Australia’s climate is projected to become harsher, putting more stress on our living conditions. Arguably, we need to adapt the design, use and maintenance of infrastructure and building stocks in response to a changing climate …
Asia’s rise is changing the world. This is a defining feature of the 21st century—the Asian century. These developments have profound implications for people everywhere. Asia’s extraordinary ascent has already changed the Australian economy, society …
Hugh White’s How to defend Australia shows a master storyteller at work. It’s part of a debate Australians must have. While the book starts that debate, its core judgements shift from possibilities to certainties, and …
The world The diplomatic mega-event of the year, the G20 summit, was held in Japan last weekend. Caitlin Byrne nicely captured the main highlights in her post in The Conversation. Not surprisingly, US President Donald …
WPS Strategic Insights paper launched ASPI launched its third Strategic Insights paper on WPS. This year’s collection of articles offers insights and recommendations to address some of the emerging challenges—including cybersecurity, health security and resource …
The logic behind Australia’s terrorism-related loss-of-citizenship provisions is meant to be brilliantly simple: if a person travels overseas to be a foreign fighter, and is a dual citizen, then under certain circumstances their Australian citizenship …
US President Donald Trump has been accused of weaponising economic globalisation. Sanctions, tariffs and the restriction of access to US dollars have been major instruments of his foreign policy, and he has been unconstrained by …
Once again Peter Jennings has started an important debate: to white paper or not to white paper? I am persuaded by Andrew Davies’ cautious counter. The heart of this discussion is what problem another defence …
How to defend Australia sets out four strategic objectives for Australian forces: defending the continent, securing the neighbourhood, supporting maritime Southeast Asia and preserving the wider Asian balance. To achieve this, Hugh White proposes a …
The beat Political interference revealed in UK arrest of Tiananmen activist Evidence has emerged that in 2015 Chinese officials pressured British police to arrest Shao Jiang, a Tiananmen square survivor and activist living in London. …
US President Donald Trump’s threat last week to respond militarily if Iran attacks ‘anything American’ is a clear warning to Iran’s leadership, and all stakeholders, that the US has now added lethal military action to …
For millions of years, monsoonal winds have cycled between Asia’s tropical seas and the Tibetan Plateau, delivering snow to its high-altitude mountains and rains to the plains below them. The melting snow and summer rains …
In part 1, we discussed how we ensure we get the right propulsion system for Australia’s Attack-class submarines. We argued that nuclear power is an inadvisable and improbable option and observed that lithium-ion batteries, and …
Back in the 1990s and 2000s, Australian perceptions of the bilateral relationship with China were marked by a surprising degree of unanimity. Without implying that the clustering of opinion was confined to Australia’s capital city, …
In Australia, the federal, state and territory governments have defined critical infrastructure as: ‘Those physical facilities, supply chains, information technologies and communication networks which, if destroyed, degraded or rendered unavailable for an extended period, would …
US strategic competition with China has triggered considerable debate about the implications for Australia. Thus far, commentators have judged US President Donald Trump’s approach towards China and the Indo-Pacific mostly negatively. Some analysts have feared …
Hugh White’s book How to defend Australia tries to square the circle that has become the global community’s critical security problem: reconciling China’s growing strategic power with the dramatic loss of US strategic authority. China …
US President Donald Trump’s recent tweet on the Strait of Hormuz, in which he said that Asian countries ‘should be protecting their own ships’ prompts some serious questions—setting aside some customary Trumpian bravado and factual …
The Wall Street Journal ran an article last week saying pessimistic investors were ‘short-selling’ the Australian dollar in anticipation of a disappointing outcome of the weekend’s G20 meeting. ‘Some money managers are bracing for a …
Sea state Two Canadian warships passed through the Taiwan Strait last week. During the transit, Canada alleges that two Chinese Su-30 fighter jets made a low pass within 300 metres of one of the vessels. …