A good political memoir offers the joy of the fight and the smell of the gang warfare. Insight is ever welcome. Ditto inspiration. Plus laughs to help the medicine go down. Gareth Evans’ Incorrigible optimist: …
Articles by: "Graeme Dobell"
Australia spent years saying no to a central role in the mounting crisis in Solomon Islands. Then, in 2003, Canberra did a huge U-turn and led the intervention that ran for 14 years and ended …
Three things Australia didn’t want to do in the South Pacific came to culmination this year. Two of them were things Australia hadn’t wanted to do, but then changed its mind on. Having made the …
Americans do one great favour to sitting presidents—they re-elect ’em. Landing the top job is extraordinarily tough. Doing it is nigh impossible. Getting re-elected is the oft-recurring gift. Dating the modern superpower presidency from Franklin …
An Australian in the United States is branded on the tongue. The moment you speak, the accent reveals all. They know you’re not from around here. In previous decades, the question was usually whether you …
‘With an annual budget approaching $2 billion and about 7,000 staff spread across 10 agencies, it is clear to us that on size alone the Australian Government’s intelligence activities supporting national security are now …
Australia is to have an Intelligence Czar. For the politicians, the Czar is the answer to the single phone call question: the Czar will be charged with giving the answers—and will be answerable. The …
Strange things happen in that dynamic space where politics and policy meet in Canberra. Part of the discipline is for all players to keep a straight face. No matter the impact of the strangeness, no …
The new normal of international affairs has lots of abnormalities. Not least is the way the norms of the system of states are being tested and stretched and pushed and punished. Along with all the …
To see Australia’s $2 billion intelligence community, come for a stroll around Canberra’s parliamentary triangle. The expansion of bureaucratic empires is always expressed in concrete and marble, so there’s much to observe. Your tour guide …
If Donald Trump can’t get a deal with North Korea, the only deal in town is with China. If not ‘fire and fury’ with Pyongyang, it must be a fix with Beijing. A president keen …
The snow on the Brindabella Range was icing Canberra’s wind as I slipped into Old Parliament House to take the temperature of Oz international policy and check the strategic weather forecasts. The prophets of the …