Articles by: "Graeme Dobell"
Rhyming history: America has been here before

An impeached president departs Washington in disgrace. The peace deal in America’s longest war crumbles and defeat looms. US politics is polarised. A nation, both angry and agitated, grapples with racial and social divisions. The …

Australia’s security guarantee to Timor-Leste

Australia gives security guarantees to two nations that have land borders with Indonesia—Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste. The word ‘guarantee’ rightly makes Oz politicians, diplomats and lawyers cautious, even nervous: never say forever, never say …

Cabinet’s gift of independence to ASPI

Cabinet created the Australian Strategic Policy Institute as a small body with a big brain—and, most importantly, a strongly independent voice. Creation stories tell much. And the release of the cabinet records for 2000 by …

Fifty years of Foreign Affairs as a great department

A retired secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs is fulminating that the department is in a deplorable ‘crisis’. ‘The quality and conduct of Australia’s foreign relations are suffering’, he writes. The government doesn’t love …

Fifty years of the Department of Foreign Affairs

Fifty years ago this month, Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs was born, casting aside its old moniker, External Affairs. The name changed as Australia changed. The switch from External Affairs to Foreign Affairs was a …