USSC Live

Recent years have seen the unravelling of some of the landmark arms control treaties, compounded with growing strategic competition between major powers and increases in military spending. This inevitably places arms control high on the agenda, including in the framework of NATO 2030. In 2019, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said “arms control is in NATO’s DNA”. This talk discussed NATO’s...

The United States Studies Centre hosted a virtual address and in-conversation event with Senator the Hon Penny Wong to launch the United States Studies Centre report “Correcting the course: How the Biden administration should compete for influence in the Indo-Pacific.” Senator Wong delivered her remarks on “Australia's contribution to American engagement in the Indo-Pacific” in the wake of this mo...

The next Australia-United States Ministerial Consultation (AUSMIN) will take place later this month amidst sharpening strategic competition with China and rising concerns about the direction of Biden’s Indo-Pacific strategy. This meeting between foreign and defence ministers is a critical opportunity for the Australia-US alliance to embark on more ambitious efforts to uphold a stable, open and pro...

This year marks 20 years since the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the United States, the precursor to US-led military operations in Afghanistan, joined by Australia. For the two decades, counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency in theatres far from both the US and Australian mainlands was the dominant, operational focus of the Australia-US alliance. Now both Australia and the United States l...

As Australia and the United States commemorate the 70th anniversary of their alliance, the alliance agenda is burgeoning, matching the pace and breath of geostrategic change in the Indo-Pacific, accompanied by constant innovation in ways nation states project power and influence. China’s economic coercion of Australia is a telling case in point, figuring prominently in recent remarks from US senio...

September 1, 2021 marks 70 years since the ANZUS Treaty was signed in San Francisco in 1951, the first major international treaty Australia entered independent of the British government. Today, the alliance between Australia and the United States — and the deep, long-standing channels of trust and cooperation it has fostered — is being tasked with more issues and with more urgency than at any poin...

As a refugee from South Vietnam when he was four years old Professor Viet Thanh Nguyen’s work explores the convergence between politics and literature. The Sympathizer, his thriller about a communist double-agent won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2016. The United States Studies Centre was honoured to have Professor Nguyen deliver the first-ever American Cultures Lecture. The lecture by Aerol A...

As it celebrates its 70th anniversary, the Australia-US alliance continues to evolve in response to a changing regional context in the Indo-Pacific. How do Australia’s neighbours in Southeast Asia understand the purpose of the alliance in 2021? Is the alliance seen as limiting Australia’s autonomy, or enhancing its influence? Is the alliance seen as distracting Australia from engaging its neighbou...

2020 will be remembered as one of the most tumultuous years in American history. COVID-19 tested every country, every government and every political leader in the world. But with the pandemic arriving as Donald Trump launched his campaign for re-election, the world watched aghast as the United States lost more than 500,000 of its citizens to COVID. From hydroxychloroquine and bleach, to making hos...

The United States Studies Centre and Perth USAsia Centre host a monthly web series reviewing the latest in US politics and policy and what this means for Australia. This month our guest was Ambassador Jane Hardy, who has joined the United States Studies Centre as a Visiting Senior Fellow from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. She most recently served as Consul-General in Hono...

The United States Studies Centre and Perth USAsia Centre host a monthly web series reviewing the latest in US politics and policy and what this means for Australia. This month hosts Simon Jackman and Gordon Flake were joined by guests Dr Victoria A. Farrar-Myers, a dedicated civic leader, an award-winning educator and a distinguished scholar; and Professor Valerie Hudson, the George H.W. Bush Chai...

Cybersecurity, defence innovation and climate change in the military are all on the agenda for NATO’s Brussels Summit on 14 June. But with NATO placing unprecedented attention on the Indo-Pacific, what are the summit’s implications for Australia? What will NATO's defence innovations mean for the Indo-Pacific? How can Australia work with NATO to strengthen cyber defences? USSC hosted a webinar even...

