No images? Click here 22 SeptemberAUKUS-trating Australia’s strategic futureIn what may prove to be the single biggest development in Australian strategic affairs since the signing of the ANZUS Treaty, President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced a new trilateral security partnership with the United Kingdom – the AUKUS pact. Along with headline-making nuclear-powered submarines, the agreement would see Australia benefit from enhanced cooperation on a range of security and technological areas. Beyond merely fulfilling the Biden administration’s promise for greater attention to the Indo-Pacific region, the agreement is a clear vote of confidence by the Australian government in the US alliance. The AUKUS announcement occurred mere hours before Australian Defence Minister Peter Dutton and Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne met their US counterparts for the 31st annual Australia-US Ministerial Consultations (AUSMIN) – the first AUSMIN of the Biden administration. The heavy Indo-Pacific focus of the ministerial meetings was mirrored in the first in-person one-on-one meeting of President Biden and Prime Minister Morrison, where the US President said the United States has "no closer ally". The Indo-Pacific focus will remain unchanged at the first in-person Quad leaders' summit on Friday. The significant number of high-profile events and developments make clear that the relevance and importance of the US-Australian alliance has grown dramatically. As we continue analysing the implications of 70 years of the alliance, we are honoured to host Senator the Hon. Penny Wong to launch our new report, Correcting the course: How the Biden administration should compete for influence in the Indo-Pacific. WEBINAR | 23 SeptemberAustralia, the United States and the Indo-Pacific Please join us for a virtual address and in-conversation event with Senator the Hon Penny Wong to launch the latest United States Studies Centre report “Correcting the course: How the Biden administration should compete for influence in the Indo-Pacific.” Senator Wong will deliver her remarks on the “Australia-US alliance in the Indo-Pacific” in the wake of this month’s 70th anniversary of the ANZUS Treaty and the Australia-US Ministerial Consultations (AUSMIN) in Washington DC. She will then join report co-authors Ashley Townshend and Susannah Patton for a discussion on the United States’ role in the Indo-Pacific region and the way forward for Australian policy. WHEN: COST: You can also subscribe to have event invitations and reminders sent straight to your inbox, so you never have to miss an event! NEWS WRAPGetting the House in order
"...our nations will update and enhance our shared ability to take on the threats of the 21st century just as we did in the 20th century: together." ANALYSISAUSMIN is a chance to refocus Biden's Indo-Pacific strategyAshley Townshend While AUSMIN is well-geared to making incremental progress on important bilateral issues, Australia’s overriding priority in any interaction with the United States is much more ambitious and challenging: encouraging the most robust possible US presence in the Indo-Pacific region. How forthright Payne and Dutton are on this topic in this year’s AUSMIN will depend on their personal styles, and how receptive they judge their American counterparts to be to Australian views on US Indo-Pacific strategy. If Payne and Dutton prefer to be polite about the weakness of the Biden administration’s approach to the Indo-Pacific, they could do worse than slip their counterparts a copy of our recent United States Studies Centre report “Correcting the Course”. The report suggests that the administration’s early approach to the Indo-Pacific has lacked focus and urgency – raising questions for regional allies and partners, including Australia, about whether Washington will ever deliver on its long-promised “rebalance to Asia”. The reason for this is that Biden appears to view competition with China as a predominantly long-term global challenge, rather than present-day contest for regional influence. As such, the administration has prioritised efforts to strengthen America’s domestic power base and the systemic aspects of competition – in areas such as technology, democratic values and global coalition-building – paying comparatively little attention to the near-term requirements of an Indo-Pacific competition for influence. Biden has no trade or investment strategy for the region, he has not embraced regional defence spending priorities such as the Pacific Deterrence Initiative, and his team have been slow to engage Asian allies and Southeast Asian nations on new diplomatic, economic or military initiatives – with the Quad Leaders’ Summit and its vaccine initiative as