Australian Strategy and the Gathering Storm in Asia

The US world order is a suit that no longer fits.
               —Fu Ying, Chair, Chinese National People’s Congress, Foreign Affairs Committee, 2016

Over the next decade two challenges face Australia which, in combination, seem likely to transform our strategic fortunes for the worse. The first challenge is the need to confront the reality that the great project of Western liberal globalism conceived in the 1990s is slipping into the pages of history. The second challenge is the return of great power competition, most particularly in the form of the rise of a revisionist China that is determined to assume global superpower status and to become the hegemon of Asia. China’s geopolitical ambitions mean that the 2020s and beyond will be marked by a Sino-American struggle for mastery of Asia in which Australia will be directly and fatefully involved.

Outside of expert circles, few Australians seem to grasp the implications of these major strategic changes. It is the purpose of…