Articles by: "Graeme Dobell"
The new era of great-power competition

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 …

The purposes of the Pacific pivot

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 …

Broadcasting the Oz Pacific pivot

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 …

Big-power decathlon in a hot peace

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 …

Not the new cold war

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 …

Strange and stressful days for Oz foreign policy

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 …

An angel coalition to save the world

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 …