Australia’s Strategic Objectives in a Changing Regional Order

Introduction

Trade and the Australian Economy: Neoliberal Dreams, Geopolitical Realities
Darren J. Lim, Jackson Skinner, and Sashank Thapa

Minilateralism at the Crossroads: Australian Security Politics in the Indo-Pacific
William Tow and Alynna M. Carlos

Australia’s Climate of Uncertainty
Matt McDonald

The Dog That Hasn’t Barked: Australia and the New Nuclear Age
Brendan Taylor

Not Defiance, Not Deference: Australia’s U.S. Alliance Pragmatism in the Second Trump Administration
Rory Medcalf

Australia’s Strategic Objectives and Challenges in Relations with China
James Laurenceson

Australia’s Strategic Priorities and Challenges with Southeast Asia
Susannah Patton

Australia’s Relations with Pacific Island Countries: Contestation and Collaboration
Joanne Wallis and Salote Tagivakatini

Introduction

Australia has long viewed itself as a middle power anchored in the liberal rules-based order, global markets, its wider neighborhood, and its alliance with the United States. Yet today it confronts a regional order in flux that tests these foundations. This Asia Policy roundtable contains eight essays that examine Australia’s strategic priorities and challenges in a range of international relations areas. The first half of the roundtable looks at the country’s role and priorities in four global topics—trade, consortium building, climate change policy, and the threat posed by a nuclear resurgence—and the second half of the roundtable addresses the relationships between Australia and its most important partners—the United States, China, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Island countries.

The roundtable opens with an essay on trade and economics by Darren Lim, Jackson Skinner, and Sashank Thapa that assesses how Australia’s orientation toward an open, liberal, rules-based, free-market system has come under strain as tensions rise globally between economic and national security interests. Increasingly, cracks in the liberal international order are putting Australia in a bind between two long-standing pillars of support: its trade partner China and its security ally the United States. Lim, Skinner, and Thapa argue that managing the resulting dilemmas will require “not only shoring up domestic resilience but also cultivating a wider coalition in support of the rules-based order” that Australia would like to see continued.

William Tow and Alynna M. Carlos consider how minilateral forms of collaboration—associations of relatively small numbers of states—are playing a growing role in Canberra’s approach to regional and international security, alongside and in tandem with Australia’s traditional U.S. alliance. The most prominent and contentious of these is the AUKUS partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, but the Quad (between Australia, India, Japan, and the United States) and the emerging “Squad” (between Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and the United States) are also notable in signaling a shift toward small-group collaborations of (mostly) like-minded states around common challenges. Tow and Carlos argue that “if AUKUS and the Quad, or its Squad variant, are to play a more meaningful role in today’s Indo-Pacific security environment, they will need to strike a judicious balance between designing these arrangements to directly address complex issues relating to deterrence and order-building without relinquishing the benefits of policy flexibility and agility that minilaterals theoretically provide.”

In terms of cooperation on global issues, climate change is perhaps the most insidious. Matt McDonald shows how “Australia is a country of contrasts and tensions when it comes to the environment,” valuing environmental protection and vulnerable to environmental degradation, while at the same time contributing significantly to climate change through the country’s role in the global fossil fuel economy. McDonald describes how these thorny issues have arisen both in the domestic political arena and in relations with Australia’s Pacific Island neighbors, which Canberra identifies as a strategic priority. Australia hopes to generate greater trust and goodwill on the issue over the longer term as it attempts “to move past the environment versus the economy/jobs binary that has often characterized the politics of climate change.”

Another overlooked but salient global challenge Australia faces is a revival of nuclear weapons as instruments of international power politics, this time centered in Asia. Brendan Taylor questions why this issue has received so little attention in Australia and “what that silence means for the nation’s strategic readiness and agency.” He cautions that two tenets of Australian security—U.S. extended deterrence and the global nonproliferation regime—are increasingly insecure in the current moment, and that the country can draw on its role as a U.S. ally, its enthusiasm for collaboration with other middle powers, and its own expertise and capacity to confront shifts in the nuclear landscape.

Rory Medcalf examines the U.S.-Australian alliance in what is possibly its most testing time as the second Trump administration upsets long-standing rules, norms, and practices in international relations. Tariffs, AUKUS, defense spending, China policy, and geopolitical perspectives are suddenly flashpoints in what traditionally has been a smooth bilateral relationship. He writes that “it is too early to be definitive, but there are indications of an emerging Australian way to manage alliance relations under Trump 2: a quiet path between defiance and deference.” Despite this new phase, Medcalf argues that Australia is still well-positioned to develop as both a credible alliance partner and a more independent security actor.

