Every year I get to watch Mark Thomson pull off a remarkable feat of ‘extreme analysis’, as he cranks out 260 pages of the annual Cost of Defence report in the couple of weeks after …
In a recent article in Foreign Affairs, Robert Art and Robert Jervis wrote about the late Kenneth Waltz’s unique contribution to the field of international politics. One of the things Waltz brought to his research was an interest …
Like the term Asia-Pacific, the Indo-Pacific is such a large concept that it conceals as much as it conveys. Why is the idea of the Indo-Pacific so powerful that it is a key motif of …
Australia has made many important contributions to the non-proliferation regime over the years, helping draw attention to the dangers inherent in the spread of nuclear weapons. At the international and regional levels, it’s provided diplomatic …
The 2013 Defence White Paper says that: ‘There is no credible risk of Australia’s national interests in the Southern Ocean and the Australian Antarctic Territory (AAT) being challenged in ways that might require substantial military …
In the last few weeks, we’ve seen some impressive photographs and the naming ceremony of the first of the 27,000 tonne Canberra class landing helicopter docks (LHDs) coming together in the BAE shipyards in Williamstown. …
Tanya Ogilvie-White’s reading of the 2013 Defence White Paper suggests significant changes in the role nuclear weapons play in Australian strategic policy, which give grounds for optimism. Yet all might not be as it seems. …
It can be rather disconcerting for a New Zealand audience when they are faced with an Australian who wants to praise our defence policy. We don’t quite know whether to celebrate or to question the …
Australia’s long experience of dealing with a New Order regime in Indonesia provides only limited insights for engaging with Fiji’s New Order. The previous two columns (one and two) explored Canberra’s current headaches in trying …
On 22 May, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released a new report on Iran’s nuclear activities. Nothing in it was particularly shocking, but like the many similar reports that preceded this one, it’s a …
As mentioned on The Strategist, last week ASPI convened its first ‘Australia–Indonesia Next Generation Defence & Security Forum’ to discuss the state and future of the relationship. I talked about the strategic implications of the …
This week marks 15 years since Indonesian cities erupted in violence in early May 1998. Burdened with economic hardship from the East Asian Financial Crisis and fatigued with political corruption, Indonesians took to the street …
I’m in New Zealand at the moment, attending a public symposium on future security issues. It’s an interesting model for this sort of discussion. We have a room full—and I mean full as the forum …
Mao Zedong is the only 20th dictator to have a resurgence of life-after-death that is largely benign. A heavy influence on the 20th century, Mao was a major force in the history of Communist ideas …
At the state and company level the objectives a defence industry strategy might seek to achieve look different to those at the federal level that were discussed earlier (here and here). They’re broader in scope, worry more …
Since the Defence White Paper 2013 emphasises the Defence of Australia, it’s useful to look at where we would be able to project force under the cover of our own airbases by having a standing fighter …
Africa is a resource-rich continent, but most of its people live in extreme poverty. Amid the world’s resources boom and high global demand, Africa’s vast oil, gas and mineral resources have the potential to drastically …
Guest editor Anthony Bergin At their annual Meeting in 2012, the 25 members of the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) failed to come to agreement on the declaration of any …
The Australia–Indonesia relationship is headed in a broadly positive direction, with the potential for defence and security cooperation to grow. But people-to-people and economic links are surprisingly limited and more needs to be done to …
The Queensland government has recently appointed a defence envoy to bolster defence industries in the state. In this it joins other states and the federal government in actively adopting defence industry sector strategies. But for …