A senior US military general in South Korea recently advised Foreign Minister Julie Bishop that Australia would ‘soon be within range’ of a North Korean nuclear strike. That raises several crucial defence policy questions. First, …
Articles by: "Paul Dibb"
Much of the commentary in Australia since the US election has reeked of dangerous platitudes. A lot of ‘experts’ (none of whom forecast a Trump victory) are asserting that nothing much will change: President Trump …
The US presidential election on 8 November could have grave implications for Australia’s security. The next US president may retreat into international isolationism. If President Trump wins there could well be serious consequences for our …
Almost a quarter of a century after the demise of the USSR, Russia is back on the world stage and in a familiar threatening manner. Some are describing the resurgence of Russia as a return …
Paul Dibb The former Secretary of Defence, Tony Ayers, who died last week aged 82, was truly the last of the Mandarins in Canberra. He served as a permanent head of five departments for almost …
Australia’s 2016 Defence White Paper marks the return of geography to defence planning. Not that it had ever entirely disappeared, although Defence Minister Robert Hill at times tried his best to ridicule the importance of …
The US government has just released one of the most worrying reports about the risk of nuclear war in the Cold War and the dangers of miscalculating Soviet intentions. The top-secret document was released in …
It’s becoming commonplace to drum up the military threat from China and belittle America’s military capabilities. Much of this commentary reminds me of statements in the mid-1980s that the former Soviet Union was poised to …
In order to understand why Putin invaded Ukraine, we need to attempt to see into the mind of this former KGB colonel. Vladimir Putin believes that the West wants his overthrow—just as occurred in Kiev …
This post is adapted from the authors’ paper Australian defence: challenges for the new government, published in the latest edition of Security Challenges. There’s a set of enduring policy principles that have guided the defence …
This post is part two of an extract by the editors from Paul Dibb’s paper The Nuclear War Scare of 1983, to be released later today. As I explained in yesterday’s post, the world came uncomfortably …
This post is part one of a two part extract by the editors from Paul Dibb’s paper The Nuclear War Scare of 1983, to be released tomorrow. The last crisis of 1983 was one of …