The fight with China over the Darwin Port

July 21, 2025

A decade ago, a Chinese company was given the green light to take control of the Darwin port, which is key Australian infrastructure. Now, the Albanese Government is scrambling to get it back in Australian hands, in a move that risks antagonising China, while being welcomed by the United States.

Today, veteran defence analyst Alan Dupont, who until recently was the Defence and National Security Advocate for the Northern Territory Government, focused on defence investment in the NT. He explains why the deal was allowed in the first place and whether Chinese control really poses a risk to national security.

Listen to the podcast.

Featured: Alan Dupont, chief executive of geopolitical risk consultancy The Cognoscenti Group

In a tougher, more dangerous world, the US remains our best option

July 18, 2025

~ by Alan Dupont. Originally published in The Australian on 18th July, 2025.

Contrasting the bonhomie of Anthony Albanese’s visit to China with his less than effusive embrace of Donald Trump’s America, an intergalactic visitor could be forgiven for concluding that China, not the US, is our principal ally and closest friend.

Seldom has the tension between our security alliance with the US and our trade relationship with China been so starkly exposed. The optics are damning. While the Prime Minister talks enthusiastically about increasing trade, tourism and cultural contacts, his words are jarringly at odds with the unwelcome presence of Chinese naval ships monitoring the Australian and allied Talisman Sabre training exercise off the Queensland coast.
Read more

Albanese’s trump card: our shovel-ready rare earth mines

June 13, 2025

~ by Alan Dupont. Originally published in The Australian on 13th June, 2025.

Australia’s world class critical minerals endowment will figure prominently in Anthony Albanese’s pitch to Donald Trump for tariff relief should they meet in person for the first time at the G7 summit of the world’s advanced economies in Canada next week.

This will be a crucial test of the Prime Minister’s ability to manage his notoriously capricious counterpart and quarantine Australia from the worst effects of Trump’s disruptive, America First approach to international trade and national security, underlined by Washington’s surprise decision to review the AUKUS defence agreement.

If Albanese wants tariff concessions and AUKUS to proceed, he needs to offer something Trump wants other than platitudes about our perennial trade deficits with the US and enduring loyalty as an ally. That may have worked in 2016 aided by golfing legend Greg Norman’s star-power. But Trump unbridled is more ruthlessly transactional in his second coming.
Read more

Insurance and Credit Forum for investors

June 4, 2025

Dr Alan Dupont was interviewed by Mark Beardow, Chief Investment Officer for iCare, at the Insurance and Credit Forum for investors in Sydney on 4 June at the Intercontinental Hotel, Double Bay.

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 to the recording 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