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    Pentagon review reportedly confirms Aukus submarines pact is safe

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    The Aukus submarine deal will proceed as planned after reportedly surviving the Pentagon’s review of the security pact.The Japan-based Nikkei Asia reported the Trump administration would retain the original timeline for the $368bn program, which includes the US selling three Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines to Australia from 2032.A US Department of Defense official would not confirm the report when contacted by Guardian Australia.“The Aukus initiative is still under review. We have no further Aukus updates to announce at this time,” the official said.Sign up: AU Breaking News emailThe prime minister, Anthony Albanese, acknowledged the review was still under way but was confident Aukus had the support of the US and the UK – the third partner in the pact.“We know that Aukus is in the interests of Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States,” Albanese said from Abu Dhabi, the last stop in an overseas trip that has included visits to the two Aukus allies.“It is about a partnership which is in the interest of all three nations which will make peace and security in our region so much stronger.”The review will be wrapped up before Albanese’s first scheduled face-to-face meeting with Donald Trump in the US on 20 October, Nikkei Asia reported.The future of Aukus has been under a cloud since the Pentagon launched an appraisal of the deal to determine if it aligned with Trump’s “America-first” agenda.The review has been conducted by the US under secretary of defense for policy, Elbridge Colby, who has previously expressed scepticism about any deal that could weaken the US navy.One of the most significant concerns over Aukus in the US is its capacity to spare any nuclear-powered submarines to sell to Australia as it struggles to build enough for its own needs.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThere has also been speculation the US has wanted clarity from Australia about how it respond in a potential US-China war over Taiwan.The federal government has already handed over $1.6bn to the US to support America’s shipbuilding capacity, with delivery of the first Virginia-class submarines to Australia in the early 2030s contingent on the US ramping up production.Australia’s government has never publicly expressed concern about the Pentagon review, arguing that it was standard procedure for a new administration to examine such an agreement, just as the UK did after a change of government.Earlier on Tuesday, Australia’s defence minister, Richard Marles, would not pre-empt the outcome of the Pentagon review but again expressed confidence that the deal was secure.“Aukus is happening – that’s not in question,” the acting prime minister told ABC Melbourne on Tuesday morning.“We’re very confident about the deal and we’ve been saying that all the way through, as we have also been saying that we welcome this review and will participate in it,” Marles said on Tuesday.“I’ve repeatedly said Aukus is going well; Aukus is happening at a pace; it is meeting all the milestones that it’s meant to be meeting and we are confident about this being the pathway for Australia acquiring its future submarine capability.”The US has also been pushing Australia to raise its overall defence spending to 3.5% of GDP, up from its current level of roughly 2%.Albanese has publicly resisted that pressure, insisting Australia will determine the nature and volume of its military spending.The federal government has made several new defence spending commitments while the review was under way, including $12bn to upgrade a Western Australian shipyard that will be used by the Aukus submarines.Albanese and Marles have confirmed the US navy will be able to use the Henderson defence precinct to dock and maintain its own ships. More

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      A US fascism expert’s warning to Australia: ‘You guys are probably next’

