Transcript

Is America retreating from global leadership? 

Is this just a temporary wave of tension in the bilateral relationship, or might it signal a broader, long-term shift? 

Are the current AUKUS debates in Australia cutting through in the US? 

In this episode, John Blaxland joins David Andrews to discuss Australia’s relationship with the US, and why he believes we’re well placed to withstand the instabilities of Trump’s second term in office. 

(This transcript is AI-generated and may contain inaccuracies)
 

John Blaxland

There are some pundits out there saying America is becoming isolationist. That's just not true. America is engaged globally. It is as engaged as ever, globally.

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.

David Andrews

Welcome to the National Security Podcast. I'm David Andrews, Senior Manager for Policy and Engagement at the ANU National Security College. Today's podcast is being recorded on the lands of the Ngunnawal and Namburi people, and I pay my respects to the elders past and present. This week I'm welcoming back not only to the podcast, but also Australia, an esteemed ANU colleague, John Blaxland. Dr. John Blaxland is Director of the ANU North America Liaison Office and Professor of International Security and Intelligence Studies in the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre. John is a former Australian military intelligence officer, a trusted and highly regarded historian, including as an author of the official history of ASIO, and an occasional media commentator. John, thanks for being with us on the podcast.

John Blaxland

Good to be with you, David. Thanks for having me back.

David Andrews

For those of our listeners who aren't aware of the specifics, you hold a pretty unique role at the ANU and potentially unique one across all of Australia's tertiary education institutions as director of the ANU North America Liaison Office, which is embedded, as I understand it, in the Australian Embassy in Washington, DC. Can you tell us a bit more about your role and its responsibilities?

John Blaxland

Yeah, thanks David. So The Australian National University is the only federally legislated university in Australia and therefore has a unique relationship with the federal government. And it is in that context that The Australian National University maintains an office on the premises of the embassy. So I am not there as a public servant, I'm there as an ANU staff member and I have I have the benefit of being able to leverage off the investment of the government in the support mechanisms that are available there. And it's a very convenient base from which to engage academics and think tanks and researchers on shared interests and opportunities for us to explore. The embassy building itself is a spectacular new building opened by the Prime Minister two years ago, just under two years ago now.

And it is a very convenient and attractive convening venue for engagement with universities in the neighbourhood, visiting delegations, including from universities across the United States. So one of the great things about being there is that I have the opportunity with my colleague, Martha Evans, who's locally employed there, to reach out to American universities, research institutions, and think tanks and explore collaboration and talk to them about Australia, talk to them about research opportunities and scholarship opportunities in Australia. So that's basically why I'm there and what I do. So it's leveraging off my academic credentials. It's employing my scholarship as a door opener to talk about Australia, talk about scholarship opportunities, talk about research collaboration opportunities.

I'm mindful that I have in the past been a Minerva Research Initiative awardee, although that program is no longer in existence. The fact that I've been engaged in the United States in scholarship over a number of years was, I think, the premise on which I was approached to fill the vacancy in Washington.

David Andrews

Fascinating, a truly unique opportunity for us all, I think. So one of those areas of expertise that you are sort of published a lot in, I mentioned before, you're part of the co-authors of the history of ASIO, the official history. So both as an officer in the Australian Army, as an academic, it's the study of intelligence. That's one of the key areas of specialty for you. And obviously there's been a lot of upheaval in the US intelligence community over the last particularly six to 12 months, let's say. And I imagine by extension there's a degree of upheaval in the Five Eyes, the intelligence sharing partnership between Australia, the US, Canada, New Zealand, and the UK. Have you observed anything on that front? What have you observed to do with that sort of intelligence sharing partnership and how it's evolving during your time over there?

John Blaxland

So I'm not directly engaged in any official capacity with the intelligence community and their operations in any way. So if those people listening in think that I may have some particular gems to toss around on insights from current practice, that's not the case. I observe from a safe distance, if you like, what's going on, having the privilege of living in DC or very near the capital and engaging with people and rubbing shoulders with people at events. There's so many events in Washington to engage people on that I do pick up a little bit by osmosis and by keeping my ear to the ground, I guess, on what's going on. And it is very interesting to reflect on the dynamics at play at the moment.

