Donald Trump’s language is limited, much like his store of ideas. The US president is a demagogue who rouses without rhetoric. A bemusing bit of Trumpworld is the small range of his rant—intense rather than …
The world The UN Human Rights Council has released a report of an independent fact-finding mission on Myanmar that examined allegations of human rights violations by the country’s armed services against the Rohingya people. The …
Scott Morrison is on his first overseas trip as prime minister—and it’s to Indonesia. The immediate purpose is for Morrison and Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo to announce their two countries’ assent to a free trade …
Now five years into its existence, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) appears to be attracting both new supporters and opponents on a daily basis. Included among the former is Papua New Guinea, which in …
One of the things that often struck me during my career as a civilian bureaucrat in the Defence Department’s capability development area was the relatively limited amount of public debate about our future armoured vehicle …
In this podcast our strategists discuss the foreign policy and defence implications of the Liberal leadership spill and change in prime minister, the decision to ban Huawei from Australia’s 5G network and economic crisis in …
I read with interest the recent Strategist posts (here and here) written by my former colleague Andrew Davies, outlining his conversion to the anti-nuclear cause. Andrew’s views are always worth listening to, but on this …
The beat Prison strike over ‘modern slavery’ continues A North American prison strike, sparked by the death of seven inmates during a riot in a South Carolina jail in April, is now in its second …
In August 1918, the battlefield of the Western Front was something that no soldier there had yet experienced. For the first time in three and a half years, movement had been restored to the battlefield. …
If Australia weren’t so important to New Zealand, New Zealanders could relish the farce masquerading as politics in Canberra. Australians used to denigrate New Zealand’s post-1993 proportional voting system. But Helen Clark got nine years …
Marcus Hellyer’s article ‘Army must adapt to evolution in its military purchases’, published in The Australian earlier this month, reveals a number of serious problems with the prevailing wisdom about Australia’s defence. Invoking the obsolescence …
It was the autumn of 2001, sometime between the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States and US President George W. Bush’s invasion of Afghanistan. I was walking through Venice with Richard C. Holbrooke, who …
Scott Morrison took a step last week that will define him as prime minister, but it wasn’t about getting party room numbers. It was his announcement as acting minister for home affairs that effectively banned two big …
‘John, I love Australians. They are freedom-loving, fierce and fun. They are so critically important for us. I fought with them in Vietnam. I have met them on battlefields in Afghanistan and Iraq. We are …
Sea state The Indian navy secretly test-fired its first indigenous nuclear-capable submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) from INS Arihant in the Bay of Bengal on 11–12 August. The B-05 missile can hit targets with nuclear warheads …
What explains Australia’s bizarre leadership churn? No prime minister has served a full term since 2007, with five different faces becoming prime minister in the last five years: Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd, Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull—and now, …
The Talking Heads’ 1985 hit ‘Road to nowhere’ provided a rather entertaining, if somewhat bleak, perspective on the futility of life: we are born, we live and we die. While we don’t necessarily agree with …
Last week, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop launched Australia’s first-ever review of soft power. It’s a bold move, flagging a new reality that Australia must engage more strategically through official and public diplomacy if it is …
Asia’s future is inextricably tied to the Himalayas, the world’s tallest mountain range and the source of the water-stressed continent’s major river systems. Yet reckless national projects are straining the region’s fragile ecosystems, resulting in …
‘U.S.A. is the slice of a continent … U.S.A. is the world’s greatest river valley fringed with mountains and hills, U.S.A. is a set of bigmouthed officials with too many bank accounts. U.S.A. is a …