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      It’s a warm autumn evening and Jason Stanley is walking through downtown Toronto, his home of a fortnight, discussing his view that America is sliding into fascism, and its global and historical parallels.“But the far right is everywhere,” he tells the Guardian. “There is a chill of fear everywhere.”As if on cue, a man emerges walking in the opposite direction wearing a bright red T-shirt bearing the slogan “Canada First”, a nationalist political movement promoting the mass deportation of migrants.“You can feel the sense of threat,” Stanley says. “Fascism begins with immigrants and national minorities, and it moves quickly to political opponents.”The trend is a global one, Stanley argues; the United States is just further down the path than other places. It is descending more quickly – and, as the events of past days have shown, more violently.When we speak, it is a week since rightwing provocateur Charlie Kirk was murdered at a university campus in Utah. In the days since, Kirk’s death has been weaponised by some supporters to attack political opponents. In an address from the Oval Office, the US president, Donald Trump, specifically blamed “radical left political violence” for Kirk’s death.View image in fullscreenA website has been established to dox anyone the site’s creators believe has “celebrated” Kirk’s assassination, or made comments they deem insufficiently orthodox on his legacy. People’s names, phone numbers, home addresses and places of work have been listed online, accompanied by threats and acts of violence.A thread on X is celebrating people losing their jobs for making comments about Kirk’s death: the thread lists dozens of cases of journalists, teachers, even hamburger cooks and Secret Service agents, summarily fired.“And JD Vance, the vice president of the United States, has encouraged ordinary citizens to report people for their negative comments about Charlie Kirk,” Stanley says.“That was a real signal saying, ‘We’re going to police your speech at every level’ … It’s a terror campaign against ordinary citizens’ speech.”Stanley made global headlines in March this year when, as a Yale professor specialising in the study of fascism, he announced he was leaving the US because he believed it was at risk of becoming a “fascist dictatorship”.View image in fullscreenNow a fortnight into his exile, he says he is not surprised by the worsening political climate in the US, “but it’s always terrifying when it comes”.He does not regret the move, arguing he can “fight better” from outside the US.“Right now, walking through the streets of Toronto, I feel safe. Given that the president of the United States said we’re going to target the people who call us fascists and Nazis, I probably wouldn’t feel safe in the United States. A lot of people don’t feel safe in the United States.”There is historical resonance, too, in Stanley’s exile from a rising tide of fascism. His German Jewish forebears, including both his parents and grandmother (who rescued more than 400 Jews from concentration camps) fled a Nazi regime that had them marked for extermination.As we speak, Stanley is partway through writing an article on America’s current moment, drawing from his grandmother’s memoir of the Kristallnacht, a Nazi-coordinated, nationwide antisemitic riot in 1938.View image in fullscreenHe cites a quote (mis)attributed most often to Mark Twain: “History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes.”“I find myself asking: ‘Is this moment exactly Kristallnacht? Is it exactly the Reichstag fire?’ It’s like it’s these jigsaw puzzles … it’s a piece of one and a piece of another.”Stanley says he sees elements of Kristallnacht in the current conflagration after Kirk’s killing – the tumult exploited to expand the target of hostility from immigrants to political opponents.There is parallel too, he says, in the militarisation of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (Ice) – echoes of the Sturmabteilung, Ernst Röhm’s feared brownshirts.Much of the US’s political upheaval is idiosyncratic to its own history and political moment, but Australia, far distant, perhaps, with a different political culture, is not immune from a descent into fascism, Stanley insists.View image in fullscreenIn fact, he argues, Australia’s history makes it acutely vulnerable to precisely that.“You guys are probably next, right? The first domino to go.“You guys had a White Australia policy until the 1970s. That’s a terrible sign. And you attacked your universities ages ago.”Stanley cites, as well, Australia’s history of Indigenous displacement, its “performatively vicious” treatment of asylum seekers and the fierce “anti-woke” rhetoric that pierces public discourse.“A lot of what you’re seeing in the United States must seem familiar to you, even though you’ve come nowhere close to what we’ve seen in the last few months; but the ideological preconditions are certainly familiar to you.”The response to this might be that Australia has just re-elected a centre-left government with a commanding majority, rejecting anti-immigration rhetoric and division to such an extent that the leader of the opposition – who ran on these campaign platforms – didn’t just lose the election, but his own seat in parliament.Australia’s institutions, too, can be argued to be more robust: the public service and judiciary are far less politicised, voting is independently overseen and compulsory (driving parties towards a more moderate centrism), political violence is rare (and not fuelled by a firearm epidemic).But Stanley points out that fascism often comes cloaked in the language, the institutions and the processes of democracy: an insidiousness that lies in seeking to appear democratic.“Fascism conceals its anti-democratic nature by representing itself as the general will of the people, where ‘the people’ are the dominant racial or religious group.“It will say ‘the majority of people want this’, but that’s not the core idea of democracy. The core idea of democracy is not the tyranny of the majority. Democracy is a system based on freedom and equality.”Fascism is not a binary question either, nor one of an absolute threshold. Democracy and fascism are concepts that exist on a spectrum – a country can be more or less democratic, more or less fascist.“Yes, the United States is quite fascist now. It’s much less of a democracy. But, officially, at least, the United States is a democracy living under an emergency.“And this emergency allows the government to scoop people up into unmarked vans; perhaps you can stay indefinitely as a democracy under emergency?”View image in fullscreenA nation’s slide into fascism carries obvious consequence for the nation itself, but Stanley argues that when the country in question possesses the strongest military on Earth, is the global superpower and dominates international politics, it carries immense ramifications for the entire world.“It normalises and legitimates fascist movements everywhere,” Stanley argues. “So you’re going to see more of that dynamic, I suspect. All the remaining democratic countries are going to face surging anti-democratic, ultranationalist movements.”For Australia, the consequence of America’s descent is particularly acute.Since the end of the second world war, Australia has depended on the United States for its defence and security (including sheltering under its nuclear umbrella). The postwar “international rules-based order” (to use the parlance so loved by Australia’s foreign policy establishment) is, some argue, more accurately characterised as a US imperialist one.But Australia’s “great and powerful friend” (another particularly Australian foreign policy nomenclature) is no longer a reliable or consistent ally. Perhaps it never was, only now it is more nakedly so.Trump’s second administration has an exposed record of treating allies with worse than indifference – rather with contempt.Here, Stanley has perhaps his strongest note of caution. “Undoing fascism is very, very hard,” he says. Democracy is not some natural default.“We shouldn’t be surprised if, very soon, there are no more democracies, or very few. Democracy wasn’t a thing for a long time: we had monarchies and we had empires, and other forms of government, but we’re now in a situation where India, Russia, the United States and China are not democratic countries. So you have to ask: what will remain?” More

