Countering foreign interference: the government should name names

It didn’t receive much publicity amid summertime’s distractions, but Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke unveiled on 14 January what’s been described as the ‘first ever analysis of foreign interference and espionage threats’. It’s safer to say the first publicly released by the Australian government. It’s a step towards what we need: political leaders explaining these threats and naming the sources of these dangers. But it’s only a step, because the document still doesn’t name names.

Since 2020, Australia’s Director-General of Security, Mike Burgess, has raised public awareness through annual threat assessments. In 2024, Burgess said that if we had a threat level for espionage and foreign interference it would be at ‘certain’—the highest level. The threat was ‘deeper and broader’ than we might think, he added.

Burgess’ ground-breaking assessments have been a vital source of information. They have raised public awareness and built confidence in Australia’s operational response through the Counter Foreign Interference Taskforce, which is headed by an officer from the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). The taskforce combines ASIO’s and the Australian Federal Police’s sophisticated capabilities, along with those from other National Intelligence Community agencies.

The government’s new guide is called ‘Countering Foreign Interference in Australia: Working together towards a more secure Australia’. It covers the basics of what foreign interference is, how it manifests and how it adapts. The document also identifies contact points for reporting suspected interference. The guide borrows heavily from the earlier threat assessments.

So, what is foreign interference? The guide defines it as activities carried out by, on behalf of, directed or subsidised by, or undertaken in active collaboration with, a foreign power and involving either a threat to a person or being clandestine or deceptive and detrimental to Australia’s interests. Espionage is relegated to a subsidiary activity in this regard.

Like previous official statements, the guide distinguishes foreign interference from foreign influence, which refers to activities conducted by foreign governments openly and transparently.

This distinction matters in a society and economy as open as Australia. Assertions that Elon Musk has engaged in foreign interference demonstrate how the concept is misunderstood: Musk’s comments are far from clandestine, so they’re not foreign interference.

The guide also describes typical warning signs of foreign interference for those who might be at risk: communities (especially foreign diasporas), democratic institutions, the higher education and research sector, industry, and media and communications.

The highlighting of media and communications as targets (and vectors) for foreign interference is important. In this regard, it’s important to distinguish misinformation from disinformation. The source of misinformation is just mistaken; the source of disinformation aims to deceive. Disinformation then becomes foreign interference when foreign powers seek to exploit societal divisions or amplify false narratives to manipulate public opinion, destabilise societies or influence decision-making processes.

The guide fails to consider that foreign interference isn’t a temporary or new aberration. In fact, it’s an intensifying threat that we’ve faced for decades. We just thought we were exempt from this foreign interference.

Precisely because it is pervasive and sophisticated, foreign interference requires our political leaders—not just senior intelligence leaders, who have long been active in this regard—to explain the threat and how we should adapt to what’s coming.

We say we live in the most dangerous time since World War II. In such times, history tells us we need to prepare ourselves—as political representatives such as Winston Churchill and Franklin D Roosevelt explained to their people in the lead-up to WWII and successive leaders did through the Cold War.

While the guide commendably seeks to do just that, it does not identify perpetrators. This is a problem. While senior intelligence and departmental officials must be circumspect, we need elected governments to speak plainly and directly to their publics.

Unfortunately, Western governments, including Australia’s, are increasingly reluctant to come clean publicly about who, in Burke’s own words, is threatening ‘our most valuable national assets—our social cohesion, our trusted democracy, our security and prosperity and our freedom of thought and expression’. It’s been almost a decade since Malcolm Turnbull explicitly cited Chinese activities when introducing Australia’s foundational counter-interference laws. Marco Rubio’s testimony in his nomination hearing for the position of US secretary of state bucked the trend of avoidance: he identified espionage and interference as key enablers of Chinese ascendency.

Australian government responses to the threat, as comprehensively as they’re outlined in the guide, will ultimately be sub-optimal unless the government finds the courage to publicly name those who are interfering. Having established an attribution framework, Australia has only used it once: to call out Iran, a safely egregious pariah. On the worst offenders—China and Russia— the government remains silent.

Rest assured: actual, attributable threats underpin security decision-making within the government, in high policy but also in personnel matters and issues such as procurement. Attribution informs policy stances behind closed doors. The concern is that few Western governments similarly take ordinary citizens into their confidence.

This returns us to the consideration that foreign interference is in fact the new normal—not an aberration, not temporary, and not something that can be solved once and then ignored thereafter. In these circumstances the current agnostic approach across Western governments to publicly countering foreign interference is unsustainable. It will continue to confuse the community, shield bad actors, divert resources and undermine compliance—as ASPI research has explained in relation to the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme.

The geopolitics of Australia Day

The Founding of Australia 1788 was painted in 1937 by Algernon Talmage. It was commissioned for the sesquicentenary celebrations of 1938. The painting depicts the moment that Captain Arthur Phillip proposed a toast to George III on January 26, 1788.

Imagine that this scene never took place. Imagine that the government of William Pitt the Younger decided in 1786 not to send the First Fleet to Botany Bay but instead to the other site for a penal colony that it was considering, Das Voltas Bay in present-day Namibia.

Would the Indigenous people of the Australian continent and their lands have been left undisturbed? Or would Europeans have inevitably arrived at some later point? Instead of a British colony, might several different colonies have been established under Britain, France, The Netherlands and Spain, each of which had, at various times, explored the continent’s coastline and its surrounding seas?

We assume the present was always going to be. That the past was destined to lead to the inevitable present. Counter-factual thinking prompts us to examine alternative historical timelines to better understand the contingent choices, forgotten circumstances and patchwork of occurrences that constitute the history of the present.

Those who consider Australia Day to be ‘invasion day’ have to ask: had the British not arrived in 1788, would there not have been an ‘invasion’ later? It would have been a different ‘invasion’ – possibly less violent, possibly more violent – but nonetheless it still would have led to the dispossession of the Indigenous people. That is not to justify dispossession but to better understand it in historical terms.

Those who celebrate the day have to ask: is the Australia that has emerged across the course of almost 250 years the only possible version of Australia that might have come into being? Might other possibilities have played out?

Instead of Australia as we know it, might several nations today inhabit the continent, each with different histories, national cultures and geopolitical world views and strategic interests?

It is almost certainly the case that in every plausible alternative historical timeline, the land that is known as Australia was always going to be occupied by one or more of the European powers of the 19th century, in some form or another. When, by whom and how is not certain. We will never know because history is run only once.

Had the colony not been established in 1788, it is most likely that Britain would have occupied points on the eastern seaboard of Australia and perhaps on its northern coastline, probably within 50 years.

In this altered timeline, Talmage might well have painted the scene of the establishment of a British base in Sydney in 1838, as the first European settlement on the Australian continent. From that base, Britain could have challenged the Dutch in the East Indies and the Spanish Empire in the Pacific and South America, in the event of a war with either or both.

From Sydney and from other bases in Port Darwin, Singapore (colonised in 1824) and Hong Kong (colonised on January 26, 1841), Britain could have better protected its trade with China, which had to pass through or close to the Dutch East Indies.

In the event of war in the region, British ships sailing to and from China could have been routed around the east of Australia and protected by a Sydney-based fleet.

