Expertise
U.S. foreign policy; Australian foreign policy; Asia and the Pacific; the U.N. and multilateral diplomacy; diasporas; international law; state-building; human rights; speech-making
Background
Current Positions
Director, Global Issues Program, Lowy Institute for International Policy
Past Positions
Lawyer; Consultant on the establishment of the Lowy Institute; Adviser to the Prime Minister of Australia, the Hon. Paul Keating, MP; Volunteer, U.N. mission to East Timor
Education
D.Phil. (2004), M.Phil. (1999), Rhodes Scholar, University of Oxford; LL.B., University of New South Wales, 1997; B.A. (Hons), University of Sydney, 1993
"How should we grade Obama’s foreign policy? It depends on the measure you choose to apply. If you assess his record against the expectations generated by his campaign, which is how his critics proceed, then things have not gone according to plan. The planet has not cooled. Ocean levels have not fallen. Cuba has not applied to join NATO. However, you get a different answer if you use an historian’s measure, and bear in mind the structural limitations on Obama’s power and the disastrous situation he inherited – two bloody wars, nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea, persistent terrorist threats, a cooling economy, a warming planet. If this is your analytical frame, and you ask how any other individual might have done in his position, then Obama’s foreign policy looks pretty good."