Mr Tony Walker: The World in 2011

A new year has opened amid financial distress in the US and Western Europe, with the American military struggling for success in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, and with China fast emerging as the big new global power.  This is a year in which the West's ability to sustain its old dominance will be tested in many ways.  Beijing will flex its economic and military muscles.  Other rising powers will assert their influence. Unscrupulous regimes from North Korea and Iran to Venezuela and Sudan will seek to take advantage of any weakness in Washington.  The Middle East will remain a huge challenge with a risk of fresh conflict.  Nuclear-armed Pakistan will keep President Obama awake at night as it continues to implode. Can the Korean peninsula avoid a new war?  Will Sudan separate peacefully?  Will the Euro zone disintegrate?  What will the tenth anniversary of 9/11 bring to this troubled outlook?  Most important for us, how is Australia positioned in the global context? To place these and other issues in perspective we welcome the return to AIIAV of Mr Tony Walker.  No Australian international journalist has devoted more time to reporting, analysing and commenting on global issues.  In the course of more than 30 years as a foreign correspondent, variously for the 'Financial Times', 'The Age' and now as International Editor of the 'AFR', Mr Walker has interviewed many of the famous figures who have shaped today's geopolitical outlook.  He has reported many historic events and gained a first-hand feel for the ways of the world from bases in Beijing, Cairo, Washington, DC, and elsewhere.  He is the co-author of a biography of Yasser Arafat and is working on a history of Australian war correspondents.