trilateral secretariat run by the heads of the national bodies.

At the national level, these advisory boards should be formed from a mix of trade and industry leaders, government officials, and military experts. The advisory board would then be ideally situated to capture lessons learned and feedback from all key stakeholders. These boards would examine the regulatory environment, proposed legislation, and obstacles to implementation within their respective country. They could give annual reports to the legislative and executive branches or the parliament. This ensures governmental oversight and would allow lawmakers to identify areas for improvement within their control.

The trilateral secretariat would be ideally placed to coordinate between the three advisory boards to identify obstacles and opportunities that cannot be solved within the national infrastructure of a single partner. Dual hatting the leaders of the national bodies as members of the secretariat would increase buy-in within the national advisory boards, improving their effectiveness and efficiency. This would also reward talented individuals within the organization and thus facilitate knowledge retention.

Aside from its engagement with the national advisory boards, the council should at least engage at the minister level across all three countries, providing briefings and soliciting inputs from the government. These engagements could take place every couple of years, limiting bureaucratic and political fatigue while maintaining momentum. Given the complexity and novelty of the endeavor, there are sure to be unforeseeable friction points and obstacles, so this coordination body would be pivotal in ensuring all partners operate from the same playbook as they are tackled.

Sharing Info by Sharing Spaces

As it stands, defense research and development is highly siloed and concentrated in the hands of a small number of “primes,” the biggest defense industrial companies, that have the institutional capacity and budget to manage the Byzantine legal requirements involved in defense manufacturing. The costs of building a classified workspace, known as a SCIF, can add up to hundreds or thousands of dollars to the cost per square foot, drastically increasing the upfront costs of competing in the classified space. Additionally, each organization manages its SCIF and pays for its employee’s clearances, which adds to the overhead.

This process becomes even more complex when dealing with geographically separated offices, and those within the AUKUS countries are no exception. Given the price and complexity of establishing even a single SCIF, many SMEs are precluded from operating in the classified space, a requirement for higher-level defense development and contracting. This limits the inflow of potentially disruptive technology into the procurement process and complicates collaborative development.

The government can dramatically lower these barriers by funding the creation of co-workspaces with certified SCIFs. Developing business parks that facilitate businesses with complementary capabilities operating in a shared area is nothing new, but applying this model to AUKUS endeavors could supercharge research and development. These AUKUS parks should be based around both classified and unclassified workspaces that companies can share, thereby maximizing utility while minimizing costs. This allows for synergistic collaborations within the industry and access to government expertise.

Governments could staff these parks with export control experts, rotate through military members to test prototypes early in development, provide feedback, and evaluate prospective projects for contracts. Leveraging their combined experience, these routine interactions among the researchers, government, and defense would propel innovation. Ideally, engaging with end users early in the process would allow minimum viable capabilities, or “problem sets” that need solutions, to be shared with the industry and minimum viable products to be developed rapidly.

Having government officials on site to continuously evaluate these developments would allow for built-in maturity paths. Rapid, responsive iteration with avenues to official contracts would supercharge the defense industry. AUKUS parks would have the additional advantage of capitalizing on economies of scale with respect to security. By centralizing these facilities, security protocols could be standardized, easier to manage, and ensure better safeguarding of critical technology from potential sabotage or theft from adversaries. Providing these services would offset the steep upfront costs associated with classified work, opening the door to SMEs that are usually excluded from competing and collaborating in the space.

Governments don’t have to construct and manage these spaces themselves. However, they could leverage the private sector to manage the construction and daily operations of the SCIFs. Within the United States, some movement exists within the private sector to establish shared and mobile SCIFs. Still, these efforts could be amplified across all three AUKUS partners to significant effect. If a public-private partnership is pursued, there could be a planned transition to fully privatized funding and operations of the business parks, further limiting government overheads in the future while enabling collaboration. This would help derisk the investments made by private industry and facilitate rapid expansion into the field.

And Now, for Something Completely Different

With AUKUS still in its initial phase of enabling environment creation, there is no better time than now to lay a foundation to ensure the greatest returns on investment. The feedback mechanisms provided by advisory councils and secretariats will be immensely valuable in refining processes and policies. AUKUS parks will facilitate greater collaboration during development and push the focus toward solution-based, minimum-viable product thinking and rapid iteration. Radical changes and thinking are what will ensure success. All three partner nations must push to create new systems and structures to create a truly integrated enabling environment.

Canberra has no excuses for failing to prepare for Trump 2.0

Donald Trump was already the frontrunner to win the presidential election, with the assassination attempt and his defiant response only increasing his chance of victory.

Global capitals, including Canberra, are abuzz with policymakers anticipating a predictably unpredictable second Trump term. But unpredictability doesn’t mean Trump is random or absent strategy.

Trump will be better prepared than his first time in office. Australia, therefore, has enough of a road map to use the next six months to plan for Trump 2.0, which will require Canberra to avoid any penchant for reactive thinking or falling into a flat-footed state of voyeurism.

