When US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral John Aquilino spent his April seeking to deepen regional strategic ties, technology figured prominently on this agenda. In India, he emphasised “integrated deterrence”, a recent US push to share more technological capabilities and security operations with partners. In Australia, he visited the joint US-Australia spy satellite facility at Pine Gap. The site exemplifies US efforts to extend technological integration with partner governments.
Aquilino’s agenda was inspired partly by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, an act that has reinvigorated US President Joe Biden's commitment to supporting partners and allies. And yet Biden’s strategic agenda remains a mix of nationalism and internationalism, embodying long-running US tensions between techno-nationalist policy and internationalist cooperation.
One of the US Senate’s youngest-ever members, Biden absorbed the chamber’s ethos of collaboration, deal-making, and mutual benefit. A cold warrior for 20 years but rarely a standout hardliner, he championed deals for nuclear arms reductions and boosted the liberal postwar order. In this strategic framework, international alliances and organisations married US military dominance and economic integration. It proved a winning strategy by the late 1980s. Biden never forgot the lesson.