I would contend there's a mixture of emotions. There's those who are depressed, those who are nervous, and those who are cocky. I think people fall into one of those categories. They’ve either lost their job or they're deeply worried about what's happening, or they're nervous about losing their job or about the direction of the ship of state, or they're very happy about what's going on and are doubling down on pursuing the policies as they are articulated - they do vary over time by their current administration. I would just add to that, I'm also covering Canada as the North America Liaison Officer and of course my PhD was in Canada and I'm quite well connected in Canada. And on the Canadian side there is deep unease about what's happening with the United States and its transactional approach to what I'm calling ideational leadership, and its adversarial stance towards privileges that Canada had taken for granted for a long time. So there is an effort by those insiders from what I have seen to keep the doors open as best as possible, but there is a chill in the air that is unsettling, not just for Canadians, but I think by implication, and as I say, only by implication across the Five Eyes.

David Andrews

We spoke to some colleagues from Canada earlier in the year, I think, when some of that had really kicked off. And I think they were certainly very worried about how that trend was going. And I think that's something that we observe a lot from over here. And so I'd be interested to hear maybe how you've perceived the Australian conversation in this time you've been back and how maybe it compares with what you're seeing on the ground. Also maybe if you could expand a bit on that ideational leadership notion you mentioned, what do you mean by that?

John Blaxland

The United States under this administration is undertaking what I describe as a retreat from ideational leadership, a transactional retreat from ideational leadership. And that's because we're seeing the manifestation of America First policies that are transactional, that are in defiance of protocols and pacts and trade agreements that have been well established and that are about placing American interests above and beyond international agreements. And I make the point that the United States has been foundational to the international order that we have kind of taken for granted over the years.

The San Francisco Treaty is the San Francisco Treaty.  The UN is headquartered in New York. These are not accidental factors. They are deliberate acts of the US state, the US government that's been maintained since the end of the Second World War. It is very interesting and very disconcerting in my view to see the United States play down the consequence of and be disregarding of the significance of international institutions that it helped form revolving around the United Nations. Now pundits, defenders of that position would say, oh look, it's all been taken over by China, there's no point, it's all corrupted anyway. And my point is this isn't an end point, it's not a sprint, it's a marathon and it's an ongoing race and America has a role to play as we all do in pursuing interests on the world stage through international forums. I'd also make the point that we in academia, we like to critique things like the rules-based international order, which are what rules-based international order. And I say it's a bit like the Holy Roman Empire, not holy, not Roman, and not an empire. And yet it still existed.

And the rules-based international order, as much as you can call it out for the gaping holes in its practice, we still are the beneficiaries of this system where we can confidently export goods, confident that no one's going to torpedo the ship, pirates aren't going to take it, it's going to arrive at the other end and the recipients will pay. And if they don't pay, you can take them to arbitration. That is a system that only exists in the post 1945 era. We've grown up assuming that's normal, right? It's actually a historic aberration. What we're realising is we're butting up against this sense of, well, that is normal and therefore we can take it for granted and I think that's a mistake.

David Andrews

And so in that perception piece, as I was saying before, do you feel like the mood you're seeing on the ground is sort of mirrored or echoed in the Australian context? How are you seeing the, you might say, bioelectrical discourse almost between Canberra and Washington?

John Blaxland

So it's very interesting, course, having this conversation just after the prime minister's return from six days in China, where there's more willingness to engage over a prolonged period with the People's Republic of China than there is in a similar state visit to the United States. Now, I think it's important to keep in perspective that the relationship with the United States is one that's on a completely different level to the one with China. So, when it's critiqued, it's from a different start point. The expectation of the relationship with China is from a much lower base. It's transactional, it's trade, and it's much more wary because of the experience of war for war diplomacy, the $20 billion of sanctions, and the opaque and authoritarian approach to not only local governance inside China, but regional engagement and a high-handed approach to multilateral engagement in the South China Sea, in the Pacific and elsewhere.

So that's the China side. Engaging on that front makes sense because you're trying to raise the level, raise the tone, raise the of the atmospherics, improve the atmospherics if you like, while being very guarded in doing so. In contrast with the United States, you've got a relationship that is unparalleled in terms of Australia's international relations. We talk about the alliance and it's easy to criticize the alliance because the alliance itself, it's ANZUS, it's an 800-word essay that doesn't say very much. There's no headquarters, there's no commanding general, there's no forces assigned, there's no Article 5 like in the NATO treaty, so it's kind of loosey goosey. It doesn't say very much. The alliance itself is there. But we talk about common values. And that's, think, where we're getting a lot of pushback at the moment because we're seeing a dissonance, a discordance, if you like, between the America we've grown to know and love and the America we're seeing today, which is, as I say, transactional bombastic authoritarian. But when we think about the United States, it's worth keeping in mind just how much we have in common. So, Australia and the United States are continent spanning, Pacific-facing, English-speaking, cosmopolitan, federal, free market, bicameral, constitutional, New World democracies that are allied. Now, can you think of anyone else that fits that bill? There happens to be one other, but that's Canada.

