Transcript

Is there a strategic through line or an explanatory logic behind the Trump Administration’s actions in Venezuela, Greenland and Iran?

What is the current state of the Transatlantic Alliance?

What are the implications of cross-theatre linkages for the idea that Europe and the Indo-Pacific are separate security arenas?

With rising tensions in the Middle East, what factors will most strongly influence whether tensions between the US and Iran escalate into a broader regional conflict?

Are there any potentially optimistic geopolitical signals that deserve amplification?

 

In this episode, Justin Burke speaks with Euan Graham and Gorana Grgić to discuss the through lines on the surprising geopolitical events that ushered in 2026, imagining a world without the US at its center.

 

Gorana

Under Trump 2.0, it's not a story of without America, it's a story of against America.

 

Euan Graham

This is a regressive trend on the part of the United States. If it's thinking in hemispheric terms for itself and trying to kind of impose a backyard view of security upon its allies, it's only helping our adversaries.

 

National Security Podcast  

You're listening to the National Security Podcast, the show that brings you expert analysis, insights and opinion on the national security challenges facing Australia and the Indo-Pacific, produced by the ANU National Security College. 

Justin Burke

Welcome to the National Security Podcast. I'm Justin Burke, a Senior Policy Advisor here at the ANU National Security College. As is customary, we acknowledge the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people, the traditional custodians of the lands on which we are recording today's podcast. I'm joined today by Dr Euan Graham and Dr Gorana Grgić to discuss the fast-evolving geopolitical landscape that has been unfolding in 2026.

Gorana is the head of the global security team at the Centre for Security Studies at Swiss University ETH Zurich, as well as holding senior affiliations in Australia and the US. Her research interests include US and EU foreign policy, NATO, and the nexus between Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific security. Welcome, Gorana.

Gorana

Thank you so much for having me.

Justin Burke

Euan Graham is a newly minted expert associate at the National Security College specialising in Indo-Pacific defence and security after decades of living in the region and contributing to policy debates from senior roles at ASPE, IISS Singapore, the Lowey Institute and the British Foreign Office. Welcome Euan.

Euan Graham

Hello Justin.

Justin Burke

It has been a relentless start to the year for geopolitical watches. I think it's fair to say a little bit like trying to drink water from a fire hose. As early as January 3, we saw the US military strike on Venezuela, which saw the capture of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife taken to New York for trial, but leaving the existing regime in place. Dramatic stuff. That was followed by President Trump, President Trump's turn towards Greenland, which is an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark, which he nonetheless insisted was crucial for US national security and therefore had to be controlled by the US. And this insistence carried on for many, weeks. And the matter seems to now have slipped into some grey zone with some unspecified framework deal with the Europeans.

Though nonetheless, lots of frayed and fractured European relationships left in its wake. And at the time of recording, we are looking at a looming attack of the US on Iran. It seems likely, it must be said, with an extraordinary array of military assets deployed to the Middle East. The president's comments in the State of the Union just today, identifying Iran's alleged resumption of nuclear interest and it comes after the regime brutally suppressed a wave of protests which took place over December and January and after a US bombing campaign on nuclear facilities in the middle of last year. So it has been a lot, it's been somewhat exhausting. We may be entitled to think that January will start off slowly and we'll get a chance to take a breath but it wasn't to be.

And so we've chosen these topics for our podcast today so we can hopefully ask our expert panel to bring some clarity and some sense to it all. So in that spirit, I would like to ask the first question. This is indeed the Trump administration driving this agenda in each of the cases I've described. Euan, if I could ask you first, do you see a strategic through line or an explanatory logic to what we've been seeing?

Euan Graham

I think the closest we get to that, Justin, is a clear hemispheric interest on the part of the second Trump administration. So you can literally connect a line from Venezuela through Panama Canal to Greenland, which chimes with the declaratory policy of the Trump administration's defense policy, which made no bones about the fact that there was gonna be a primary focus on the Western hemisphere. So whether you like it or not, they've made good on that promise. And have also shown a marked difference from Trump one in terms of the willingness to either threaten or use military force. Trump surprised a lot of people in his first term by his disinclination to get militarily involved. I think some of that has clearly kind of changed and what the president, what seems to like is quick in and out style, a kind of smash and grab approach to the use of military force, so long as it has the effect or at least the appearance of being decisive. And we can group the first Iran, strike with the B-2 aircraft against the nuclear facilities in that. But I think from our Australian-centric perspective, we're looking over there and I guess that's also an object of concern that the Indo-Pacific is no longer designated the priority theatre, whether it ever was in practice is another question. But it hasn't disappeared either and maybe we can come back to that later on.

Justin Burke

Yes, indeed. And, Gorana, I guess, in the same sense as someone perched on the, you know, the top of the Swiss mountains there looking at the European context as you are, President Trump promised that he would be ending the conflict, the Russian invasion of Ukraine in a day. One might have expected a particular focus from him or a sustained focus from him on this European war. And yet, you know, we're seeing this range of challenges, you know, as Euan points out, in the Western Hemisphere. Is it a surprise, a disappointment to Europeans?

Gorana

There's a lot there. So I'll just try to maybe come back to the first question just around what we see or what we make out of Trump 2.0. And I would definitely agree with you on that we are seeing some breaks from the first administration in terms of just how swift some of the changes have been harsh in sort of direction that a lot of allies and partners weren't necessarily expecting, but that also there are a lot of continuities there as well. And I think that whenever we talk about Trump, we always have to make this sort of decision whether we want to treat him as really an exception, someone who really doesn't fit the kind of continuity of the past 46 or 45 presidents if you wish, or if you do want to place him in some sort of historical context. And here I would say that in terms of treating him really as a sort of sui generis case, there are things that he has done that completely depart, I would say, not just his couple predecessors, but really the kind of context of what we think of as modern American presidency. And really then in terms of how we unpack, you know, whether it's reprioritization of particular theatres where it's very clear, yes, Western Hemisphere is front and centre, but also the elevation of homeland security in this context, which used to be part of kind of national security discussions, but these days it's much more prominent and sort of the use of some of the parts of the even foreign policy apparatus to be repurposed for homeland security purposes is something that's concerning. But also I would say in that kind of context of what he has done is the reorientation from the kind of even, you know, like the rhetoric of the belief in certain values and norms that used to bind together United States with its allies and partners towards something that looks way more transactional. Some Europeans here are saying not just transactional, but actually extortionist and quite coercive in a lot of ways. But again, it kind of falls under that bracket of transactionalism.

And finally, I would say that one thing that we can't just go past is just the attack that has been happening on US institutions at large and the sort of unravelling of, again, foreign policy bureaucracy by essentially hollowing out particular departments or sort of functions or whether it's talking about State Department or completely doing away with USAID and other things that, again, contribute to this sort of sense that these days US foreign policy, because of some of the changes in the tools that it operates with, is going to be a lot more (a) militaristic, (b) a lot more transactional, a lot more ruled by the personal considerations and we see that really in the personal politics in the way you mentioned now the talks going on in Geneva, this sort of performance both around Ukraine but also in Iran, the fact that we have what David Sanger and Anton Troianovski out of New York Times have called diplomacy without diplomats, right? Things that are truly very much departing from some of the norms, even if we consider that the United States hasn't always, you know, like, walked the talk and that we've had of course, over the past 80 years, lot of departures from the things that the United States was professing to be supporting, but this time around, it does seem that it is much harsher and that there is this sort of rupture, you know, being the sort of buzzword of the past couple of months.

Justin Burke

And so sticking with you for a moment, Gorana, and thinking about the anniversary that we've just passed of the Ukraine war, that Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine, having its fourth birthday, entering its fifth year, the tensions between Europe and the US about how that conflict should end on what terms, on what basis, how such a thing should be negotiated, the tensions over defense spending, the tensions over burden sharing, sometimes in some cases, tensions over intelligence sharing. How bad is the state of the transatlantic alliance which you spend a great portion of your time looking at?