Relations with Australia’s major economic partner, China, are hardly any more straightforward. James Laurenceson notes that two critical assessments have long shaped Canberra’s strategic thinking: “the trajectory of China’s economic rise and the reliability of the United States as a bilateral security ally and strategic presence in Asia.” Australia has aimed to strike a balance between these foreign policy pillars, and Laurenceson details how the Australia-China relationship and the Australian domestic politics around it have evolved over the last ten years. Although wary of China’s growing power and influence, Australia benefits from its economic complementarity with China and is now pursuing pragmatic and clear-eyed engagement across a range of issues.

Turning to a priority region, Susannah Patton assesses the achievements to date of the Albanese government in its relations with Southeast Asia. A key focus, which supports both Australian and Southeast Asian objectives, has been boosting diplomatic and economic ties to the region. The Albanese government has stepped up diplomatic visits, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations collectively is the country’s second-largest trade partner. But Patton describes how Australian businesses have been slow to follow Canberra’s lead. At the same time, and despite quiet government efforts, Australia’s “perceived policy proximity” to the United States (the “deputy sheriff problem”) complicates its relations in and with the region, especially where China is concerned. While Southeast Asia will stay an area of priority, whether Australia’s successes there continue remains to be seen.

As noted above, the Australian government has designated its Pacific Island neighborhood a strategic priority and is anxious about China’s growing presence in the region. Joanne Wallis and Salote Tagivakatini point out that “the region lies across some of Australia’s crucial air and sea lanes of communication, connecting Australia to its allies and partners—and their markets—in North America and Northeast Asia.” Given this, the government has been working to enhance ties with the island states through economic, security, infrastructure, policing, work visa, and cultural programs. But whether Australian and Pacific priorities align and whether these efforts are adequately focused on advancing the island countries’ aims—and “by extension, advancing the Australian government’s interest in being identified as the region’s preferred partner”—are still important questions. Wallis and Tagivakatini argue that there is potential for closer relations if Australia can deconflict “how the different elements of its foreign and security policies inadvertently affect its policy objectives in the region.”

Taken together, the roundtable essays highlight Australia’s foreign policy priorities, challenges, and key external relationships, showing where the country stands and what lies ahead as it seeks to manage a changing global order. While Australia cannot determine the trajectory of this order, the analyses presented here suggest its ability to balance flexibility with principle, dependencies with agency, and pragmatism with long-term vision will remain critical in sustaining its influence and navigating the challenges of a contested Indo-Pacific.

Darren J. Lim is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Politics and International Relations at the Australian National University (Australia).

Jackson Skinner is a student at the Australian National University and an editorial team member at the East Asia Forum (Australia).

Sashank Thapa is a student at the Australian National University (Australia).

William Tow is an Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University in Canberra (Australia). He has published widely on U.S. alliance politics in the Indo-Pacific and on Asian security politics.

Alynna M. Carlos currently serves in the Presidential Office for Maritime Concerns of the Philippine government (Philippines). In 2025, she completed her master’s degree in international studies from the University of the Philippines, where she wrote a thesis on minilateralism in the Sulu-Sulawesi Seas.

Matt McDonald is Professor of International Relations and Director of Research of the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland (Australia).

Brendan Taylor is Professor of Strategic Studies at the Australian National University (Australia).

Rory Medcalf is Head of the National Security College at the Australian National University in Canberra (Australia). His career has spanned diplomacy, intelligence analysis, think tanks, and journalism. He is known internationally as a pioneer of the Indo-Pacific concept.

James Laurenceson is Director of the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney (Australia).

Susannah Patton is the Director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Lowy Institute in Sydney (Australia).

Joanne Wallis is Professor of International Security and Director of the Stretton Institute Security in the Pacific Islands research program at the University of Adelaide (Australia). She is also a Senior Nonresident Fellow of the Brookings Institution.

Salote Tagivakatini is a PhD scholar at the University of Adelaide (Australia). She is a lawyer and former Fijian diplomat with over fifteen years of experience with governments and intergovernmental organizations. Ms. Tagivakatini is a Fellow of the Australian War College, where she received the 2022 Geddes Gavel Award.