Sadly, hermeneutics—or exegesis as it was formerly known—is not much in vogue these days. Maybe that reflects the fact that most of us rely on translation for our glimpses into the texts written in ancient …
The beat Hate crime in the US The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program released the 2016 hate crime statistics, which show an increase for the second year in a row. A total of 6,121 crimes …
This week, the UN is meeting for a fourth time to discuss how ‘lethal autonomous weapons systems’ (LAWS) should be governed within the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. NGOs such as the Campaign to Stop …
Times change and we change with them, as the saying goes. Much the same could be said of warning times: as our strategic circumstances change, so we should reassess the consequences for contingencies that the …
Rod Lyon (‘The Nuclear ban “pledge”: how’s it tracking?’) is predictably underwhelmed by the idea of Australian parliamentarians pledging their support for the recently concluded Nuclear Weapons Prohibition Treaty (NWPT). He and I have totally …
I started to read Andrew Harrison’s recent Strategist post, ‘“Capability” saves lives’, with some interest, but that soon changed to disappointment as the narrowness of his definition of capability became clear. Like most military professionals …
At a time when NATO–Russia relations are arguably at their lowest ebb since NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, major military exercises are designed to send a message. Russia’s Zapad 2017 military manoeuvres, which took …
At a recent conference I attended, I was seated next to a prominent American trade policy expert. We began to talk about the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which President Donald Trump has blamed …
Australia’s strategic outlook is deteriorating and, for the first time since World War II, we face an increased prospect of threat from a major power. This means that a major change in Australia’s approach to …
My colleague Andrew Davies has written convincingly about the challenges of securing a diplomatic resolution to the North Korean nuclear crisis. He speculated about a solution in which the US accepts North Korea’s nuclear status …
Sea state The US Navy is conducting exercises in the Sea of Japan with three aircraft carrier groups. The US Ships Theodore Roosevelt, Nimitz and Ronald Reagan are participating in the drills, which began on …
On 1 November, ASPI and the Begin–Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies met in Tel Aviv, Israel, at the third Be’er Sheva Dialogue to build on the work initiated at the first round, held in Israel …
In mid-October, Dan Tehan, the minister assisting the prime minister on cyber security, announced that the Australian government is considering introducing new legislation on the internet of things (IoT; for an introduction to this topic, …
Over recent months, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) has been attempting to sign up Australian parliamentarians to a pledge of support for Australia’s signature and ratification of the nuclear ban treaty. And …
President Xi Jinping has emerged out of last month’s 19th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party as a new paramount leader of China on a par with Mao Zedong, founder of the People’s Republic of …
President Donald Trump, who is in the Philippines on the last stop of his marathon trip to Asia, has paid his respects to President Rodrigo Duterte. Since Duterte’s inauguration last year, police and affiliated death …
The core belief system of Australia’s approach to international affairs for 75 years is the cause that can barely speak its own name. Whisper it softly: ‘liberal internationalism’, an aspiration big enough to encompass democracy …
The war in Vietnam is widely perceived to have been the first television war, fought not only on the battlefield but also in the living rooms of America (and Australia). If that thesis is correct, …
The world The decades-old Iranian–Saudi rivalry ramped up this week after Saudi Arabia accused Iran of supplying arms to the conflict in Yemen and using Hezbollah to exert political influence in Lebanon. The Lebanese prime …
The 31st ASEAN Summit and its related meetings, including the East Asia Summit, start today and will run through 14 November. Lost in the hoopla over Trump’s attendance and the ongoing tension in the Korean …