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      Australian politicians rally behind ABC journalist after clash with Donald Trump

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      Australia’s politicians have thrown their support behind an ABC journalist who was berated by Donald Trump after asking questions about the US president’s personal business dealings in Washington DC on Tuesday.Trump was answering questions on the White House lawn when he clashed with the ABC’s Americas editor, John Lyons, who said he was reporting for Four Corners.The exchange also appeared to include Trump’s first confirmation he would meet Anthony Albanese for their first face-to-face talks, as part of the PM’s visit to the UN general assembly next week.Lyons asked Trump how much wealthier he had become since returning to the Oval Office for his second term in January, noting that he was regarded as the wealthiest man to occupy the White House.Sign up: AU Breaking News email“I don’t know,” Trump said, explaining that his children were responsible for the family business, the Trump Organization.“But most of the deals that I’ve made were made before,” he said. “This is what I’ve done for a life. I’ve built buildings.”He pointed to the site of a grand ballroom planned for the White House.Lyons then asked whether it was appropriate for a US president to be conducting personal business while in office. “I’m really not, my kids are running the business,” Trump said before asking Lyons where he was from.Trump then accused Lyons of “hurting Australia” with the line of questioning. “In my opinion, you are hurting Australia very much right now. And they want to get along with me.“You know, your leader is coming over to see me very soon. I’m going to tell him about you. You set a very bad tone.“You can set a nicer tone,” Trump said, before telling Lyons: “Quiet.”Australia’s treasurer, Jim Chalmers, said Lyons was “just doing his job”.“I respect the ABC and I respect its independence and that extends to not second-guessing the questions asked legitimately by journalists,” he said.Lyons told the ABC his questions had been “perfectly normal,” describing them as fair, based on research and not asked in an abusive fashion.“If we’ve reached the point where asking those sort of questions prevents you from going into the White House, then I think it’s a very dark day,” he said. “I’ve still got to brace myself for what happens when he tells on me.”David Pocock, an independent senator, called for stronger defences of press freedom and mocked Trump.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“That doesn’t include the leader of another country thinking he can report journos to our PM for asking hard questions,” he posted on X.The Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young said Trump was trying to bully the media and Australia, and demanded Albanese stand up to criticism of Australian journalists.The Liberal senator Sarah Henderson called for the ABC to explain Lyons’ line of questioning, given the importance of trade, defence and national security matters to the Australia-US relationship. Bridget McKenzie, a Nationals frontbencher, defended Lyons.“There’s nothing wrong with journalists asking tough questions,” McKenzie said.Albanese has been seeking a meeting with Trump since the pair’s first talks were abruptly cancelled at the G7 summit in Canada in June. His schedule for the upcoming visit to New York is yet to be confirmed but Australian officials are trying to lock in a time.This week Albanese said he would see Trump at the meeting of world leaders in New York, as well at upcoming international summits.“We’ll see each other in New York,” the prime minister said. “He is hosting a reception on Tuesday night of next week. As well, we’ll see each other at various forums that are taking place between now and the end of the year. It’s summit season.”The meeting is expected to cover urgent issues in the bilateral relationship, including the Pentagon’s review of the Aukus nuclear submarines agreement and Trump’s demands that Australia spend more on defence.Trump and senior US officials have privately urged Australia to commit to spending as much as 3.5% of GDP on defence, a potential $30bn annual increase to the defence spend of about $59bn.The Aukus review – which is being led by the undersecretary of defence and Aukus sceptic, Elbridge Colby – is due to be completed around November. Australia has sent about $1.6bn to the US as part of the agreement. More

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      in US Politics

      Zohran Mamdani proudly embodies what I often feel alienated in: my own identity as an unapologetic Muslim and progressive | Sarah Malik

