Heritage and the Wall Street Journal released the 2012 Index of Economic Freedom on Thursday, ranking 179 countries on 10 benchmarks that gauge their economic success. This year Heritage introduced a new interactive feature that gives you the opportunity to create a comparative graph. This week’s chart shows how the United States stacks up against Canada and the United Kingdom. As recently as 2009, the United States led both countries in economic freedom. But after four years of decline, the United States is heading in the wrong direction. This year …
Last week, The Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center hosted a very timely discussion on the prospects for U.S.–Australia–India Trilateral Cooperation featuring Graham Fletcher, the deputy chief of mission at the Australian embassy in Washington, D.C.; Sunjoy Joshi, the director of the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), an Indian think tank; Heritage’s own Walter Lohman, director of its Asian Studies Center; and Heritage senior research fellow for South Asia Lisa Curtis. This event follows the recent release of “Shared Goals, Converging Interests: A Plan for U.S.–Australia–India Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific,” a joint …
In recent weeks, representatives of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) have complained of America’s “Cold War mentality.” The rhetoric is in reaction to President Obama’s recent swing through the Pacific and particularly his announcement in Australia of a sustained rotation of aircraft and up to 2,500 Marines through northern Australia. This rhetoric is nothing new. The Chinese often dismiss America’s system of alliances in Asia as “relics” of the Cold War. They have apparently found it a handy talking point in a region that is as dynamic as East …
In a November 15 op-ed in The Age, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced that she would push her Labor Party to overturn its ban on selling uranium to India when the party meets next month. The unexpected announcement is a testament to the growing importance that Australia attaches to ties with India and should lead to a significant deepening of their bilateral partnership. In 2008, Australia’s Labor Party government reversed a decision by its predecessor to end the ban on export of uranium to India on the grounds that …
Want to hear something disturbing? China has increased its defense budget by double digits every year for the last 20 years. Just as China seems to be gearing up for some undefined enterprise, the U.S. is winding down its defense budget at a similarly rapid pace. Despite the obvious contrast, President Obama said recently that reductions in U.S. defense spending “will not—I repeat, will not—come at the expense of the Asia-Pacific.” Yesterday, Obama visited Australia to announce a renewed U.S. troop presence in coming months, part of a new security …
On November 16, President Barack Obama and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced their intention to increase U.S. Marine Corps and Air Force training in Australia. The expanded U.S. military presence is meant to enhance allied interoperability and reassure friends and allies in the region worried over an increasingly assertive China. The new joint initiative lends credence to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s promise last month that Washington would maintain or even expand its military commitment to Asia. Whether the United States is able to deliver on those promises in …
With the World Trade Organization’s Doha Round of trade talks at a standstill, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard is taking action by giving poor nations “ongoing and absolute access to 100 per cent of [Australia’s] trade markets.” The United States should follow in Australia’s footsteps by removing all barriers to imports from poor nations. According to Gillard, “Economic growth and trade is the surest way out of poverty, the surest way to create jobs and spread growth.” Poor countries have had free access to Australia’s market since 2003 with no …
Sixty years ago today, in San Francisco, the foreign ministers of Australia and New Zealand met with Dean Acheson, President Harry Truman’s Secretary of State, to sign a tripartite mutual defense treaty—the Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty, or ANZUS, which solidified America’s longstanding friendship with its two Pacific partners into a formal alliance structure. At that time, Asia had exploded into a hotbed of Communist activity, insurgency, and all-out war, a mere six years after U.S., Australia, and New Zealand fought together to force Japan’s surrender in World …
In 1966, God was pronounced dead. More recently, it was determined that God is back. But now a team of researchers has put him on the endangered species list. “Religion may become extinct in nine nations,” says a BBC headline today reporting on a presentation made at the American Physical Society meeting. Based on census data showing increased religious non-affiliation, the study “indicates that religion will all but die out altogether in those countries.” “The idea is pretty simple,” says one of the researchers. “It posits that social groups that …
A new paper entitled Australia’s Strategic Edge in 2030 from Ross Babbage, founder of the Kokoda Foundation, an Australian think tank, has furthered the debate in Australia about the future of Asia with a rising China and the role of the U.S.–Australia alliance. This paper continues the strategic discussions that took place within Australia following the release of Australia’s 2009 defense white paper and Hugh White’s 2010 Quarterly Essay piece “Power Shift: Australia’s Future between Washington and Beijing.” It, and the conversation it has generated in Australia, illustrates the continuing …
