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The ABR Podcast 

Released every Thursday, the ABR podcast features our finest reviews, poetry, fiction, interviews, and commentary.

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‘Rejecting the system it created’: How Trump’s America is reshaping Australia’s regional relations

by Rebecca Strating

This week on the ABR Podcast, we feature Rebecca Strating’s commentary ‘“Rejecting the system it created”: How Trump’s America is reshaping Australia’s regional relations’. While the second Trump administration presents a challenge for Australian policy makers, it also provides an opportunity for Australia, explains Strating, ‘to develop greater self-reliance in foreign policy and deepen relationships across Asia’. But what are leaders across Asia concerned about and how are they responding to the Trump administration? Strating provides a survey, noting that ‘most Southeast Asian nations have so far opted for hedging strategies that maintain relationships with multiple partners’.
Rebecca Strating is Director of La Trobe Asia and was this year awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in recognition of her contributions to the fields of strategic defence and international relations. Her most recent book, Girt by Sea: Re-imagining Australia’s security, was published by Black Inc. in 2024. Here is Rebecca Strating with ‘“Rejecting the system it created”: How Trump’s America is reshaping Australia’s regional relations’, published in the June issue of ABR.

Recent episodes:


Since the May 2022 federal election, several books have been published seeking to explain the rise of the teal independents. In this week’s ABR Podcast, Dennis Altman, a Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow at La Trobe University, reads his review of three such books. Altman argues that the media’s concern with the teals borders on an ‘obsession’, blinding them to other cross-currents in the Australian political landscape. Listen to Dennis Altman’s ‘Teal Talk: Exaggerating the independents’ revolution’.

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