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      He eats biryani with his hands, references Bollywood, is an unapologetic Muslim and a progressive. He has also done something politically risky for a mainstream candidate: been vocal for Palestine. Zohran Mamdani proudly embodies what I have often felt alienated in: my own positioning as a Muslim progressive – one that has been treated as an oxymoron at best, or suspect at worst.From Australia, watching him feels like having my own personality projected large. I feel both an elation at his reception and win as Democratic candidate for mayor of New York as well as exhaustion at the double bind and suspicion brown Muslims inevitably experience in the public sphere. It’s echoed here in Australia with the treatment of the first hijab‑wearing senator Fatima Payman and deputy Greens leader Mehreen Faruqi.The outright dog-whistling is expected, but as Tressie McMillan Cottom in The New York Times points out, it is the elite liberal panic which is most interesting, with critics scrambling to find a dent in Mamdani’s affable armour by zooming in on everything from code-switching accents to college applications.Mamdani should be a darling of the left and liberal press. But what the veiled racism echoes, in a more subtle way, is the same anxiety I feel writ large and explicit in the rise of Trumpism and its echoes in Australia. Demographic changes are irrevocably transforming power in western democracies. As we, the sons and daughters of migrants from formerly colonised nations, seek power in media and politics and transform the societies we have grown up in, we are still seen as threatening, and not just to the far right. Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best readsWe are seen as having “broken the rules of multiculturalism” for disagreeing, and too often the very people championing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) feel more comfortable offering a (conditional) hand than power sharing and equality.This idea of being too Muslim for progressives or too progressive for Muslim communities and somehow an impostor in both those worlds, which bar entry because of what they perceive as parts of you that are incompatible, is an experience I’ve often felt. But Mamdani’s ability to sit proudly in that, a respect for his heritage, a confidence in his self, and a vision for the future, is a real decolonial practice. Because so many of us are also sitting in the overlap of political Venn diagrams and showing others it is possible too.We are the natural evolution of the third culture kid identity, and a product of a pluralistic, multicultural west. At home with pop culture and the internet, online and intercultural dating. We are comfortable with difference and tradition, loving our Naanis, and often existing in the pointy, working-class ends of society, where surveillance and systemic violence as well as lack of access to affordable housing, education, safety and justice have forced a political savvy and urgency to mobilise and challenge systems that impact us the most.For a long time, the price of entry to these worlds of power was to capitulate to the model of the grateful migrant. The insanity of our current times has perhaps created an opportunity, an appetite, for the kind of boldness, cultural confidence and agility Mamdani embodies. As the fear-mongering and Islamophobia reach saturation point and doesn’t seem to work, especially in the age of social media, a new appetite emerges – for unapologetic voices who refuse to be silenced.Just like Mamdani, who visited a Shia mosque in the Muslim holy month of Muharram and represented for Pride, stepping out of the pigeonholes and private spaces I’m allowed to exist in has made me feel more confident and mentally healthy and helped me find the right people in my life. It’s not for me to explain myself, but to exist fully and allow society to absorb and become something new with that.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a city like New York, which prides itself at least symbolically on venerating the immigrant, the rebel and the outsider, Mamdani has a natural home. I hope in my own way I can try to do this too in Sydney more consciously. I belong to the beach and also to Eid, in swimmers and shalwar kameez. I’m a feminist who prays, and happy to wave both Pride flag and Palestinian keffiyeh.I want this confidence to translate into corporate, arts and media environments, where having this multiplicity is not seen as incongruous but increasingly reflective of the world we live in.This kind of confidence in forcing change in the face of our current catastrophes, both political and ecological, by refusing to budge and by being intentionally and fully our uncensored selves feels like the start of an answer. We’re here. Get used to it. More

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      in US Politics

      Australia won’t receive Aukus nuclear submarines unless US doubles shipbuilding, admiral warns

