Address, NXT Global Summit
“The Global Reset”
13 March 2026
The Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi, India
Spend five minutes scrolling the headlines and you would be forgiven for concluding the world is falling apart.
The Middle East is on fire, as the US and Israel pound Iran and their proxies day and night.
Shipping lanes are cut off, causing oil and gas prices to sky rocket, disrupting economies, threatening food production, escalating already strained costs of living and inflationary pressures.
The war grinds on in Ukraine at great human cost, as it does in the Sudan.
Dictators have been dramatically taken down and spirited away in the middle of the night, as their sponsors have sat silent and stunned.
US trade protectionism has been straining friendships and alliances, while increasing tension with China. At the same time Chinese over production and economic coercion has similarly impacted trading partners, which India and Australia know all about.
Sharp words are being exchanged between western allies, raising doubts about trust, reliability and the future of such alliances. Even threats to sovereignty in Greenland have not been off limits.
And then there is the return of great power rivalry.
China now casts a significant and increasing shadow over the Indo-Pacific, the global economy and global institutions. China’s economic miracle has fuelled the most largest peacetime military build up in world history, and it has every intention of going further, including reclaiming Taiwan, creating the single most significant geo-security flashpoint in the world today.
Critical minerals, rare earths and critical technologies are being used as choke points to press geo-political advantage, while the space domain is becoming increasingly militarised under the cloak of dual use.
And this is just geo-politics.
At the same time tectonic shifts in demography, technology and capital markets are redefining the future.
All of this will bring more disruption, some good, some bad. Some of this is enduring change - like AI - while others, such as closed shipping lanes in the Straits of Hormuz, could be resolved in weeks, if not sooner.
So is it all just chaos or is there some method or thematic to this alleged madness? Are the walls of our global rules based order really collapsing, in an age of rupture as Prime Minister Carney described it, ushering in a new cold world, or is a better future being built?
The chaos narrative is a compelling story, but it is also incomplete.
Outside the broader and enduring mega trends in demography, technology and capital markets, much of the disruption of the past year has been driven by the Trump Administration. That is undeniable. But disruption is not the same thing as disorder. Nor is it evidence of strategic incoherence.
Instead of the US bringing down the international order and allowing us to enter into a soulless world of great power politics, I would argue there is a deliberate and genuine work of reset underway. The goal is to return the world order to a trajectory that better favours liberal interests and human freedom from one increasingly influenced by illiberal states acting in concert and international institutions untethered from their founding liberal values and mission.
The system needs a reset. I believe that is what the US has embarked upon.
To understand what is happening, you have to start with the Trump Administration’s own stated objectives.
First, secure the foundation of the US homeland and its regional approaches.
Second, prioritise the Indo-Pacific as the decisive theatre of long-term strategic competition.
Third, rebalance burden-sharing among allies.
Fourth, rebuild US industrial and defence sovereignty.
Seen through that prism, events across the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific begin to look less like chaos and more like reset.
In Washington’s hierarchy of threats, homeland vulnerabilities are paramount. Drug trafficking, mass migration, and hostile influence within the Western Hemisphere are treated not as peripheral irritants but as direct national security challenges.
The operation to remove Nicolás Maduro was emblematic of this approach. Venezuela had become more than a narco-state. It functioned as a platform for adversarial influence, sanctions evasion, illicit oil trading, and military cooperation with Russia and Iran. The message of Operation Absolute Resolve was simple: the United States will no longer tolerate hostile infrastructure in its immediate neighbourhood.
Even the Greenland controversy, while needlessly provocative in its prosecution , reflected similar logic. Arctic approaches matter. The North Atlantic is no longer a benign environment. The disagreement was over process, not purpose. The strategic objective of hardening northern defences, remains legitimate and shared.The pattern is clear: restore control of the hemisphere, close vulnerabilities, and reassert deterrence close to home.
In Europe the US has acted to reset burden sharing. This has been jarring and abrasive. For decades, Europe over-relied on US military predominance as a constant. Defence spending declined. Industrial capacity thinned. Strategic risk was discounted. Washington demanded higher NATO spending and for Europe to assume primary responsibility for its own security.
Despite rhetorical protest, Washington has catalysed change that polite diplomacy failed to achieve for years. The irony is striking: European leaders now speak proudly of greater independence and sovereignty in response to US pressure. That is precisely what Washington demanded.
In the Middle East, for almost half a century, the Iranian revolutionary regime has built influence and tormented the region through proxies, missile forces, maritime disruption and nuclear ambition. Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis and other networks allowed Tehran to project power while avoiding direct confrontation. The result has been persistent instability that has threatened governments, shipping, energy prices and injected volatility into the global economy.
The campaign led by the United States and Israel is being fought to break that pattern.
While the disruption has been and will continue to be significant in the short term, the long term goal of a stable region free of Iranian hegemony is far more conducive to what Condi Rice used to describe as a world order that favours freedom, than what we had a year ago.
