Seeing Australia’s foreign minister and their opposition counterpart arguing international affairs on the same stage is a rare thing. The federal parliament is the nation’s great clearinghouse for all arguments, but big set-piece foreign policy …
Articles by: "Graeme Dobell"
Australia is witnessing an explosion of blind spot exposures, as important institutions are blindsided by their own shortcomings. The blind spot eruption reveals big organisations with incomplete vision, unable to see key elements of what …
Australia keeps getting listed among the nations that should form an angel coalition to the save the world as we know it. Or, perhaps, the world as we used to know it. Flummoxed, fazed and …
Australia today sees its strategic interests in the South Pacific directly challenged by China. No longer is China given the benefit of the doubt as the rapidly expanding power coming to terms with its new …
The South Pacific lives in interesting times—a ‘crowded and complex region’ is the phrase of the moment—and the times made for an interesting Pacific Islands Forum meeting earlier this month. Climate change roils. China pushes. …
The Australian government’s approach to the US under President Donald Trump is deeply pragmatic: hold tight to what we’ve got, get what we can, and don’t anger Trump. Loudly love the alliance. And if you …
The shifting role of international media is akin to the changing-times tale told by the university economics professor retiring after 40 years of teaching. At his farewell, the prof confessed that for those four decades …
Donald Trump’s language is limited, much like his store of ideas. The US president is a demagogue who rouses without rhetoric. A bemusing bit of Trumpworld is the small range of his rant—intense rather than …
‘U.S.A. is the slice of a continent … U.S.A. is the world’s greatest river valley fringed with mountains and hills, U.S.A. is a set of bigmouthed officials with too many bank accounts. U.S.A. is a …
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 …
Australia was grasping for soft power long before the term ‘soft power’ was invented. Here’s an official example from 32 years ago: Countries still achieve their international objectives by threat, bribe or persuasion. Australia has …
Australia’s international broadcasting effort in the Asia–Pacific is at its lowest-ever level. These are the worst of times for Australian international TV, which is 25 years old this year. And these are the hardest of …