A discussion of the most important news and issues in international affairs through a uniquely Australian lens. Hosted by Darren Lim, in memory of Allan Gyngell.
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Three weeks into the US-Israeli war on Iran, Darren looks to international relations theory — particularly the bargaining and war termination frameworks associated with James Fearon — to explain why this conflict is so resistant to ending. He organises his thinking around two conditions for war termination: the existence of a mutually acceptable deal, and a credible mechanism for enforcing it. Neither condition is met, and the war is actively making both harder to achieve.
Both sides are pursuing cost imposition, but with incompatible visions of what peace looks like. The US is destroying Iran’s military capacity; Iran is weaponising the Strait of Hormuz and attacking Gulf energy infrastructure. Darren examines why Trump’s coercive credibility has been undermined by the South Pars episode, why Iran’s energy war may be hardening rather than softening its neighbours’ resolve, and what Oman’s foreign minister’s extraordinary public intervention reveals about Gulf anger at both Iran and the United States.
The episode offers two speculative theories for how the war might end — one centring on Trump’s psychology and capacity for narrative reinvention, the other on whether China could help solve the credible commitment problem by offering Iran something the US cannot. It closes with a reflection on what it means for analysts, governments, and markets when the most consequential variable in the system is a single unpredictable leader. A postscript addresses Trump’s 48-hour ultimatum to Iran, issued hours before recording, threatening to destroy Iranian power plants if the Strait of Hormuz is not reopened.
Australia in the World is written, hosted, and produced by Darren Lim, with research and editing by Hannah Nelson and theme music composed by Rory Stenning.
Two weeks into the US-Israeli war on Iran, Darren uses Robert Pape's cost-benefit framework to assess where things stand. The tactical achievements are real — two-thirds of Iran's missile launchers destroyed, its navy sunk, its leadership decapitated — but the probability of converting those gains into durable strategic outcomes is low, and the costs are mounting fast.
On the military side, interceptor stocks are being depleted at unsustainable rates, and missile defence assets may be being redeployed from South Korea in a move that achieves what Chinese coercion could not. Economically, Iran's effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz has triggered what may be the largest oil supply disruption in history, with cascading effects through gas, fertiliser, and food markets arriving at the worst possible moment in the agricultural calendar. Strategically, Russia is profiting, China is learning, Gulf allies are furious, and the non-proliferation incentive structure has been inverted.
Darren assesses the range of plausible outcomes — from a painful but temporary shock to a nuclear-armed Iran within eighteen months — and examines the factors that will determine how the war ends, including US-Israel divergence, Trump's contradictory signals, and Iran's determination to ensure this is the last time it is attacked. He closes with an observation about weaponised interdependence: that a sanctioned middle power with cheap drones and a narrow strait has exposed the gap between America's capacity to destroy and its capacity to control.
Australia in the World is written, hosted, and produced by Darren Lim, with research and editing this episode by Hannah Nelson and theme music composed by Rory Stenning.
In (yet another) emergency episode, Darren offers eight initial thoughts on the US and Israeli strikes on Iran and the killing of Ayatollah Khamenei. Inside Iran, the question is whether airpower and decapitation can deliver regime change when the historical record says they never have — though this case may be an outlier given how weakened the regime already was. Regionally, Iran's “drizzle” retaliation strategy is targeting Gulf states and depleting expensive US interceptors, while the munitions being consumed come directly at the expense of what the US would need in a Taiwan contingency. Globally, no country or institution has any agency to shape what happens next — and China may be the quiet winner simply by being predictable while Washington lurches between crises.
On international order, Darren explores how US deterrence is simultaneously stronger on willingness but weaker on material capacity, and why the Venezuela-Greenland-Iran sequence is normalising a new and dangerous operating model for the hegemon. On Australia, he thinks the government made the right call. He finishes by asking what we're learning about Trump's emerging “anti-Powell Doctrine”, what the erosion of rules means for world politics, and what constraints — if any — exist on this new kind of American power.
Australia in the World is written, hosted, and produced by Darren Lim, with research and editing this episode by Hannah Nelson and theme music composed by Rory Stenning.
The US Supreme Court has struck down the Trump administration’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs. This is a big deal!