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      The US cannot sell any Virginia-class nuclear submarines to Australia without doubling its production rate, because it is making too few for its own defence, the navy’s nominee for chief of operations has told Congress.There are “no magic beans” to boosting the US’s sclerotic shipbuilding capacity, Admiral Daryl Caudle said in frank evidence before a Senate committee.The US’s submarine fleet numbers are a quarter below their target, US government figures show, and the country is producing boats at just over half the rate it needs to service its own defence requirements.Testifying before the Senate Committee on Armed Services as part of his confirmation process to serve as the next chief of naval operations, Caudle lauded Royal Australian Navy sailors as “incredible submariners”, but said the US would not be able to sell them any boats – as committed under the Aukus pact – without a “100% improvement” on shipbuilding rates.The US Navy estimates it needs to be building Virginia-class submarines at a rate of 2.00 a year to meet its own defence requirements, and about 2.33 to have enough boats to sell any to Australia. It is currently building Virginia-class submarines at a rate of about 1.13 a year, senior admirals say.“Australia’s ability to conduct undersea warfare is not in question,” Caudle said, “but as you know the delivery pace is not what it needs to be to make good on the pillar one of the Aukus agreement which is currently under review by our defence department”.Caudle said efficiency gains or marginal improvements would not be sufficient to “make good on the actual pact that we made with the UK and Australia, which is … around 2.2 to 2.3 Virginia-class submarines per year”.“That is going to require a transformational improvement; not a 10% improvement, not a 20% improvement but a 100% improvement,” he said.Sign up: AU Breaking News emailUnder pillar one of the Aukus agreement, Australia is scheduled to buy between three and five Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines from the US, starting in 2032.The UK will build the first Aukus-class submarine for its navy by “the late 2030s”. The first Australian-built Aukus boat will be in the water “in the early 2040s”. Aukus is forecast to cost Australia up to $368bn over 30 years.US goodwill towards Australia, or the import of the US-alliance, would be irrelevant to any decision to sell submarines: Aukus legislation prohibits the US selling Australia any submarine if that would weaken US naval strength.Australia has already paid $1.6bn out of an expected total of $4.7bn (US$3bn) to help the US boost its flagging shipbuilding industry.But the US itself has been pouring money into its shipbuilding yards, without noticeable effect.A joint statement on “the state of nuclear shipbuilding” issued by three rear admirals in April noted that while Congress had committed an additional US$5.7bn to lift wages and shipyard productivity, “we have not observed the needed and expected ramp-up in Columbia-class and Virginia-class submarine production rates necessary”.Caudle, himself a career submariner, said the US would need “creativity, ingenuity, and some outsourcing improvements” if it were to meet its shipbuilding demands and produce 2.3 Virginia-class vessels a year.“There are no magic beans to that,” he told the Senate hearing. “There’s nothing that’s just going to make that happen. So the solution space has got to open up.”‘Why is there no plan B?’The former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, who first reported on Caudle’s testimony to the Senate, told the Guardian that there was “no shortage of goodwill towards Australia” from the US in relation to Aukus, but the realities of a shortfall of submarines meant there was a “very, very high” probability that Virginia-class submarines would never arrive under Australian control.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTurnbull said the language coming from US naval experts was “framing expectations realistically”, essentially saying that, without dramatic reform, the US could not sell any of its Virginia-class boats. With the Collins class nearing the end of their service lives, and the Aukus submarine design and build facing delays in the UK, Australia could be left without any submarine capability for a decade, potentially two, Turnbull argued.“The risk of us not getting any Virginia-class submarines is – objectively – very, very high. The real question is why is the government not acknowledging that … and why is there no plan B? What are they doing to acquire alternative capabilities in the event of the Virginias not arriving?”Turnbull – who, as prime minister, had signed the diesel-electric submarine deal with French giant Naval that was unilaterally abandoned in favour of the Aukus agreement in 2021 – argued the Australian government, parliament and media had failed to properly interrogate the Aukus deal.“When you compare the candour and the detail of the disclosure that the US Congress gets from the Department of the Navy, and the fluff we get here, it’s a disgrace. Our parliament has the most at stake, but is the least curious, and the least informed.On Friday, the defence minister, Richard Marles, told reporters in Sydney “work on Aukus continues apace”.“We continue to work very closely … with the United States in progressing the optimal pathway to Australia acquiring a nuclear-powered submarine capability,” he said.“In respect of the production and maintenance schedule in the United States, we continue to make our financial contributions to that industrial base.”Marles cited the $1.6bn paid to the US to boost its shipbuilding industry already this year, with further payments to come, and said that 120 Australian tradespeople were currently working on sustaining Virginia-class submarines in Pearl Harbor.“All of that work continues and we are really confident that the production rates will be raised in America, which is very much part of the ambition of Aukus.”The Guardian put a series of questions to Marles’s office about Caudle’s Senate testimony. More

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      Scott Morrison tells US Australia risks going to sleep on China threat after diplomatic ‘charm and flattery’