No campaign promise, rumour mill or day one executive order is as revelatory of a US president’s strategic intentions than the men and women they trust to guide them. A president’s Cabinet and key policy advisors have the extraordinary power of controlling the day-to-day decisions of the federal government. In essence, ‘personnel is policy’ and, as such, the key players of the Biden administration...

In the midst of the biggest pandemic in a century, Sky News Host Annelise Nielsen headed to the epicentre – the United States. Bringing a cameraman she ventured into the heart of the 2020 election to talk directly to citizens to understand the people behind the political polarisation. Why were Americans so much more divided over mask mandates than Australians? How many people truly believe the 202...

Geoeconomic threats to American primacy are prompting the Biden administration to explicitly connect domestic recovery to external strength, with reviews of supply chains and strategic, government-led investments to secure US technological supremacy. Given increasing threats to the rules-based order, it is imperative that Australia and the US work together to reinforce a secure Indo-Pacific econom...

The United States Studies Centre and Perth USAsia Centre host a monthly web series reviewing the latest in US politics and policy and what this means for Australia. This month hosts Simon Jackman and Gordon Flake were joined by Elise Hu, the host of TED Talks Daily, a correspondent for VICE News Tonight and a host-at large at NPR, where she spent nearly a decade as a reporter. She has reported sto...

President Biden’s recent Leaders Summit on Climate returned the United States to the centre of global climate change action. On the road to the Glasgow climate conference later this year, the United States is ramping up its efforts urging world leaders to adopt more ambitious emissions reductions targets. With Australia’s climate policies labelled “insufficient” by a Biden administration official,...

NATO and Australia relations date back over a decade with Australia being one of the most important contributors to NATO’s missions and operations. Today, NATO and Australia face a new set of global security challenges — from systemic competition, authoritarian powers and non-state actors — that challenge the rules-based order. These occur through cyber threats and the malicious use of new technol...

As Washington Bureau Chief for the ABC, Zoe Daniel had a front-row seat to the ascension and decline of Donald Trump. Seeing how he masterfully harnessed fear and anger, coupled with a reality-TV honed entertainment instinct, she bore witness to the dawn of a new era in US politics. With a new steady, staid and significantly unassuming presidential administration, who is the anomaly – Trump or Bid...

It is now well accepted in Canberra and Washington that the Australia-US alliance needs to be operationalised in new ways to meet Indo-Pacific strategic challenges. Against a backdrop of intensifying Chinese assertiveness and the United States’ declining capacity to uphold a favourable balance of power by itself, our shared interests in deterrence and defence require greater coordination, alignmen...

The United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney and the Perth USAsia Centre at The University of Western Australia hosted a conference for the launch of their joint publication, “State of the United States: An evolving alliance agenda”. The conference closed with a session featuring The Honourable Arthur Sinodinos AO, Australia’s Ambassador to the US (joining via Zoom from the United...

The United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney and the Perth USAsia Centre at The University of Western Australia hosted a conference for the launch of their joint publication, “State of the United States: An evolving alliance agenda”. The topic for session three of the conference was "Transforming the alliance for collective defence challenges." Speakers included Greg Moriarty, Secr...

The United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney and the Perth USAsia Centre at The University of Western Australia hosted a conference for the launch of their joint publication, “State of the United States: An evolving alliance agenda”. The topic for session two of the conference was "Managing geoeconomics, contestation and coercion". Speakers included James Carouso, Managing Director...

The United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney and the Perth USAsia Centre at The University of Western Australia hosted a conference for the launch of their joint publication, “State of the United States: An evolving alliance agenda”. The topic for session one of the conference was "The Australia-United States bilateral economic relationship in a global context." Speakers included J...

The United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney and the Perth USAsia Centre at The University of Western Australia hosted a conference for the launch of their joint publication, “State of the United States: An evolving alliance agenda”. The opening session of the conference featured Ambassador Atul Keshap, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of East Asian and...