At the recent ‘New Directions in Strategic Thinking’ conference, a common character trait could be found amongst the world-class collection of participants: pessimism. Not only pessimism about the state of the world today, but also …
Articles by: "Andrew Carr"
‘If you aren’t talking dollars, you aren’t talking strategy.’ While that well-known Arthur Tange saying is often used in the context of defence budgets, it can also be applied to alliance management. One of the …
In 1983 Bob Hawke and his new Treasurer Paul Keating came to office promising to resist radical changes to Australia’s economic system. Hawke’s election pitch had recognised the economy was in bad shape, but he …
In the 1990s, an American scholar wrote a famous paper called ‘Anarchy is what states make of it’. The central argument was that little in international politics is pre-ordained and how we think about issues …
Just a few years ago a number of books were released which celebrated an ‘Australia moment’, where the nation was in ‘The Sweet Spot’. Today’s book titles, however, seem to run the other way, with …
Peter Jennings picks up a theme that has been working its way through the Western security community for some years now, and quite explicitly so since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: hard power is back. That’s …
Mark Thompson writes: Imagine how the White Paper would have read if it had begun with the recognition—brutal yet surely accurate—that our security ultimately depends on the geopolitical balance in our part of the world …
Jim Molan ends his latest post on defence policy with the cutting line ‘The only upside for us voters is that the CDF and Secretary are more than likely to tell the Minister exactly what …