As the adverse conseq­uences of Donald Trump’s crash-through style bite, buyer’s remorse sets in among his MAGA base

April 12, 2025

~ by Alan Dupont. Originally published in The Australian on 12th March, 2025.

Despite a relief surge in global markets on Thursday AEST triggered by Donald Trump’s unexpected 90-day tariff pause on “those who don’t retaliate”, the US President’s Liberation Day tariffs presage the most sweeping structural and normative change in the international trading system since 1945.

This was underscored by the imposition of a staggering 145 per cent tariff on imports from China, our major trading partner, sending US-China ties into a deep freeze and bringing a halt to most bilateral trade. Absent stimulus measures, this could cut China’s growth in half and have severe knock-on effects for the Australian and world economies.
Read more

Sovereign and Security Forum hosted by Malcolm Turnbull ~ National Press Club

March 31, 2025

Dr Alan Dupont presented in Panel 4 at Sovereign and Security Forum on Monday 31st March, 2025.

How can Australia pursue its national interest in a “might is right” world? Can we save the multilateral furniture? Can we work with other countries to mitigate the economic damage from Trump’s tariff war? Is CPTPP a model for the future?

Listen here.

I believe the Trump ascendancy presages a radical change in Washington’s approach to the US alliance.

Mutual trust, shared interests and values have little or diminished weight. Trump, the dealmaker, doesn’t distinguish between friends and foes. This means the major beneficiaries of his second coming are more likely to be autocratic challengers, who have no love for America, at the expense of traditional friends and allies, who are being treated with disdain.
Read more

We need a Plan B just in case ‘King Donald’ betrays our alliance

March 3, 2025

~ by Alan Dupont. Originally published in The Australian 0n 3rd March, 2025

Has Pax Americana reached its denouement – not at the hands of autocratic challengers but a wannabe American dictator named Donald Trump?

And will Trump’s love for authoritarian strong men embolden China’s Xi Jinping to flex his military muscles in the seas around Australia?

The great disrupter is trashing the assumptions, norms and architecture that have underpinned Australian and global security since 1945.
Read more

The A to Xi of Trump’s tariffs – what a global tradewar might mean

February 1, 2025

~ by Alan Dupont. Originally published in The Australian on 1st February, 2025.

Donald Trump campaigned as the Tariff Man. All indications are that as president he intends to deliver on his promise to introduce sweeping tariffs on imports into the United States. Trump has announced plans to levy duties on China, Canada and Mexico on 1 February and he signed an executive order on the first day of his new administration directing officials to conduct a thorough review of US trade policy. Another review will examine the US industrial and manufacturing base to assess whether further national security tariffs are warranted.

When his political epitaph is written, will Trump be remembered as the US president who initiated a trade war, caused a global recession and destroyed the last vestiges of a waning international order crafted and policed by his thirteen post-World War 2 predecessors? Or are his threats to impose punitive tariffs a justifiable attempt to level the playing field of an unfair international trading system gamed by a mercantilist China? Read more

America needs us as much as we need America

December 7, 2024

~ by Alan Dupont. Originally published in The Australian on 7th December, 2024

In a resounding endorsement of closer defence co-operation with Australia, departing US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has described AUKUS “as one of the most ambitious defence projects in modern history” and Australia as a key ally in America’s global strategy to deter future conflicts in an increasingly uncertain world.

In a valedictory speech to a Washington-based think tank, Sullivan provides revealing insights into the reasons for the pivotal shift in US strategic policy from a peacetime footing to preparing for a potential military conflict with China – a war the US doesn’t want but must be prepared to win should deterrence fail.
Read more

Zelensky might baulk at any deal and could literally go nuclear

November 19, 2024

~ by Alan Dupont. Originally published in The Australian on 19th November, 2024

Despite Donald Trump’s boast to end the war in Ukraine in a day, the end game is not in sight. But it’s nearing a critical inflexion point. President Volodymyr Zelensky will come under heavy pressure from the newly elected Trump administration to reach a settlement with Moscow. But if he’s backed into a corner the risk is that Zelensky could literally go nuclear, opting to develop nuclear weapons of his own – the ultimate security guarantee.

Contrary to the view of the parochially minded, the outcome of the Ukraine conflict will have global consequences. And Australia won’t be immune. A Vladimir Putin win will encourage his expansionist impulses in Asia, as well as Europe, strengthen the axis of autocrats, enervate the democracies and promote a deals-based order where the strong do what they will and the rest of us have to roll with the punches.
Read more

How soon will AI become better than us?

October 26, 2024

~ by Alan Dupont. Originally published in The Australian on 26th October, 2024

Once the preserve of technology geeks, artificial intelligence has gone mainstream resulting in an explosion of digital and virtual capabilities. These range from the helpful personal assistants on our digital devices and the mapping of more than 160,000 new virus species, to troubling “deep fakes” that are impossible to detect with the naked eye.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT has helped democratise AI but raised many questions about the technology’s value and impact. Will it be genuinely transformational and a boon to society as advocates proclaim boosting productivity, creating undreamed of prosperity and liberating us from life’s drudgeries? Or are the naysayers right – that its promise is over-hyped and the risks potentially catastrophic without guardrails and humans in the loop?
Read more

Warnings as Doomsday Clock edges ever closer to midnight

October 1, 2024

~ by Alan Dupont. Originally published in The Australian on 1st October, 2024

Worried that a nuclear war could pose an existential threat to humankind a group of American researchers, known as the Chicago Atomic Scientists, conceived the idea of a Doomsday Clock in 1947 that would metaphorically measure how close the world is to a global catastrophe.

Many of these scientists had intimate knowledge of the danger of a nuclear war having worked on the development of the Manhattan Project, the top-secret program to make the first atomic bombs during World War II, later popularised in the 2023 film ‘Oppenheimer’.

The clock’s initial setting was 7 minutes to midnight, with midnight representing the moment at which a global catastrophe would occur. In 1991, it was wound back to a reassuring 17 minutes following the signing of the pathbreaking Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty between the former Soviet Union and the United States when war seemed a distant prospect.
Read more

Bring out the big guns in defence of AUKUS project

August 23, 2024

~ by Alan Dupont. Originally published in The Australian on 23rd August, 2024

Three years after Scott Morrison announced AUKUS, stunning the nation with its audacity and scope, the passing of two milestones this month served only to raise doubts about the pact’s viability, cost and political longevity as the Biden presidency concludes.

The first milestone was the signing and tabling in federal parliament of a 50-year treaty governing naval nuclear propulsion co-operation central to the ambitious plan to acquire nuclear-powered submarines from the US and Britain. The second was an announcement by the US State Department that Australia, the US and Britain have comparable export control regimes, billed as an important first step in setting the rules of the road for AUKUS implementation.
Read more

Tough on China? Remember Trump only has one true allegiance

August 7, 2024

~ by Alan Dupont. Originally published in The Australian on 7th August, 2024

The presidential contest between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris could be the most critical for the US and the world since the 1940 re-election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt decisively altered the outcome of World War 2 in favour of the democracies.

As the polls tighten Harris has a pathway to victory. But the odds still favour Donald Trump despite his crass and counter-productive attacks on Harris’s racial identity. Although his persona is well established – has anyone not heard of the man? – his unique capacity to polarise opinion has blinded many of his critics and admirers to what Trump does, as distinct from what he says.
Read more