In the five years since the AUKUS agreement was announced, can we still rely on our British and American allies?

While most debate on AUKUS focuses on the United States and the promised Virginia-class submarines, the ultimate goal is the British-designed vessels. So how confident should Australia be that the UK can actually deliver?

Acting British High Commissioner to Australia Dr Brian Jones joins Hamish Macdonald and Waleed Aly to discuss defence budgets, shipyard capacity, and the timetable for Australia's most ambitious military acquisition.

They also discuss Britain's new prime minister, and whether Andy Burnham can finally bring the UK into its post-Brexit place in the world.

Plus - how does the UK feel about China's increasing forays into the Pacific?

Guest: Dr Brian Jones, Acting British High Commissioner to Australia.

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Nine years after more than a million Rohingya fled Myanmar, Bangladesh wants them to return. But return to what?

As Myanmar's civil war intensifies, the Rohingya are caught between the military that drove them from their homes and the powerful Arakan Army now reshaping the battlefield in Rakhine State.

Award-winning filmmaker and investigative journalist Ali Fowle joins Latika Bourke and Laura Tingle to unpack her new Al Jazeera documentary, Bloodshed on the Border. She explains how the Rohingya are being drawn into the conflict, why villages are being destroyed once again, and how a forgotten crisis has become even more dangerous.

Plus: who is the Arakan Army, how did it become one of Myanmar's most effective rebel forces, and why does Bangladesh still hope to repatriate refugees despite the continuing war?

Guest: Ali Fowle, documentary filmmaker and investigative journalist.You can watch Bloodshed on the Border here

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Giorgia Meloni has become Italy's longest continuously serving prime minister since Mussolini - no small feat in a country that usually burns through leaders in under a year. 

Once written off as a fringe far-right risk, she's since charmed Brussels and shared a book preface with Donald Trump. That was until Trump attacked the Pope and made a demeaning remark about her at the G7, and the honeymoon soured. 

At home, she's just lost a referendum, wages are among the lowest in Europe, and a more radical challenger, retired general Roberto Vannacci, polling at eight per cent and rising, is squeezing her from the right. 

Dr Marina Cino Pagliarello joins Global Roaming to unpack the split between Meloni's international and domestic image.

Guest: Dr Marina Cino Pagliarello, senior visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and senior research fellow at the European University Institute.

Mentioned in this episode: Giorgia Meloni Cuts the Hard Right a Path to Power, New York Times

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A far-right party is on the verge of forming a German state government for the first time since World War II.

The Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has surged in Saxony-Anhalt, raising questions that extend well beyond one regional election. 

Is this the latest chapter in a political shift that has been building across Europe for more than a decade? Or could it mark a deeper break with the post-war order that shaped modern Germany, the European Union and NATO?

Hamish Macdonald and Waleed Aly examine the rise of the AfD, why eastern Germany has become its strongest base, and what reunification left unresolved.

They trace the broader populist wave from the global financial crisis to Orbán, Brexit, Meloni, Le Pen and Trump, and ask whether Germany's political "firewall" against the far right is beginning to crack.

Plus: Waleed reflects on the arguments behind his new Quarterly Essay, What Future for Liberalism? and why he believes the challenge facing liberal democracy runs deeper than any single election result.

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China shock 2.0 has arrived and this time it's not the US rust belt in the firing line, it's Germany's beating industrial heart. Geraldine Doogue and Nick Bryant are joined by Jeremy Shapiro of the European Council on Foreign Relations to unpack how a flood of Chinese exports is hollowing out the car industry that Germany built its post-war identity on.

With up to 1.1 million jobs exposed and the far-right AfD looking increasingly competitive, Chancellor Friedrich Merz is clinging to the lowest approval rating of any German leader in memory.Plus, the Pentagon has sent a leaked questionnaire asking NATO allies to prove their loyalty to Washington, including whether they backed the recent strikes on Iran, and Shapiro makes the contrarian case that Obama's much-mocked Syria "red line" retreat wasn't weakness at all, but one of the smartest diplomatic wins in modern US history.Guest: Jeremy Shapiro, European Council on Foreign Relations

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After a week examining the history, logic and limits of the ANZUS alliance, Hamish Macdonald and Geraldine Doogue turn to the American perspective.

Former Trump White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci joins the podcast to discuss how alliances are viewed in Washington, whether America's partners should trust Donald Trump, and why he believes the next few years could test the West's security architecture.

Along the way, Hamish and Geraldine reflect on what they've learned from former prime ministers, historians and defence thinkers: Was ANZUS always driven more by interests than values? Is Australia more strategically important to the US than we realise? And in an increasingly uncertain world, can Canberra say no to Washington and still rely on the alliance when it matters most?

