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Australia in the World

Australia in the World

By: Darren Lim
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Summary

 A discussion of the most important news and issues in international affairs through a uniquely Australian lens. Hosted by Darren Lim, in memory of Allan Gyngell.Copyright 2019 All rights reserved. Political Science Politics & Government
Episodes
  • Ep 184: Learning lessons on Iran

    Ep 184: Learning lessons on Iran
    May 13 2026

    Eleven weeks into the U.S.-Iran war, the news cycle is relentless, but the strategic position has barely moved. Darren looks to step back from the weekly churn to lay out the five durable lessons of this conflict — the things that were becoming visible in March, that have held through April, that are still true in May, and that may well remain true for some time yet.

    The episode begins with a factual update: the collapse of Project Freedom, the trading of fire that neither side will call a ceasefire violation, Iran's 10 May counter-proposal demanding sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, Trump's dismissal of it as "garbage," and the bombshell New York Times report that Iran has regained operational access to most of its missile capability — directly contradicting the administration's public narrative just as Trump leaves for his summit with Xi Jinping.

    The bulk of the episode then works through five structural lessons:

    1. Coercion doesn’t work if your adversary wants it more
    2. The geography in geo-economics—how Iran has demonstrated a modern model of asymmetric power
    3. Both sides still prefer no deal to a deal, and Trump's overnight Truth Social post tells us more than he realises
    4. Policy competence actually matters a lot
    5. The decaying pillars of the international order, with the oil market as case study

    Darren closes with the model he keeps coming back to: what actually constrains Donald Trump. With JP Morgan predicting Hormuz will reopen in June on inventory grounds, the institutional architecture that has buffered the shock running out of room, and Republican Senate primaries clearing through May and June, the question is whether material reality and the political calendar finally converge to produce a binding constraint on a president who has resisted almost every other form.

    Australia in the World is written, hosted, and produced by Darren Lim, with research and editing by Hannah Nelson and theme music composed by Rory Stenning.

    Relevant links

    Adam Entous, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, "U.S. Intelligence Shows Iran Retains Substantial Missile Capabilities," New York Times, 12 May 2026: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/12/us/politics/iran-missiles-us-intelligence.html

    Sudarsan Raghavan, "The Art of the Ceasefire," The New Yorker, 12 May 2026: https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/the-art-of-the-ceasefire

    International Crisis Group, "Iran Crisis Monitor #5," 12 May 2026: https://www.crisisgroup.org/bnt/middle-east-north-africa/iran-israelpalestine-united-states/iran-crisis-monitor-5

    Danny Citrinowicz, "How the War Saved the Iranian Regime," Foreign Affairs, 29 April 2026: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/iran/how-war-saved-iranian-regime

    Gregory Brew, "America Will Pay Dearly for Its Energy Arrogance," New York Times, 2 May 2026: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/02/opinion/trump-us-oil-crisis-strait-of-hormuz.html

    Jason Bordoff, "If OPEC Falls Apart, It'll Cost Us All," New York Times, 6 May 2026: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/06/opinion/opec-oil-markets-trump.html
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    1 hr and 4 mins
  • Ep. 183: Hormuz—the new nuclear

    Ep. 183: Hormuz—the new nuclear
    Apr 21 2026

    Eight weeks into the US-Israeli war against Iran, the ceasefire is about to expire and the second round of negotiations is supposed to be happening this week in Islamabad. Darren uses the framework of “war-as-bargaining” to make sense of an extraordinary three weeks—the threats, the ceasefire, the collapse of the first talks, the blockade, Iran's brief reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and its near-immediate closure—and argues that the conflict has transformed Iran's strategic calculus in ways that make control of the Strait a functional substitute for nuclear weapons. The episode then works through what kind of deal is actually possible, why the Trump administration’s rejection of process makes that deal hard to deliver, and why the West more broadly is going to have to develop the psychological capacity to live with outcomes in which adversaries get to enjoy strategic successes. Darren finishes with a moral accounting of Trump's threats to annihilate Iranian civilisation, and a post-script on what he still believes despite it all.

    Australia in the World is written, hosted, and produced by Darren Lim, with research and editing by Hannah Nelson and theme music composed by Rory Stenning.

    Relevant links

    Thomas Schelling, Arms and Influence (Yale University Press, 1966): https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/113730.Arms_and_Influence

    Robert Pape, Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War (Cornell University Press, 1996): https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/761594.Bombing_to_Win

    Mark Mazzetti, Adam Entous and Julian E. Barnes, “For Iran, Flexing Control Over Waterway Is New Deterrent,” New York Times, 18 April 2026: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/18/us/politics/iran-hormuz-strait-trump.html

    Josh Dawsey and Annie Linskey, “Behind Trump’s Public Bravado on the War, He Grapples With His Own Fears”, 18 April 2026: https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/trump-public-bravado-private-fear-59814dca

    “Which Iran is America dealing with?”, The Economist, 19 April 2026: https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2026/04/19/which-iran-is-america-dealing-with

    Barak Ravid and Marc Caputo, “U.S. considers $20 billion cash-for-uranium deal with Iran,” Axios, 17 April 2026: https://www.axios.com/2026/04/17/iran-us-deal-20-billion-frozen-funds-uranium

