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 …
Articles by: "Graeme Dobell"
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 …
China’s the great question mark, but its power isn’t in question. Pose this central conundrum of the Asia Essentials in the succinct terms of the question that Hillary Clinton put to PM Rudd in 2009: …
Asia’s hearing a great sucking sound as lots of hot money flees the region as the US Fed signals an end to the great monetary easing. India is getting jittery and Indonesia feeling some currency …
Australia’s approach to France in the South Pacific oscillates between fear and forgetfulness. The fear moments have marked some notable points in Australian history. The fear of what the French were up to in the …
The security system the US has evolved in Asia has dealt with upsets, defeats, setbacks and even the dangers of victory. The US suffered a bitter draw in Korea that’s had a half-life equal to …