What of the western and southern seaboards in this altered timeline? Perhaps after the Napoleonic Wars France might have claimed the southwest and southern portions of the continent. In the real historical timeline, France was certainly interested in the possibility.

Concerned about French intentions, in 1825 Britain extended the western edge of its territorial claim to Australia from the 135th meridian to the 129th meridian. Afterwards, it claimed the rest of the continent when it established the colony of Western Australia in 1829. In an altered timeline, imagine the French tricolour being hoisted over the Swan River, perhaps also in 1838, as the British Union Jack was being raised for the first time over Sydney Cove.

Now let us change the timeline again by supposing that no occupation of the Australian continent had occurred in the days of sail. By the 1870s, when steamships were replacing sailing ships, especially after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, and when undersea telegraphy cables were being laid around the globe, the strategic value of a continentally sized territory located at the hinge of the Indian and Pacific oceans would have been irresistible to numerous European powers. Locations around the coastline of the Australian continent would have been occupied, if only for the purpose of coaling trading ships and warships, securing telegraph cable connection points and protecting sea routes.

A scramble for Australia might have taken place, as occurred in Africa during the 1880s, when the quest for empire was at its peak, and European powers were seeking to extend their reach to all quarters of the globe for resources, markets, bases and strategic advantage. It would be ahistorical to think the Australian continent would have been left undisturbed. By 1888, it would have been occupied, with its fate and that of its Indigenous people perhaps determined by negotiation among the imperial powers, as occurred in the case of Africa at the Berlin Conference of 1884-85.

If we take a step back and consider these alternative timelines, there is a strong case to be made that because settlement began when it did in 1788, Australia’s colonial-era development benefited from the fact it occurred under the protection of British sea power and with access to British capital and markets, when Britain was at the peak of its powers. Settlement in 1788, followed by exclusively British colonisation (and with no other flags flying over the continent), also meant that Australia’s development occurred within a single framework of British institutions – especially parliamentary democracy, responsible government and the common law.

Exclusively British colonisation, and the British territorial clean sweep of the entire continent that was achieved finally by way of the claim in 1829 to the western portion, meant there were no European co-inhabitants.

With no land borders with the colonies of other empires (imagine, for instance, a border on the 129th meridian between British Australia and French Australia), the six colonies were able to pursue political, economic and social development in a stable and peaceful environment, even when one allows for the violence of frontier clashes with Indigenous people. No wars were fought between the European powers on the Australian continent. The colonists did not have to fight for their independence or to create a unified nation.

It is little wonder that Douglas Pike titled his history of Australia, which was first published in 1962, The Quiet Continent.

That Australia is a nation for a continent, and a continent for a nation, is a direct legacy of 1788 and Australia’s political development in the 19th century, which of course culminated in Federation in 1901.

Having a single nation on the Australian continent is today a source of geopolitical strength. One might imagine, for instance, the challenge that would be involved today in trying to shape a common defence and foreign policy at an imaginary Council of Australian Governments that was the supranational co-ordinating body for a confederation of four sovereign Australian nations, whose proceedings were conducted in English, French, Dutch and Spanish and whose deliberations were shaped by different and possibly conflicting strategic interests.

For all of its locational advan­tages, Britain never seriously exploited the strategic value of the Australian continent for the purpose of sea control or indeed for any other related purpose. Australia was never home to a significant British fleet. The closest that British sea power ever came was in the form of the great naval base in Singapore (1919-41) that was designed primarily to protect India against Imperial Japan. Australian governments of the interwar period naively hoped it also would provide for the naval defence of Australia. They were wrong.

Writing in 1883, British historian John Seeley famously said of the expansion of the British Empire that the “mighty diffusion of our race and the expansion of our state” had been undertaken indifferently, so much so that Britain had “conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind”. His point was that while Britain had acquired a great empire, its thinking was still unimaginative, concerned more with the affairs of Europe than with the wider world, where the future would be determined by enormous political aggregations, such as the US and Imperial Russia.

Seeley argued a ‘Greater Britain’, by which he meant a transnational union of Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa, could rival these two behemoths. Of course, this never came to pass. Instead, it was Australians themselves who led on local matters of strategy and defence, acting more independently than our national myths would have it.

For instance, in 1883 Queensland annexed New Guinea to thwart Imperial Germany’s interest. The British government disallowed this action, although it did establish a protectorate in New Guinea in 1884 that became a colony in the southeast portion of New Guinea in 1888. It was transferred to Australia in 1902. In 1889, Henry Parkes used a report on the parlous state of the defences of the colonies to drive the strategic case for Federation.

Alfred Deakin championed the building of a powerful Australian navy, for use in the Pacific and the Indian oceans, a cause that was given impetus after the victory of Imperial Japan over Imperial Russia in the war of 1904-05.

Australia attacked the Imperial German base at Rabaul in New Britain in 1914, as part of a broader campaign to force that country’s squadron out of the Pacific. In 1919, Billy Hughes aggressively pursued Australian interests at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, prevailing on winning territorial control over New Guinea.

At least until the 1920s, Australians were more independently minded in strategic and defence affairs than we might think today.

However, and unfortunately, as a result of feeble political leadership in the interwar years, independent Australian thinking was not much in evidence at precisely the time when Australia was coming into its own as vital strategic space – that is, when sea and air power were coming together with the advent of aircraft carriers. As a result, by the time Talmage was painting his scene in 1937, Australia had become geopolitically vital in military terms, as was soon to be seen in the Pacific War.

Imagine in another timeline, where the French tricolour flew over the Swan River, what would have happened had French Australia in 1940 been the dominant power in the southern Indian Ocean? What if French Australia had gone with Vichy after the fall of France in June 1940, as had French Indochina? Britain would not have tolerated the resultant threat to India, Ceylon and Burma. Winston Churchill even might have decided to attack French Australia, probably from the British naval base in Ceylon. He did not shy away from doing so in the case of French Algeria in July 1940 and French West Africa in September 1940.

Today, Australia is one of the most vital strategic spaces on the planet, that being first demonstrated in the Pacific War of 1941-45. Its value as vital space started to be fully realised in the 1960s, with the establishment of US communications, space-based surveillance and intelligence facilities at North West Cape, Pine Gap and Nurrungar.

Today Australia is a bastion and a base at the hinge of the Pacific and Indian oceans, from where power can be projected into the rimlands of the Eurasian supercontinent and from where the Western Pacific and the Indian oceans can be guarded. Any conflict fought in the Indo-Pacific inevitably would involve calculations being made, by all protagonists, about how best to use Australia’s strategic space – and how best to neutralise it.

The “tyranny of distance” is one of the most famous and widely understood concepts in Australian historiography. For Australia, distance from war and conflict was for many years a blessing. It long gave us comfort, until the range of military systems and weapons started to eliminate the protective effects of distance. Imperial Japan’s aircraft carriers were the first to overcome the barrier of distance. Long-range bombers and missiles followed later. Today, we are in range – everywhere, all at once, physically and virtually. The sheltered land of our national imagination is no more.

In Richard III, Richard says: ‘All unavoided is the doom of destiny.’ Australia’s ‘doom of destiny’ is to inhabit vital strategic space, whether we like it or not. Our national imagination, which has deep roots in our colonial past and the long period of the solitude of the ‘quiet continent’, is today too conditioned by the comforting but obsolete notion that distance is our shelter and that troubles are far away. This is a strategic illusion.

