2025 in Review: The fading West, a cautious Labor win and an uncertain world
From the erosion of Western authority to Australia’s election result, 2025 exposed deep shifts in global power, alliance politics and the limits of domestic reform.
Recent articles in USA
20 December 2025
Why did Trump send his warships to Venezuela?
As US pressure on Venezuela intensifies, Washington is reviving an openly interventionist approach to Latin America. The targets extend beyond Caracas to the region as a whole.
16 December 2025
Font of all knowledge? Of Rubio, Rupert and playing to type
A curious US culture-war memo about typefaces becomes a sharp lesson in readability, newspaper craft, and how badly those lessons have been forgotten in Australian journalism.
11 December 2025
From partnership to pressure: why India–US ties have frayed
The downturn in India–US relations during Trump’s second presidency exposes deeper structural weaknesses in the partnership, from trade and strategic autonomy to diverging political priorities.
11 December 2025
Deleting climate science: the Trump EPA rewrites the causes of warming
The Trump administration has removed references to human-caused climate change and key scientific data from EPA websites, alarming climate scientists and health experts.
7 December 2025
Ceding the future to China
Delivered as remarks to Brown University’s Watson School during its “China Chat” series, Chas Freeman reflects on China’s return to global prominence and the United States’ accelerating retreat from the international order it once led – and asks what coexistence looks like as power shifts in the 21st century.
6 December 2025
China’s challenge is explaining why it succeeded
Western commentary often dwells on China’s problems while overlooking the cultural and historical foundations of its extraordinary achievements. Understanding both is essential to informed judgement.
5 December 2025
When foreign policy becomes domestic theatre
Australia’s response to Japan’s rhetoric has been framed as a test of loyalty, but the outrage is largely media-driven. Caution in foreign policy is not betrayal – it is a rational defence of national interest.
3 December 2025
UK–US drug deal risks turning the NHS into a casualty of Trump trade politics
A new agreement with the Trump administration would force Britain’s National Health Service to pay billions more for medicines to avoid tariffs – prompting outrage from MPs, health experts and patient advocates.
1 December 2025
Trade and tariffs: how reciprocity turned into retaliation
Tariff powers once tightly constrained by Congress have steadily migrated to the US presidency. That shift is reshaping global trade – and exposing countries like Australia to greater economic coercion.
29 November 2025
Silencing Starlink over Taiwan would be a massive military challenge
Chinese scientists have modelled how Starlink could be jammed over an area the size of Taiwan – and found it would take an unprecedented scale of coordinated electronic warfare.
22 November 2025
Trump’s latest Epstein gambit
The next time you hear that Trump has somehow reversed his earlier resistance to releasing the Epstein files, remember that he hasn’t. He could have ordered their disclosure long ago; he never needed a congressional resolution compelling it.
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