Australia: an ASEAN perspective

‘You [Australia] have found Southeast Asia, don’t lose it.’ These were the words of the highly charismatic ASEAN Secretary-General Dr Surin Pitsuwan, the key-note speaker at last Tuesday’s launch of the Southeast Asia Institute at …

ASPI suggests

With the upcoming US presidential election on 6 November, we’ve put together a special edition ‘ASPI suggests’ of reports and articles relating to US defence policy and spending. Defence policy and spending One of the …

A US–China ‘shadow condominium’?

Coral Bell’s recent passing has created an unfillable void in the Australian International Relations and Strategic Studies scene. Yet Coral leaves behind a wealth of ideas generated during her illustrious career that retain substantial currency …

UN Security Council – down to work

In a recent post, Peter Jennings and I argued that if Australia won a seat at the global decision making peak body, the UN Security Council, we’d benefit from picking some signature issues where Australia …

Pine Gap – technically speaking, Australia has a choice

Cam Hawker’s recent Strategist post, ‘Stuck in the middle with you’, suffers from five major fallacies. First, it assumes that Australia–US joint facilities predetermine the strategic relationship between Canberra and Washington. Second, it assumes that …