In this episode, Darren argues that the decision is not primarily a story about tariffs — important as they are — but about power. The Court has drawn a clear line around the President’s ability to declare an “emergency” and unilaterally impose across-the-board tariffs. While other tariff authorities remain in place, the removal of IEEPA as a rapid escalation tool represents a concrete institutional constraint on executive authority.
What does that mean for Trump’s negotiating leverage? How does it change the international landscape — particularly ahead of a planned visit to Beijing? Why does this matter for Australia’s vision of regional order?
Darren cannot avoid the bad news: heightened uncertainty, likely litigation, and the longer-term drift toward protectionism that this ruling will not reverse. But ultimately, this episode asks a bigger question: what actually constrains presidential power in the United States? And does this moment represent a small but meaningful crack in the aura of inevitability surrounding the current administration?
Australia in the World is written, hosted, and produced by Darren Lim, with research and editing this episode by Hannah Nelson and theme music composed by Rory Stenning.
Ep. 176: Davos, Greenland and Carney’s speech
Episode 176
Sunday, January 25, 2026 • Duration 40:07
A week after his emergency episode on President Trump’s threats to acquire Greenland, Darren returns with a rapid debrief of the Davos meetings—and what it means for the world (and for Australia). The immediate crisis appears paused: Trump has shifted from “ownership” to a negotiating “framework” focused on Arctic security, basing access, and keeping China and Russia out. Still, Darren thinks the sovereignty question is not resolved, and these events are a marker of deeper institutional decay.
Darren then unpacks Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s much-discussed Davos speech: a blunt warning that the world is experiencing a rupture of the international order, not a smooth transition. He shares Carney’s sense of urgency, but challenges parts of the diagnosis—and explains why those analytical distinctions matter for policy choices.
He assesses Trump’s proposed “Board of Peace” as a signal of how personalist, status-driven institutions can emerge when rules weaken. Darren also reflects on power—arguing that Trump’s performative displays of raw strength risk the Athenian problem of overreach and backlash, while for middle powers real leverage often lies in domestic resilience: the capacity to mobilise politically and absorb pain long enough to hold the line. The episode finishes once again with an Australia angle, given Canberra has benefited from luck as much as strategy. What are Australia’s red lines—and when would it speak up for partners before silence becomes precedent?
Australia in the World is written, hosted, and produced by Darren Lim, with research and editing by Hannah Nelson and theme music composed by Rory Stenning.
Less than a year into Trump’s second term, his renewed push to acquire Greenland has escalated into a full-blown alliance crisis—complete with tariff threats against Denmark and other European backers, and a scramble for NATO unity. In (already) his second “emergency” episode of 2026 recorded solo on 18 January, Darren starts off by observing this episode doesn’t neatly fit neat orthodox models of international relations—it looks less like balancing or normal alliance bargaining and more like coercion and hierarchy politics, forcing Europe to weigh retaliation, endurance, and face-saving off-ramps. Given that, what kind of model(s) are useful?
Australia in the World is written, hosted, and produced by Darren Lim, with research and editing this episode by Hannah Nelson and theme music composed by Rory Stenning.
Relevant links
Stacie Goddard and Abraham Newman. 2025. “Further Back to the Future: Neo-Royalism, the Trump Administration, and the Emerging International System.” International Organization 79(S1): S12–25. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818325101057
In an episode recorded just before Christmas, Darren interviews Janet Egan, Senior Fellow and Deputy Director of the Technology and National Security Program at CNAS, about AI policy and its implications for Australia. Janet (who started her career in the Australian government) frames the current AI landscape as a two-horse race between the US and China, given vastly asymmetric investment levels. She introduces “compute policy” as a tractable governance lever, explaining that the physical infrastructure required for AI—specialised chips, data centres, and energy—offers regulatable chokepoints unlike easily transferable data or algorithms. The US strategy focuses on scale and removing barriers to advancement, while China, constrained by export controls on advanced semiconductors, pursues a diffusion-oriented approach emphasising open-source models and practical applications.
Turning to Australia's recently released National AI Plan, Janet offers a mixed assessment. She praises the establishment of an AI Safety Institute and the acknowledgment that data centres matter, while noting the plan avoided overly restrictive regulation that could stifle investment. However, she argues the plan misses a significant opportunity: positioning Australia as a compute hub for frontier AI training. Australia’s renewable energy potential, available land, and skilled trades workforce make it attractive for data centre buildout, but copyright restrictions on training data remain a key barrier.
Janet argues that unlike critical minerals, AI does not lend itself to hedging between Washington and Beijing given its inherently dual-use nature and emerging evidence of bias in Chinese models. She highlights the UAE and UK as instructive cases—the former for ambitious state-led mobilisation, the latter for sophisticated thinking about AI sovereignty structured around supply resilience, value capture, and strategic influence. For Australia, she argues, meaningful participation in the AI supply chain would provide strategic leverage and a seat at the table where consequential decisions are being made.
Australia in the World is written, hosted, and produced by Darren Lim, with research and editing this episode by Hannah Nelson and theme music composed by Rory Stenning.
Relevant links
Janet Egan (bio):
Ep. 173: The implications of Venezuela
Episode 173
Tuesday, January 6, 2026 • Duration 41:31
To begin 2026, the Trump administration has once again served up a news story of immense implications, with a military intervention and seizure of Venezuela's President Maduro. In this episode, Darren talks through his initial reactions to this developing story.
Australia in the World is written, hosted, and produced by Darren Lim, with research and editing this episode by Hannah Nelson and theme music composed by Rory Stenning.
Ep. 172: The "Four Rs" of Australian foreign policy
Episode 172
Thursday, November 27, 2025 • Duration 01:11:35
Darren is joined by returning guest Richard Maude to unpack what Australian foreign policy looks like in late 2025. The conversation centres on Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s recent AIIA speech, which Darren argues—mostly with Richard’s agreement—marks a clear evolution in Australia’s foreign policy doctrine. The traditional three pillars — alliance, region, and rules — have been replaced by a new framework, the "Four Rs": Region, Relationships, Rules, and Resilience. The discussion explores what this shift reveals about how Canberra sees the world today, and what it tells us about Australia’s strategic priorities as the international environment becomes more volatile.
Together, they assess how well the government is executing each of the “Four Rs” in practice — from strengthening ties across Southeast Asia and the Pacific, to managing the alliance with an unpredictable Washington, stabilising relations with Beijing, and linking foreign policy more overtly with domestic resilience. They ask whether Australia is being suitably ambitious in shaping the regional security environment, or whether it risks becoming over-focused on Southeast Asia at the expense of alliance leadership and broader coordination with partners like Japan, Korea and Europe.
Darren and Richard also grapple with Australia–China relations. Is Canberra being too cautious in public language — or sensibly risk-averse? Darren frames the question as whether the greater risk currently lies in under-reacting to the threat posed by China, or in over-reacting. And how should Australia manage economic dependence on China given the limits of diversification and the “iron laws” of trade?
The fourth R is resilience, and they discuss whether tying domestic policy to foreign policy is a strength or a political trap. They consider how resilience language enables governments to justify hard economic choices, while also warning against overselling national security policy as economic strategy.
Finally, Darren and Richard look ahead to 2026. Richard nominates three global questions to watch closely: the trajectory of US–China relations, the fate of Ukraine, and whether anything remains of the liberal international project. Darren adds his own focal points: Australia’s critical minerals strategy, Europe’s struggle with Chinese economic leverage, and the political durability of Trump’s dominance ahead of the US midterms.
Ep. 171: Trump-Xi, leverage & US foreign policy
Episode 171
Tuesday, November 11, 2025 • Duration 48:41
Zack Cooper of the American Enterprise Institute returns to the podcast to discuss the recent Trump-Xi meeting in Seoul. Who got the better deal, and is the year-long “truce” a stable one? As both sides look to use this window to de-risk, who will have more leverage over the medium term? More broadly, Trump’s Asia trip was a very important data point in helping us all understand what US foreign policy is now, how it is made, and what direction it’s going in. The answers are not satisfying and very uncertain, but it’s the most important question in international affairs today. There is no-one better than Zack to help one build a model of US foreign policy in the Trump era.
Australia in the World is written, hosted, and produced by Darren Lim, with research and editing this episode by Hannah Nelson and theme music composed by Rory Stenning.
A wide-ranging episode on doctrine, diplomacy and domestic politics — and what it all means for Australia navigating a world that feels, as Richard once put it, "completely stuffed".
Australia in the World is written, hosted, and produced by Darren Lim, with research and editing this episode by Hannah Nelson and theme music composed by Rory Stenning.
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