Flight path It looks as if Russia isn’t just flexing its muscles in Eastern Europe. Last Wednesday, Japan reported Russian incursions in its northern skies. Along with Chinese combat aircraft in its southern airspace, this …
Malcolm Fraser was the last Australian Prime Minister who thought the Commonwealth could be a major instrument of Australian foreign policy. Some of Fraser’s successors—Hawke, Howard and even Gillard—believed the Commonwealth could do useful work …
If the venerable British naturalist David Attenborough was to make a television series entitled The life cycle of the Australian defence review, he would say that reviews are to Defence what the Gnu or Wildebeest …
More evidence of Tony Abbott’s policy stance on the next generation of Australian submarines was revealed with the release of the RAND report into Australia’s Naval Shipbuilding Enterprise. By ignoring an Australian build for …
Andrew Davies’ three First Principles Review (FPR) posts on contestability (here, here, and here) make interesting reading for anyone who has been on both sides of capability arguments. While I agree with most of what …
If there was an award for most audacious title for a blog, Peter Layton’s ‘Shortcomings of the next defence white paper’ would surely take the prize. It was posted just months after the 2013 edition …
Despite press and broadcast reporting that largely focused on the omission of submarines, the RAND report on naval shipbuilding in Australia is a valuable contribution to the discussion of this important public policy issue. No …
To get you across the week’s big stories in security and defence, here’s ASPI Suggests with new reports, videos and podcasts. Following Hillary Clinton’s announcement of her run for the White House, Strategist editor David …
How does a government dissuade someone half a world away from making a life threatening decision? Australia’s federal government has commissioned a $4.1m telemovie for release this year, designed to dissuade asylum seekers from coming …
There was a change of tone in Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s media conference this week, where he announced the deployment of the Australian and New Zealand training contingent to Taji, Iraq. Gone was the more …
As an early RAN submission to the former Force Structure Committee’s strategic policy consideration of the ANZAC frigate put it so breathlessly, ‘Australia is an island continent surrounded by sea’. The pleonasm notwithstanding, the proposition’s …
Following the recommendations of the First Principles Review, the government has agreed to move the quasi-independent Defence Materiel Organisation (DMO) back into Defence. In its place will rise the new Capability Acquisition and Sustainment (CAS) …
Since the early April release of the Parameters for a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action Regarding the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Nuclear Program, commentators have been vocal and divided about its merits and demerits. I’m …
This week in The Beat – more problems in Australia’s ‘ice’ epidemic, big money in European organised crime and news for Serial fans. And this week in Counterterrorism Scan, Australian foreign fighters, counterterror in the Asia-Pacific …
Ahron Shapiro’s critique eloquently expresses the strongest arguments against the P5+1 interim deal. In many ways this debate is ‘the principle versus the technical’. It’s regrettable that in 2015 the discussion is about how many …
Last September the terrorism advisory was raised by Prime Minister Tony Abbott from medium to high. We’d been stuck at a medium level alert for thirteen years. The Australian government communicates with the public in …
In between steaming bowls of organic steel-cut oats and workouts deploying the one-legged Romanian deadlift, supple Bob Carr’s Diary of a Foreign Minister heaps praise on Hillary Clinton, ‘a world-historical figure’ for her energy, sharpness …
If the recent Iranian nuclear framework deal progresses into an actual signed agreement, it would legitimise Iran as a nuclear weapons threshold state by allowing it to maintain a vast nuclear infrastructure. The finer points …
Below a welter of cliché and bamboozling modern management mumbo jumbo in the First Principles Review of Defence, there lurks much sound advice. The government has bought it all except for an unconvincing recommendation about …
Laos People’s Democratic Republic (LPDR) has become a regionally significant hub for transnational organised crime syndicates. Faced with serious border security challenges brought on by its shared borders, endemic corruption and central location in Southeast …