USSC Live

The Indo-Pacific has rapidly emerged as the world’s most strategically consequential region in the Asian century. But the regional order is straining under China’s assertive use of coercive statecraft and doubts about the United States’ capacity and willingness to uphold a favourable balance of power. These dynamics are deeply troubling for Australia’s strategic outlook and for the security and pr...

Charlie Cook is one of the most authoritative analysts of US elections - an exceptionally trusted and respected voice on the American electorate for nearly four decades. Charlie discussed his overview of the race for the White House and where it stands today - trends, key states and voter demographics, and strengths and weaknesses of President Trump and Vice President Biden - and also the state of...

Ensuring that elections are free and fair is far from a settled matter in the United States, with courts frequently asked to settle disputes about virtually every element of election administration. In 2020, President Trump and his supporters contend that vote by mail is rife with fraud (in an election cycle where COVID will help drive demand for mail balloting to record levels) and that an electi...

BBC New York Correspondent Nick Bryant has studied US elections for decades and saw the election of President Trump in 2016 as inevitable, rather than a fluke. Growing executive overreach, shifting economic and cultural power, and ubiquitous distrust of media and government paved the way for a disruptor with promises of “greatness.” As a Brit in the United States, his observations translate the Am...

In 2016, then-candidate Donald Trump made immigration a key campaign platform, warning of Mexican “rapists” and criminals coming to the United States. He pledged that a wall on the US-Mexico border would be erected and Mexico would pay for it. Four years later, the US and Mexican presidents have publicly praised each other while a naturalisation ceremony of immigrants to the United States was feat...

The Perth USAsia Centre and United States Studies Centre host a monthly web series in which our CEOs review the latest in US politics with a focus on the upcoming US election and US-Indo-Pacific relations. This month's guest was Mark Textor, Co-Founder and Non-Executive Director of C|T Group and the political strategist behind John Howard, Boris Johnson and Tony Abbott. Mr Textor joined USSC CEO S...

Ambassador John Bolton served as National Security Advisor to President Trump for 453 days. One of America’s most experienced international relations advisors, Bolton has served every Republican president since Reagan. In his time with the Trump administration, he dealt with chemical attacks in Syria, G7 showdowns and the Kim Jong Un negotiations. As an unabashed national security hawk — and given...

Molly Ball is TIME magazine's national political correspondent and a political analyst for CNN. Her latest book, Pelosi , has been hailed by publishers from The Washington Post to O Magazine. She appears regularly on PBS's Washington Week , CBS's Face the Nation , ABC's This Week , and other television and radio programs. Ball is the winner of numerous awards for her coverage of American politics,...

Thomas L Friedman is an internationally renowned author, reporter, and columnist; recipient of three Pulitzer Prizes; and author of seven best-selling books: From Beirut to Jerusalem; The Lexus and the Olive Tree; Longitudes and Attitudes; The World Is Flat; Hot, Flat, and Crowded; That Used to Be Us, which he co-wrote with Michael Mandelbaum and Thank you For Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Th...

Courtney Kennedy is director of survey research at Pew Research Center. In this role, she serves as the chief survey methodologist for the Center, providing guidance on all of its research and leading its methodology work. Prior to joining Pew Research Center, Kennedy served as vice president of the advanced methods group at Abt SRBI. Her work has been published in Public Opinion Quarterly, the Jo...

James Carouso has been at the forefront of economic diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific for much of his career. Prior to joining BGA, he was the senior foreign policy advisor to the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii. Earlier, Jim served as deputy chief of mission and chargé d’ affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Canberra, Australia. He also worked as the chargé d’affaires at the U.S. Mission to the Associ...

The Perth USAsia Centre and United States Studies Centre host a monthly web series in which our CEOs review the latest in US politics with a focus on the upcoming US election and US-Indo-Pacific relations. This month's special guest was Evelyn Farkas who was appointed by President Obama to be Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, where she was responsible for US policy toward Russia, Ukraine, and...