Destruction, degrading and denial of much of Iran’s capabilities, including nuclear weapons, conventional naval strength, ballistic missile launch, production and interception capability and weakening of their ability to support their proxy networks already represent big wins. They have secured air superiority for the US and Israel to strike deep into Iran at will.
This will make Iran a far more manageable force in the region than they have been at anytime in their modern revolutionary history. Regime change would be better, but at the cost of escalating into another forever war and rendering short term economic impacts more enduring, this would be counter productive and off strategy.
Even now, President Trump has achieved what all of his predecessors have been unable to do and some unwilling to do. The achievements to date are already significant. They should be maximised in the time remaining, claimed and banked in order to allow the US to stay on mission and turn their focus to the Indo-Pacific, which is a priority element of their strategy, as articulated.
While the US security and defense strategies go out of their way not to mention China and even Taiwan by name, their unspoken presence is unmistakable.
There is no doubt that the US welcomes resistance to China in the region and the stronger alliances this can foster to support their deterrence efforts. However, the US strategy is to deter, not provoke. This requires a careful line to be walked, as the Chinese are very easily provoked.
The upcoming leaders meeting between Xi and Trump will be a further opportunity to ensure that tensions are managed. Neither leader has anything to gain by exacerbating tensions. However, this does not mean either will abandon their red lines or programmes to enhance their capabilities and compete for dominance.
The includes continuing to build credible collective deterrence with allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific theatre to prevent conflict and achieve stability. This means combining continued US security leadership with regional alliances and partnerships that are also willing to lift their rate of effort on burden sharing, especially in relation to their spending on defence, security and intelligence capabilities, integration and interoperability.
While the Indo-Pacific does not have a NATO-style architecture, and does not seek one, it does have a working and comprehensive web of bi-lateral and multilateral alliances and like minded partnerships, including Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Phillipines, India and ASEAN states, covering both economic and military security. This includes the five power defence agreements, the CP-TPP, the Quad and even AUKUS.
These networks are only as strong as the bonds between each of their members. As Prime Minister of Australia from 2018 to 2022, my Government worked assiduously on these relationships, especially with Quad partners, including the AUKUS agreement and the Japan reciprocal access agreement. We achieved the first Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with ASEAN.
But it was with India where we also saw a dramatic step up in our bilateral relationship. Together with my friend Prime Minister Modi we took our bilateral relationship to its highest level ever as we saw a convergence of outlook, interests, and ultimately, responsibility in the Indo-Pacific.
In 2020, this culminated in elevating the relationship to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, binding Australia and India to work together more closely on defence, intelligence, maritime security, technology, and on securing the supply chains that underpin our economies and our sovereignty.
We also put in place the Mutual Logistics Support Arrangement, enabling our defence forces to operate together more seamlessly. We strengthened cooperation between our security and intelligence agencies. We expanded our naval exercises, including through the Malabar exercise with our Quad partners, the United States and Japan.
And in 2022, after many years of effort, we concluded our first Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement, opening a new chapter in our economic relationship.
During this time the Quad was also revived at leader level, and Prime Minister Modi and I stood together with our counterparts in the United States and Japan to ensure that our region remains open, stable and sovereign.
While the Quad got off to a strong start, it now needs a reset. A year ago, Secretary Rubio sensibly refocussed the Quad agenda, which I am pleased included critical minerals cooperation, which I first highlighted at the first in person Quad meeting in Washington in 2021, as well as maritime domain awareness and infrastructure, such as sea cables and ports. Space would also be a good inclusion.
This reset also needs to happen at the leader level. Prime Minister Modi is the only remaining foundational member. New leaders in the US and and especially in Japan, provide a great opportunity to refocus the Quad’s efforts, lift the tempo of engagement and increase its intentionality.
At a leader level it must meet more frequently and provide for greater unscripted engagement to review and set priorities and candidly address current issues within the region. This should include China’s increasing presence in the Indian Ocean and India’s neighbouring states in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. I trust the next meeting in India will be scheduled soon and bring a greater Indo focus to the Quad’s Indo-Pacific dialogue
In conclusion, it is true we live in uncertain times. But the prevailing “chaos narrative” misses the structural shift underway.
The United States is not withdrawing from the world. It is resetting it.
The US is demanding allies carry greater weight. It is rebuilding industrial capacity. It is concentrating strategic focus where long-term competition is most acute, in our region.
In the Americas, homeland security is reinforced.
In Europe, burden sharing is accelerating.
In the Middle East, adversarial influence has been and continues to be degraded.
In the Indo-Pacific, deterrence is front and centre.
The distinction between disruption and decline matters.
When that disruption is intended to achieve a positive reset to a more favourable balance in our global order, it should be appreciated and supported by likemindeds, rather than feared and derided.
