NEWS WRAP

Air Force Chief new top gun at JCS

• CQ to lead JCS | President Joe Biden nominated General CQ Brown Jr as the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). General Brown will become only the second black chairman in US history after General Colin Powell. READ MORE HERE
   
• Mid-air manoeuvres | The Pentagon released a video of a Chinese jet performing an "unnecessarily aggressive" manoeuvre by passing directly in front of a US military aircraft over the South China Sea. Incidents between Chinese and US aircraft continue to be a source of tension in the region. WATCH THE VIDEO HERE
   
• United States, EU talk China and AI | The EU-US Trade and Technology Council met in Sweden this week, where they discussed cooperation on artificial intelligence and how to approach economic relations with China given the rapid rise of new critical technologies. READ MORE HERE
   
• Air travel recovers | US air passenger travel over the Memorial Day weekend topped that of 2019 pre-pandemic levels, with almost 10 million passengers catching a flight in a sign of a return to normalcy across the US travel sector. READ MORE HERE
   
• Manhattanhenge mania | The annual Manhattanhenge event, in which the sun sets in perfect alignment with the main street grid of Manhattan, occurred today in New York City, delighting onlookers. READ MORE HERE

EVENT

How Australia can navigate US-China economic battles

Strategic competition between the United States and China, Australia’s most important ally and largest trading partner respectively, means Australia must maintain a delicate balancing act. China has recently begun removing restrictions on Australian imports in signs of improved bilateral relations, even as it threatens economic coercion in other areas of the region. With an uncertain global economic outlook and rising tensions across the Indo-Pacific, questions of how Australia should engage with China's economy have never been more important.

To discuss these questions, please join us for a discussion with Rhodium Group founding partner and USSC Visiting Fellow Daniel Rosen in conversation with USSC Economic Security Program Director Hayley Channer.

TYPE
Public event

WHEN
Thursday, 15 June, 6:00–7:30pm

WHERE
Auditorium, The Michael Spence Building (F23), Corner of Eastern Avenue and City Road, The University of Sydney Camperdown NSW.

COST
Free, but registration required.

COMMENTARY

What would a DeSantis presidency mean for Australia?

Victoria Cooper, Research Associate

With the long-awaited and awkward crash landing of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ presidential announcement, we stare down a whole new series of questions about what could happen before next November. Is DeSantis a more electable candidate than Donald Trump? Can he magically pry away Trump’s loyal base to win the primaries and then nimbly change tact to persuade a new cohort of voters to win the general in November? Does DeSantis’ politics work outside of Florida? Why does Trump keep calling him ‘meatball Ron’?

In a time where the word ‘unprecedented’ is becoming less and less unprecedented as a descriptor of US politics, the dissatisfying answer to all the new questions cropping up around DeSantis’ presidential run is: we just do not know. And, being a little over 38 weeks away from Super Tuesday and over 500 days away from the 2024 presidential election, I dare not try and make a prediction. 

So, in a reach for predictability and to attempt to answer what a DeSantis presidency means for Australia, the question we need to ask is what would a hypothetical DeSantis presidency mean for US foreign policy and the US view of its role in the world? To answer that, we need to do exactly what DeSantis has done to secure his victories in the past: look to President Trump.

This is an excerpt from a new USSC article.

VIDEO

How to stop a Cold War from becoming hot: Lessons from Ronald Reagan

On 25 May, USSC held a public event discussing lessons from the end of the Cold War for modern day competition with China, featuring CEO Dr Michael Green in conversation with USSC Visiting Fellow Dr William Inboden, who is the Executive Director and William Powers, Jr. Chair at the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas-Austin and author of The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, The Cold War, and the World on the Brink.

Catch this and other recent events on the USSC YouTube channel!

BY THE NUMBERS

US voters worried about lack of compromise

USSC polling from September last year shows that Americans are overwhelmingly concerned about the lack of compromise between Republicans and Democrats, with 57 per cent saying they are "very concerned". Despite this pessimism, as USSC Director of Research Jared Mondschein writes in a new article, the successful reaching of a deal will, "remove one more obstacle to a better-functioning Washington, where political brinkmanship has continued to challenge an otherwise significant resurgence of US strength at home and leadership abroad."

THE WEEK IN TWEETS

#Deal