When you change the government, you change the country, a previous Prime Minister once said. And one of the many things that changes is the way a new government thinks about international relations and the …
Articles by: "Graeme Dobell"
Hovering close to the table at the annual Australia–US ministerial were ghosts, spirits and spectres. New Zealand still qualifies as a ghost at this son-of-ANZUS feast, but in recent years the Kiwis have been edging …
Naval navel gazing (part one here) is a complex endeavour with many participants: experts both civil and military mingle with ministers and manufacturers and even the odd puzzled taxpayer. Drawing on the previous column gazing …
The state of Australia’s navy debate looks like this. The experts war with each other over the best size of ships as close personal combat is mixed with the exchange of long range metaphors. The …
As with Vietnam, so with Iraq and Afghanistan; Australia is avoiding any alliance blowback over evident disasters and misjudgements. Here’s one of the advantages of being the small ally—usually only a small part of the …
Australia is leaving the Afghanistan war well before the war is over. This is one of the Vietnam echoes in our experience of Afghanistan. Both were coalition wars fought by Australia with a central focus …
As with Vietnam, the Australian military will leave Afghanistan believing it won its bit of the war, even if the Afghanistan war is eventually judged a disaster. This is the limited right of small alliance …
On Monday, seven weeks after Australia’s federal election, the new Prime Minister and the new Opposition leader stood together in Afghanistan to declare the end to Australia’s longest war. The message from Tony Abbott and …
No executive in charge of a major construction project should announce the scheduled date for the Queen to open the building until after it’s up and finished. This bit of British building lore drew its …
As noted in my previous column on the changes the Abbott government is making to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the wombat tribe has lost ownership of Trade. That’s to say, the National …
In ordering administrative upheaval in Foreign Affairs and Trade, Tony Abbott finally killed off an aid consensus that had lasted for a brief political moment, while quietly breaking an Iron Law of politics that ruled …
The South China Sea is ‘probably the world’s single most complex, and intractable, international relations problem’. Gareth Evans, in proclaiming the South China Sea as the biggest and most complex headache, didn’t mention any of …