On 6 December, Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Defence Minister Richard Marles met with their US counterparts, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, for the annual Australia – United States Ministerial Consultations, or AUSMIN, held this year in Washington DC.
In addition to the four principals, the Australian and US delegations included senior defence, intelligence and foreign policy officials. This tendency towards a security focus is born out of AUSMIN’s origins in the ANZUS Treaty, which established ‘a Council, consisting of [the parties’] Foreign Ministers or their Deputies, to consider matters concerning the implementation of this Treaty’. The first bilateral meeting held under the auspices of AUSMIN was in 1985, following the United States’ 1985 suspension of its security commitment to New Zealand for refusing port access to US nuclear submarines.
Taking AUSMIN to the third dimension | The Strategist (aspistrategist.org.au)
