When Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles signs a new bilateral Defence Cooperation Agreement today with Indonesia’s Defence Minister and president-elect Prabowo Subianto, observers would be wise to treat Australian claims of its ‘historic’ significance with …
HMAS Sydney, one of Australia’s three Hobart-class air warfare destroyers this month became the first Australian warship to test fire Raytheon’s RIM-174A SM-6 missile, during Exercise Pacific Dragon off Hawaii. This followed hot on the …
Anwar Ibrahim would not be the first political dissident who has struggled with the transition from opposition to incumbency. In office, his grasp of complex policy issues, such as the South China Sea, has sometimes …
John Healey, the secretary of state for defence in Britain’s new Labour government, could be forgiven for not putting the country’s geostrategic presence in the Indo-Pacific at the top of his to-do list. Russia’s aggression …
Against a gloomy strategic backdrop and painfully slow growth in Australian military capability, the government’s critics are urging it to commit more money on a tighter timescale to the nation’s defence. Money certainly matters, but …
China has identified the beleaguered garrison at Second Thomas Shoal as a weak link among the South China Sea features physically occupied by the Philippines and, by extension, the US-Philippines alliance. While Manila has held …
A Chinese J-10 fighter intercepted an Australian MH-60R Seahawk helicopter from the destroyer HMAS Hobart over the Yellow Sea on 4 May, dropping flares in its path and endangering the helicopter and its crew, Australia’s …
The strategic potential of Submarine Rotational Force-West, the AUKUS initiative that commits the United States and United Kingdom to forward-deploy a small flotilla of nuclear-powered attack submarines to HMAS Stirling, near Fremantle, isn’t adequately appreciated. …
Australia and Britain have concluded a new treaty-level Defence and Security Cooperation Agreement (DSCA). To what extent does this move the dial of their close defence relationship towards a formal alliance? This question matters because …
AUKUS is back in the news again, this time because the US Navy has asked to order just one Virginia-class submarine in fiscal 2025, compared with the target of more than two a year needed …
Following last week’s by-all-accounts successful Australia-ASEAN summit in Melbourne, I offered some unsolicited advice for an ASEAN audience, on the differences between non-alignment and neutrality. In the same presumptuous vein, my recommendation to Australian readers …
As this week’s 50th anniversary ASEAN-Australia summit wraps up in Melbourne, I would like to offer one simple piece of policy advice to each party to help them strengthen their relations in future from a …
