Previous posts in this series explored the Canberra officer project; Arthur Tange; the promised land of Jointery; taming the service chiefs; the Vice CDF; and CDF atop the diarchy. The military venturing into politics is …
Articles by: "Graeme Dobell"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLZ_ipV9lUU Australia has sent forth many outstanding journalists to spend their careers reporting on Asia. Sean Dorney stands with those correspondents but, uniquely, he devoted his life to covering Papua New Guinea and the South …
In the next few months, Australia’s leader will have four opportunities to spend quality time with Indonesia’s new president. Prime Minister Abbott can (will/should/must) attend Jokowi’s inauguration in Jakarta in October, following the precedent John …
When Australia thinks strategy, it quickly comes to Indonesia. So it was when the Howard Government was mulling the 2000 Defence White Paper. The National Security Committee of Cabinet was grilling the defenceniks: ‘If Indonesia …
Indonesia can direct Australia’s regional dreams or dominate its nightmares. Just as Papua New Guinea shapes the way Australia thinks about the South Pacific, Indonesia frames Australia’s view of Southeast Asia. In those key regional …
To watch a new government is to see a party’s shibboleths, suspicions, suppositions and superstitions mugged by reality. Time in opposition is supposed to be when new thinking gets done. Yet often that period of …
In 1972, Nixon and Mao met in Beijing to begin the Great Asia Bargain. Nixon called it the week that changed the world. The Republican and the Revolutionary ushered in a glorious period. Almost as …
Gutting Radio Australia and killing the international TV service is bad, sad and mad. Bad: Lopping 60% from the ABC’s international service is lousy for the national interest. A strategic asset in Asia and the …
Japan has quickly risen to become a defence partner for Australia that ranks beside New Zealand and Britain. Thus, Japan sits on the second tier, with the traditional Anglo allies, below the peak where the …
Australia is developing the habit of balancing an address to the Parliament by an Asia-Pacific ally with a matching speech by China’s President. The contentious words in that sentence are ‘balancing’ and ‘ally’, even if …
Hillary wants you to know what the US is doing in Asia is a ‘pivot’. The previous Secretary of State thinks ‘rebalance’ is bureaucratic blandness, and dismisses its usage as ‘anodyne.’ Part II of the …
A part of being a foreign-affairs tragic is believing any memoir by a modern US Secretary of State is interesting, no matter how flawed the book or the Secretary. This tragic ranks the autobiographies of …