Different timelines generate different fates. With a different past, there is a different present. The debate about Australia Day is, at its core, a debate about different pasts. Even if it came to be accepted that dispossession was inevitable – if not in 1788, then certainly by no later than the great European imperialist expansion of the 1880s – counterfactual analysis can still enrich the discussion by casting new light on questions such as why in the real historical timeline there was no sustained process of treaty-making with the Indigenous people, such as occurred in New Zealand. Can we imagine other timelines where sovereignty, land ownership and Indigenous rights were dealt with differently?

Or imagine Phillip had not been sent, and later occupation had been limited to the establishment of trading posts and naval bases around the coastline, with little or no settlement. Is it possible to imagine, in that alternative arc, that enough might have remained of the pre-colonial political, economic and social structures of Indigenous life, such that an independent Indigenous Australia might have emerged as a sovereign nation, as occurred when other colonies such as the Dutch East Indies, French Indochina and Malaya were granted their independence in the wave of post-war decolonisation?

The semiquincentenary of modern Australia will occur in 2038. The debate about Australia Day no doubt will continue to evolve. One thing about Australia Day is certain. The arc of history has seen Australia emerge and evolve as a single, unified political entity, inhabiting a continent on its own. Geopolitically, this blessing means that Australia, whose territory has been free of great-power conflict and whose people have been able to focus on national development in relative solitude and peace, is today in a position of strength to deal with its looming “doom of destiny”. History’s other arcs would have left us worse off.

That is worth celebrating on Australia Day.

The sources of Russian conduct

This essay examines the sources of Russian power and conduct from an historical, cultural and geopolitical perspective. It aims to help assessment of Russia’s future behaviour.

My approach is based on the essay The Sources of Soviet Conduct written by the famous US State Department diplomat and leading Russian expert George Kennan (under the pseudonym ‘X’) in the journal Foreign Affairs in 1947. Kennan was struggling to get Washington to understand the threat from the Soviet Union so soon after the end of World War II, when the USSR had been an ally of the United States.

Kennan concluded that Moscow’s communist expansion ideology was the central threat to the US and needed to be thwarted by ‘a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.’ Kennan’s objective was the bringing about peacefully either the breakup or ‘gradual mellowing’ of the Soviet Union.

This was at a time, however, when Russia had no nuclear capability. Later, Kennan foresaw that the USSR would become the US’s most serious military challenge in the new nuclear era. In 1986, when the number of nuclear weapons peaked at around 70,000, just under two-thirds belonged to the USSR. And, at that time, the Soviet Union’s conventional military power in Europe was widely seen as easily outmatching that of NATO. There was a general worry that, if NATO didn’t use nuclear weapons, Moscow could be at the English Channel in weeks, if not days.

Today’s Russia is a very much reduced military threat from the peak of its power at the height of the Cold War. Now, Moscow is struggling to progress beyond what looks like a three-year stalemate in the battle for military supremacy in Ukraine, which is a middle-sized non-nuclear country with less than 30 percent of Russia’s population.

Today’s strategists in the West are debating the underlying reasons for Putin’s war on Ukraine. And they shake their heads when Putin so frequently and irresponsibly rattles the nuclear threat. Russia’s small relative economic size these days (a GDP of US$2.24 billion, little more than Italy’s US$2.04 billion) makes it even harder to explain why Putin would embark on and persist with such a war. Moreover, Moscow no longer has the leverage of leading a world communist movement towards an ideological victory.

But Kennan believed Russia’s history, geography and the ‘permanent characteristics’ of the Russian national character were key determinants of Soviet conduct, in addition to its ideology. His conclusion was almost Freudian in its determinism: ‘Nations, like individuals, are largely the product of their environment.’

I begin by examining Russia’s historical experience, which is so different from our own, and the development of the distinctive Russian view of itself as a uniquely Slavic power that is neither European nor Asian. We move on to explore the relevance of Russia still being geographically the largest country in the world, even though it lost a huge part (more than 5 million km2, or double the area of Western Australia) of the former territory of the USSR when that country collapsed in 1991. The Soviet Union was then divided into 15 countries, eight of which still share a common border with today’s Russia.

I then move on to a consideration of Russian culture and how it illuminates Moscow’s view of the world today. And its unique concept of a bigger Russian World, or Russkii Mir, encompassing places with significant numbers of Russian speakers, such as the Baltic countries, Moldova, Georgia and Kazakhstan.

Finally, we must consider the issue of the new Russian ideology, which—while it no longer seeks to rule a future communist world—persists with dangerous authoritarian and expansionist geopolitical ambitions, not least in what it terms ‘the near abroad’. We need to understand that Russian domestic politics is still burdened with heavy imperial baggage from the early 20th century. And its central geopolitical priority these days sees the West as a hostile concert of powers seeking to destroy Holy Mother Russia.

So, let’s start with Russia’s history. Many Western observers have consistently misread Russia and the way it is driven by its geography, history and ideological ambition. Successive Russian or Soviet regimes have been seen in the West as simultaneously dangerous and essentially fragile, and yet we are surprised when, once again, the Russian phoenix re-emerges from the ashes.

Indeed, when the former Soviet Union collapsed in December 1991, the sudden reaction in the West, especially in the US, was to write Russia off. No longer regarded as a global superpower, it fell as low as being dismissed by then president Barack Obama as a ‘regional’ European power. This description was (and still is) bitterly resented in Moscow.

Russia on the eastern flank of Europe but extends to territory more than 8000km away in Siberia that is part of east Asia. Russia has the longest border in the world, with China. Its history goes back more than 1000 years and includes, according to Yale University professor George Vernadsky, being occupied in a period ‘of enormous significance in Russian history for almost 250 years (1223-1452) under Genghis Khan’s Mongols.

Unlike most Anglo-Saxon countries, Russia has no obvious or clear-cut geographical borders and for practical purposes is almost landlocked, with only a few significant ports on the Black, Baltic and Barents seas and the northwest Pacific. It was invaded by Sweden in the 18th century, by France in the early 19th century and by Germany twice in the 20th century.

The eminent Harvard University professor of Ukrainian history Serhii Plokhy has stated—correctly, in my view—that the questions of where Russia begins and ends and who constitutes the Russian people have preoccupied Russian thinkers for centuries. Plokhy also says the current Russia–Ukrainian conflict is only the latest turn of Russian policy resulting from the Russian elite’s thinking about itself and its Slavic neighbours as part of an allegedly common historical and cultural space and ultimately as one nation.

Plokhy asserts that the current conflict reprises many of the themes that have been central to Russia’s political and cultural relations in the region for the previous five centuries. These include Russia’s great power status and influence beyond its borders; the continuing relevance of religion, especially Orthodox Christianity, as defined in Russian history; the assertive conduct of Russian policy abroad; and the importance of language and culture as tools of Russian state policy. The conflict in Ukraine reminds the world that the formation of the modern post-imperial Russian nation is still far from complete.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has already become the worst international crisis since the end of the Cold War. Plokhy has worried that a new and terrible stage in the shaping of European borders and populations was emerging. He has said that it all depends on the ability and readiness of the Russian elites to accept the post-Soviet political realities and adjust Russia’s own identity to the demands of the post-colonial world. The alternative, he concluded, might be a new world war.

