Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast Foreign Exchange

Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective.

“But there's another layer on top of this which is the Treaty of Rarotonga—the South Pacific Free Zone Treaty. And that treaty, to which Australia is a signatory, says that nuclear weapons shall not be stationed on the territory of any signatory of that treaty. And so, we get around that by talking about a rotational arrangement. 

“And as Mike Pezzullo, former colleague of yours, Deputy Secretary in the Defence Department, has helpfully pointed out in The Australian in recent weeks, come 2032 or thereabouts, the United States is going to be once again putting nuclear weapons on board its fast attack submarines.

“And some of those fast attack submarines are going to be stationed, or I should say rotating, through Submarine Rotational Force West at HMAS Stirling.

“So that raises a thorny problem for Australia: if those nuclear armed vessels are going to be rotated through HMAS Stirling. Does that put us in breach of the treaty?"

Compelling conversation, engaging debate and insightful perspectives. This series provides expert insights into Australia’s future in a changing world.

Foreign Exchange. Brought to you by Australian Foreign Affairs.

Subscribe to Australian Foreign Affairs: https://www.australianforeignaffairs.com/subscribe

Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective.

“And great powers do use armed force against countries that obstruct their vision of regional, or for that matter, global order. And, you know, it's worth remembering that that's why the United States has a great power went to war with Vietnam and Iraq and Iraq again, and Iran and Afghanistan. 

“So, you know, Australia, thinking about its strategic future in Asia, can't afford to overlook the possibility that if Australia does effectively and sort of systematically oppose China's vision of regional order, then we can expect to get some pushback, and we can’t rule out the possibility that pushback includes military pushback.”

Compelling conversation, engaging debate and insightful perspectives. This series provides expert insights into Australia’s future in a changing world.

Foreign Exchange. Brought to you by Australian Foreign Affairs.

“Now, the interesting thing about this national security strategy, it sort of declares the end of great power rivalry by saying, actually, America is content to live in a world with other great powers, and accept that other great powers will have their own spheres of influence."The language is ambiguous. It's very unclear what it hopes to achieve, what the administration hopes to achieve strategically, in Asia, in relation to China. But it certainly seems to me to go a long way towards accepting that China is going to be a much more significant player in Asia than it used to be."

"There was that great quip from Henry Kissinger in the 1970s: if I want to talk to Europe, who do I call? "Now, of course, the answer to that question at the time and for long afterwards was Washington. If you want to talk to Europe, called Washington. In a strategic sense, Washington was the leader."What the United States is doing under Donald Trump is actually forcing that question to the forefront again, because if the Americans really are threatening to pull back, as they realistically might under Donald Trump, then it revives that question. "And you could argue that the European statecraft in this period, even under the the worst, most egregious provocations from Donald Trump and his team, that kind of genuflecting to Washington has been an attempt, an extended attempt to continue to defer that question."Every second Thursday, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective.Compelling conversation, engaging debate and insightful perspectives. This series provides expert insights into Australia’s future in a changing world.

"I really don't think the United States today has a functioning national government."This week, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White break down what Trump and Albanese's visit to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meeting in Kuala Lumpur tells us about the current state of power in Asia. Then, they talk about the new Netflix series A House of Dynamite, how realistic it is, and what it tell us about the current state of nuclear proliferation. Finally, they provide some reading recommendations, on both foreign policy and some personal favourites.For more, check out the latest issue of Australian Foreign Affairs, The Bomb: Will Asia go nuclear?

Every second Thursday, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective.Compelling conversation, engaging debate and insightful perspectives. This series provides expert insights into Australia’s future in a changing world."You just have to look at the map. It's embedded in our strategic geography that PNG is always going to be very important to Australia's security. And that's an idea which goes back to the very dawn of Australian thinking about strategy and defense in the 19th century. Yes, it's a significant step to take. But I think in the end there might be less to it than meets the eye."

Every second Thursday, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective. Compelling conversation, engaging debate and insightful perspectives. This series provides expert insights into Australia’s future in a changing world.“I this is this is for real a very genuine weakening of the credibility of US extended nuclear deterrence, towards North Korea in particular, as North Korea develops an intercontinental ballistic missile capability that can hit the United States, that increases the cost and risk to America of a nuclear strike on North Korea exponentially and therefore reduces the credibility of its extended nuclear deterrence posture.”

Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective.

“I don't mind that framing, but my retort would be that the easiest and probably the cheapest and lowest risk way to ensure that China never becomes globally dominant is to ensure that China's own region remains perpetually contested.

After all, what was the sort of geostrategic basis of American dominance? It's that it had a totally untroubled and uncontested Western hemisphere.”

Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective.“A word shall mean whatever I want them to mean, as Humpty Dumpty said. “But I do think it's helpful for clarity to reserve the word alliance for a relationship which carries clear mutual commitments to military support in the event of conflict. And for quite a long time now, going back to a late 90s even, you've seen the evolution of the Japan-Australia relationship in the direction in which would that would appear to be a logical end point.“And obviously, the rise of China and growing doubts about the United States are what's behind that.”

Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective.

“It's worth bearing in mind that although the US and its partners have been bitterly opposed to Iran’s nuclear capability for decades, it was always clear that there was no military solution to that problem until Donald Trump decided, well, and Benjamin Netanyahu decided to see if there was.

And what we discovered—again—is that there isn't. Most of the time, it's very difficult to achieve decisive strategic results through military operations. And even the ones that look like a success don't necessarily look like a success in the longer term.”

