Turbulence

What is Donald Trump trying to achieve and where does Australia end up in all of this?
What we do now will affect our destiny for the rest of this century.

Turbulence: Australian Foreign Policy in the Trump Era is an indispensable manual for understanding the present and navigating the future. It addresses the serious challenges Australia faces as Trump upends geopolitical tectonic plates and shows that a shrewd calculus is at work behind the chaos. Trump wants the United States, not China, to define and control the technical standards of the global economy: in finance, telecommunications, space, robotics, bioengineering, nanotechnologies and manufacturing methods. That means full-spectrum rivalry with China. If economic control is not possible, Trump’s plan B is global economic separation from China. For him to achieve these goals, there are three key front lines: Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Taiwan.

In Turbulence, Clinton Fernandes explores the forces at work in each of these front lines, and the implications for Australia. Trump wants to create an illiberal order of reactionary states with undemocratic political systems committed to weakening non-Western international associations that seek a more democratic order. Fernandes investigates how Australia is trying to remain on the winning side of the global confrontation between a US-led West and an increasingly dissatisfied rest of the world, to whom China’s outreach seems enticing.

Written with deep insight and a technical mastery of many disciplines, Turbulence is required reading for all those concerned about the world and Australia’s role in it.

About the Author

Clinton Fernandes is Professor of International and Political Studies at the University of New South Wales. He has published on the relationship between science, diplomacy and international law, intelligence operations in foreign policy, the political and regulatory implications of new technology and Australia's external relations more generally. His research in the Future Operations Research Group at UNSW analyses the operational environment, and the threats, risks and opportunities that military forces will face, in the 2030-50 timeframe.