David Kilcullen Biden's America and Great Power Conflict

In The Dragons and The Snakes: How the Rest Learned to Fight the West, the eminent soldier-scholar David Kilcullen offers a wide-ranging analysis of the global security environment since 1993 and asks what opponents of the West have learned during the last quarter-century of conflict. The Dragons he refers to are nation-states such as China and Russia; the Snakes are guerrilla and terrorist organisations.

Western dominance over a very particular, narrowly-defined form of warfare since the Cold War has forced adversaries to adapt in ways that present serious new challenges to America and its allies, and state and non-state threats now increasingly overlap and intersect.

For President Joe Biden, the post-Trump era is fraught with challenges, ranging from increasing great power rivalry, economic uncertainty, insecure allies and domestic challenges – nowhere is this more evident than in Australia’s own region. While the nation's geographic isolation has provided Australia with a degree of protection from the major conflagrations of the 20th century, the 21st century's great power rivalry impacts closer to home.

We are consistently told that as a nation we are torn between our economic relationship with China and the longstanding strategic partnership with the US, placing the country at the epicentre of a great power rivalry – but does it have to be that way?

AIIA Victoria invites you to join Richard Iron in conversation with David Kilcullen.

Видео David Kilcullen Biden's America and Great Power Conflict канала Australian Institute of International Affairs