The Trump effect downunder: U.S. allies, Australian strategic culture, and the politics of path dependence

Regional powers and the politics of scale

“…For the conservative Coalition, which framed Australia's regional role through the prism of the security architecture of the Indo-Pacific, this decentred environment from regionalism, which was particularly significant for Australia's relationship with the USA. Whereas the previous period of conservative Coalition rule (1996Coalition rule ( -2007 could rely on a firm and predictable relationship with the USA, the Trump presidency led to strained relations, although not as much for Australia as for other traditional American allies (Beeson and Bloomfield 2019). The Trump administration was deeply hostile to climate change discourse, and leading figures on the US populist right such as Fox News media personality Tucker Carlson and governor of Florida Ron DeSantis exercised significant influence over the Republican base, which raised the possibility that a future conservative Coalition government in Australia would have to avoid taking climate action, even in a 'greenwashed' format, if it might irritate a putative Republican US president.…”

Harnessing protest potential: Russian strategic culture and the colored revolutions

“…It offers a cultural context for strategic decision-making within a country: by understanding a state's collective beliefs about security policy and the use of force, shaped by shared experience and history, it may be possible to gain an insight into what shapes the threat perceptions of a state's policy-making elites and how they might interpret, and therefore react to, international events such as popular uprisings or colored revolutions. As Beeson and Bloomfield (2019) assert, because "states' ideational histories and cultural traditions differ, different states interpret the same material variables somewhat differently, meaning they may respond differently to similar stimuli" (p. 338).…”