When straddling a barbed-wire fence, shifting your feet risks a wound ranging from hurt to horrendous. Shift carefully, not carelessly or inadvertently. For two decades, Australia has been doing a delicate straddle between Papua New …
Articles by: "Graeme Dobell"
When Australia became a nation on 1 January 1901, it was at war in South Africa and China. The six Australian colonies had sent militia and bushmen contingents to the Boer War (1899–1902) and dispatched …
As the Chinese Communist Party convenes next week to embellish and extend Xi Jinping’s role as emperor, the mandate of heaven wobbles. The imperial mandate has been translated into a Marxist mandate of history. Heaven …
‘A great deal of the history of our world is going to be written in the Indo-Pacific over the coming years and decades. And the Pacific Islands are a critical voice in shaping that future. …
The first US summit with South Pacific leaders offers symbolism and the chance of future substance. The US announces, ‘We’re back!’ The summit on Wednesday and Thursday is a statement that the US can no …
Since the modern South Pacific arrived in the 1960s and 1970s, the United States has handed significant regional responsibility to Australia and New Zealand. America would do the duties of the big external power in …
‘It is up to all of us to work towards a strategic equilibrium in the region.’ — Foreign Minister Penny Wong, Singapore, July 2022 The Asian century isn’t turning out how Australia had hoped. A …
‘The past decade has seen a huge turnaround in Australia’s attitudes towards China. Handling this relationship is unquestionably our biggest foreign policy challenge at present. China is our largest export destination. Approximately 1.4 million Australians …
Great powers don’t die in bed, the realist judgement goes. Empires fall amid flames and war. Not so, answered Mikhail Gorbachev, proving his greatness by achieving the gentle end of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev’s achievement …
Australia’s parliament has little chance to place legal limits on the profound prerogative of the prime minister and the executive to take the country to war. Instead of pushing against the constitution, look to build …
The way Australia goes to war needs new conventions to give parliament a greater role in the weightiest choice any nation can make. Creating parliamentary customs or conventions is the only realistic way to touch …
Australia’s prime minister has the power to launch a war. The almost unfettered right to take the nation into conflict is a stark and simple statement about our system and our history of wars. The …