Australia, and our partners in the Quad, fared well through the first Trump administration by anticipating those areas where we needed to defend ourselves and where we could co-operate.

Trump considers the actions of allies more important than words. That can help shape four main lessons to navigate potential sources of friction and opportunity over the next four years. First, Australia should showcase its national security credentials. Strategic rivalry with China, especially on technology, will be front and centre of a second Trump term. Restricting Beijing’s access to advanced technologies has been a bright light of American bipartisanship, with President Joe Biden expanding Trump-era policies.

Given Trump says he wants “total independence from China” and to “stop China owning America”, we can expect further expansion of the technology-driven economic security agenda.

Many of these measures are in Australia’s national interest, but Canberra will need to encourage protection of our respective and collective sovereignty, not mere protectionism. When Australia became the first country to exclude “high-risk” vendors – namely Huawei – from its 5G network in 2018 it was done to protect critical infrastructure. The decision gained respect within the Trump White House and across Washington, given the call was made without knowing the US decision.

Australia’s 5G decision helped rally a global coalition to mitigate Chinese technology risks and address the shifting technological balance away from the US and its allies. Meanwhile, Australia pursued broader reforms in areas such as foreign investment screening and countering foreign interference, in part to protect cutting-edge technologies.

Australia’s clear-eyed approach to China provides a strong track record for engaging Trump and his team. In doing so, it will be important to show how Australia’s recent diplomatic stabilisation with China has not changed Australia’s willingness to “disagree where we must”.

Second, Australia should share the burden of deterring aggression. Trump wants peace through strength. This includes countering adversaries as well as preventing allies from free-riding on US security guarantees.

Australia has shown a commitment to our own security and the alliance that should help avoid the “tough love” directed at the likes of NATO members and South Korea in Trump’s first term. Defence spending is set to increase to around 2.3 per cent of GDP within the decade. The 2024 National Defence Strategy sets out major strategy, force structure and capability reforms. Australia and the US have expanded collaboration on Australian soil. This includes rotations of US and British submarines through HMAS Stirling near Perth from 2027, enhancing nearer-term collective deterrence in the region.

Australia plans to pump around $6bn into US and British defence industrial capacity in the coming decade, a long-term play to support Australia’s acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines, under AUKUS Pillar I. Canberra should promote this investment to Trump every chance it gets. But history is short-lived and Trump’s White House will back in allies and partners who show an ongoing commitment to their own security.

Third, Australia should push AUKUS as a good deal.

Trump is transactional, a deal-maker. Even if he supports some or all AUKUS elements, the partnership will require long-term political, institutional and industrial effort across the US, UK and Australia to succeed.

For Trump and his closest advisers, Australia will need to sell the partnership’s advantages in making Australia a more capable and lethal ally, bolstering regional defence supply chains, and contributing to US-led deterrence of conflict in the Indo-Pacific. Australia will need to highlight AUKUS’s merits as a boon for US companies, rather than being a drain on their technology, industry capacity and workforce.

Trump has a history of tearing up or renegotiating agreements he judges as taking America for a ride. Australia should ensure Trump doesn’t see AUKUS as an American handout but a transaction that boosts US capability to muscle up to China.

Finally, Australia should be bold. Early in a second Trump term, the value of our partnerships should be reinforced, starting with Quad meetings that emphasise the grouping was revived in 2017 under his presidency.

If Trump is re-elected, the Albanese government and its representatives in Washington – starting with ambassador Kevin Rudd – will have a job ahead of them. But, unlike 2016, there are no excuses for being underprepared.

Image: Jackson A. Lanier 2019, Wikimedia Commons

The U.S. Can’t Lead on Quantum Computing Alone

Quantum computing will be one of the most defining technologies of the century. It will intersect and enhance capabilities across sectors such as climate change, manufacturing, biotechnology, and artificial intelligence.

China is ranked second to the United States in terms of research about this technology, according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Critical Technology Tracker, and the race to achieve quantum supremacy is intensifying.

In particular, the United States must work to mitigate the risks that quantum computers pose to national and economic security. These computers will be able to surpass existing cybersecurity encryption standards in minutes, even in situations that would take a conventional computer years to solve, compromising the confidentiality and integrity of the security used for everything from banking to data storage and internet communication.

Preparations for such a scenario are already being undertaken in the United States by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which has released its first batch of four cryptographic algorithms designed to withstand decryption by a future quantum computer.

However, the United States can’t safeguard its leadership on quantum computing by acting alone. In a similar situation to the semiconductor industry, there is a limited global talent pool of expertise in the sector, and Washington needs to coordinate the human capital, research and development, and the advanced manufacturing capabilities needed to bring quantum computing online in a time frame conducive to the pacing threat that China poses.

The United States has already acknowledged the pressing need to secure advanced technology supply chains through the passing of the CHIPS and Science Act in August 2022. As the country looks to place similar export controls on advanced technologies such as quantum computing, it must not cut its allies out.

Instead, Washington needs to leverage the complementary strengths of each nations’ advanced technology ecosystems. That collaboration must begin with semiconductors.

