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 …
Articles by: "Graeme Dobell"
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 …
‘For a century, Australian leaders have been engaged in the war game. And just as a game has rules, there are rules for effectively playing the war leadership game.’ — David Horner, The war game: …
In a span of nearly 90 years—from 1914 to 2003—Australia chose to go to war nine times. In the 100 years from 1914, Australian military personnel were on active service for nearly half the time—47 …
‘Brothers and sisters—our region has not faced a more vexing set of circumstances for decades. The triple challenges of climate, Covid and strategic contest will challenge us in new ways. We understand that the security …
Last week’s meeting of Pacific Islands Forum leaders celebrated the region while confronting deeply familiar regional pressures. The big questions rang out in Fiji as they have since the forum was created 51 years ago. …
Before Shinzo Abe, Australia’s vital economic relationship with Japan had only small, slowly evolving defence, strategic and intelligence dimensions. By the time he finished as Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, Australia and Japan were quasi-allies. Before …
The central balance of international power this century will be set in the Indo-Pacific. So ends a 500-year stretch of history when the central balance was made in Europe and decided by the West. The …
Australia is to refashion defence policy with a force posture review, not a white paper. The policy the Labor Party took to the federal election on 21 May was for a ‘defence force posture review’. …
Myanmar is both tragedy and wicked problem. For theorists, a ‘wicked problem’ is a complex dilemma with no single solution or natural end point. For Myanmar, ‘wicked’ also means evil. In both senses of wicked, …