Compelling conversation, engaging debate and insightful perspectives. This series provides expert insights into Australia’s future in a changing world.

Foreign Exchange. Brought to you by Australian Foreign Affairs.

Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective.

“I don't think we should also underestimate our capacity to overplay our hands here. 

“There is a bit of a bullying tone to some of this stuff. I mean —leaving aside the fact that article two of the Ocean of Peace treaty declares our shared values, including the party's commitment to free and democratic institutions — that’s a bit rich when you’re signing the treaty with Sitiveni Rabuka— you know, leader of two coups.

“But also there's language about about not permitting, and this is not just in the in the Fiji agreement, but in all of the agreements in different ways, language about not allowing other countries to establish bases and so on.

“You know, and it's a bit asymmetrical. In the Vanuatu treaty, for example, it says is not allowed to have foreign bases, but we are.

“The sort of cuteness of some of this. I think we need to be very careful that we don't overplay our hand.”

Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective.

“You have to be very clear where the capability trends are going. 

“Intentions can change quickly, but it's worth making the point that the broader geostrategic framework within which intentions evolve can change more slowly. 

“When we made the foundation of Australian defense policy throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s, even into the 2000, it was that: we didn't have to care much about China's military capabilities because we could not conceive that it would have an intention to use force against us. “Now, what's the big thing that's changed on the intention side is that in the decades ahead, we're expecting China to be much less constrained by American power and therefore to have opportunities, if it chooses, to use force against Australia free of interference from the United States. Which it wouldn't have had, which we didn't conceive it having decades ago.”

“There’s an element of intention that changes slowly, too.

Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective.“The life type extension of the Collins—keeping as many Collins as possible in service and operationally viable for as long as possible—is really critical to the whole AUKUS[...]for two reasons.”“The first is because we won't have a submarine capability otherwise“But the second is we won't have enough submarines at sea to provide the training opportunities for enough submariners to ensure that we actually have the personnel required to sustain a viable submarine capability when the US boats arrive.“And I've long been of the view that the first hurdle at which we're likely to fall in getting to where the AUKUS plan was meant to take us was that we wouldn't succeed in upgrading, prolonging the life of the Collins sufficiently to keep enough submarines in water, to keep enough trainees going to sea, to give ourselves the personnel required to operate the AUKUS boats when they arrive. And that’s become more likely”

Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective.“This has been by far the biggest ballistic missile we've ever seen. I don't think we've ever seen anything like this number of ballistic missiles used in anger…”“Now, part of the story of the war so far is that a very high proportion of the Iranian missiles have been shot down… it demonstrates the importance of more sophisticated ballistic missiles that can evade defenses and which is really what the Hypersonics story is about.“But I bet you'll find one of the things that's happening to the Chinese is studying what's been happening, to maximize their chance of getting their ballistic missiles under the targets and avoid the defenses.”

“I want to bring this home to our part of the world, our region. And your point about this being essentially performative tends to cut against one theory that's become popular among a certain element of the commentariat, which is that this is all about China.“That at the base of all this and the Venezuela operation, as well, and American statecraft, if we can call it that, under Donald Trump, is somehow all explainable by a long term competition with China and that the United States is involved in this very far sighted strategy of trying to isolate China and to deny it allies.“I'd like to say that's rubbish.”

Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective.“I want to quote from the speech itself…“The speech begins with a familiar critique. Anti-free trade, anti-mass migration…anti-welfare state, a critique of deindustrialisation in the West. And then Rubio says:“‘ Four, five centuries before the end of the Second World War, the West had been expanding its missionaries, its pilgrims, its soldiers, its explorers pouring out from its shores to cross oceans, settle new continents, build vast empires extending out across the globe.“‘But in 1945, for the first time since the age of Columbus, it was contracting. The Great Western empires had entered into terminal decline. Against that backdrop, then, as now, many came to believe that the West's age of dominance had come to an end and that our future was destined to be a saint and feeble echo of our past.“‘But together, our predecessors recognized that decline was a choice, and it was a choice they refused to make. This is what we did together once before. And this is what President Trump and the United States want to do again now, together with you.”

“We have seen in the development of the PLA over the last few decades, as fast an evolution of a military as the world has ever seen.” “You’d have to compare it with what Japan achieved after the Meiji Restoration or what the United States achieved in the late 19th and early 20th century, to have any sort of comparison.”“Certainly bigger than the navy that the Soviets built during the Cold War period.”Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective.Compelling conversation, engaging debate and insightful perspectives. This series provides expert insights into Australia’s future in a changing world.Foreign Exchange. Brought to you by Australian Foreign Affairs.

“We all suffer from availability bias. What's the thing that's moving the world? Well, what's the thing that I can recall quickest now? “Well, it's Trump. Because he's always there. He's always there. But there are bigger forces at play.“So, on Venezuela, for instance, Trump did this very singular thing. But on the other hand, the United States has been intervening in central and south America for generations. That's what the Monroe Doctrine is. It's a 19th century idea. And over the course of, let's say, since the Second World War, there's been Chile, Nicaragua, Haiti, Panama, Grenada, Cuba…”Every fortnight, Sam Roggeveen and Hugh White discuss major developments in international affairs affecting Australia and the region, from an Australian perspective.Compelling conversation, engaging debate and insightful perspectives. This series provides expert insights into Australia’s future in a changing world.Foreign Exchange. Brought to you by Australian Foreign Affairs.