Gorana

So I hesitate to veer into the kind of cliche statement which always is ascribed to whoever studies transatlantic relations would say the history of transatlantic relations is actually a history of crisis. Not my statement, this was Stanley Hoffman, a famous Cold War historian of transatlanticism, but it's true, you know, there's always been something that has been sort of testing the bonds across the Atlantic, basically since the inception, if you want, again, of the kind of modern understanding of transatlantic relations. And some of that has to do with the sort of building asymmetries, whether it's in the context of NATO or the kind of economic competition that arose as basically after World War II, the Western European economy started recovering or then like more recently, some of the differences in terms of stances towards subscription to multilateralism and similar. However, again, this time it feels markedly different because, sure, structurally Europeans have known for quite some time, right, that the United States has been looking elsewhere, right, that Europe Europe is not necessarily a priority theatre, despite the fact that we've had a bunch of crises that have focused attention back to the European continent and the story of Ukraine doesn't actually start four years ago, right? It starts in end of 2013, early 2014. So illegal annexation of Crimea, the war in Donbas and so on. So there were these sort of moments when US was sort of drawn back in, but overall the kind of structural calculus has always been in the back of the minds of Europeans that they will have to do things without America at some point, right? And this has been a conversation that has been long time coming from the Wales Summit of 2014, pledges that, you know, Europeans will pull more sort of weight and be better in burden sharing. But under Trump 2.0, it's not a story of without America, it's a story of against America. And I think this is the sort of, again, the break that a lot of, I would say, Western Europeans in particular weren't necessarily expecting. But I think it also comes at the knees of some of those who have naturally been more transatlanticists and that are part of this sort of new Europe, if you wish, because of their long-standing suspicions towards some of the other continental European powers. And what I mean by this is really against America in the context of all sort of three pillars that make transatlantic relations. When it comes to security matters, this is the story that now we see a divergence like no time before in their stance towards Russia. I think that Donald Trump over the past year in sort of what you alluded to in the kind of push to end the war in Ukraine in one day has not missed an opportunity to see Russia's side more than Ukrainian side in these negotiations and kind of has been more understanding than a lot of Europeans and leaders in European capitals, including the European Union would have wanted.

I think that we are also seeing now the kind of change in rhetoric from the Ukrainian side as well. President Zelensky last week sort of saying out in the open, he had an interview with Axios where he basically calls on President Trump to sort of see the bigger picture as to who was attacked. And then the other two pillars in terms of economic relations in the context of transatlanticism, basically again, this sort of coercive transactional sort of look at what makes what is essentially the world's biggest sort of trading vector and how the Trump administration has been treating Europeans in that sense. And there's been a lot of concessions. But, you know, again, when we put into the mix also questions like Greenland and when we have this sort of nexus now of economic and security issues that now European Union was for the first time mulling, actually imposing its most potent economic instrument, which was originally designed for China, right, to potentially use against the Trump administration to kind of send a strong signal as to what they think that President Trump should be doing regarding Greenland and that is to back off. That's again a break. And then finally, and I think that this is something that we can't understate, is the sort of divergence in values that again we I don't want to paint too broad of a brush strokes because there are issues within the European Union as well and there are a couple of elections coming that will take place in some of the largest European economies that might actually tip the balance more towards this sort of nativist, Christian nationalist, protectionist, etc kind of option, but you know if you look at the national security strategy language, if you look at Rubio's speech in both Munich and then his tour of Slovakia and Hungary, considered the unfunded terribles of European Union, then you see that there is a clear break and that these days again those who do believe still in something called liberal democracy or at least some sort of consolidated democracy are worried about the efforts that the Trump administration is making to actually undermine this and to support what they have been doing, supporting various leaders of parties that are trying to undermine those very values that the European Union was built on and that goes from France to Italy to Germany all the way to Eastern Europe.