Conversations on the security of advanced semiconductor supply chains and the importance of investment in quantum computing often occur independently. Yet, Washington’s ability to maintain global leadership in the quantum computing industry hinges on secure access to advanced semiconductor manufacturing.

Advanced semiconductors serve as the processors of quantum computers. They contain “qubits” (short for “quantum bits”) that enable these computers to process algorithms and equations significantly faster than standard computers. The more qubits that a quantum computer contains, the more powerful it is. In the global race to develop a useful quantum computer that is commercially scalable, access to advanced semiconductor manufacturing will be a determining factor in winning.

China is being forced into domestic manufacturing of advanced semiconductors due to U.S. export controls imposed under the CHIPS and Science Act. However, in August, Chinese telecommunication giant Huawei released its latest smartphone, containing an advanced, Chinese-manufactured 7 nanometer chip, which suggests that China’s semiconductor industry is adapting to the export controls designed to slow its advancements. China is also developing its advanced foundry capabilities, which are used in the chip manufacturing process, and this will further aid its quantum computing industry.

Australia is a natural partner for the United States on quantum computing. Despite having only 0.3 percent of the global population, Australia is home to 10 percent of the world’s quantum scientists; these scientists are supported by a national quantum strategy. Announced in May, the strategy lays out the ambitious goal of building the world’s first error-corrected quantum computer and the importance of collaboration with trusted partners in the private sector to create it.

Collaboration between the United States and Australia in quantum computing sciences dates to the late 1990s, when there was engagement between the U.S. Army Research Office and Australian quantum computing research centers. In 2021, a landmark statement of intent was signed between the two governments to cooperate and share the benefits of quantum information and science technologies.

But commitment must continue to go beyond government-to-government engagement and involve academia and industry, as well. One example of these partnerships was made in September 2023, when Australia-based companies Q-CTRL, a quantum infrastructure software developer, and Diraq, a leading innovator in silicon-based quantum computing, announced a joint venture in pursuit of projects funded by both the U.S. and Australian governments, with the shared goal of accelerating the commercial adoption of quantum computing.

Alongside the U.S.-Australia bilateral relationship, the AUKUS security arrangement offers the two nations an endorsed pathway to deepen innovation ties and achieve scalability alongside the United Kingdom. Quantum computing has been identified as a priority for AUKUS partners under their technology-sharing agreement as one of eight specified areas of advanced capability collaboration. While global collaboration should not be limited to AUKUS partners, it provides a starting framework for coordinating strategic investment between the three nations.

U.S.-based quantum computing company PsiQuantum is a prime example of partnerships between the quantum industry and semiconductor manufacturers within an alliance ecosystem. With Australian origins and a presence in the U.K. quantum computing industry, PsiQuantum has established a strategic partnership with the U.S. semiconductor manufacturer GlobalFoundries.

Investment from the U.S. semiconductor industry alongside the Australian and U.K. quantum computing industry can facilitate access to the advanced manufacturing capabilities needed to develop quantum computing technologies. The collaboration utilizes otherwise disparate talent pools, provides U.S. industry with access to additional advanced research and development, and has the dual benefit of diversifying advanced manufacturing supply chains for the United States.

The United Kingdom and Australia host a range of quantum organizations that could be grown through similar partnerships with U.S. semiconductor foundries. In the U.K., the National Quantum Computing Centre is backed by government support. Similarly in Australia, there are several global quantum front-runners.

Beyond AUKUS, the United States can also look to other nations for examples of successful public-private partnerships, such as that of Canadian quantum company Xanadu, which has partnered with the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea to develop a quantum workforce pipeline. The institute also undertakes advanced semiconductor research, and South Korea is, of course, a key player in global advanced chip manufacturing supply chains.

While industry players understand the technical needs of their technologies, support from government is key to accelerating these activities. It provides access to capital and markets that encourage industry growth where, under natural market conditions, it might have been slower.

The United States and allied governments therefore need to collaborate to provide investment incentives to encourage public-private partnership between quantum computing companies and mature U.S.-based chip manufacturers. Collaboration will require relationship building, infrastructure investment, and research and development coordination that should begin now.

Moreover, as global leaders in quantum computing, the United States and allies also can shape the industry as it develops through the establishment of international standards and norms, ensuring that the technology is brought online responsibly. This includes the ability to shape strategic supply chain development and ensure that infrastructure such as specialized data centers and a highly skilled workforce are built and cultivated within a trusted alliance ecosystem that can withstand geostrategic competition.

The United States is already throwing everything it can at slowing down China’s access to the technology and the expertise it needs to gain a competitive advantage in key technology areas. Access to talent, research and innovation, and advanced semiconductor manufacturing are vital ingredients in achieving quantum computing leadership. As global technology competition continues to intensify, a strong history of allied partnership is an advantage that the United States holds over adversaries, and it needs to be bullish about leveraging it.

Image: President Joe Biden greets British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese the AUKUS bilateral meeting in San Diego, Calif, March 13, 2023. (DoD photo by Chad J. McNeeley)