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      The Chinese Communist party hopes Western democracies “go to sleep on the threat” it poses to the international order, former prime minister Scott Morrison has told a congressional committee in the US.In a forthright appearance before the hawkish US House of Representatives select committee on the strategic competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist party, Morrison said China had changed diplomatic tack after he lost the 2022 election to Anthony Albanese.“This included abandoning their economic and diplomatic bullying and coercion for more inductive engagement, laced with charm and flattery,” Morrison said. “That said, the PRC still continues to engage in intimidatory behaviour by their military against Australia when it suits them without remorse.”Morrison said while China’s diplomatic tactics had changed, its objectives were unaltered: to isolate US influence in the Indo-Pacific and weaken efforts at countering Beijing’s “potential security threat”.He said Australia should boost its defence spending to the 3.5% of GDP demanded of it by the US, arguing “the world has changed” and that Chinese leaders sought to “recast the world order to accommodate their illiberal objectives”.Morrison accused the current Labor government of scrimping on defence spending in order to pay for the Aukus submarine deal, which will cost $358bn to the 2050s.Morrison later told reporters Australian defence spending parsimony – in particular the “displacement” of funds to prioritise Aukus – had been raised by the US in its review of the agreement.Sign up: AU Breaking News email“It wasn’t [meant to be] ‘Aukus instead’, it was ‘Aukus as well’,” he said. “And ‘Aukus as well’ was at least going to add another half a percent of GDP, at least.”Morrison said Australia should raise its defence spending to 3% of GDP by 2030 and 3.5% by 2035. The government spends a little over 2% of GDP on defence currently, with forecasts to lift that to 2.3% by 2033. To prioritise Aukus, significant cuts have reportedly been made to defence programs, training budgets and to senior defence ranks.Australia has already paid $1.6bn to the US as part of the Aukus agreement. However, the future of the massive nuclear submarine deal remains uncertain as the Pentagon undertakes a review to ensure it does not weaken US naval capacity or diminish America’s force posture to contain China.Morrison, whose leadership between 2018 and 2022 endured a low in relations with Beijing, told the committee it was vital for western nations to resist Chinese attempts to interfere in politics and curb free speech.Citing polling of Australians by the Lowy Institute, the former prime minister told US lawmakers that “for the first time in quite a number of years there is a greater value on the economic partnership with China than concerns about the security threat”.“That is an objective of the CCP [Chinese communist party], that western democracies go to sleep on the threat,” Morrison said.“You need to build the internal resilience, and that means an appreciation of the potential threat. And that is somewhat in jeopardy in Australia.”Morrison said the liberal world order faced a “rising threat from authoritarian states who, not content with absolute control over their own populations to preserve their regimes, also seek hegemonic control over their own regions and to recast the world order to accommodate their illiberal objectives”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The Chinese Communist party government of the People’s Republic of China is such a regime.”And Morrison said Western countries were “kidding themselves” if they thought dialogue would change Beijing’s pursuit of their objectives.“A free and open Indo-Pacific – that is a threat and a challenge to regime security in China,” he said.“Discussion is fine, engagement is good – it’s better than the alternative. But if we think that is going to produce change in the mindset of Beijing then we’re frankly kidding ourselves.”Appearing alongside Morrison before the committee hearing was Rahm Emanuel, formerly president Barack Obama’s chief of staff, mayor of Chicago and US ambassador to Japan. Emanuel is widely considered to be a leading Democratic contender contemplating a run for the White House in 2028.He argued the US – in a significant shift from the Trump administration’s “America First” doctrine – should lead a strong “anti-coercion coalition” along with allies like Australia to counter Beijing’s growing influence.He cited China’s trade sanctions on beef, wine and barley, imposed after Australia led calls for an inquiry into the origins of Covid-19, as examples of economic coercion, China’s most “pernicious and persistent tool”.“Australia is the best kind of blueprint of what you want to replicate worldwide. They did it on their own,” Emanuel said. “And China realised they couldn’t isolate Australia.” More

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      Cables and notes reveal UK view on Howard’s personality, Australia’s part in Kyoto ‘awkward squad’ and an aborted cricket match

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      Plus ça change. At the turn of the millennium, Australia was in the throes of “one of its periodic bouts of angst over its place in the Asia-Pacific and the wider world”. It was doubting the reliability of its ally the US, wrestling with the issue of Indigenous reconciliation, and attracting criticism for its lack of commitment to addressing the climate crisis.And it was trying to organise a game of cricket against the English.Just released papers from Britain’s National Archives shed light on intergovernmental correspondence between the governments of Australia and the UK before a prime ministerial visit to London in 2000 to mark Australia Week, and the centenary of the Australian constitution.Correspondence between the governments of the conservative prime minister John Howard and the UK Labour leader Tony Blair reveal a suite of problems still being grappled with in Australia a quarter of a century later.“Personality notes” written for Blair describe Howard as a leader who had “started well” as prime minister, particularly on gun control after the Port Arthur massacre, but who “appeared to lose his way” during his first term. Importantly for the UK, it saw Howard as an “instinctive monarchist … well-disposed towards Britain”. The sketch says Howard was a “strong family man”, significantly influenced by his wife, Janette, that he was a “fanatical follower” of cricket, and a “great admirer” of Sir Winston Churchill and Mahatma Gandhi.In a scene-setting cable dated June 2000 prepared for Blair, the UK high commissioner noted: “Australia is going through one of its periodic bouts of angst over its place in the Asia-Pacific and the wider world”.It said Australia took “enormous national pride” in its intervention in Timor-Leste the year before (despite significant damage to its relationship with Indonesia), saying that the Australian-led peacekeeping mission “raised Australia’s stock in Asia”.

