A literal reading of the treaty suggests that ANZUS is a triangle. According to the all-important fourth article, each one of the three parties ‘recognizes that an armed attack in the Pacific Area on any …
Articles by: "Robert Ayson"
The big political questions of 2020 for New Zealand were could Jacinda Ardern earn a second three-year term in Wellington and could Donald Trump become a two-term president in Washington? While definitive answers have arrived …
New Zealand’s domestic politics have been transformed by the 2017 general election. But the same can’t be assumed for its foreign and defence policies. Not even growing talk of war on the Korean peninsula …
Mark Thomson’s account of Australia–New Zealand defence differences prompts an impolite question: quite what is the point of these trans-Tasman comparisons? The intellectual answer is that we want an accurate account of the world around …
It’s funny how the same document can be perceived so differently. In his demolition job on New Zealand’s latest Defence White Paper, Peter Jennings sees Wellington plumbing ‘new depths of vacuity’ in its ‘desperation to …
One thing is guaranteed in New Zealand’s forthcoming Defence White Paper: Australia will be identified as Wellington’s leading defence partner by some margin. Australia’s importance to New Zealand’s planning suggests that Wellington’s best and brightest …
Tomorrow, New Zealand’s Prime Minister John Key, now entering a third term after September’s general election, is going to do something very rare in his leadership: he’ll be delivering a major speech on security. The …
New Zealand watchers of Australia’s defence policy won’t be surprised by Graeme Dobell’s point that alongside New Zealand and the United Kingdom, Japan now rates as one of Canberra’s second-tier partners. But more intriguing is …
The strategy debate on this blog has come to resemble a major crisis in the South China Sea where the interactions between multiple claimants almost take on a life of their own. What started with …
In asking why Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade doesn’t do strategy, Peter Jennings has posed an important question. But the question begs at least two assumptions. The first is that the government agency …
The New Zealand government’s decision to commit an extra A$95m per year to defence for the next five years would scarcely rate a mention if the same had happened in Australia. The total of that …
As Tony Abbott wings his way to Northeast Asia, up to 130 ADF personnel are already there, participating in a major US-led amphibious exercise off the South Korean coastline. That number comes from a mid-March …