The first priority is to manage great power competition in the Indo‑Pacific. — Australia’s Defence Minister Christopher Pyne Optimists see the glass as half full, while strategists worry that it’s actually a coffin that’s half …
Articles by: "Graeme Dobell"
The first strategic priority for Australia in the Indo-Pacific is to manage great-power competition. And the central trend of that competition is the challenge to US dominance. So says Australia’s defence minister. Here’s Christopher Pyne …
In the South Pacific, Australia confronts the law of untended purposes. The law states that if you don’t tend to your policy and political purposes, stuff goes off course and the unexpected arrives. If your …
As travel broadens the mind, so summit season allows an Australian leader to deepen their understanding of the world. The presidential pretensions of the Oz prime ministership get fullest expression at the summit. Working at …
Savour that rare headline. The Pacific wins over political argy-bargy. Australia has listened to the South Pacific and done something to discomfit the ‘junior’ member of the governing coalition, the National Party. Another way to …
The emerging era of great-power competition shapes as a hot peace. ‘Hot peace’ is a better label for what the world faces than ‘new cold war’, not least because we’re well short of an icy …
The two cold wars of the 20th century caution against the idea that today’s confrontation between the US and China is a ‘new cold war’. The long cold war launched by Stalin and the shorter …
Competition and confrontation build between China and the US. The era of engagement fades. Superpower rivalry returns. Great power challenges great power. The world’s biggest economy faces off against the second biggest. The descriptor of …
Thirty years ago, a South Pacific radio chief hit me with the greatest jest-cum-compliment I ever received working for the ABC’s international service, Radio Australia. The joke about the role and reach of radio still …
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 …
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 …