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      However, “critics argue that it simply hardened a view widely held in Asia that Australia is ambivalent, even antagonist, towards Asia”.Timor-Leste, the cable noted, had also strained Canberra’s relations with Washington DC.“The [US’s] perceived reluctance to assist Australia is seen as an indication that the US could not be relied on automatically in circumstances that are of little interest to it.“More broadly, some are doubting that the US will retain interest in the alliance unless Australia increases its commitment, in terms of defence spending.“The litmus test is Taiwan: having to choose between the US and China is the nightmare scenario on Australia’s strategic and diplomatic horizon. Few doubt Australia would choose the US but the calculations are becoming less clearcut.”In 2025, the US defense secretary has insisted Australia lift defence spending to 3.5% of its GDP, while Trump administration officials have demanded assurances from Australia it would support the US in any conflict over Taiwan.On climate, Blair was briefed that although Australia had signed the Kyoto protocol to cut emissions, it had not ratified the treaty.The British government suspected Howard would not raise the matter during the two leaders’ meeting.“If Howard doesn’t mention it, you should raise climate change,” Blair’s brief states. “The Australians are in the awkward squad on Kyoto (alongside eg the Russians and the US): you should tell Howard how important we think the issues are, and encourage Australia to do more.”In the quarter-century since, Australian governments have been consistently criticised internationally for failing to adequately address the climate crisis. A federal court judge last week found previous Australian governments had “paid scant, if any, regard to the best available science” in setting emissions reductions targets.Other files reveal concern within Blair’s government about an Indigenous delegation that visited the UK in late 1999.Leading the delegation was Patrick Dodson, a Yawuru elder and later senator, often referred to as the “father of reconciliation”. During the same trip, he met Queen Elizabeth II as part of a larger effort to foster reconciliation.However, a memo written by Blair’s foreign affairs adviser, John Sawers, reflects angst within the prime minister’s office about a proposed meeting with the delegation, referring to an apparent intervention by the then Australian high commissioner, Philip Flood.“The Australians are pretty wound up about the idea of you seeing the Aborigines at all,” Sawers wrote to Blair. “Their high commissioner rang me to press you not to see them: they were troublemakers – it would be like [the then Australian prime minister] John Howard seeing people from Northern Ireland who were trying to stir up problems for the UK.”The memo suggested: “Can’t we plead diary problems?” The word “yes” is written in answer to this, in handwriting that resembles Blair’s.A quarter-century later, Dodson was a key advocate for an Indigenous voice to parliament, put to Australians in a referendum in 2023. The voice proposal was ultimately defeated.Also within the National Archives files is a prescient document from the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to the UK High Commission in Canberra. It reflects on a visit from a “rising star in the Australian Labor party and a useful contact for the FCO”.The “rising star” had reflected on Australia’s place in its region (and was summarised by an FCO official): “There were two main problems to Australia being part of Asia: a large slice of the region did not accept them, probably because of a common experience of European occupation – and Australia were too white; and Australians saw themselves as Australians rather than Asian, or indeed Europeans or Americans.”The visitor’s name was Kevin Rudd, the man who in 2007 would replace Howard as the next prime minister of Australia.As the 2000 Australia Week visit from prime minister Howard approached, a flurry of correspondence between the two governments sought to put the finishing touches to the trip. The files contain flight details, hotel bookings, and to-the-minute travel arrangements. There are discussions of trumpet fanfares and processional routes.One idea ultimately discarded was a cricket match proposed by Howard, to be played between Australian and English XIs at a ground near Chequers, the British prime ministerial country house.“The teams could, perhaps, consist of one or two current Test players, a recently retired great cricketer or two, with the balance being young players of promise.”Blair’s private secretary, Philip Barton, wrote in a memo to the UK prime minister: “I suspect the last thing you will want to do is go to a cricket match on the Saturday. But if we just say no, this would no doubt come out and you would look unsporting.”Barton proposed getting former Tory prime minister John Major, an avowed cricket fan, to raise an XI on Blair’s behalf, “but it may not be enough to stop the prime minister having to go to at least the start of the match”. A third option was to “turn it into a charity match”.The match did not go ahead. More

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      Scott Morrison to testify before US House panel on China

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      The former Australian prime minister Scott Morrison will testify at a US House panel hearing next week about countering China’s “economic coercion against democracies,” the committee said on Friday.Rahm Emanuel, the former US ambassador to Japan, will also testify before the House select committee on China.Relations with China, already rocky after Australia banned Huawei from its 5G broadband network in 2018, cooled further in 2020 after the Morrison government called for an independent investigation into the origins of the Covid-19 virus.China responded by imposing tariffs on Australian commodities, including wine and barley and limited imports of Australian beef, coal and grapes, moves described by the United States as “economic coercion”.Morrison was defeated in a bid for reelection in 2022. His successor, Anthony Albanese, visited China this week, underscoring a warming of ties.

