Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and US Secretary of State John Kerry after the annual Australia-US security talks in Sydney last month.
AAP Image/Dan Himbrechts
Australia has announced that it will take its place among the US-led coalition of states in military operations against Islamic State in Iraq. Responding to a request from the US President, Australia has…
Barack Obama is reluctant to jump in with both feet with a major military intervention in Iraq and Syria.
EPA/Valda Kalnina
US president Barack Obama has yet to work out exactly what America’s strategy is in confronting Islamic State (IS), and has been foolish enough to say so in public. Cue the foreseeable torrent of point-scoring…
A Twitterstorm about Barack Obama’s tan suit can hardly have been what the president was expecting as he spoke at a press conference about foreign policy issues ranging from the IS insurgency in Iraq…
These children are just a few of thousands feeling gang violence in central America.
EPA/David Maung
The spectacular arrival of thousands of unaccompanied Central American children at the southern frontier of the US over the last three years has provoked a frenzied response. President Obama calls the…
In telegraphing toughness on foreign policy issues, Hillary Clinton hopes to send the message that the US will act like a great power when she’s president.
EPA/Michael Reynolds
Few people expected the opening shots of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign to be fired across the bow of the Obama administration. Yet in a recent interview, the former secretary of state took aim…
The death of Michael Brown is heartbreaking, and Michelle and I send our deepest condolences to his family and his community at this very difficult time … I know the events of the past few days have prompted…
Political crisis in Iraq: “Al-Maliki is our choice” insist supporters of the ousted PM.
EPA/Ali Abbas
One of the defining moments in the growth of the Islamic State (IS) was when its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, announced in a mosque in Mosul at the end of June that an Islamic Caliphate was being established…
Five-year-old Dahlia Zabrano-Tercero at a July vigil for young Central American migrants in California.
David Maung/EPA
Between 2003 and 2011, 8,000 to 40,000 unaccompanied migrant children from Central America were stopped every year on the southern border of the US. When this number boomed to more than 57,000 during the…
Iraq is rapidly spiralling into a humanitarian catastrophe, with the persecuted Yazidi religious minority facing genocide.
EPA/Mohammed Jalil
US president Barack Obama has confirmed that the US military made targeted airstrikes and carried out a humanitarian operation in Iraq, marking the deepest US engagement in the country since US troops…
Whether or not MH17 was shot down on purpose or was just a ghastly mistake, international opinion is overwhelmingly that the airliner was downed by separatist rebels and that they were trained – and their…
Isolated by sanctions - but does Putin care?
EPA/Mikhail Klimentyev/Ria Novosti
The sanctions against Russia just announced by the EU and the US are widely reported to be the harshest since the end of the Cold War. The package includes cutting off Russia’s state-owned banks from international…
Pro-Russian separatists guarding the crash site.
EPA/Anastasia Vlasova
The shooting down of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 in Eastern Ukraine on 17th June has placed the conflict which has engulfed that part of Ukraine into an entirely new context. It has transformed the…
America has never apologised for its own passenger plane shooting incident.
EPA
President Barack Obama has declared the apparent shooting down of a Malaysia Airlines passenger plane over Ukraine is a “terrible tragedy” and warned that “the world is watching”. He has offered full assistance…
US president Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Medicare Bill into law in 1965, one of a suite of policies aimed at ending poverty in America.
LBJ Library
2014 marks the 50th anniversary of president Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty” in the United States. Whatever people might think of Johnson’s actions in southeast Asia, it’s worth pausing to remember his…
Yes we can (I’ve checked this with my legal team).
EPA/Evelyn Chavez
With the world focused on ISIS and Iraq, last month US Special Forces carried out a capture operation in Libya against Ahmed Abu Khattala, the suspected ringleader of the 2012 attacks in Benghazi. The…
Shia militias have flocked to defend Baghdad.
EPA/Khider Abbas
Once again, Iran and the United States find themselves thrust into the heart of a Middle East crisis. As the Sunni ISIS militia rampages across Iraq, consolidating its hold on a large area of territory…
Hard sell: can Obama convince Americans to trust Iran?
EPA/Martin Simon/Pool
Charles Dudley Warner’s oft-quoted suggestion that “politics makes strange bedfellows” is never better illustrated than the prospect of a rapprochement between Iran and the United States. Stimulated by…
Dorothy Parker famously reacted to the ringing of the telephone with the phrase, “What fresh Hell is this?” Occupants of the White House could be forgiven for having adopted the same practice when it comes…
The Abbott government is at risk of sullying its international reputation if it fails to acknowledge the seriousness of climate change as a global issue.
AAP/Yuli Seperi
Tony Abbott will arrive in the US this week for his first face-to-face meeting with US president Barack Obama in Washington since becoming prime minister. It comes at an important time: Australia is to…
Not so cheap: coal has wider costs than the price of digging it up.
Calistemon/Wikimedia Commons
US President Barack Obama’s latest plan to reduce carbon emissions is a welcome one, and not just because it addresses climate change. In publicising the plan to cut emissions from old coal power stations…
Professor in U.S. Politics and U.S. Foreign Relations at the United States Studies Centre and in the Discipline of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney