As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton led one of the Obama Administration’s signature foreign policy initiatives, the ‘pivot’ to Asia. On 13 June, the Lowy Institute heard an address from Hillary Clinton’s closest foreign policy confidant, Jake Sullivan, about what motivated the pivot and what US Asia policy will look like under President Trump and beyond. A rising China, a belligerent North Korea and an unruly ASEAN are among the many challenges facing the US in the Asia-Pacific. Can this still be ‘America’s Pacific Century’, as Clinton promised when she first described the pivot in 2011?

The annual Owen Harries Lecture honours the enormous contribution Mr Harries, a Nonresident Fellow of the Lowy Institute, has made to the international policy debate in Australia.

Jake Sullivan was senior foreign policy adviser to Hillary Clinton's 2016 election campaign, having ‘quietly catapulted through the ranks of the Democratic foreign policy establishment’, as Vox magazine put it. Sullivan had earlier served as senior aide to President Obama, national security adviser to Vice President Joe Biden and Director of Policy Planning at the US Department of State, as well as deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In 2013 Sullivan launched and co-led the secret negotiations with Iran about its nuclear program, paving the way for the November 2013 nuclear agreement.

Previous Lowy Institute Distinguished International Fellows include Kurt Campbell, Stephen Hadley, Ambassador Shyam Saran and David Ignatius.

The Lowy Institute would like to thank Telstra, the sponsor of the Distinguished International Fellowship Program.

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