An Australia fully embracing Southeast Asia will be seeking to join the ASEAN Community, not Suharto’s ASEAN. The glimpse Australia has of its future in Southeast Asia—framed by Indonesia—is the opportunity offered by Jokowi rather …
Articles by: "Graeme Dobell"
Southeast Asia is where Australia’s geography collides with our future. And Southeast Asia acts as the threshold for what Australia faces in the Asian century. The ASEAN summit in Sydney was the first on Australian …
ASEAN comes to Sydney this week. The harbour city hosts Southeast Asia as Malcolm Turnbull does summitry with ASEAN’s leaders. Just back from the Washington DC celebration of 100 years of US–Australia mateship, the prime …
Australian politics is the art of riding a bicycle along a tightrope, pedalling furiously, using one hand to alternatively whisper into a phone and scream into a megaphone, while the other hand is used to …
Japan faces a choice. Will it decide on a hard or a comfortable future? Decisions—political, strategic and social—don’t come much bigger. What Japan’s leaders and people pick will say much about our times and the …
Ahead of the ASEAN–Australia summit in Sydney next month, ASPI today publishes my report Australia as an ASEAN Community partner. The report discusses how and why Australia should join the Association of Southeast Asian Nations …
Australia’s four foreign policy white papers are windows on their moments, offering a 20-year narrative of shifting times. The arc is across four stepping stones aligned in purpose but beset by swift tides. The white …
‘Politics stops at the seaboard and anybody who denies that postulate is a son of a bitch and a crook and not a true patriot.’—Dean Acheson, US Secretary of State Acheson, a wry moustachioed warrior …
The US is the essential status quo power, led by a revisionist president. China loves the current status quo, while liking how the tide of change flows its way. The labels ‘status quo’ and ‘revisionist’ …
Australia’s aspiration for the South Pacific must be for the creation of an economic, political and security community. Australia and New Zealand will be central to such a community—and will carry the cost—but much of …
Up in the Arcadia of the political afterlife, some great Oz leaders are sharing an ambrosia sherbet and reflecting on the recurring rhythms of Australia and the South Pacific over nearly 150 years. ‘The old …
For the past 50 years in Asia, the economists have consistently beaten the strategists in the crystal ball stakes. Over those decades, you’d have done better going to an economist rather than a strategist to …