In my view, we now face the spectre of not only a new Cold War but the prospects of a wider war in Europe, and perhaps beyond Europe, if Russia persists with its post-imperial expansion objectives. This is occurring at the same time as an increasingly authoritarian China is collaborating with its strategic partner in Moscow to remake the international order. This deeply disturbing picture is made all the worse by Putin’s now frequent threats of the potential use of nuclear weapons.

I have deliberately begun these introductory words with reference to the deeply entrenched historical context of Russia’s relations with Ukraine, which extend over more than nine centuries. For much of that time, and particularly during the 74 years of Bolshevik power, Russia’s long history with Ukraine has been consistently reinvented. Russians like to say, ‘The future is certain; it is only the past that is unpredictable.’

And for Putin, today’s past is being continually reinvented, along with his reasons for his so-called special military operation in Ukraine, which is now Europe’s biggest war since World War II. Fake news and facts are the key tools of his huge propaganda offensive to reinforce Russian popular support for his war in Ukraine. It is now claimed by Moscow’s Levada poll that more than 70 percent of Russians believe that the war is not just a war about Ukraine but is also about the West trying to destroy Russia itself.

This brings me to Russia’s geography and Putin’s attempts to mix his fantasies of history with Russia’s geographical vulnerabilities to reinforce his position as the acknowledged authoritarian leader. Countries with long, porous borders become endlessly obsessive about their geographical security. This is something that Australians, with such obvious natural borders, find hard to understand. For more than 400 years, between 1500 and the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the Russian Empire grew at an astonishing average rate of 47,000 km2 per year. From the nucleus of Muscovy, it expanded into the world’s largest contiguous empire.

Russia is now much smaller than it has been for the past three centuries. Even so, at 17 million km² it is almost double the size of China or the US, and more than double the size of Australia.

But the fact remains that much of the Russian Far East was taken from a weak China by the unequal treaties of Nerchinsk in 1639 and Aigun in 1858. The current Chinese leadership seems to have put this historical inequity to one side for the time being. But it lurks there as a possible geographic cause for a future Chinese conflict with Russia. The Russian Far East Federal District, which shares a long border with China, has scarcely 8 million people but accounts for 40 percent of Russia’s area.

This leaves us with the question of Putin’s further manipulation of Russian culture and his bid for a uniquely Russian ideology. Putin’s primary aim is to revive Russia as a great power and recover an acknowledged sphere of influence over its former Soviet territories in the near abroad. His view is that, without dominance over Ukraine, Russia cannot be a great power again, and that a Ukraine within NATO would be a direct national security threat to Russia. Or, as one of Moscow’s prominent political commentators, Sergei Karaganov, puts it, Ukraine’s membership of NATO would be ‘a spearhead aimed at the heart of Russia.’

So, Putin’s aim is to restore Russia’s reputation as a great power and end the post-Cold War era of its humiliation. By invading Ukraine, Putin intended to send a strong signal to NATO of Russia’s dissatisfaction with its refusal to treat Russia as a major power with a vital geographical interest in Ukraine. Putin’s problem is that he now faces a relatively unified NATO and European Union opposing him. He has not only failed, so far, to establish Russia as a key player in European security; he has also ensured NATO’s enmity for the foreseeable future.

There is one final geopolitical consideration about Russia that requires mention. In recent years, leading Russian figures, including Putin, have begun to stress the geopolitics of what they call ‘Eurasianism’. In this geopolitical ideology, Russia’s economic and political orientation is changing dramatically from being predominantly European in historical outlook to being a great power in what it calls Eurasia. Former foreign minister Igor Ivanov argues that Russia is no longer the eastern flank of a failed greater Europe but is becoming the western flank of the emerging greater Eurasia, albeit led by China.

Many of these musings about Eurasia reflect the sort of imperial revival mentality that can be found in many writings in Moscow these days. They desperately reflect Russia’s seeking a new ideology as a powerful driver for Moscow. Karaganov argues that Russians have ‘our Asian traits in our genes, and we are in part an Asian country because of this.’ And he sees Russia’s greatness as being increasingly focussed on the development of Siberia.

But I believe most Russians would disagree with him. For example, the former KGB rezident in Canberra, Lev Koshliakov, said to me a couple of years ago, ‘I am not Asian.’

All this, of course, begs the question of how Russia can reassert its great power status in the permanent shadow of a rising, if not dominant, China? The central geopolitical question here is how can the West detach—or, more realistically, distance—Russia from China? Zbigniew Brzezinski observed in 2016 that the most dangerous scenario facing the US would be an anti-hegemonic grand coalition of China and Russia united not by ideology but by complementary grievances against the West. A current concern is that such a coalition now exists and is reflected in official worries in Washington that for the first time the US could now face war on two fronts with two great nuclear powers.

Another issue we need to explore, however, is whether Russia is now going to cease to be a major power and what that would mean for global order. The worst-case scenario for Putin would be for Russia’s war in Ukraine to end in a comprehensive military defeat and Ukraine’s integration into the EU and NATO. This would mean that the course of Russian history would change, with the irrevocable and final fall of the empire of the Tsars and the Bolsheviks.

As some Russians recognise and fear, the consequences of that calamity would be far-reaching, plunging Russia into a chronic identity crisis with unpredictable political consequences. It would mean the utter destruction of three long-held Russian beliefs: that Russia is different and is neither European or Asian; that this difference is transcendently important to the continuing existence of the uniquely Russian World or Russkii Mir; and that this gives Russia a unique role in world history.

So, what we are witnessing in Ukraine today may be the prolonged death throes of the Russian Empire, which started three decades ago with the end of the Soviet Union. How much weaker and smaller may Russia become?

Long-term trends of Russia’s demography and economy will certainly further weaken Russia. Russia’s military power and sheer size have led most commentators, reasonably, to still describe it as a major power. But, in view of the dismal performance of Russia’s military power in Ukraine, we must now revisit that judgement. It is hard to see the weakened and still kleptocratic Russian economy quickly rebuilding Russian military strength whenever the war ends.

In this context, strategic failure for Russia will be enormously consequential for the West. Some Russian experts, such as Andrei Kolesnikov, talk about ‘the complete collapse of everything’ in Russia, because under Putin ‘Russia’s future has been amputated.’ In that view, an entirely isolated and weakened Russia faces not only long-term decline but the risk of further chunks of its already much reduced territory deciding to go it alone and to separate from the Russian Federation. A severely weakened, isolated and smaller but still heavily nuclear armed Russia might then become more, not less, dangerous for the world.

In conclusion, the purpose of this essay is to make readers aware of just how different Russia is from Australia and what drives Moscow’s actions. The worry, as Oxford University’s Robert Service reminds us, is that many of the older attitudes and practices under the tsars and the Communist Party have been reinforced with severity in the 21st century under Putin. He has emasculated democratic processes and curtailed freedom of expression. Opposition leaders have been killed, imprisoned or driven into exile. The rule of law has been dumped and the mass media neutered. The corrupt Russian state has seized back control of the commanding heights of the economy. And the West is being treated as a hostile concert of powers. Service concludes, ‘It is resoundingly clear that Russian politics are still freighted with heavy baggage from the early twentieth century.’ The oppressive conditions that held back Russia in the past ‘have yet to be consigned to the ash heap of history.’

