G20, Blinken and how US Exceptionalism is running out of time

The big story of the week is the G20 Summit in New Delhi and what it reveals about the new force fields of the multipolar world. With the UN General Assembly meeting next week, the world is walking from the wrecked starship of US diplomacy, the USS Exceptionalism.

In geopolitics, BRICS is the ocean, and the USA is Canute

The tolling of the bell for the American dream of a single world order, made in its own image, however does not mean the story of an expanding BRICS is the rise of a new hegemon. The multipolar world is becoming less unruly, and more plural. But who is King Canute, resisting the tide of history?

Australia’s minor power mentality.

There has been a growing debate in Australia over its subservient defence and security relationship with the USA. This debate is also leading into a meeting next week, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) national conference.

Biden remarks on Xi were a boast, not a gaffe

So Biden’s remarks were not a gaffe, not a slip. They are not words of petty anger, even if they are the simmering resentment of Captain Ahab’s obsessive revenge. Biden’s remarks are more boastful than angry, though they have that edge too. Biden is angrily defending his inflated image of his own prowess as political leader and foreign policy leader, and indeed the infinite ‘possiblilities’ of America.