I’ve recently started looking at the back catalogue of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s public addresses to see what the Indonesian President has chosen to talk about to an international audience. Since January of this year, he’s made 12 …
In case you missed it, yesterday was the launch of Mark Thomson’s magnus opus for the year, The Cost of Defence: ASPI Defence Budget Brief 2013–2014. And the cost of Defence? It’s AUD$69,081,980.82 a day. …
This week marks 15 years since Indonesian cities erupted in violence in early May 1998. Burdened with economic hardship from the East Asian Financial Crisis and fatigued with political corruption, Indonesians took to the street …
The Australia–Indonesia relationship is headed in a broadly positive direction, with the potential for defence and security cooperation to grow. But people-to-people and economic links are surprisingly limited and more needs to be done to …
As a first look analysis of the Defence White Paper 2013 (PDF), ASPI will be progressively releasing blog posts over the next couple of hours analysing the paper’s key concepts and capability decisions. 12 new Super Hornets, Andrew …
There’s been a lot of reflection on Australian blogs and news sites about our role in the Iraq war, so for a change, here’s a piece that examines Iraq’s future political prospects and another that …
One of the main features of the Indonesian President’s speech to last week’s Jakarta International Defense Dialogue was the concept of ‘strategic trust’. Admitting this was difficult to define, he referred to it as ‘an …
As the military modernisation the Asia Pacific continues, Taiwan is now looking at whether it can build its own submarine fleet. If you’ve seen the movie Argo—the Hollywood version of the rescue of six US …
Today’s a public holiday in Canberra so we’re taking a short break from regular blogging, but here’s our weekly round-up of news, reports and events in the defence, NatSec and strategy world. First up, Dewi …
It’s March 2013, and looking ahead to September 2014—when Indonesia’s new president should be elected—it’s too early to speculate on the result. In fact, we’re not even sure who’ll line up for the race. But …
I recently had the pleasure of attending the National Security College’s workshop ‘Indonesia’s Ascent: power, leadership and Asia’s security order’ at the ANU. The presentations were delivered as part of a larger publication project that will explore and …
Welcome back for our weekly round-up of news, reports and events in the defence, NatSec and strategy world. It’s one minute past midnight, as the sequester—USD$1.2 trillion of cuts across the US federal budget over …