As part of the Foreign Policy Rethink series, Geoff Raby sets out how middle powers can navigate a world of competing orders – and why a more independent, cooperative strategy is needed. (more…)
Geoff Raby
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The return of great power relations: Xi Jinping’s global dream – Part 3
In the third part of his piece for the Foreign Policy Rethink series, Geoff Raby examines how middle powers can navigate a world of competing great powers – and why Australia’s current approach is becoming more vulnerable.
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The return of great power relations: a world of bounded orders – Part 2
In the second part of his piece for the Foreign Policy Rethink series, Geoff Raby examines how China is constructing a competing global order and reshaping the institutions that underpin international relations. (more…)
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The return of great power relations: What can middle powers do? Part 1
As part of the Foreign Policy Rethink series, Geoff Raby examines how Trump’s shift to great power politics is reshaping the global order and forcing middle powers to rethink their strategy. (more…)
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Best of 2025 – Australia’s strategic choices in a fragmenting global order
With Trump 2.0, the global order is changing and changing rapidly. (more…)
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Best of 2025 – After Trump goes home
If anyone had any lingering doubts about the change in the world order, the sight of President Trump pumping his fist into the air at the doorway of Air Force One, before turning his back on Asia to fly home, they should be put to bed now. (more…)
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Australia’s strategic choices in a fragmenting global order
With Trump 2.0, the global order is changing and changing rapidly. (more…)
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Without peer in Australian media – Geoff Raby
Former Australian Ambassador to China and senior diplomat Geoff Raby commends Pearls and Irritations (more…)
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After Trump goes home
If anyone had any lingering doubts about the change in the world order, the sight of President Trump pumping his fist into the air at the doorway of Air Force One, before turning his back on Asia to fly home, they should be put to bed now. (more…)
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Trump turns the tables on Taiwan
When the razzle dazzle of the prime minister’s first face-to-face meeting with the mercurial US president is forgotten and the huge sigh of relief that nothing went wrong subsides, questions will be asked about what all the puffery achieved. (more…)
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China’s giant military parade didn’t surprise just the West
China’s recent display of its newly acquired military might surprised not only international observers, but also its own seasoned diplomats. (more…)
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Albanese’s visit to China is a moment for statesmanship
Membership of the Chinese Communist Party has just exceeded 100 million. It has long been the largest political party in world history. (more…)
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The Russians are not coming to Indonesia
In Jakarta for his first overseas visit after the election, the prime minister was displaying his elevated obfuscation skills. (more…)
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Is China really the main threat to Australia’s security?
What are the nature of the security threats Australia faces? How valid are the assumptions that have informed our economic, foreign and defence policy? (more…)
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Great power diplomacy in the era of Trump 2.0
With Trump in the White House, geopolitics has returned to the realm of great power relations. (more…)
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China’s digital sputnik moment
DeepSeek was virtually unknown when the year began. It is now shaking global stock markets and being called a “sputnik moment” for the US. Last month, xiao hong shi (Little Red Book) also emerged from seemingly nowhere, as US TikToc users began migrating en masse to this Chinese social media site in anticipation of TikTok being shut down. These follow a string of announcements by China’s digital tech giants on new developments in high-end semiconductor chips. (more…)
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Strategic space in a bounded global order: China, Russia and America
Geoff Raby AO, former Australian ambassador to China, discusses with Michael Lester the remaking of the global order in his book Great Game On: The Contest for Central Asia and Global Supremacy (Melbourne University Press, 2024). (more…)
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Trump: a reality check for Australia
On Tuesday the American people spoke with clarity and determination. They voted for jobs, secure borders and to be able to look to the future in an uncertain world with confidence and optimism. What we know from Trump 1.0 is that he his true to his word. (more…)
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The China Threat has now become the Chussia Anxiety
The West need not fear a Chussia aligned against it. It instead needs to develop geopolitical strategies to deal with China as the dominant power in Eurasia. For like the United States at the end of the nineteenth century when it consolidated its borders and established hegemony in the Western Hemisphere, China has consolidated its security in Eurasia and is now free to project power globally. (more…)
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A new global order has arrived
When justifying vast increases in defence expenditure, subsidies for so-called critical industries, foreign aid as an increasingly important element in the securitisation of foreign policy, governments and conservative think tanks never tire of telling the public that they live in the most dangerous of times. (more…)
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Great game on: China’s ascendency in Eurasia and the West’s Chussia anxiety
Dr Geoff Raby AO, Australian Ambassador to China 2007-2011, Chairman, Geoff Raby & Associates, will address the National Press Club of Australia on “Great Game On: China’s ascendency in Eurasia and the West’s Chussia Anxiety”. (more…)
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The deputy sheriff rides again
In recent days, Australia’s ‘”deputy Sheriff” role has been on full display again in our foreign policy. The prime minister’s extraordinary gaff at the Pacific Islands Leaders Forum, when caught out joshing along with US Deputy Secretary of State, Kurt Campbell, would have been noted not just among Pacific Island leaders, who would be entitled to feel belittled by Australia, but also across the region. (more…)
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Peak China? Judge by outcomes not ideology
Distinguishing in part between cyclical and structural economic challenges facing China, (eg, real estate busts vis further urbanisation potential) Geoff Raby, AO, former Australian Ambassador to China, to APEC and WTO, is sceptical of arguments propounding ‘peak china’ economic growth. (more…)
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Mr Modi goes to Moscow
Putin has done it again. Prime Minister Modi will visit Moscow as his first overseas destination since his re-election. And Modi has again demonstrated that India pursues an independent foreign policy. While this visit will come as a shock to Western policy makers. It also strikes a blow at efforts to isolate Russia internationally, while China will also be concerned. (more…)
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China and Russia have one bed but different dreams
Russian weakness has enabled China to emerge as Eurasia’s dominant power. But it also limits the partnership of the two. (more…)
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End of peak China?
It is easy these days to grab a headline about the end of peak China. China’s imminent economic stagnation is becoming conventional wisdom, unless of course one happens to be in the resources, energy, green industry, or automobile sectors, just to name a few. There, China’s demand continues to surge or, alternatively, depending on the sector, China’s capacity threatens extinction of foreign competitors. (more…)
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What’s next for China-Australia relations?
CGTN Radio host Liu Kun interviews Ambassador Tony Kevin, Ambassador Geoff Raby and Dr. Zhao Hai on Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s recent trip to Australia and broader China-Australia relations. (more…)
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China steals a march on a distracted world
For China these days it doesn’t get much easier to pursue it geostrategic objectives. With the US distracted on two fronts in Europe and the Middle East, and Russia mired in its intractable invasion of Ukraine, among the great powers, China is largely free to advance its interests on an increasingly global scale. Sabre rattling over Taiwan only further serves to distract the US from China’s much larger game. (more…)
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Deploying to the Red Sea a test of US fealty
It is worth considering when exactly deploying our military assets in Australia’s interests becomes a test of fealty to the United States, and an act of ‘‘mateship’’. (more…)
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Albanese’s China visit: an ear to the future
Fifty years’ ago, the grainy black and white image of Whitlam with his ear pressed against the listening wall at Beijing’s Temple of Heaven, led to the joke: What is being said to Gough? Answer: ‘Mei you!’ The ubiquities response then by Chinese service staff in restaurants and stores in those day, loosely, ‘don’t have any’. (more…)