Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne concluded a four-day tour of Southeast Asia this week, visiting Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam and Indonesia. The trip was widely seen as an effort by the Australian government to allay concerns in some nearby countries over the recently announced AUKUS defense pact, which calls for Australia to deploy nuclear-propelled submarines with assistance from the United States and United Kingdom.
On the Trend Lines podcast this week, Susannah Patton, a research fellow in the Foreign Policy and Defense Program at the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Center, joined WPR’s Elliot Waldman to talk about the wide range of reactions to AUKUS from within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
Listen to the full conversation here: