The government confirmed last week that selected Royal Australian Navy surface ships and submarines will in the foreseeable future be equipped with US long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles. This is a spectacular development in Australia’s military …
Articles by: "Ron Huisken"
The headline news for Australia out of last week’s G20 summit in Bali was the meeting between Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The prospect of repairing relations between Australia and China …
China has reacted strongly to Australia’s intention to acquire a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines under the AUKUS agreement with the US and UK. Since the announcement in September, Beijing has taken a stance of lofty …
In a world largely inured to shocks, the announcement that Australia, in partnership with the United States and the United Kingdom, would acquire nuclear-powered submarines was a bombshell. We haven’t over-egged this development—it was dramatic. …
Earlier this year, freelance analysts in the United States confirmed vague Pentagon speculation since around 2018 that China intended to expand its force of land-based strategic missiles capable of reaching most or all of the …
As the distribution of wealth, influence and strategic weight in our world continues its profound transformation and the light at the end of the tunnel of the Covid-19 pandemic continues its ambivalent flicker, the Australia–China …
Covid-19 is a gritty and primitive specimen—so primitive that scientists dispute whether it qualifies as a form of life. But it is wickedly contagious and possessed of fiendishly advanced stealth capabilities. The pandemic erased ‘normality’ …
It’s been suggested that China’s deputy ambassador to Australia, Wang Xining, used an August 2020 speech to the National Press Club in Canberra to set out Beijing’s thinking on how Australia and China could reset …
Most cultures—especially, perhaps, those in Asia—regard cycles as one of the basic rhythms of life, including international life. Great Britain was recognised as the leading world power for more than a century from 1815. The …
US President Donald Trump’s hope that the Korea question—particularly the part about North Korea’s nuclear capabilities—could be resolved by the sheer force of personality has been confirmed as a fantasy. The best that can be …
Just a year ago, the annual regional security outlook from the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific highlighted ‘the end of ambiguity and denial’ about whether the United States and China saw themselves …
Towards the end of 2017, America’s official rhetoric on China changed so abruptly that the sensation was one of a dam bursting. The national security strategy issued in December 2017 and the national defence strategy …