In my view, however, the last act of Russia’s threat to the established international order is still to come. Therefore, we need to be vigilant and ensure the current checks and balances against Russian aggression remain firmly in place. Even more importantly, insufficient attention has been paid in the West to the evolution of Russian security thinking, and to understanding Russia’s emergent strengths and ongoing, perhaps fatal, weaknesses. Western policymakers’ grasp of the Russian leadership’s motivations and decision-making processes, especially in respect of military matters, has degraded since the end of the Cold War.

The fact is that the West has been caught napping, and we need to think afresh about planning for Russia and its new security policy, including the role of nuclear weapons. But in thinking afresh, we need to keep in mind that many of the historical forces at work in Russia will persist—including beyond Putin’s term in office.

The ADF needs more specialists. To get them, it needs more flexibility

The Australian Defence Force needs a new way to recruit and retain hard-to-find experts, such as specialist engineers. Current systems do not allow for the flexibility that the 21st century demands, nor do they match industry salary standards.

These shortcomings were highlighted by the Strategic Review of the Australian Defence Force Reserves, which identifies the need to adopt a Total Workforce System that supports more innovative and flexible workforce arrangements.​

The problem has been worsening as tasks within the ADF have become more complex. But maybe the solution has been right in front of us all along.

We could adapt the existing Specialist Services Officer (SSO) system through which the army currently engages people in fields such a healthcare, finance, law, chaplaincy, management, public affairs, aviation, engineering or education, without necessarily requiring the full military training of standard army service. The SSO arrangement needs to be more flexible: rather than limited to pre-defined fields, it must be open to whatever roles the ADF requires.

It would thereby enable the ADF to employ a much wider range of specialists, and it would apply to people with particularly valuable skills who could already be in the ADF under a different role.

The adaption, renamed Specialist Service Person (SSP), could also replace the Specialist Service Soldier scheme, which the army is trialling for enlisted personnel and which is focused on specific trades.

For example, the army may need someone with specialist sanitation knowledge for an operation, but ‘sanitation engineer’ isn’t on the Specialist Services Officer list or a job in the ADF. The review of the reserves advocates creating pathways that allow a broader range of specialists to enter the ADF, ensuring operational requirements guide employment rather than rigid role categories.

Instead, operational needs should guide employment, and a system unconstrained by pre-defined employment categories and open to negotiable pay should ensure that ever-changing service demands are met.

Other examples of skills that the ADF can acquire with far more flexibility are artificial intelligence experts, automation engineers, naval architects, procurement specialists and unknown future roles we haven’t thought up yet.

The SSP system, like the SSO, would apply to civilians entering the ADF or to reservists with specialised skills. This gives the ADF options to move people into roles where there is an operational need and move them out when it is over.

A continuous full-time service (CFTS) contract, as already used for upgrading reservists to full-time employment, could be used. Under the SSP model, the ADF could call upon specialists when needed, similar to the reserves, rather than keeping people permanently on contract but underemployed.

Additionally, ADF also relies on a contracted external civilian workforce for niche expertise. They are often employed by companies that they work for directly, adding complexity, cost and conflicts of interest. Instead, such skills should be available from service members under SSP CFTS contracts.

Offering realistic market salaries under the SSP system would also improve the chance of keeping highly skilled ADF members who have grown beyond their standard employment model.

This proposal takes inspiration from the US Warrant Officer system and Singapore’s military expert system.

The US Army pays more for its technical experts through its Warrant Officer ranks. These members are specialists in specific fields rather than generalist leaders, enabling them to focus on their core skills. This system allows the military to retain and access the expertise of its best specialists.

The Singapore Armed Forces directly recruit specialists from the civilian sector, tapping into a wider talent pool to meet evolving defence needs. These specialists, known as military experts, can then develop their skills through the Military Domain Experts Scheme.

Like the US model, the proposed SSP system would recognise and promote expertise from within the ranks. Like Singapore’s approach, it would acknowledge the need to bring in external expertise when required. This hybrid model ensures seamless integration of both internal and external specialists, optimising the ADF’s capabilities.

The SSP system could also be used to keep the skills of people who would otherwise leave the ADF—for example, because medical conditions make them unfit for standard duties. If they hold the right in need skillsets the ADF in the SSP model would have the flexibility to reengage them under a CFTS contract with defined duties, salary and outcomes.

Currently, specialists often face pay cuts when they move from private companies into ADF roles. This concern is echoed in the review of the reserves, which emphasises the need to modernise conditions of service and adopt a more competitive pay structure to improve retention and recruitment outcomes.

The key word is ‘flexibility’. That’s what the ADF must have as it tries to employ and keep people with the ever-enlarging range of skills that it needs.

Fighting deepfakes: what’s next after legislation?

Deepfake technology is weaponising artificial intelligence in a way that disproportionately targets women, especially those working public roles, compromising their dignity, safety, and ability to participate in public life. This digital abuse requires urgent global action, as it not only infringes on human rights but also affects their democratic participation.

Britain’s recent decision to criminalise explicit deepfakes is a significant step forward. It follows similar legislation passed in Australia last year and aligns with the European Union’s AI Act, which emphasises accountability. However, regulations alone are not enough, effective enforcement and international collaboration are essential to combat this growing and complex threat.

Britain’s legislation to criminalise explicit deepfakes as part of the broader Crime and Policing Bill that will be introduced to the parliament marks a pivotal step in addressing technology-facilitated gender-based violence. This move is a response to a 400 percent rise in deepfake-related abuse since 2017, as reported by Britain’s Revenge Porn Helpline.

Deepfakes, which fabricate hyper-realistic content, often target women and girls, objectifying and eroding their public engagement. By criminalising both the creation and sharing of explicit deepfakes, Britain’s law closes loopholes in earlier revenge porn legislation. The legislation places stricter accountability on platforms hosting these harmful images, reinforcing the message that businesses must play a role in combatting online abuse.

The EU has taken a complementary approach by introducing requirements for transparency in its recently adopted AI Act. The regulation does not ban deepfakes outright but mandates that creators disclose their artificial origins and provide details about the techniques used. This empowers consumers to better identify manipulated content. Furthermore, the EU’s 2024 directive on violence against women explicitly addresses cyberviolence, including non-consensual image-sharing, providing tools for victims to prevent the spread of harmful content.

While these measures are robust, enforcement remains a challenge due to fragmented national laws, and deepfake abuse often transcends borders. The EU is working to harmonise its digital governance and promote AI transparency standards to mitigate these challenges.

In Asia, concern over deepfake technology is growing in countries such as South Korea, Singapore and especially Taiwan where it not only targets individual women but is increasingly used as a tool for politically motivated disinformation. Similarly, in the United States and Pakistan, female lawmakers have been targeted with sexualised deepfakes designed to discredit and silence them. Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni faced a similar attack but successfully brought the perpetrators to court.

Unfortunately, many countries still lack comprehensive legislation to effectively combat the abuse of deepfakes, leaving individuals vulnerable, especially those without the resources and support to fight back. For example, similar laws in the United States remain stalled in legislative pipelines—the Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits (Defiance) Bill and Deepfake Accountability Bill.

