Last week, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop launched Australia’s first-ever review of soft power. It’s a bold move, flagging a new reality that Australia must engage more strategically through official and public diplomacy if it is …
While Heisenberg proclaims the uncertainty principle, a public service inquiry operates on the certainty principle. Not for government, Heisenberg’s quantum insight about the impossibility of simultaneously measuring position and momentum; nor the observer effect—that to …
The Turnbull government’s foreign-policy white paper is due any day, and it’s a fair bet it will not recommend what is fashionably called an ‘independent foreign policy’. That is bound to upset many intellectuals, former …
If Australian politicians are certain about one thing regarding the future, it’s that ‘we do not have to choose’ between the US and China. This panglossian optimism is easily mocked, though a small industry of …
Like the World War One 9.2-inch siege howitzer, Dennis Richardson has been a mobile weapon, deployed across many fields of battle, able to deliver a lot of ordnance with maximum elevation in a single shot. …