The government doesn’t seem to understand the words it has been saying on submarines. It has committed to a ‘competitive evaluation process’ for the future submarine project—a term not used in defence circles—and some seem …
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A soap opera typically has a number of common features: forced characters, somewhat unbelievable; a plot in which dramatic events occur frequently but the story itself doesn’t reach any sort of conclusion; a familiar setting …
The dramatic hostage crisis in Syria ended tragically with the execution of two Japanese hostages and a Jordanian pilot by ISIS militants. Kunihiko Miyake, a former Japanese diplomat, described the crisis as a ‘9/11 for …
Japan’s discovering that being a ‘normal’ state in international relations isn’t all beer and skittles. The brutal death of two Japanese hostages at the hands of Islamic State is, in an ugly back-handed way, confirmation …
Much has been made in the media (for instance, here and here) about the Japanese government’s ‘record’ defence budget request for Fiscal Year 2015. With ¥4.98 trillion (roughly US$42 billion), it’d be the ‘largest budget …
After reading Peter Briggs’ excellent posts on why Australia should build its own submarines (here and here), it occurred to me that we may be missing a more important element of the discussion. Recently, I …
In my post yesterday I highlighted the stand-out attributes of submarines, Australia’s need for a greater range/endurance than is available off the shelf, the difficulties of increasing the payload and mobility of an existing design and …
The case for building the next generation of RAN submarines in Australia begins with the stand-out attributes that make submarines so important for us: they must be able to operate in areas a long way …
The House of Representatives election in Japan on 14 December resulted in a comfortable victory for the incumbent coalition government parties. The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the New Komeito party won, in aggregate, more …
In 2014, China arrived as the economic Number One and Japan arrived as a ‘normal’ security player in Asia. China confronts the many meanings and huge character test of being the biggest. Japan has just …
Recently, I attended the Griffith Asia Institute’s fourth annual Australia-Japan Dialogue in Tokyo. Not surprisingly, a central theme of the workshop was whether Australia–Japan security and defence relations are on the cusp of a transformation, …
There’s been a wave of recent media and political commentary about the future submarine. The debate has tended to slide around the central question of whether or not to build them in Australia, and to …