Buried deep in the news about a tax bill of close to $6 million being served on three Victorian ‘racing identities’ was an even more important story: the Commonwealth, state and territory governments are close …
With a relatively small amount of media coverage, foreign ministers of five nations—Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea, Turkey and Australia—met in New York last week for the sixth MIKTA ministerial meeting. The meeting resulted in a …
It’s becoming commonplace to drum up the military threat from China and belittle America’s military capabilities. Much of this commentary reminds me of statements in the mid-1980s that the former Soviet Union was poised to …
The Beat Australian Crime Commission heads East Members of the Australian Border Force and Australian Federal Police have been joined in Hong Kong by a transnational crime expert from the Crime Commission to help counter organised …
On the basis of experience and ability, Paul Hasluck should have been one of Australia’s greatest foreign ministers. Before he came to that post, he had been an notable journalist, writing influential articles on the …
Some recent contributors to The Strategist have championed the M4 over the EF88. Army is satisfied with the M4 for select Special Operations Command combatants. However, there’s no such a thing as the ‘perfect weapon’. …
Graeme Dobell and Matt Davies have both written engaging contributions respectively for and against Australia’s possible future membership of ASEAN. I’m grateful to Graeme for presenting so cogently the arguments for Australia’s seeking admission. But …
Following up on last week’s cliffhanger, the Safe Harbour agreement was deemed invalid by the European Court of Justice. For the last 15 years, this agreement has allowed the transfer of EU data across the …
On 6 October, Russian warships on the Caspian Sea fired 26 medium range cruise missiles at 11 targets in Syria. Washington has protested that these strikes have not only struck the forces of the self-declared …
The so-called ‘valley of death’ in Australian naval shipbuilding is already upon us, but we also have the means to reduce the severity and then to build on this traumatic experience to create a productive, …
This month, United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security turns 15. But what has changed for women and girls in conflict over the past decade and a half? Nearly 300 schoolgirls …
While China’s unilateral declaration of an Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) over disputed waters in the East China Sea (ECS) caught many by surprise, today’s debate circles around the likelihood that Beijing might take the …
Sea State The US Navy has reportedly declared its intentions to send a surface ship inside the 12-nautical-mile territorial limit China claims for its man-made islands in the South China Sea. According to the Financial …
Mike Burgess, Telstra’s Chief Information Security Officer, claims that attributing blame for cyberattacks is a ‘distraction’. It’s hard not to empathise with his views when, according to the Australian Centre for Cyber Security, 85% of …
The Parramatta shooting and its aftermath demonstrate common difficulties democracies face in counterterrorism. On Friday 2 October, 15-year old boy Farhad Jabar fatally shot NSW Police employee Curtis Cheng at Parramatta police headquarters, before being …
On 19 September, Japan’s upper house passed a set of bills that allow the country to deploy its military overseas and play a much more prominent strategic role in peacekeeping and collective self-defence. Viewed from …
Tomorrow, ASPI’s Border Security Program will launch its new Special Report on crystal methamphetamine (‘ice’): Methamphetamine: focusing Australia’s national ice strategy on the problem, not the symptoms. Australia’s seemingly unquenchable thirst for ice has created major …
The proposition that Australia should spend the next decade seeking observer status in ASEAN will get lots of kicks in Southeast Asia. However, the kicks in Canberra about joining ASEAN are nearly as hard. Canberra’s …
The US-led airstrike on a Médecins sans Frontières hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, which killed 12 MSF workers and 10 patients, is a story that has a long way to run. General John Campbell, the American …
In two posts for The Strategist, Why Australia Should Build Its Own Submarines (part 2 here), I discussed the benefits of building all submarines in Australia, including better management of the cost of ownership through …