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The foreign policy crises that the USA has confronted under the administration of President Barack Obama have generated profound uncertainty about whether the USA can maintain what has been its consistent grand strategy since the end of the Cold War: primacy. The authors argue, drawing on a neoclassical realist framework, that this uncertainty has been driven not so much by fundamental changes in the international system itself, but rather by how such changes have beeninterpretedby the Obama administration and its critics. US grand strategy is now caught between approaches best described as the ‘decline management’ of the Obama administration and the ‘decline denial’ of president Donald Trump, which reflects the fracturing of the domestic ‘political support system’ that has underpinned primacy since the end of the Cold War. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite the recent surge in both governmental and academic advocacy of nuclear disarmament, including initiatives of the Obama administration and the Australian and Japanese governments, the spectre of further nuclear proliferation arguably remains a key challenge for international security. This article suggests that this is particularly the case in Asia due to three major dynamics: (1) the stasis of the international non-proliferation regime embodied in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; (2) the state of flux in the global and regional strategic nuclear environment; and (3) increasing regional demand for nuclear energy. This article argues that developments in each of these realms of nuclear affairs hold the potential to increase proliferation pressures in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European security depends on the effective collaboration of the five major powers; it will be undermined by the extension of NATO, a policy driven by US domestic politics. The main threats to security are: the breakdown of political and economic stability; unintended nuclear proliferation and/or failure of the START process; Russia's evolving political and territorial aspirations. All three will remain marginal as long as Russia is constructively engaged with the West. NATO expansion threatens that engagement. It is seen by all strands of Russian opinion as violating the bargain struck in 1990 and will likely lead to the withdrawal of cooperation. Invitations to Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic cannot be rescinded, but the consequences can be mitigated by refraining from integrating them into NATO's military structure, by ceasing to insist that NATO membership is open to all, and by perpetuating the de facto nuclear-weapons-free zone that presently exists in Central and Eastern Europe. Britain's stance could be pivotal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of the ongoing international debate concerning the efficacy or otherwise of the NPT and IAEA in preventing or managing nuclear proliferation, Australia's undertaking to enter a nuclear cooperation agreement with the People's Republic of China (PRC), once identified as a “strategic competitor” of Australia's major alliance partner the United States (US), suggests that Australia's approach to proliferation issues is being re-evaluated. This paper argues, utilising an analysis of the relationship between the evolving US approach to nuclear issues and Australian policy, that the Howard government's evolving approach to nuclear issues can be characterised as an attempt to balance the competing imperatives of maintaining Australia's reputation as a nuclear non-proliferation standard bearer, regional strategic and economic considerations and the weight of the Australia-US alliance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]