The heat of the Oz new year is here, heralding our annual Madeleine Award for the use of symbol, stunt, prop, gesture or jest. The envelopes, please, for the 9th awards ceremony, named to honour …
Articles by: "Graeme Dobell"
The annual release of hitherto secret cabinet papers now takes us back to the last great Oz outbreak of Francophobia—rage and fear about the French in the South Pacific. The 1994 and 1995 cabinet records …
Come back with me to a wonderful time when the Cold War had been won and Australia was cashing in the peace dividend. Spend money on the military? Naaah! Squeeze ’em. The release by the …
In Jakarta’s presidential palace in December 1995, Australia’s Prime Minister Paul Keating stood with Indonesia’s President Suharto as their two foreign ministers signed a security treaty. Keating was ebullient. Here was Australia as a regional …
As 2017 limps out and 2018 edges in, here’s Old Dobell’s almanac of the times, trends and twists of history. Trump-eting: The US system is working, but it’s been a stress test from hell. America’s …
In offering security and economic integration to the South Pacific, Australia is starting gently with small steps. The soft-and-slow approach to integration has the best chance of success, because South Pacific states will embrace the …
Reaching beyond the usual language of partnership with the South Pacific, Australia is offering economic and security integration. The integration policy is a new ideal: not just neighbours, but joined. It’s a complex task for …
In geoeconomics and trade as much as in the security realm, Australia fears the international rules of the game are being battered and eroded. In musing on the future of the Indo-Pacific, Australia’s new foreign …
Australia’s foreign policy white paper is a contrast study, both dark and light. Bright vistas of international opportunity are described beneath storm clouds of ‘political alienation and economic nationalism’. Here are both dreams and nightmares: …
Asia’s summit season is bountiful. Flowers bloom, weeds sprout, thorns thrive, all coloured by policy and politics and the personalities of leaders. The APEC summit and the East Asia Summit (EAS) bring lots of people …
The core belief system of Australia’s approach to international affairs for 75 years is the cause that can barely speak its own name. Whisper it softly: ‘liberal internationalism’, an aspiration big enough to encompass democracy …
Simultaneous serendipity struck when the new magazine Australian Foreign Affairs and its US inspiration Foreign Affairs dropped into my mailbox on the same day. The wattle-yellow cover of the newborn publication made a fine Oz …