Australia offers a strong example of legislative action as it faces similar challenges with deepfake abuse contributing to a chilling effect on women’s activity in public life, affecting underage students and politicians. This abuse not only affects individual privacy but also deters other women from engaging in public and pursuing leadership roles, weakening democratic representation.

In August 2024, Australia passed the Criminal Code Amendment, penalising the sharing of non-consensual explicit material.

While formulating legislation is the first step, to effectively address this issue, governments must enforce the regulation while ensuring that victims have accessible mechanisms to report abuse and seek justice. Digital literacy programs should be expanded to equip individuals with the tools to identify and report manipulated content. Schools and workplaces should incorporate online safety education to build societal resilience against deepfake threats.

Simultaneously, women’s representation in cybersecurity and technology governance needs to be increased. Women’s participation in shaping policies and technologies ensures that gendered dimensions of digital abuse are adequately addressed.

Although Meta recently decided to cut back on factchecking, social media platforms need to be held to account for hosting and amplifying harmful content. Platforms must proactively detect and remove deepfakes while maintaining transparency about their AI applications and data practices. The EU AI Act’s transparency requirements serve as a reference point for implementing similar measures globally.

Ultimately, addressing deepfake abuse is about creating a safe and inclusive online space. As digital spaces transcend borders, the fight against deepfake abuse must be inherently global. Countries need to collaborate with international partners to establish shared enforcement mechanisms, harmonise legal frameworks and promote joint research on AI ethics and governance. Regional initiatives, such as the EU AI Act and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ guidelines for combatting fake news and disinformation, can serve as a means for building capacity in nations lacking the expertise or resources to tackle these challenges alone.

In a world where AI is advancing rapidly, combatting deepfake abuse is more than regulating technology—it is about safeguarding human dignity, protecting democratic processes and ensuring that everyone, including women, can participate in society without fear of intimidation or harm. By working together, we can build a safer, more equitable digital environment for all.

How drone racing promotes battlefield FPV capability

The Australian Defence Force is a global leader in first-person view (FPV) drone racing, a sport that has attracted public attention and gone viral on social media. The ADF’s success in the field demonstrates how competitive military sport can be used to advance dual-use technology and nurture technological skills in the next generation.

Military capability and military sport have been linked for millennia, with soldiers competing in events such as the Olympic Pentathlon and the Military World Games to develop their skills in peacetime. Today, militaries use sports to forge international relationships, a key application of soft power.

FPV drone racing, one of the most recent examples of military sports, has emerged as a form of honing skills for a disruptive battlefield technology that can quickly enhance the situational awareness and firepower of individual soldiers and small combat elements. The little aircraft are cheaper and require less training than do more complex military-specification precision-guided weapons and autonomous systems.

Commercial camera drones and FPV drone racing were at first adapted for the battlefield by the Ukrainian military in response to shortage of precision-guided munitions and artillery rounds. The affordability, accessibility and ease of designing, building and flying drones have proliferated their use in conventional battlefield applications. They are effective as tools for disruption and provide opportunities for innovation to maintain combat advantage.

The Australian Army and British Army collaborated to assemble the first military drone racing teams in 2017 and 2018, and the inaugural Military International Drone Racing Tournament was held in Sydney in 2018. Since then, the ADF’s FPV drone racing pilots have remained undefeated, with consecutive wins in 2018, 2023 and 2024. The tournament brings together military FPV drone practitioners from around the world with the highest skills in designing, building and flying FPV racing drones. They compete in drone design, technology, pilot skills and teamwork. Most participating nations now have full-time pilots developing their military tactics, techniques and procedures; some of them are involved in the racing.

The ADF’s commitment to promoting FPV drone racing is enthusiastic, with its hashtag #SendIt! going viral across the movement. Its initiation of the international tournament in 2018 and the establishment of the ADF Drone Racing Association in 2023 are clear demonstrations of this commitment.

These initiatives illustrate how military sports programs can support the evolution of warfighting techniques and technology. They help ensure that ADF personnel remain competitive in drone racing, and have opportunities to learn and practise designing, building, flying, and repairing drones.

Racing tournaments encourage pilots to innovate in the quest for a drone design that delivers a winning performance. In many ways, the technology involved in FPV drone racing is an innovative application of the technology made affordable by commercial smartphones. Smartphone technology includes miniaturised batteries, microprocessors, high-definition cameras, small monitors, network communications and gyro-stabilised gravimeters. FPV racing drones are assembled from micro electric motors, electronic speed controllers, radio receivers, video transmitters, cameras and a flight controller integrated into a carbon fibre quadcopter frame. Thanks to the diversity of available components, racing pilots can hone their preferences for the most effective brands, software and technologies.

Drone racing tournaments also help pilots develop their flying skills. During a race, pilots control their custom-built FPV racing drones around a 3D obstacle racetrack. They wear FPV goggles to see the live video from the drone’s forward-facing camera and remotely manoeuvre the drone using electronic and radiofrequency systems. The video gives pilots an immersive experience so that they can see and understand where the drone needs to go. They decide on the flight control actions required to complete the race, sometimes recovering from unplanned mid-air collisions with other drones, the race gates and the ground.

Through its creation of FPV drone racing associations, the ADF is also highlighting the importance of building drones as a key skill that future generations should learn through science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) outreach programs. The pilots and teams visit schools, demonstrate at science festivals, career expos and airshows, and run drone racing boot camps for the ADF’s cadet and training organisations. Their message is clear: all STEM skills are required across the entire ADF, not just in drone operations.

While the ADF’s drone racing champions appear to simply relish winning at the sport, the main mission of the team lies in the innovation of drone technology and its application to the battlefield. The pilots’ success demonstrates how competitive military sports can be utilised to advance dual-use technology and promote STEM within the next generation, fostering innovation and disruptive thinking in current and future drone experts. #SendIt!

Australia’s new CT and CVE strategy: light on policy and specifics

Australia has a new counterterrorism (CT) and counter-violent extremism (CVE) strategy—but it’s light on counterterrorism and lacking in strategy. While it introduces two new CVE measures, it presents itself more as a communicative document than a real strategy or action plan.

Titled ‘A Safer Australia – Australia’s Counter-terrorism and Violent Extremism Strategy 2025’, it was quietly released on 17 January, two years after then home affairs minister Clare O’Neil vowed to revise and update the strategy of 2022. Yet there is little to show for two years of development.

As of August 2024, Australia’s national terrorist threat level is ‘probable’—higher than when the previous strategy was released. The document also arrives amid a spate of antisemitic incidents in Sydney and Melbourne and increasing political pressure on government to respond. Clearly, the title of ‘A Safer Australia’ does not reflect our current security climate.

The strategy will improve Australia’s early-intervention capacity. But it is a CVE strategy, not a CT strategy: it is focused on community intervention programs, not Australia’s capability to pre-empt or respond to terrorist acts. The document does not provide new CT policy, resourcing or strategic direction. A comprehensive strategy should address both.

Even on CVE it is light on policy ideas and specifics, supporting criticisms that the department has lacked in-house capability to lead on CT policy since the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation were moved outside it.

The strategy begins with a sober assessment of the threat landscape and focuses on countering rising youth violent extremism, as well as highlighting changes to the character of terrorism. But these challenges—including hybrid ideologies and youth radicalisation—were discussed in 2024 by ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess in greater and more engaging detail.

