Australians as always will make their own judgments about 1975 and hindsight, of course, offers 20/20 vision. For what it’s worth, I believed then, and I still do, that Sir John Kerr should have given …
Tomorrow Australia’s Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will sit down with Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) for some valuable face time. Just over a year into his presidency, Jokowi has already had some experience dealing with Australian …
My Strategist post on Monday has stimulated considerable interest from readers in respect of the claimed People’s Liberation Army (PLA) connections with Landbridge. To provide further information and allow people to make their own assessments of the connections, …
News this week that companies bidding to build Australia’s next generation of submarines could be targets of Russian and Chinese hackers hasn’t surprised anyone. But it remains to be seen if Defence will adopt the …
China’s land reclamation in the South China Sea has generated concern across Asia about China’s challenge to US strategic primacy in the Western Pacific. The US has belatedly responded to this challenge with a single …
Will the Paris climate change conference measure up? The answer to that question, of course, depends on what success is measured against. And it’s important that we not only have a clear idea of the …
Sea State Last week the destroyer USS Donald Cook visited Turkey’s Aksaz naval base on Turkey’s southwest coast for joint Turkey–US exercises. Elements of the Turkish naval force present included submarines, surface and air defence …
A nation’s border security is intrinsically linked to its national security. There should be no doubt that perceptions of border security impact upon public confidence in a government’s security strategies; after all, the protection of …
Peter Jennings’ ‘Darwin: storm in a port’ has brought to broader attention the apparent nonchalance with which the lease of the port of Darwin by Chinese firm Landbridge has been treated by many parts of …
Social media has been alive with chatter about the finalised UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and how they might influence security and development policy globally. To us, there’s no better example of the need to …
John Howard’s decision to go to war in Iraq was constructed on a fib. The fib was used repeatedly throughout 2002 and almost to the very start of the invasion in 2003. The fib was …
Update: ICYMI Henry Kissinger penned a WSJ op-ed back in mid-October entitled, ‘A path out of the Middle East collapse’. Headlining the first Suggests for November is an Intelligence Squared debate on the topic ‘Containment …
Evidence presented to Senate Estimates hearings on 21 October over the 99-year lease of the Port of Darwin to a Chinese company shines new light on the elements of the decision. The issue points to …
In the first part of this post, I stressed how the ADF currently lags well behind other Western militaries in recognising the urgency of addressing climate change and security. In a recent Climate Council report …
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has recently shown a more open-minded approach to Australia’s nuclear future. In a radio interview in South Australia in late October he speculated on the possibility of a nuclear industry in …
The Beat Australian–Chinese taskforce policing ice The Australian Federal Police and the Chinese National Narcotics Control Commission have launched a new initiative to counter the trafficking of illicit drugs. Joint Taskforce Blaze, which will be …
As Australia approaches a decision concerning its acquisition of a next-generation submarine, it faces several crucial questions, not least of which is whether to build this submarine in Australia or buy it off-the-shelf from a …
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey proved once more this week he’s in a league of his own, securing a thumping victory for his neo-Islamist Justice and Development party in Sunday’s re-run of June’s general …
Vladimir Putin once said that he knew where Australia was but never thought about it. Australian leaders too have seldom had reason to think about post-Soviet Russia—until recently. But as Russia has become more ‘assertive’ …
Last week, the US Senate approved the CISA or Cyber Security Information Sharing Act. Among the bill’s main provisions is a proposal to expand liability protections to companies that voluntarily share threat information with the …