It's the final chapter of The Alliance series and a conversation about the question at the heart of Australia's foreign policy: if the old assumptions no longer hold, where do we go from here?

Guest: Former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci.

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Andrew Hastie, the Liberal MP for Canning and Shadow Minister for Industry and Sovereign Capability, joins Geraldine Doogue and Hamish Macdonald for the fourth instalment of The Alliance, marking 75 years of ANZUS. 

A former SAS soldier who deployed to Afghanistan and Middle East, Hastie traces his own path into the military back to a family story from World War II, and argues that Australia's deepening reliance on the US, from Pine Gap to AUKUS, has come at the cost of diminishing Australia's sovereignty. 

He makes the case for Australia investing in its own drone and AI capability, questions whether the public is being prepared for what the alliance might demand of them in a future conflict, and reflects on why he still sees the US as indispensable to Australia's security despite his reservations about the Trump administration.

Guest: MP and former military officer, Andrew Hastie.

Coming up on The Alliance: former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci.

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Fear of China and Japan has long defined Australia's foreign policy. Could there be a new way forward?

In the third episode of The Alliance, Hamish McDonald and Geraldine Doogue put that question to Kevin Rudd: former prime minister, former foreign minister, and, until recently, Australia's ambassador to the United States.

Rudd makes the case for what he calls "ANZUS Plus": not a straight bet on Washington, but a widening web of security arrangements layered on top of the US alliance rather than instead of it. 

He defends the joint facilities in the Northern Territory and Western Australia as genuinely different from US sovereign bases, arguing Australia retains the right to say no, as it did over Iraq.

On China, Rudd draws on the doctorate he completed on Xi Jinping's worldview, arguing Xi has deliberately shifted Chinese politics further left on ideology, further left on economics, and further nationalist on foreign policy and warns against ever underestimating him. 

He also lays out the numbers behind the region's naval build-up: China's submarine fleet, its expanding surface fleet, and how the US calculates the "pacing challenge" against it.

Plus, why Rudd calls Japan's military future 'a work in progress.'

Guest: Kevin Rudd, former Australian prime minister, former foreign minister, former Ambassador to the U.S.

Coming up on The Alliance: MP and former military officer Andrew Hastie; and former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci.

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The ANZUS treaty might be based more on cynical self-interest than a shared system of democratic values. 

In this episode of The Alliance mini-series, Hamish Macdonald and Geraldine Doogue trace the origins of Australia's most important strategic partnership and examine how it has evolved through the Cold War, Vietnam, the War on Terror and the rise of China.

Historian Michael Wesley and U.S. politics scholar Timothy Lynch explore why ANZUS was created, why Washington wanted the deal in the first place, and whether the alliance has always been far less certain than Australians assume. 

They also examine the key tension between Australia's fear of being abandoned in a time of conflict, and the United States' fear of being entangled in a war it doesn't want or need. 

As Donald Trump forces allies around the world to question old assumptions, the discussion turns to whether Australia still needs to prove its value to Washington, or whether its geography, intelligence facilities and strategic position make it more important to the United States than many Australians realise.

At 75, ANZUS remains a cornerstone of Australian foreign policy. But is the alliance stronger, more flexible and more durable than we think? Or is it time to rethink what it was designed to do in the first place?Guest: Prof. Michael Wesley & Prof. Timothy J. Lynch, University of Melbourne.

Coming up on The Alliance: Former prime minister and US ambassador Kevin Rudd; MP and former military officer Andrew Hastie; and former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci.Get in touch:

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In a special series this week, Global Roaming is checking the use-by date on our relationship with the U.S.

Signed on 1st September 1951, the ANZUS treaty has been the lynch-pin of Australia's security and foreign policy.

As we approach the 75th anniversary of the alliance, it is perhaps more challenged and questioned than ever before; Can Australia trust the U.S? Is the U.S a good ally? Are our interests and values aligned?  

In the first episode of The Alliance, Hamish McDonald and Geraldine Doogue put these questions to John Howard, the only Australian prime minister ever to invoke it.

Howard explains how the decision to invoke ANZUS after the September 11 terror attacks came together on the flight home from Washington, defends AUKUS as a direct outgrowth of that loyalty, and repeats his on-the-record criticism of Donald Trump's refusal to concede the 2020 election.

Plus, how much of the ANZUS treaty is based on fear of China? John Howard weighs in, comparing the China of Jiang Zemin with what he calls the more "aggressive and disruptive" China of Xi Jinping.Guest: former Australian prime minister John HowardComing up on The Alliance: Former prime minister and US ambassador Kevin Rudd; historians Timothy Lynch and Michael Wesley; MP and former military officer Andrew Hastie; and former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci.Get in touch:

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Find all the episodes of Global Roaming now via the ABC Listen App or wherever you get your podcasts.