It aims to prevent CVE at a community level through two main initiatives. Firstly, the government intends to nearly double funding to state and territory partners for CVE intervention programs, which they lead, and commit to ongoing funding. Secondly, it will establish a national version of the successful NSW Step Together program, a confidential, non-police community support service that parents can contact if they are concerned their child is radicalising. The government will also better include young people in developing CVE policy.

These will not address the drivers of youth extremism, including real and perceived grievances. The strategy also highlights the challenge of online spaces and radicalisation but commits only to closer collaboration with technology companies and partners. It overlooks structural factors contributing to the rise of violent extremism. More funding and a federal helpline are positives but are small offerings after two years of delay.

Instead of policy innovation, the strategy repeatedly refers to existing measures and ‘improving partnerships and collaboration’ with various stakeholders. It rarely provides examples of how it will do this.

For instance, when announcing the strategy, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke highlighted an ongoing commitment to engaging Southeast Asian partners—an important measure that already exists. The strategy introduces no mechanisms for engagement or deepening relationships. Instead, it references the 2022 ASEAN-Australia Counter-Terrorism Dialogue.

For CT, the strategy is seemingly more focused on communications than action, saying in its executive summary: ‘The Strategy is for all Australians to develop a greater understanding of the evolving threat and what Australian governments are doing to respond to those challenges.’

Transparency and communication with the public are important, but they are not a strategy. Furthermore, the government is hardly promoting transparency by releasing the document with little notice on a Friday in mid-January.

Instead of foreshadowing new initiatives, the document commits to improved bureaucracy and internal functions, recommending improved internal assessment pathways and better consultation. Its action plan calls for yet another government review into existing frameworks. After a considerable wait for this strategy, it calls for more waiting.

Instead of new initiatives, it explicitly defends the status quo, saying ‘our current system for preventing and responding to terrorism is mature and works effectively.’

Certainly, Australia’s national security professionals at the coalface have an excellent record. But such confidence in the system contradicts reporting from September 2024 of a breakdown in collaboration between the federal government and the states and territories over the National Counter-Terrorism Plan—describing the situation as an unprecedented ‘clusterf—k’.

A key issue highlighted was the Home Affairs limited capacity to deliver counterterrorism policy, with migration absorbing significant time and resources. Similar issues were raised by ASPI’s Justin Bassi and John Coyne in August, with the division of counterterrorism responsibility between Home Affairs and the Attorney-General’s Department splitting expertise.

A real CT and CVE strategy requires new policy, more specifics and clear objectives. An increasingly difficult operational environment demands innovative policy backed by expertise. Terrorism is evolving and the threat it poses is increasing. Policy and resourcing need to be commensurate with this challenge.

Australia enters the America First era: an analysis of the executive orders

The litany of executive orders that have dropped on the White House website tell us plenty about what Australia can expect from a second Trump term’s foreign policies.

And there are plenty of implications of the America First agenda for Canberra.

Let’s begin with Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential. Trump’s intent to unlock Alaska’s ‘bounty of natural wealth’ by opening offshore drilling and greenlighting dormant liquified natural gas (LNG) export projects is a boon for the US economy and energy security.

But plans to ‘prioritize … the sale and transportation of Alaskan LNG to … allied nations within the Pacific region’ potentially cuts Australia’s grass. Our fractured LNG export ‘strategy’ is going to have to compete with likely cheaper LNG flooding the Asian market.

Trump’s America First Policy Directive on foreign policy is rather literal, simply stating that it will always put ‘America and its interests first’. Australian policymakers must now frame commitments, agreements, and policies regarding the US around this mandate.

Understanding that this is the way decisions will be taken in this new era will save time and public servants’ energy.

We can already apply the America First policy to one case study: AUKUS pillar one. Trump’s US can be expected to continue supporting the optimal pathway for several national interest reasons. First, Australia has already paid cash. Second, the rotation of US and British nuclear submarines through HMAS Stirling in Western Australia affords a ‘beachhead’ for US strategic depth in the Indo-Pacific. Third, Australia will give billions of dollars more to the US for Virginia class submarines.

America First? Tick.

Central to the America First era is Trump’s plan to block Chinese overreach into strategic regions of American interest. It’s not clear how the US might secure control of Greenland and the Panama Canal, but it’s quite clear why Trump wants to do it.

Canberra shares with Washington common interests and challenges posed by Beijing’s creeping territorialisation efforts in Antarctica. Antarctica is a strategic continent that needs much more work through the US-Australia alliance to protect it.

One obvious point of divergence is commitment to multilateralism. There appears to be zero reversal of this trend—Trump has signed an order to withdraw the US from the World Health Organization, and has signalled an intention to pull out of the Paris Agreement on climate change.

Further Trump presidential action is aimed at multilateralism. Significantly for Australia given the amount of US and other multilateral companies that have operations in our key industries, Washington is also ditching the OECD Global Tax Deal, which was negotiated by the Biden administration though never approved by Congress.

Representing 90 percent of global GDP, and signed by 136 countries and jurisdictions, it seeks to ensure big firms ‘pay a fair share of tax wherever they operate and generate profits’. Australia remains a fervent advocate for it, along with the remnants of most multilateral bodies, while Trump’s memorandum prioritises ‘sovereignty and economic competitiveness by clarifying that the Global Tax Deal has no force or effect in the United States’. This will be a problem for Australia.

An area of little divergence appears to be foreign aid. Australian efforts in this sector are dismal at best—roughly $4.7 billion in foreign aid was distributed in 2023-24, placing Canberra 26th out of 31 wealthy countries ranked for how much foreign aid they provide. Trump’s Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid order might put pressure on Australia to ‘do more’—that is, spend more—in our region. The order freezes US aid while a review is undertaken and frames foreign aid to be ‘destabili(sing) world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly inverse to harmonious and stable relations internal to and among countries’.

Trump’s declaration of a ‘national energy emergency’ might trigger a much-needed national debate in Australia about our persistent energy insecurity. Our nation sits on immense resource wealth yet has gone from being a global LNG export superpower to importing gas to meet domestic needs in less than a decade.

Trump’s memorandum on Restoring Accountability for Career Senior Executives needs little explanation as to how it could provide lessons for Canberra. Group-think and risk-adverse career public servants have hollowed out our public service’s ability to ‘faithfully fulfill … duties to advance the needs, policies, and goals’ of Australia.

The TikTok saga continues into the Trump 2.0 era. Never fear, watchers of MomTok—a group of Mormon ‘yummy mummies’ who post on TikTok, for the uninitiated— Trump’s attempt to find a compromise on an outright ban of TikTok gives the US government 75 days to get to the bottom of Beijing’s reach afforded by the popular app being used by 170 million Americans.

NSW Premier Chris Minns finds a ‘return to work’ ally in Trump, whose Return to In-Person Work mandate notes ‘all departments and agencies in the executive branch of Government shall, as soon as practicable, take all necessary steps to terminate remote work arrangements’. Again, this could energise debate here in Australia for similar measures.

Trade remains a concern for Australia. Will we, or wont we, be slapped with the tariff stick? Will Trump be able to separate bilateral trade relations from Australia’s lacklustre defence spending? Trump’s America First Trade Policy provides no clear answers. But the Albanese government needs to recognise that simply pointing to a healthy American trade surplus with Australia—saying ‘smile and wave boys’—might no longer pass Trump’s pub test.

