Last Friday’s Defence White Paper (DWP) rightly drew a lot of praise from (most) of the analytical community and the media. Many commentators, including myself, welcomed the more cautious tone regarding China’s military rise and …
There has been a lot said on the Boston Bombings. ASPI’s Toby Feakin on what we know and don’t know: UPDATE: The Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at ANU will be holding a panel discussion on …
Defence alliances thrive on liberal doses of new ideas to turn the wheels of big military machines doing practical things. If the ideas dry up, alliances slow down and eventually cease moving forward. Those charged …
I spent September 1984 sleeping in German forests and barnyards. It was Exercise Lionheart and my regiment, the Royal Yeomanry, was providing rear area security for the British Army of the Rhine. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the …
Today, ASPI released my report ‘Planning the unthinkable war: ‘AirSea Battle’ and its implications for Australia’ [view our interview with Ben Schreer on his paper here]. When China’s military modernisation hit its stride over the last …
First up Captain Henry J. Hendrix argues in this paper from CNAS that aircraft carriers may be too vulnerable to play the central role in future conflicts that they have played in the past. We …
It was meant to be merely a rhetorical question. Why, I wondered, do we need a submarine fleet? Before that, like most Australians, I’d just assumed that our government would replace like-for-like. This meant we’d …
Earlier this week, the RUSI ACT asked Ben Schreer and myself to talk about the next Defence White Paper. This is a challenge because we’re going to get a new Defence White Paper (DWP) in …
The way Australia goes to war hasn’t changed in a century. The Prime Minister declares the deployment or announces the conflict and the troops march and the ships sail. This is the leader’s most profound …
One of the key questions US allies and partners have been asking is whether America will actually be able to pull off the Asia–Pacific ‘pivot’. More than twelve months after the announcement there are doubts …
China’s behaviour over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute with Japan is deeply worrisome. It not only displays a level of brinkmanship which could easily lead to war, it also seems to be part of a broader …
Editor’s note: we at ASPI value contestability and independence of thought so we’re sometimes surprised when people think that there’s a single ‘official’ ASPI position on a topic. That isn’t the case—we practice contestability inside …