South Koreans elected a new president earlier this month. Few Australians noticed or cared, preoccupied by concerns closer to home, by Russia’s aggression in Ukraine or by China’s belligerence toward us and others. But the …
Japan’s sovereign credit rating could fall one to three notches in the coming decade if the government does not implement a credible fiscal consolidation plan. This risk, which the ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic Research Office highlighted in …
The 2022–23 defence budget is a conflicted program. In key ways it acknowledges and responds to a changing world, but in others it is a relic of an earlier time. Let’s start with the funding …
The Australian government is working to modernise and simplify outdated laws governing how Australian agencies conduct electronic surveillance. However, this reform effort is not examining surveillance by companies—so called surveillance capitalism. This is a problem …
What are the causes of Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine and why have they created Europe’s most serious conflict since World War II? The answer is in the mind of President Vladimir Putin, the only …
In January, the US Indo-Pacific coordinator, Kurt Campbell, told the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington that the Pacific was the place most likely to see ‘strategic surprise’. He said the US needed …
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s endgame in Ukraine remains unclear. But his war there does seem to be sending one clear message: if you have nukes, nobody messes with you. The security risks this poses cannot …
So much for the ‘hot peace’ scenario of power relations in the post-post-Cold War era. In extremis, the Russia–Ukraine conflict spotlights the interwoven strategic and tactical issues associated with cybersecurity and disinformation campaigns, the virality …
I can’t sleep. I’m glued to the minute-by-minute news cycle that is the war in Ukraine. How did we get here? My combat brain tells me that how we got here doesn’t matter. We are …
When the draft security agreement between Solomon Islands and China landed in the news cycle on Thursday, we shared a sense of dread. Initial analysis of the agreement in the Australian media was typically narrow …
I first met Madeleine Albright in 1988, when I was a very junior staffer on Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis’s presidential campaign and she was one of his foreign-policy advisers, alongside Harvard professor Joseph S. Nye, …
The debate about whether we’re in a new cold war has a decisive, brutal answer. For Europe, the lines of cold war 2.0 are drawn, no matter how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ends. NATO doubles …
Beijing’s interest in Pacific military bases is to make it harder for the United States to move forces across the sea and closer to the Chinese mainland. This is a modern version of Japan’s wartime …
Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare has a Chinese-government-proposed text for a security agreement between his country and China, which is apparently being considered by his government. The draft agreement leaked to the media is …
The fictional British prime minister Jim Hacker once opined that summits were public relations circuses offering less scope for negotiating solutions to international problems than state funerals. That might be harsh. But a spate of …
Sea state As Russia’s costly invasion of Ukraine grinds into its second month, what was framed as an ‘imminent’ plot to launch an amphibious assault on the port city of Odessa seems to have more …
While Russian troops in Ukraine have been bogged down, Ukrainian forces have started regaining territory. Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence issues daily reports on how many military assets Russia has lost. Three weeks after Russian President …
On Monday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison held the second India–Australia virtual summit. At the meeting, the two leaders reaffirmed their commitment to the India–Australia comprehensive strategic partnership and …
The 2020 defence strategic update states that the Australian Defence Force is ‘to deploy military power to shape our environment, deter actions against our interests and, when required, respond with military force’. It’s less certain …
Weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine, but when it was still constraining gas supplies to Europe amid soaring demand and prices, Prime Minister Scott Morrison suggested Australia could step in and help, given its huge liquefied …