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      The prime minister spent this week touring the country with stops in Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu amid a period of geopolitical instability and escalating trade hostilities between the US and its trading partners.Albanese also sniped back at the opposition’s criticism of his “indulgent” six-day visit, pointing out the former Coalition government failed to hold a single phone call with the major trading partner for years.Reuters reported this week that Canberra is close to an agreement with Beijing that would allow Australian suppliers to ship five trial canola cargoes to China, sources familiar with the matter said, a move towards ending a years-long freeze in the trade. China imposed 100% tariffs on Canadian canola meal and oil this year amid strained diplomatic ties.Emanuel, who told a Chicago news outlet last month he is considering a run for president in 2028, has been a harsh critic of China, saying last year Beijing constantly uses coercion and pressures other countries, including Japan and the Philippines.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Economic coercion by China is their most persistent and pernicious tool in their toolbox,” Emanuel said in a separate speech in 2023.The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately comment. More

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      Who is Nick Adams? From a Sydney council to Trump’s plum pick, the Hooters fan could be next US ambassador to Malaysia

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      “Nicholas Adams, of Florida, to be ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of the United States of America to Malaysia,” the White House announced this week.There were those who had never heard of Australian-born Nick Adams. And then there were those who thought Nick Adams was just a satirical social media account, a troll who delighted in anti-wokery and Trump adoration.But he’s real, and he’s in line to pick up a plum diplomatic posting.Who is Nick Adams? Adams was, once upon a time, Australia’s youngest ever deputy mayor, with a penchant for talking about pigeons and dog poo. Twenty years after his stint at Ashfield council, the University of Sydney graduate is a Trump-loving, beer-swilling, steak-eating, self-described “alpha male”.He became a US citizen in 2021.And now, the US president, Donald Trump, has nominated him as the country’s ambassador to Malaysia – a conservative, Islamic country.Adams thanked his parents for giving him every opportunity. “I only wish my father were alive to see this,” he wrote on X, adding that “delusional self-belief and irrational optimism, along with endless hard work, make anything possible”.One of his most-quoted tweets includes the memorable lines:“I go to Hooters. I eat rare steaks. I lift extremely heavy weights. I read the Bible every night. I am pursued by copious amounts of women.”Why has Trump picked him for US ambassador to Malaysia?An ambassador is usually a lifelong diplomat or a former politician. They exist to grease the wheels of international relations, to represent their country in a foreign land, and to keep their country informed about what’s going on in that land.Adams is an “incredible patriot”, Trump wrote on social media, and “a bestselling author, speaker, and commentator”. He has “made it his life’s mission to extol the Virtues of American Greatness”.What is an ‘alpha male’?In the animal world the alpha male is the dominant one in a group. The term has been dragged into the murk of the manosphere.In Adams’ case, he posted a video on X in which he emerges, damply, from a sauna to declare himself an alpha male and to tell “all the beautiful ladies” whose birthday wishes he has made come true that they are “welcome”. He called for his birthday to be made a public holiday and for all alpha males to celebrate it, order a larger steak and smoke a “girthier cigar”.He also wrote a book called Alpha Kings (with a foreword by one Donald J Trump), which “makes the case for traditional masculinity” and promises to “show the young men of America what it means to be a true alpha male in today’s hyper-feminized world”.What are some of his Australian career highlights? “I’m not an expert,” Adams said in 2005. “I’m certainly not a pest controller … What I would like to see is no pigeons in our area.” Eradicating the rats of the sky would save the citizens of Ashfield from bird flu, he thought.In 2008, he proposed DNA testing dog poo left in public so their owners can be tracked down and fined.In 2009, the Channel Ten journalist Brett Mason asked him about council meetings he had missed. In return, Adams verbally abused Mason, which led to the Liberal party threatening to suspend him. He said he quit anyway.And what does he do now? He runs the Foundation for Liberty and American Greatness, a non-profit “dedicated to promoting and providing high-quality civics education that informs students and families about the greatness of America and the power of the American Dream”.Of about US$1.5m it brings in revenue, a jot over US$500,000 goes to salaries and other employee expenses – Adams being one of three employees, but the only one who draws a salary, according to the latest details lodged. About US$185,000 goes on travel and a bit over US$400,000 goes on social media campaigns.It’s a far cry from being a councillor, where you’d be doing well to take home A$50,000 – and maybe a bit more during a stint as deputy mayor.He also founded 1A Warriors, a “non-profit organization dedicated to securing, protecting, and preserving our beautiful and exceptional First Amendment” that is practically nonexistent online.And he’s written a bunch of books on top of Alpha Kings, including Green Card Warrior about his struggles to become a US resident.What happens next? He has to be confirmed by the Senate first, and if that goes through, he will replace Edgard Kagan as the US ambassador to Malaysia.The Malaysian media was relatively quiet on Friday about the appointment, but there are sure to be mutterings and raised eyebrows behind closed doors. Once Adams takes up residence in Kuala Lumpur, he will be hard-pressed to find a Hooters-like establishment, but he’ll be OK for steaks and beer.Then he will have to tread a delicate and sophisticated line as the US and Malaysia negotiate trade tariffs, joust over their respective relationships with China and deal with an increasingly unstable geopolitical climate. More