The COVID pandemic has had dramatic effects on higher education worldwide, but the impact has been very uneven. The gap between rich and poor has widened further, aid to education has been cut, and abrupt changes introduced to pedagogy, international student and staff mobility, research laboratories, and institutional bottom lines. Anglophone systems with a high dependence on international students (Australia, Canada, UK, New Zealand) have been particularly affected. In Australia, the fact that the COVID crisis occurred in the context of rivalrous US-China relations influenced how the pandemic was understood and its effects, including in higher education. But the specific context was also influential, including lingering tensions between Australia's geography and history. A further complication was that higher education had become overly dependent on international student fee income, with higher education becoming Australia's largest service-sector export. It is argued that the longstanding underfunding of the higher education system, the abrupt closing of international borders, and the impact to the rising US-China Culture War have combined to produce major effects on the higher education system, the results of which will continue for some time.