The Quad foreign ministers joint statement: short and sweet

Today’s joint statement from the Quad foreign ministers’ meeting in Washington is short and sweet, particularly for those who have been arguing that the grouping should overtly embrace security cooperation.

The statement’s emphasis on ‘security in all domains’ is a noteworthy and welcome shift from the previous, awkward position that the Quad was not a security partnership, despite working together in health security, cybersecurity and maritime security.

This inherent contradiction was unnecessarily self-limiting and confusing but persisted because Quad members, including Australia, saw this self-constraint as necessary to assuage Southeast Asian sensitivities about counterbalancing or containing China.

The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade should update its official description of the Quad, which is currently a ‘a diplomatic, not security, partnership’.

Also absent from the statement is any reference to ‘ASEAN centrality’. This is notable because past Quad statements have all dutifully replicated this diplomatic deference to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. This ellipsis is an early indication that the Trump administration does not intend to pursue cooperation through the Quad only at a pace that is comfortable for Southeast Asian countries. In fact, ASEAN doesn’t appear to register at all as a policy concern among some members of Trump’s cabinet line-up.

While China is not named either, a joint commitment to ‘oppose any unilateral actions that seek to change the status quo by force or coercion’ leaves little doubt that Beijing is the Quad’s common challenge. A subsequent reference to ‘strengthening regional maritime, economic and technology security in the face of increasing threats’ should remove any remaining doubt. Beijing will inevitably react to such bluntness. But the Quad’s belated embrace of security cooperation is welcome. After all, security is a public good just like other elements of the Quad’s agenda, and something which the four countries should openly aspire to strengthen, without fear of offending others in the region.

Defence cooperation is not mentioned directly in the joint statement as part of the Quad’s security agenda. But it is strongly hinted in the commitment that ‘rule of law, democratic values, sovereignty, and territorial integrity’ should be ‘upheld and defended’ in the Indo-Pacific. (Note ‘defended’.) The Quad navies already exercise together in the annual Malabar drills. It is likely that a military dimension to four-way cooperation will now develop within the Quad, not only in unwarlike activities as disaster relief but also focused on deterrence. This should not dilute the Quad’s collaborative agenda in other policy fields, such as supply chain resilience and maritime domain awareness, but rather complement it.

The fact that the Quad foreign ministers meeting was virtually Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s first official activity will be read as a sign of President Trump’s willingness to back the quartet, which after all was revived in 2017 during his first term in office. This will come as a relief to Australia, India and Japan. And it underlines the Quad’s strategic utility not simply as a counterbalance to China but also as a means to anchor the US security role in the Indo-Pacific via a broad-based partnership with three of its most important regional partners, including its closest regional ally, Australia, and its most important one, Japan. India, which offers the heft as the world’s most populous country and democracy, will host the next summit of Quad leaders this year. Trump’s attendance in Delhi will be essential to maintaining the momentum.

This is a promising turn in the Quad’s fluctuating fortunes. It is tempting to inversely correlate the impact of joint statements with their length. The commendable brevity of this two-paragraph statement packs policy punches that were patently missing from some of the Quad’s recent, prolix pronouncements. When it comes to drafting joint statements, concision should be best practice: less means more.

Australia must be clear-eyed and pragmatic about Donald Trump

Australia must be clear-eyed and pragmatic about Donald Trump’s return to the White House, looking past the rhetoric to focus on advancing our strategic interests in an increasingly competitive Indo-Pacific region.  

His ‘America First’ declarations may unsettle traditional diplomatic sensibilities, but they mask a crucial reality: the United States isn’t withdrawing from global leadership; it’s redefining how that leadership works. While it is a rejection of the idea the US can, and should, continue to underwrite security and stability to the world alone, critics are wrong to call it isolationist. 

In fact, one of the first executive orders signed on day one was to require American foreign policy to be guided by domestic interests. That isn’t withdrawal from the world or in fact radical. One of Joe Biden’s stated foreign policy priorities was always to ask: ‘What will our foreign policy mean for American workers and their families?’ 

For Australia, Trump’s second term presents both challenges and opportunities, but only if we can distinguish between his style and the substance of American strategic objectives. 

The key for Australia will be to focus on actions, not words. Trump’s inauguration speech, while light on foreign policy specifics, revealed an approach grounded in peace through strength—suggesting that US superiority means fewer conflicts through deterrence. This aligns with Australia’s interests in three crucial areas: maintaining a stable Middle East with a secure Israel, preventing Russian victory in Ukraine, and most importantly, ensuring China cannot use its economic power to impose its military, technological and diplomatic might on the rest of us. 

US involvement will, however, come with a requirement that allies make an equal or meaningful contribution. In this way, Trump’s modern-day America First movement differs from the first incarnation in 1940 of those Americans who did not want to enter World War II regardless of Britain doing more than its fair share to save the world from fascist authoritarianism. 

It is likely that the Trump administration will challenge China’s behaviour early in the term. This includes by calling out cyber attacks, and by demanding fair and equitable trade. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s congressional testimony as part of confirmation hearings provides the most recent, and clearest, indicator.  

The Quad foreign ministers’ meeting has provided a further early indication, producing a joint statement that was brief but heavily security focussed. The fact that the Quad was effectively the first international meeting of the new administration also highlights the US will look to continue leading on regional stability. 

And the Quad’s pre-eminence shows the need to see global affairs as far more than just US-China rivalry.

As the European Union’s President, Ursula von der Leyen, notes, we’re entering an era of ‘harsh’ strategic competition. While US-China rivalry dominates headlines, the reality is more nuanced. Multiple nations are engaged in a sophisticated contest for influence, with Australia positioned at the epicentre of this competition in the Indo-Pacific. Our success will depend on our ability to deploy both hard and soft power effectively.

Australia holds unique advantages in this environment. Our democratic credentials, commitment to the rule of law, and long history of regional engagement provide a strong foundation for leadership. The challenge is to build on these strengths while working in partnership with our neighbours and allies. This means maintaining our strategic alignment with the US while speaking with our own voice on regional issues.

The AUKUS partnership exemplifies how Australia can successfully navigate this new era. It represents more than just a submarine deal—it’s a blueprint, as Rubio has called it, for modern alliance-building that delivers tangible benefits to the broader Indo-Pacific region. This kind of innovative thinking shows how like-minded nations can work together to maintain a free and open regional order while sharing the burden of regional security. 

The path forward requires sophisticated diplomacy that can work with Trump’s unorthodox style while advancing our regional interests. We must judge both the US and China by their actions, not their words—particularly given Beijing’s history of breaching international agreements while claiming to uphold them.  

As we prepare for this new era of strategic competition, Australia must be bold in its vision while pragmatic in its execution. We need political leadership that can see past rhetorical flourishes to identify and pursue our core strategic interests. The foundations are there in our democratic values, our regional relationships, and our strategic partnerships. The challenge now is to build upon them with the creativity and courage that these complex times demand. 

The success of this approach will depend on our ability to look beyond Trump’s unconventional diplomatic style to the underlying strategic alignment between Australian and US interests. By focusing on actions over rhetoric, strengthening our regional partnerships, and maintaining our independent voice while working closely with allies, Australia can effectively navigate the challenges and opportunities of this new era in global politics.