Justin Burke

And it's fascinating to pick up on that question of values because it's probably an unsurprising reflection. But at the college here, we've seen great many European visitors over the course of the last year really talking about shared values and talking about being like-minded. And I think it's prompted a lot of Europeans to look at Australia with fresh eyes and for us to look at them indeed and try to think about ways we can actually cooperate rather than say, well, we're friendly, but there's a lot of distance and there's probably not a lot we can do. People seem to be inclined to try harder. And I wanted to pick up on the IP4, the Indo-Pacific 4 initiative of NATO, which is Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan, which are the Indo-Pacific democratic allies of NATO and this attempt to group them up. So you know, I can sense in one way Europe has plenty to do, you've got a war to worry about. In another sense, there's this effort to reach out to like-mindeds elsewhere and try to save multilateralism, speak up for values. And in another sense, I think, there's been reporting that the US is telling NATO to get back to basics. So where do you see the midpoint at the moment, or where's the set point?

Gorana

Yes, the famous Elbridge Colby speech at the defence ministerial at NATO just a couple of weeks ago. So the United States at the moment, at least those who are in the business of policy planning, are leaning more towards the kind of ruthless prioritisation rather than the belief that is former Sec of Defence Austin said that the United States can walk and chew gum at the same time. So I would look at it through that context of, know, Elridge Colby said we need NATO 3.0, which is going to be much more akin to NATO 1.0, which was the NATO that we knew all throughout Cold War and that basically NATO 2.0 was a NATO that lost its way because it added these extra core tasks of crisis management and prevention and cooperative security. And these are the baskets actually of everything from non-article five interventions, things that had to do essentially with stabilizing, you know, places from the Balkans over to Iraq, and then cooperative security, which was actually NATO's push to get a lot of partners under its umbrella so that at this point it actually has more partners around the world, but also in its neighbourhood than it has allies, right?

I actually lean more towards the sort of why can't we do both or is it a taco commercial, right? Like, por que no los dos? In a way, but it is not because, you know, like I happen to have connections to both of these theaters. I think that it is imperative that countries that still believe in some sort of subscription to kind of rules of the road, right? That there is some commonality of purpose and that actually this sort of idea that NATO has diluted its sort of focus and sort of sharpness by thinking about what China presents to the North Atlantic Alliance or how is it that actually you could work more with some of the countries that are most capable from this region and IP4, I would say, are in that mix is not dilution, it's actually adding to the joint capabilities because the calculus is clear and I think, you know, anyone who does a little bit of sort of strategic kind of analysis and thinking can see that Russia and China are cooperating, right? That Russia and North Korea are cooperating and as a result of that cooperation, we see actual changes either on the battlefield or just in terms of strategic kind of security environment in Northeast Asia, for instance, right? So the fact that Kim is sending up from like 10,000 soldiers to fight around Kursk region is in turn giving him access to greater missile capabilities. And this is actually tipping the balance on the Korean peninsula. So actually does have to do with things that NATO is concerned, but then also what Korea is concerned. And independent of that, I would say a lot of the countries within the IP4 basket are independently interested to cooperate more with Europeans because there is a sense particularly now that was born out of the urgency and the kind of speed of need of rearming first Ukraine, but also everyone else around Europe, that there needs to be greater defense industrial cooperation. This is after all where European Union is also heading, right? Through the security and defense partnerships, Rearm Europe initiative, you know, safe and so on. So that there is that. One thing that has changed now in all of that is again, the US stands towards it because where President Biden's administration was basically one of the kind of spiritus moments, the kind of generator of this cooperation across theatres. What we see these days is a lot more of the kind of stay in your lane. And these were exactly the words that Elbridge Colby directed at some of the British officials when he heard that there was a naval deployment going, British naval deployment last year going towards the Indo-Pacific or also the kind of, you know, the withdrawal of some of the tweets by Ambassador Whitaker, so US Ambassador to NATO, who said, we believe in kind of the joint, the commonality of kind of threads and, you know, to both theatres and we want to work across the alliances and so on and then he basically had to delete that tweet or post on X because the Secretary of State or actually Deputy Secretary of State told him that he might have missed the memo that that's not what the US is doing anymore. So in that sense, there will be a lot of the kind of efforts I would say from the United States side at least to again, again to push this sort of prioritization agenda and to tell Europeans that they need to stay in their lane or to tell the Indo-Pacific allies as well to do the same. But I would say that that kind of train has left the station and there's a lot more that they're doing regardless and we see that a lot more, not just in the context of IP4, but again, I would say stories that we should track are a lot of these bilateral and minilateral and different sort of plurilateral, whichever lateral you want to choose that actually bring together countries that, again, our middle powers are very capable, small powers from across the two theatres.

