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Professor G. John Ikenberry argues that the grand project of liberal internationalism is in crisis today. But he believes there is every reason for the world’s democracies to work together to revive the liberal global order.

In the weeks before the European Union accepted Ukraine into membership talks, AIIA National Executive Director Dr Bryce Wakefield travelled to Hungary and asked about Budapest's beef with Kyiv.

For almost two decades, Canberra hedged its economic and security bets between China rather successfully, with Australian policymakers announcing that the country would not have to choose between the two great powers. That era is over.

Professors John Mearsheimer and Sebastian Rosato contest the view that states frequently act irrationally, as they propose their own concept of rationality and survey a number of cases in support of their argument. 

The system-shaping power of global financial institutions has the potential to be exploited for national self-interests by powerful states. With functionality eroded, and leadership boards stacked, institutions can be made ripe for changes that threaten their longstanding liberal foundations and ultimately global stability.

Vladimir Putin may be hoping for a negotiated settlement on Ukraine, with the support of a weakened and defensively apathetic Europe. A revived Saint-Malo Accord may make this more difficult, a prospect the United Kingdom’s new foreign minister will certainly be trying to bolster.

Despite its failure to isolate Cuba and overthrow its government, and its near unanimous opposition from the international community, the 62-year old US embargo seems likely to endure into the foreseeable future.   

Once widely dismissed as irrelevant, the BRICS bloc has seen a resurgence amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine and rising US-China tensions.  As the bloc increasingly morphs into a tool to advance the interests of Russia and China, it poses a growing threat to the liberal international order.

Today, the Indonesia-led Archipelagic and Island States Forum (AIS) has become the world’s fastest-growing climate and island-centric multilateral bloc. With some initiative, Australia could join the AIS Forum and project Canberra’s growing regional and global climate leadership through the Forum. 

The Western societies have shown a great deal of solidarity with Ukraine. 20 months after the invasion, however, there are some worrisome tendencies that need to be addressed should the collective West want to avoid the Ukraine fatigue for its own sake.