But the point is that that's the context in which we talk about common values. Over the last decade or so, a million Australians per year have gone to the United States. Why? Because the biggest destination for Australian foreign direct investment is the United States by a country mile. Then of course culturally, the connections with Hollywood or how many movie stars are Australians pretending to be American - the connections are broad, deep, and profound.

The disruption, the Trump disruption is generating a lot of noise and a lot of attention and emotional reactions. That's not unreasonable because it's been quite a shock to our system to see this country with whom we have these profound engagement on a range of levels. Even in the university sector, we've always looked to the Ivy League as kind of the benchmark for a range of standards. To see that being assaulted, to see that being challenged, to see research funding cut back and the whole premise of that level of engagement and even the issues on which we engage being challenged is deeply problematic.

But it's problematic from a very high base, this is the point. So we're saying, this is terrible and you hear people talking about the post-American world and after America and all that kind of thing. I'm thinking, hey, let's put this in context, right? This is the United States with whom we have the closest of possible relationships, where officials over the years would come to Australia and they think, well, we of feel like we're on the same team, you know, because unlike any other country when American Department of State or Defence officials come to Australia, they have for the last 20 years or more - the ones I can remember clearly as an adult and as a recently senior official in defence and then as an academic - is of remarkable closeness, unparalleled closeness. That's now in question and so the level of closeness is in question. Now having said that, you know, the Department of Defence, all of our government agencies are engaging understandably as best as possible as normal because it's in our interests not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. But there is enormous unease at the moment about the direction of the US ship of state.

David Andrews

One thing that I'm a bit concerned about of what this might lead to, I suppose, is a moving of the Overton window of sorts of the relationship in that, as you say, we've had a level of familiarity for a number of years now, built over 70 plus years of alliance relationship. But some of the people say, well when Trump leaves, things can sort of revert back to quote unquote normal. But my concern is that what will be deemed as normal, that Overton window of sort of the middle point will have been shifted so much under this presidency that actually kind of the fundamentals of the relationship will have shifted quite markedly as well. Obviously we don't know how things are going to turn out, but it does feel that as you say, the longer the sort of the more authoritarian trend goes, that does have some significant challenges.

John Blaxland

So I think it's really interesting to reflect in a historical kind of more macro context on what's happening and whether or not this is a great disruption or an intermediate kind of wave, if you like. There have been past historical examples where things have got hot and difficult under Nixon. For example, the Whitlam-Nixon relationship was a bit fraught for understandable historical reasons relating to the political differences and also the ongoing Vietnam War that Nixon oversaw. I think there's another presidency that is really worth reflecting upon as a point of reference and that is George W. Bush. In 2001, for the first eight months of his office, his focus was on China. But we don't remember George W. Bush for China. We remember him for the war on terror. And so I think it's worthwhile just putting in check this catastrophizing view of Australia-U.S. relations and about the U.S. engagement with the world because we are only six months into this presidency and there's a lot of water yet to go under the bridge. A lot of things can happen. A lot of things may not or may happen.

So I think it's worthwhile just stepping back and let's think, okay, six months in, yes, we don't want to throw the baby up with the bath water here. We're hugely invested on a range of fronts, which has been talked about in a number of books, particularly the one edited by Stephan Frühling, Peter Dean, and Brendan Taylor on Australia's American Alliance, which is now 10 years old. But it talks about the breadth and some of the depth of the relationship bilaterally that still stands pretty much untouched. And I think that's important to bear in mind. So you mentioned all this turmoil, all this concern. This is the context in which it's happening. Is this a short-term aberration? Is this a long-term shift? Catastrophists will say this is a long-term shift, we need to move away. Others who are more sanguine will say, let's take a deep breath. Let's be very guarded here. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. But let's look to defend ourselves, be more self-reliant, more robustly postured to pursue our interests, particularly in the South Pacific and in Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean.

David Andrews

There's a period of history, speaking of sort of challenges in the relationship, that I offer maybe more as an aside than us having to dig into the history of it, but thinking of the 80s and the MX missile crisis - I do wonder how much that kind of window of the Hawke-Keating and Reagan years has shaped the thinking of the prime minister at this moment in time. I think he's been quite explicit in a more independent position within the Alliance. I mean, that could be a whole other conversation into the history of the relationship.

John Blaxland

Just going back your Overton window though, I think it's important to remember that Australia has a range of commitments that have been woven in a Lilliputian manner for the past 80 years - relating to intelligence, relating to logistics, relating to international protocols, standards on trade, investment, technology, security, intelligence, military logistics -  that place us in a set of circumstances that we've never been in before. Where we are more compatible, more closely integrated as potential American partners on facing challenges in the region than ever before. So we see this diplomatically, particularly under the Biden administration, we saw this very, very close alignment of policy on the Pacific and Southeast Asia between Australia and the United States. That's obviously now up for debate, but it's in the context that a lot has happened. There's a lot of ties, a lot of connections. So this idea of post-America, after America is, in my view, misplaced.

The United States, people have looked at what the United States has done in Europe with its transactional approach to NATO and pushing NATO to get to 5%. And being very cavalier about Ukraine and hot and cold about NATO and the revealed telegram conversations that have been particularly critical of NATO partners, European partners of the United States. My sense is they point to a shifting priority. Some pundits out there saying America's becoming isolationist, that's just not true. America is engaged globally. It is as engaged as ever globally. I see no sign of retreat. There's no less American forces in Europe than there were. There may be fewer in Africa now, it's hard to say. We do see though, I think, a recognition that the unipolar moment is over. And that's something I would contend is Trump's perhaps biggest achievement, if you like, shifting American policy from thinking in a unipolar way to thinking multipolar. So getting the Europeans to do more for themselves, giving recognition of Russian space as odious as that is. It's a very kind of Kissingerian approach to engaging with them, but also seeking or appearing to recognise that China has its own space too.

And this I think echoes a Yalta 2.0 phenomenon. In Yalta the first time Churchill Roosevelt and Stalin carved up the world. And of course I talked about this on a visit to Poland a couple of months ago and the sucking of teeth in Poland of course because they got stuck behind the Iron Curtain as part of that deal. But the question then is where are the borders? And this is I think where I don't think Trump has been quite clear in his mind. Where should the border be? Where should Ukraine be in that? Where should Poland and the Baltics be? Where should Japan and Korea and the Philippines and ASEAN be? Where should Australia be? These are all questions that I don't think are all that clear in the President's mind. But they do point to a recognition of a more multipolar world where we have agency and where there is, I think, a growing need for us to actually muscle up a bit.

National Security Podcast

We'll be right back.

What roles should nuclear technologies play in our world? How do we ensure they're used and managed safely, securely, and responsibly? Nuclear Matters is a new podcast from The Australian National University College of Systems and Society. Through this series, we explore the complexities surrounding nuclear technologies in Australia that support everything from critical medical treatments to energy generation. If that sounds intriguing to you, search Nuclear Matters in your favourite podcast player or click on the link in this week's show notes and hit subscribe. That way, you'll never miss an episode.

David Andrews

Speaking of which, obviously the conversations that are seemingly attributed or at least publicly led in some fashion by Elbridge Colby around and Pete Hegseth, the Defence secretary, about increasing defence spending by allies as well as potential declarations vis-a-vis Taiwan and other regional contingencies. That's obviously been a huge discussion point in Australia. Are those things really tracking in the US conversation or are we viewing them in a very big way, understandably because they affect us domestically, are they even featuring on the US radar?

John Blaxland

There is very little. It's interesting, we in Australia, we think the world revolves around us. Our news media is dominated by US-sourced material. You can get a sense of the world that it's all about what happens there and what they do to us because the reporting is transmitted through Australian eyes and words. I would contend that Australia does not feature very prominently by and large in American discourse in Washington. AUKUS, many people don't even really know what it means, although there's a greater awareness than there was arguably during the Cold War when we barely featured at all. Most people don't even realize that we were involved in the Vietnam War. I was speaking at a Korean conference and people didn't know that Australia had been in the Korean War.

So, you know, there is, think, a utility in us reminding them that we've actually been there and we play. But with the work of Elbridge Colby and this review, which has I think, caught people by surprise, I think it's worth putting this in the context of the works of people like Michael Green, who in his book By More Than Providence makes clear that America's interests have always been, for the last 200 plus years, have been about making sure that no great power dominates East Asia. And Elbridge Colby in his Denial by Deterrence - I read it on the plane coming back to Australia - it's very interesting, clearly East Asia matters in his calculations of American interests. And in that equation, Japan, the Philippines, Australia are prominent. Interestingly, I think there's a surprisingly little amount of coverage of the significance of Indonesia in the Malacca Strait in any Taiwan scenario.

But I really would like to see the US administration take a more Australia centric perspective on what the world looks like. Because when you look at the world from down under - and we've this chat before David - the world looks much more diffuse. The low power index graph of Asia kind of points this out. If you look at the world across from North America, you kind of fixated on China, China, China, China. But if you look at the world from Australia, you see Southeast Asia and the Pacific and then beyond that you see China and India and others. So that's a much more diffuse picture. if Hans Morgenthau is right in his book Politics Among Nations, which I think he is, there are nine elements of national power and it's not just military. And all of those countries have agency, they all have some role, they have some traction, they have some influence. And when we think, when we as Australia think about engagement in the world we can't be thinking binary US-China. We've got to be thinking about our interests in a much more diffuse sense. Mindful, of course, of the great power competition and the dynamics between China and the United States, but not seeing that as blinding us from everything else.

David Andrews

So as you say, there's clearly a focus, let's say philosophically or intellectually on Asia by significant people in the US administration. I guess the question then is whether you think that enough is being done to deliver on that intent. And AUKUS is, I guess, the principal lens through which we're looking in. And again, in the sense of what conversations we see in Australia will be different to what's happening in the US, are you getting the sense that enough work is being put into building up the defence industrial base, in hitting all those sort of deadlines, in getting funding through the right parts of the US budgetary process. Are you seeing those kind of signs?

John Blaxland

So on the US side, we're seeing remarkable bipartisanship and a continued resolve to support the arrangements with Australia and the United Kingdom through AUKUS and beyond. The passing of legislation, ITA reforms, enabling Australian defence industry to engage with and contribute to the American defence industrial base, that would help facilitate the unblocking of the bottlenecks that have blocked and slowed down the submarine manufacturing rate. They're all factors that I think are very positive and that are broadly supportive. The Colby review is, I think, a bit of an outlier in that it flies in the face of that, but it also, I think, plays to the Trump administration's transactional approach to what, you know, if I can riff off the title, the art of the deal. And I think that's part of it. And I think there's an element of influence there where the United States may be wishing to pressure Australia to do more, to spend more.

And look, there's enough pundits in Australia making that call. I just don't think Hegseth and Colby saying it is all that helpful. I think that, you know, it would probably be more constructive for them to actually go silent on that and let Australia work it out. Mindful that Australia has an appreciation of its own interests and they have overwhelmingly overlapped with the United States for more than 80 years. And look, that's an interesting context for the question about Taiwan. There is a view that Taiwan is the next war. I'm not convinced. I'm of the view that for China, war has to be avoided because it's uncertain what happens. You don't know. And much like with the Korean War, it ended up a stalemate pretty much where it started after a million Chinese died, including Mao Zedong's son. No self-respecting Chinese leader wants to repeat that. And if you start a war, that's what you can have happen. You can get a visceral global reaction that sees the establishment of a UN command that still endures to this day.

But I do think they do want to take Taiwan, but I think they want to do it without actually having to fight for it. They want to squeeze and not directly seize. In that context, we need to be thinking much more laterally about how you prevent a war from breaking out. And this is where I think the debate is, in my view, seriously misleading because people are saying oh well, we can't support the United States because it'll end up in a nuclear exchange. I'm thinking, no, I think that's a false premise. I think the premise we should be starting on is how do we prevent a war? How do we contribute to the deterrent effect whereby the Chinese government decides to maintain the status quo indefinitely. That's what we want. That's the state of Australian government policy. It's a state of American policy. They want to maintain the status quo. We all want to maintain the status quo. So how do we do that? We do that, in my view, by contributing to complicating potential adversaries thinking about how likely they are to be successful.

And that means actually thinking a little bit about what you do to prevent the war from happening in the first place. I had this discussion with some folks in Germany about support for the cause in the South China Sea and preventing a war in Taiwan. They said, well, what can we do if there's a war in Taiwan? And I said to them, look, you're missing the point. It's what you can do to help prevent a war. If the war has happened, it's too late. We're trying to actually not get to that threshold. And operating short of that, now and in the immediate future is what's critical, which is why I think having the Brits with their aircraft carrier coming through - bring it on. The Germans wanting to do a South China Sea navigation, bring it on. If we can contribute to support maintenance of the status quo, that's a favourable outcome. And to my mind, that's where AUKUS fits in. That's why I think AUKUS is so important.