Euan Graham

Let me jump in on the IP4 question. think to amplify something that Grana said, I mean, I think this is a regressive trend on the part of the United States. If it's thinking in hemispheric terms for itself and trying to kind of impose a backyard view of security upon its allies, it's only helping our adversaries. And our adversaries as Gorana said, are not thinking hemispherically. They're also thinking in a kind of weaponized version of globalism in their own terms, where the North Koreans show up in Ukraine, where China is effectively bankrolling Russia's war and Russia would not be able to fight without Chinese aid. And in reverse, the UK and France, while the United States may have legitimate grounds for frustration about their level of defense capability and contribution to European NATO, nonetheless, they are permanent members of the UN Security Council with global interests of their own. So it's not really for Washington to say, stay in your lane and leave it to us. I don't think that's going to suit either the interests of the United States or those countries themselves. It's become a kind of canon that the security of the Indo-Pacific and Euro-Atlantic are indivisible. I that sounds a bit theological, but I think you can empirically break it down for the reasons I've mentioned. And the kind of strategic parochialism that comes from a view that a country like Japan should only look at East Asia when it's got Russia the other, you know, the bear's backside in its face, to put it crudely. It's clearly not going to think only about China or more proximate threats. And the same is true to bring it back to Australia and Australian audience. I think strategic parochialism is always a risk here. So we don't need any encouragement. We need the opposite. We need the outside powers to be giving us the demand signals that there's a wider world out there and that Australia connects globally through its economic interests and through its pattern of alliances and close partners. Therefore, I think it's a good thing that there is currently a UK submarine. It may not make a great deal of difference to the overall strategic balance, but as a signal of commitment through AUKUS, it is, I think, the right thing to do.

Now, the UK has also got to dig itself out of the hole of a 28 billion pound deficit in its defense budget that we've told is there. But the fact that the only operational attack nuclear submarine in the Royal Navy fleet currently is in Perth and not in the North Atlantic tells you that I think that you know, there are some pretty powerful interests that the UK and France and other European countries recognize that they are bound by the German Chancellor is in China as we speak. And I don't think this idea that European powers can be corralled into Europe with a purely Eurocentric view of security is enforceable or in the interest of the United States. As I said, I think the upshot would be it would be in our adversaries interest more than any of anyone else's.

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Justine Burke

Excellent. I'm usually the first person to mention submarines in the course of a podcast and I'm delighted you did. I get punished for doing so. And I echo your enthusiasm for the significance of that signal. There's been a couple of other signals from the US or let's say interventions from the think tank world, which have been widely discussed in the last week or so. The most recent I'm thinking of is Ely Ratner's visit to Australia with speeches in Canberra and Sydney and he was repeating arguments which he published in about the middle of last year about in Foreign Affairs Magazine and that was about the necessity of a mutual defence pact in the Indo-Pacific between Australia, Japan, Philippines and the US. Obviously, all allies of the US all with defence obligations to the US but not to each other and so his point was as difficult as it might be at this time, really, really, really important for deterrence for Indo-Pacific stability. There was another piece that was published just this last month in Foreign Affairs magazine by Zach Cooper, friend of the college, former Department of Defence, former National Security Council. And in it, he argued the pivot, Obama's pivot to Asia is dead echoing your instincts, you know, there are many aspects of it which have disappointed certainly the economic and trade aspects, certainly the governance aspects. But he is arguing in that piece for a retreat from continental obligations like the defence alliance with Thailand, like the multi-decade effort to Dutchess India's support. He's essentially saying that time's passed, that's beyond our capacity. And we can start to think about the first island chain. As I was thinking about these two pieces, the more I think about them, the more congruent I think they are, potentially. But I'm interested in your thoughts, Euan.

Euan Burke

Well, you've just quoted two American former officials and think tankers. So clearly the United States is not out of the mix if we're discussing American views of the region.

As you said, they are congruent, and I agree with that. It's sort of like, in my view, it's a glass half empty and a glass half full view of the same problem. And that problem is the structural weakness of the United States treaty system in this part of the world, which in contrast to the collective security system of NATO is a so-called hubs and spokes system of bilateral alliances. Bilateral alliances work well, and they were designed to work on that basis when the convening power of the United States was at its hegemonic height in the end of the Second World War. But for a hegemon that's been for some time in open challenge by peer competitors and which is also for its own political reasons reviewing its concept of alliances. Clearly, I think there is a back to the drawing board, a back to the basics view of how the United States should do business if it's going to remain an influential power across the other side of the Pacific. And the obvious way to do that is to cross-brace those alliances. That's not a new suggestion. That's been around since the 90s when, you know, China was three foot tall rather than six foot eight as it is at the moment. But that cross bracing has I think been a trend that grew appreciably under the Biden administration. I think the most positive development of all the alliances was the very strained relationship between Japan and South Korea being put together in a trilateral format at Camp David and the fact that that's held through successive transitions both in Seoul and in Tokyo speaks to the underlying strategic logic being shared, not just in Washington, but amongst those allies too. And I think that's what gives some optimism for Ely Ratner's views, that this is not something that's going to be choreographed from Washington as a San Francisco Mark II system. It's got to come from the allies too.

And I think some of that organically is already quite advanced. The Quad is one obvious example. But the more interesting grouping and the one that Ely Ratner has also clearly settled on, the so-called Squad, which is the US, Australia, Japan, and the Philippines, grouped together essentially by the glue of an alliance, is their common threat perceptions. And he argues that there is a shift that's being powered by all of those countries under that impetus of shared threat perceptions, principally about China, to cross brace and to develop reciprocal obligations to each other.

Something I've written on recently was Australia's growing strategic convergence with the Philippines, as I called it. It doesn't get as much attention as Australia's relations with Indonesia for political reasons, but I think there's more strategic impetus behind that relationship. So that's one local example where I think we can already see that that cross-bracing trend is significantly advanced. Unfortunately, the Quad is now the one that's yet to fulfill its potential, I think we could have an entire podcast of that theme and perhaps you've already done it. But there are various reasons that the various players don't want to fulfill that potential. Not only India, India sometimes gets unfairly the blame for that, but I think Australia too has reasons it doesn't want under the current government to develop a military potential to the the quad or I think that logic will inevitably reemerge under the strategic pressures that we're talking about. So much for Ely Ratner. I think it's ambitious. I don't think we should fall for saying, there'll never be a NATO in Asia. I think we have to be imaginative. We have to realize that no less than Japan's former prime minister was talking about the possibility of a NATO. And it won't be a NATO structure. It will be something that will be different fewer moving parts, but nonetheless, it could be more than the sum of simply bilateral US-based alliances aggregating their power. And the arithmetic of the balancing that is required against China alone, let alone China in cahoots with North Korea and Russia, mean that the United States can't do it alone and the others can't do it without the United States. So for all of the hand-wringing and the real vexation about the Trump administration and its view of alliances, I think the long-term view has to be that it will require the US to be there, to be credible as a long-term deterrent, given China's unchanging interest in trying to revise the status quo through coercion. And we see that coercion playing out at ever greater levels around Taiwan and the South China Sea. that's why the Philippines is the only Southeast Asian country that is willing to play along with this because it's feeling the threat to a much more direct and aggressive degree.

