This Sunday, Myanmar held the second parliamentary election since the end of five decades of junta rule. Amid economic hardships, escalating civil and ethnic upheavals, and a strained international image with the Rohingya issue, Aung San Suu Kyi's ruling party has claimed landslide victory.

The only times that foreign policy has been a significant issue in contemporary presidential elections have been during wars or major international crises. But to say that foreign policy is electorally less important than domestic policy is not to say that it is unimportant.

This week in Australian foreign affairs: Morrison congratulates Biden, two more COVID-19 vaccines secured for Australia, more flights between New Zealand and Hobart, and more.

Many of the drivers of paradiplomacy, such as the search for foreign direct investment, remain the same. New factors, in the form of strategic competition, are emerging and influencing the ways in which subnational actors interact with each other and with other countries.

Australia, India, Japan, and the United States held the first Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) on the sidelines of an ASEAN Regional Forum meeting in 2007. Since then, the Quad has faced significant scrutiny from detractors.

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor provides China strategic access to the Arabian Sea and lucrative projects for Chinese companies. Pakistan needs Chinese technology to upgrade its infrastructure, especially in the energy sector, but CPEC has increased Pakistan’s fiscal instability and opposition requests for more transparency.

Harold David Anderson was a meritorious Australian who brought great distinction and much honour to his country. Anderson displayed strong ethical and moral courage in his realistic pessimism over Vietnam at a time when his views were not always welcomed in Canberra.

Australia does not behave as a "good international citizen" anymore, but this is a strategic adaptation to a more demanding regional environment. With a challenging Indo-Pacific and declining US leadership, Canberra should engage strategically with long-overlooked states in the region.

Armenia and Azerbaijan are embroiled in a bloody fight over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, officially recognised as Azerbaijani territory since 1993. The problem is that the majority of those living inside the enclave are ethnic Armenians, and they would much rather live under Armenian rule.

The votes in the US presidential election were all cast before polls closed on Tuesday night in America. The counting of the votes will continue for days or weeks while the result remains uncertain.