Just briefly on AUKUS, because I think there's still people out there who don't quite get it, right? Diesel electrics don't work for Australia, right? To get from Perth to any other capital city, forget, forget trying to get to the South China Sea just to get to Darwin. It's about a dozen snorts. And each time you snort to recharge your batteries, you generate a V-shaped wake in the ocean that is now detectable, okay? Because of almost saturation low-with-orbit satellites, coupled with 30-plus years of patent analysis, coupled with AI and armed drones, you're cooked. So the only way around that is to stay underwater. And to do that, the only way to do that effectively over a long distance is nuclear propulsion. So the question then for us is, do we need to protect our maritime space with submarines? That's the question, because if you need to do that, it's got to be with nuclear. That's my take.

David Andrews

I just wanted to bring us back to where we'd started I guess, the university research dimensions of the role and your time over there. What opportunities are you seeing for Australian universities and students in North America at the moment? I mean, obviously we want to find opportunities to work more together and build those closer partnerships. You spoke about Ivy Leagues and these historic relationships and prominent connections like in the past, but of course we're now seeing more US restrictions on visas, on foreign students, the suspension of funding to the Fulbright program for example. Does that make Australia a more attractive destination for intellectual capital?

John Blaxland

This is a window of opportunity for Australia. The Canadians and Europeans are already latching onto it and they're seeing scholars look to move to Europe and to Canada. We, I think, should be doing that. I know there's some efforts under way at the moment. My thing, what I'm trying to encourage Americans to think about with studying in Australia, because it's 64 cents to the dollar. A basic degree is about US $30,000, which is cheap as chips in American parlance. We have world-class education here; we've got some of the best universities in the world. It's safe, it's a little bit exotic, it's friendly. And in our case, and others in Australia too, but ANU especially we've got the only college of Asia and the Pacific in the world. We do Asia. We do the Pacific. So we've got the Department of Pacific Affairs in the Coral Bell School. We've got the Centre in China in the world. We've got NSC, we've got the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre. We've got excellence on Asia that is unmatched globally. So the pitch is: come and study in Australia, right? You can have a great time, it's safe, friendly, cheap, world class. It's a good deal. You'll go back with a view on the world that is complementary to the ones of the United States because we're all facing the same broad issues of great power competition, looming environmental catastrophe, a spectrum of governance challenges, and the impact of the fourth industrial revolution. That's my kind of take on the ‘so what’ of everything everywhere all at once.

So if we're facing those same challenges but they look different from down under, I would contend you want that world class Australian education and you can go back to the United States in due course informed by a set of shadows and light angles on the world challenges that will help inform effective and better decision making in the United States down the track. A closer partner than Australia is hard to find. Yes, there are points of tension at the moment, but from a level of intimacy and closeness that is unparalleled.

David Andrews

And in some ways, think, particularly given all the alliance relationship complexities that you've been talking about throughout the conversation, in some ways it's actually in our strategic interest to have more Americans understanding Australia more intimately because we, not say understand them fully, but we're more exposed as you said, to American media and things like that. And so the more people that understand us - that maybe helps that relationship remain strong or continue.

John Blaxland

So there's one other aspect here which I think is really interesting and it's something that's really taken me being living there for some time to get my head around. This is the advanced sensitive research ecosystem in the universities in the United States which we lack in Australia. We do not have the critical mass for advanced sensitive research that enables American enterprise to go beyond anyone else in the English speaking world at least in the West broadly. I would contend that what we need in Australia - and I've written a paper about this and I'm happy to share it to anyone who's interested - is to draw some lessons from the university affiliated research centre model that's been in place in the United States for 80 or so years, and come up with a model that draws in CSIRO, that draws in defence science and technology, and draws in the university's advanced research capabilities to foster excellence - protected, secure, collaborative excellence and have an ecosystem that then is conducive to the proliferation of higher scholarship, PhDs, post-docs, advanced research on areas of common interest.

David Andrews

Well, John Blaxland, thank you very much for all your time and your insights and best of luck as you head back to DC.

John Blaxland

David, great to be with you. Thanks for having me on the program.

National Security Podcast

Thank you for listening to the National Security Podcast. We welcome listener feedback and suggestions at any time. So please get in contact at natsecpod@anu.edu.au. For more important conversations about Australia's national security, please subscribe to the podcast, our YouTube channel and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter to receive the latest updates.