Very briefly, I don't want to go on, but Zach's pronouncement that the US, you know, the glass half empty view of this, that the US has to just recognise that the failure of the pivot and pull back to a more realistic position. I've no argument that economically the US has been very weak and I think the imposition of tariffs certainly doesn't help make the case for the United States. On the other hand, I think there are some Southeast Asian countries that don't have a problem with Trump. The whole idea about values, I that's a Western debate. It's not the same debate that you get in Kuala Lumpur or in Jakarta, where actually Trump comes across with many of the attributes and traits of a Southeast Asian leader, family-centred, wants to make good deals, wants not to know or to like about that. They actually feel quite familiar with it. This is the United States they always thought they had, and the veil of human rights and all of that kind of stuff has slipped off. So the Obama era, in positional view of a pivot, think that's past its, it certainly is past its sell-by date. But I think for the basic strategic logic that you cannot counterbalance China and the others without the United States means that something like the Pacific Treaty, Pacific framework that Ratner's talking about will have to remain on the table. I can't see this administration or this Congress going to the lengths of formalizing a new alliance commitment for the United States. But that puts it in fact more on us, on the others, Japan, Philippines, and Australia, to fill in the missing formality, the missing reciprocity of obligations. And we're seeing some of that. What gives me a bit of heart is the fact that we have now a new administration in Japan you know, back to the hill ironically by a China campaign that made sure that Takaichi Sanae was very firmly elected with a landslide majority. But she's committed and her government are committed to building the partnership with Australia and others.

Justin Burke

And I think interestingly, the anecdotal response to Ratna around Canberra and Sydney this past week has been that'll never happen, not that's a bad idea, which is a kind of Australian form of praise, I would say.

So I wanted to end potentially on a more upbeat note. One of the meta themes of our discussion has been this idea of cognitive overload because there is quite a lot to focus on and quite a lot of things demanding our attention and it prompts me to think that astute observers such as yourselves must see amongst all the noise other signals that you think potentially have been overlooked that may turn out to be more important. It occurs to me to say that I think Venezuela might turn out to be about as important in the scheme of history as the invasion of Grenada. It may, you know, fade away in importance, but other things may in time come to seem far more important. And you and you've mentioned the election of Takaichi, a really significant electoral win that may turn out to be really significant to my mind. I was also going to mention HMS Anson because I think it is important to say, as our AUKUS critics and Alliance critics never miss the chance to say their particular side of it, I think it's important to say when AUKUS is going well, when AUKUS is hitting its mark, when important signals come at the right time. And I think that would be my little takeaway. But I'm really curious if either of you have potentially optimistic signals within the noise that you've noticed in the last few months that you think deserve amplification.

Gorana?

Gorana

Sure, I'll start with a very sort of, it's a region-centric, ethnocentric, semi-ethnocentric perspective here, but one thing I think that has gotten some attention, but I would say not nearly enough, and in the context of sort of rearming Europe, we don't necessarily look at the long-term implications, especially if there are political changes, but the fact that German defence budget is now around 80 billion and it's set to get to almost double that if it continues on the path that it has promised by 2030, which would make it almost twice that France or UK are spending. It's a massive change in terms of the balance of power and capabilities within Europe kind of writ large, but also in terms of European Union kind of division of labour where Germany was always seen more as a kind of economic powerhouse and France for all the good reasons, know, for of course being the only nuclear power in that mix, but also having that kind of claim to being the only country that can truly claim to be strategically autonomous, right? And what it does now that Germany will surpass it again, if the current trajectory of spending is unbent. But then if you throw in the mix the fact that when the next election comes in Germany, the forces that are coming from the hard right, far right, right, the AfD, are getting stronger and that it wasn't unpalatable for the Christian Democrats to enter some of the coalitions with them on at least some of the regional levels and to maybe kind of bend more towards making certain deals on particular policies. This is something that in terms of European conversations, we aren't necessarily talking yet about, but it will come around around the bend at some point. And then of course, what sort of implications it has moving forward. And maybe with that also that kind of story of different sort of middle powers, regional powers, things that I would follow that aren't necessarily now, again, headline grabbing, but are more strategic. And that has to do really with the sort of agency of middle powers, especially to pick up the sort of pieces of what remains of any kind of rules out there that we abided by because there are some, there are still, I would say again, there is a recognition that it is good sometimes to kind of pool resources, to come together to work on particular issues, but now I'm really interested in seeing and tracking where this leads us without the United States being part of those kinds of conversations, everything from CPTPP to various kinds of coalitions of the willing or the kind of variable geometry that we have around security formations. I mean, after all, of NATO IP4 being one of the kind of pieces in that mix. So where that goes and whether it delivers at all. The kind of alternative to what we see these days is kind of, yeah, the sense that there is a demise, right, of the old order and that there is no new order in sight, but there are these ordering attempts. So the messy middle where it takes us is, yeah, I guess not a headline grabber, but definitely something to look out for. And Australia is absolutely part of these discussions. And again, from just European side of the kind of globe. The conversations around the FDA with the EU, the security and defense partnership, all of these things are sort of emblematic of these changes.