    Phil Stewart, “Allies fear a rushed US–Iran framework deal could backfire, leaving technical deadlock,” Reuters, 19 April 2026: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/allies-fear-rushed-usiran-framework-deal-could-backfire-leaving-technical-2026-04-19/

    Fareed Zakaria interview with Ezra Klein, “Fareed Zakaria on the Moral Cost of Trump's War,” The Ezra Klein Show, New York Times, 10 April 2026: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5hU0VHM1-M&pp=ygUSZXpyYSBrbGVpbiBwb2RjYXN0

    The West Wing, “They'll Like Us When We Win”: YouTube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZYs2UpLYAI

    Twitter handles of individuals mentioned:

    Danny (Dennis) Citrinowicz (@citrinowicz)

    Vali Nasr (@vali_nasr)

    Ali Vaez (@AliVaez)

    Robert Malley (@Rob_Malley)

    Dmitri Medvedev (@MedvedevRussiaE)
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    1 hr and 6 mins
  • Ep. 182: Another wild 48 hours on Iran, plus the Australian lens

    Ep. 182: Another wild 48 hours on Iran, plus the Australian lens
    Apr 1 2026
    In the second episode of the week recorded just 48 hours after the last one (around 12pm on Wed 1 April), Darren is joined once again by Stephen Dziedzic of the ABC to talk through what, again, has been a wild few days. In two Truth Social posts barely twelve hours apart, President Trump threatened to destroy Iranian desalination plants — a move legal experts describe as a war crime — and then told allies to "go get your own oil" signalling the United States may end the war without reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Taken together, these posts suggest something seismic: the effective repudiation of the Carter Doctrine, which since 1980 has been the foundational premise of U.S. security strategy in the Gulf. But then Darren and Stephen turn to a long overdue conversation about what this means for Australia and the region. They cover: The alliance. Australia has maintained carefully calibrated support for the U.S. strikes, but if Trump walks away from Hormuz, the question for Canberra shifts from "will we join an American-led operation?" to "will we join a deal with Tehran that Washington might hate?" Trump is effectively telling allies to solve a problem he created — but may condemn whatever solution they find.The region. Singapore's foreign minister Vivian Balakrishnan has framed this as an Asian crisis driven by an American war. Stephen reports on the fury across Southeast Asia, the limits of what countries like Singapore and the Philippines can actually do in response, and why — despite the rage — the short-term strategic calculus holding these alliances together may persist even as long-term trust fractures.Energy statecraft. Bloomberg reported this week that Penny Wong and Madeleine King are leveraging Australia's LNG exports in conversations with Asian partners. Stephen unpacks the competing signals from inside government — one camp talking about "bargaining chips," another insisting Australia is simply being a reliable supplier — and why the audience for much of this messaging may be domestic rather than international. Darren and Stephen explore the broader question of whether Australia needs a new toolkit for directing energy flows in a crisis.The Pacific. Pacific Island nations run almost entirely on diesel and face an existential crisis if supply disruptions continue into May and June. Stephen reports that Canberra is war-gaming options — from redirecting aid funding to sharing physical diesel supplies to folding the Pacific into bilateral energy deals with Singapore and others.The China-Pakistan five-point peace initiative, announced yesterday, is the first time a major power has proposed a concrete pathway to end the war. Darren raises Adam Tooze's provocative FT column on a "blueprint for Chinese global hegemony" — mocked and criticised, but capturing something real about the sheer demand for someone to lead. Darren and Stephen grapple with whether this crisis could pull China into a systemic stabiliser role it has never sought and may not want — and what that would mean for a world order already through the looking glass. The episode concludes with both noting that the Prime Minister is due to address the nation in hours, and Trump is scheduled to speak overnight — meaning everything discussed may be overtaken by events before listeners press play. Australia in the World is written, hosted, and produced by Darren Lim, with research and editing this episode by Hannah Nelson and theme music composed by Rory Stenning. Relevant links Trump Truth Social post threatening to destroy Iranian power plants, oil wells, and desalination plants (30 March 2026): https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/30/trump-iran-strikes-escalation-00850005 Trump Truth Social post: "Go get your own oil" (31 March 2026): https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-01/trump-anger-at-allies-as-hegseth-visits-mideast/106519152 Wall Street Journal — "Trump Tells Aides He's Willing to End War Without Reopening Hormuz" by Alexander Ward and Meridith McGraw (31 March 2026): https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/trump-iran-war-strait-of-hormuz-ee950ad4 Singapore Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan interview with Reuters (23 March 2026): https://www.mfa.gov.sg/newsroom/press-statements-transcripts-and-photos/transcript-of-minister-for-foreign-affairs-dr-vivian-balakrishnan-s-interview-with-reuters-global-managing-editor-for-world-news-mark-bendeich--23-march-2026/ The New Yorker — "Trump, Iran, and the Shadow of Suez" by Ishaan Tharoor (30 March 2026): https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/trump-iran-and-the-shadow-of-suez Stephen Wertheim (Carnegie Endowment) on the purpose of U.S. military role in the Middle East — quoted in The New Yorker The Economist — “Refine and dandy: Iran’s war bounty”, The Intelligence (podcast), 31 March: https://www.economist.com/podcasts/2026/03/31/refine-and-dandy-irans-war-bounty Bloomberg — "Australia Aims to Use LNG Clout to Secure Asian Fuel Supplies" by Keira ...
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    1 hr and 3 mins
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