Anna Greenberg has over 15 years of experience polling in the political, non-profit and academic sectors. She joined GQR in 2001, after teaching public opinion and survey research methodology at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. She was the lead pollster in many successful campaigns including for Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, Governor Tom Wolf, Governor Ned Lamont and C...

Last month, Indian and Chinese troops were involved in the first clash involving the loss of life on both sides since 1975 in Eastern Ladakh. This latest clash between the two most populous nations in the world was preceded by Chinese troops gathering in multiple areas along the disputed border, the erection of new structures near the line of actual control, and ever more expansive Chinese territo...

Dr Mira Rapp-Hooper is the Stephen A. Schwarzman senior fellow for Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. She is also a senior fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center. Dr Rapp-Hooper’s academic writings have appeared in Political Science Quarterly, Security Studies, and Survival. Her policy writings have appeared in The National Interest, Foreign Affairs, and The Washington Q...

To discuss these issues, please join us for a webinar event featuring many of the officials who created the landmark agreement, including:  The Hon. John Howard OM AC – Prime Minister of Australia 1996 - 2007 The Hon. Arthur Sinodinos AO – current Australian Ambassador to the United States The Hon. Joe Hockey –  President and Founding Partner of Bondi Partners; former Australian Ambassador to the...

Ashley Townshend is Director of Foreign Policy and Defence at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, where he works on strategic affairs with a focus on the Indo-Pacific region. Ashley is also founding convenor and co-chair of the US-Australia Indo-Pacific Deterrence Dialogue and a lecturer in the Centre’s postgraduate program. A frequent contributor to the Australian and in...

Richard Maude joined Asia Society Australia in January 2020 as the inaugural Executive Director, Policy, and Senior Fellow, Asia Society Policy Institute — the first senior executive role in the Institute outside the United States. Richard Maude most recently served as Deputy Secretary, Indo-Pacific Group, in the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade with a portfolio covering Australi...

Dr Jennifer L Lawless is the Commonwealth Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia. She is the author or co-author of six books, including Women on the Run: Gender, Media, and Political Campaigns in a Polarized Era (with Danny Hayes) and It Still Takes a Candidate: Why Women Don’t Run for Office (with Richard L Fox). She is an editor of the American Journal of Political Science, and hol...

Christian Brose is currently Chief Strategy Officer of Anduril Industries, a technology start-up that develops national defence capabilities, and Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He served as Staff Director of the Senate Armed Services Committee (2015-2018), where he was the youngest person to hold the position in the committee’s history. Before that, he served as S...

Mia Love served as the US Representative for Utah's 4th district from 2015-2019. She was the first black female Republican elected to Congress. At the start of the 2015 Congress, she was appointed to the House Financial Services Committee, which oversees the Treasury and the Federal Reserve. She also joined the Congressional Black Caucus after taking her seat.

Dr David Kilcullen is Professor of International and Political Studies at University of New South Wales, Canberra and also serves as Professor of Practice in global security at Arizona State University. Kilcullen is a former soldier and diplomat, and a scholar of guerrilla warfare, terrorism, urbanisation and the future of conflict, who served 25 years for the Australian and United States governme...

Jonathan Swan is an Australian journalist and the National Political Reporter at Axios. He covers the White House and Republican Leaders on Capitol Hill. For the 2016 campaign, he followed Republican candidates and donors and had an insider’s view of the Trump campaign. He was first to break several major news stories including that the United States would pull out from the Paris Climate Treaty, t...

William Greenwalt is a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council within the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security where he focuses on barriers to international industrial cooperation. Bill served in senior positions at the Pentagon, in Congress, and in the defence industry.  As Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Industrial Policy, he advised senior Pentagon officials on matters relating t...

Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster , U.S. Army (Ret.) is the inaugural holder of the Japan Chair at the Hudson Institute, Washington DC. He is also the Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. Lt. Gen. McMaster was the 26th assistant to the president for national security affairs. He served as a commissioned officer in the United States Army for thirty-four...