Justin Burke

Excellent. I think in fact, it may reach the headlines with the Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney, coming to Australia very shortly. And I think he'll be pressing those same arguments. Euan, same question.

Euan Graham

I'm a little bit wary of the Pied Piper potential of the Prime Minister, Carney, and his visit. But maybe again, that's one for a separate podcast. there was a bit of whiff of something about his conflation of Vaclav Havel's view of communist Czechoslovakia and the implication that the rules-based order was based on the same kind of lie. I think that was rhetorically very dangerous territory. You asked for an optimistic view. So let's bring it back to the region. I mean, think first of all, let's lay the threat.

There's no indication that China has changed its strategic settings or its desire to break up US alliances and to unify Taiwan by force if necessary, potentially also taking territory in the South China Sea. Its actions telegraph those strategic intentions very clearly, so we shouldn't be fooled that the fact that there isn't a blown up crisis in this region, that this region still has the potential to be the much greatest conflagration of them all that would put Venezuela, and I'm afraid even Ukraine, into the shade by comparison if there was a full-scale major power conflict here. And I think, again, a slightly pessimistic note, the fact that Xi Jinping removed the second in command in the Central Military Commission should not make people think that, okay, he's not going to invade Taiwan. Whatever his intentions are, whether it's to get an unopposed fourth term or eventually to move on Taiwan, I think the clear implication of that is that he's removing all contrary potential sources of countervailing influence and power in the Chinese system. So it really does flow in a very dangerous way from one man's black boxed view. And that's the challenge that we have to prepare for. I think the glass half full for me is that we haven't had a big blow up of alliances in this part of the world, as has happened in Europe, as Gorana has talked very effectively about.

Consider South Korea, South Korea which was a real running saw during Trump one where all the indications were that he was going to try and pull US forces out. He might still try and do that. But he went to APEC, which was hosted by the South Korean president. And what happened? We got actually a bombshell announcement that the Trump administration was going to green light a nuclear submarine program. There's another submarine reference for you, just for you, Justin.

And that really went against the grain. Japan's new prime minister has doubled down on the alliance. And I think my sense is that Trump has also changed his view of alliances, at least in this part of the region, in that he sees them as potential assets that can be instrumentalized. And Australia got another taste of that with the meeting between Prime Minister Albanese and Trump in Washington, which went very well. Again, people were in absolute state of nervousness. They thought it was going to be a potential meltdown. It went very well. As we know, there was the critical minerals deal. That, to me, suggests that somewhere in Trump's mindset, he knows that to take on something as big as China, you can't do it alone, and that he will need others to aggregate their power. The threat has actually perversely morphed now to the other extent where I think the allies are worried that he's going to abandon them and seek a G2 style agreement, sell out Taiwan in his upcoming visit to China, which is still as far as we know set for April. So that's certainly a huge thing to look at. The US always hovers in this very awkward, you know, in between of never being, it can never be too hot. It's always either too hot or too cold. There's a fear of entrapment and a fear of abandonment and the two coexist, particularly intensely in this region. I think Trump has just dramaticized that, but it's an old dilemma that's always affected the United States in this region. But my positive takeaway from that is that the alliances are actually alive and ticking and talking to each other, which is probably the most important development. And that may be partly Trump, but I think it's also from them. And that's the trend that needs to continue.

 

Justin Burke

Indeed, indeed. Well, that does bring us to the end of today's episode. That has been incredibly rich. I think we have clarified things. It's clarified a few things for me and hopefully also for our listeners. I'd like to thank both of my guests, Dr. Euan Graham and Dr. Gorana Grgić.

Euan

Thank you.

Gorana

Thanks for having us.

National Security Podcast 

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