the only real exceptions. In this context, AUSMIN presents Australia with two opportunities: to use its bilateral defence ties to deepen and embed the US regional presence, and to encourage the United States to focus more on competition with China in the Indo-Pacific region. BY THE NUMBERSDifferent men, similar approval numbers Sarah Hamilton Nine months into his presidency in September 2017, President Trump’s public approval rate was at 42 per cent. While the first 150 days of Biden’s presidency set him apart from his predecessor by maintaining an average approval rating of above 50 per cent, the administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan last month has set Biden back on public sentiment. Polling by YouGov shows that President Biden’s current approval rating is at an all-time low of 45 per cent, putting him close to on par with Donald Trump’s rating at the same point in his presidency. THE ALLIANCE AT 70 | THE INDO-PACIFICRebalancing act The following is an excerpt from The Alliance at 70, a contribution by The Honourable Stephen Smith, Minister for Defence (2010-2013), Minister for Foreign Affairs (2007-10) Perhaps the most publicly appreciated AUSMIN work through that period was the US ‘rebalance’ and its Global Force Posture Review, complemented in Australian domestic terms by our own Force Posture Review in 2011, our first since the 1980s. This body of work saw President Obama’s visit to Australia in late 2011, and the announcement of enhanced Alliance practical cooperation measures, headlined by the rotation of marines through Darwin, but underlined by greater utilisation of Australian airfields in our north and west through greater rotation of US aircraft, and the promise of greater US Navy utilisation of Australia’s Indian Ocean naval base at HMAS Stirling, south of Perth. What looked publicly like a seamless announcement was, of course, the culmination of many months of detailed work and discussion variously between ministers and officials, most of it rudimentary and polite, but some of it robust without perhaps ever becoming impolite. A number of our US colleagues took time to appreciate the rotation of marines actually had to mean rotation! Anything more than that would, of course, be perceived as a US base, not a joint facility under the umbrella of the full knowledge and concurrence principle, entrenched into our Alliance from Prime Minister Bob Hawke’s statement to the Australian Parliament in 1984, and reaffirmed by successive Australian governments since. The rebalance reflected a changing world and the rise of the Indo-Pacific, which emerged as part of Australian policy analysis in 2008, embedded as formal Australian strategic doctrine in our 2013 Defence white paper, and which persists to this day, having been adopted by most nations in the region. This emerging Australian Indo-Pacific analysis had been very influential on Secretary of State Clinton, whom Australia urged to sign up for ASEAN’s Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, and then join the most important part of Indo-Pacific regional architecture, namely, the East Asia Summit, which Australia then helped facilitate in cooperation with Indonesia and Singapore in 2011. Finally, of course, is the great personal and professional pleasure and regard which comes from working with great Americans and such great friends of Australia from both sides of the US aisle. In my time, in particular Condoleezza Rice, Bob Gates, Hillary Clinton, Leon Panetta, Chuck Hagel and Ambassador Jeff Bleich. Not to mention the occasional bit of fun that comes from a ‘hometown’ visit to Perth, Australia’s Indian Ocean capital, variously by Condoleezza, Hillary and Leon. Lasting impressions and outcomes can also come from a ‘hometown’ visit. In particular, Secretary Clinton announced the establishment of the Perth USAsia Centre in the margins of AUSMIN 2012 in Perth, which included her emphasis of the Indo-Pacific lexicon, a shift that ultimately became reflected in US official language, including the renaming of the Pacific Command to US Indo-Pacific Command in 2018. VIDEOUSSC experts on the Biden administration's first AUSMIN meetingDid you miss last week's webinar? The USSC hosted a panel discussion featuring Non-Resident Fellow Jennifer Jackett, Director of Trade and Investment Stephen Kirchner, Research Fellow Susannah Patton and Director of Foreign Policy and Defence Ashley Townshend in a conversation moderated by CEO Simon Jackman. They discuss US-Australia partnership ahead of last week's AUSMIN meetings. If you missed the event, the full replay is now available to stream. Tune in HERE. Catch more analysis on the United States on the USSC YouTube channel. 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