Of the many threats and challenges confronting the world, two stand out: the deteriorating relationship between the world’s two most consequential powers, and the looming reality of climate-induced catastrophe. Both require goodwill and real cooperation …
When realists think about climate change at all, it’s often as the precursor for yet another demand for increased military spending. The spectre of millions of climate change refugees voting with their feet and trampling …
When the renowned British economist John Maynard Keynes was asked what he did when the facts changed, he replied: ‘I change my mind. What do you do?’ I’m not sure whether Prime Minister Scott Morrison …
Even the most hard-headed of strategic analysts would have to concede that we are now facing a direct and very real threat to our individual and collective security of a sort and severity that we …
‘You’re in denial.’ It’s a phrase no one wants to hear used about themselves as it suggests an unwillingness to confront or even recognise some unpleasant reality or other. The consequences for individuals are generally …
There’s no shortage of books about the growing strategic and economic competition between China and the United States. Adding something distinctive and worthwhile to the literature, therefore, is no easy task. The Indo-Pacific: Trump, China, …
Alex Bellamy is one of Australia’s leading authorities on security issues, especially the possible application of the ‘responsibility to protect’ doctrine. By academic standards he’s also the very model of an engaged, highly influential public …
Australia is one of the most outspoken and prominent supporters of the ‘rules-based international order’. Given its status as a modestly credentialled middle power with a limited capacity to influence the international order or the …
How times change. Only half a century or so ago, Australians were fighting and dying in Vietnam in an American-led effort to hold back the supposed threat of communist expansion. The whole of Southeast Asia …
Hugh White’s latest book, How to defend Australia, has attracted much attention. As the book’s back cover rightly claims, White is ‘Australia’s most provocative, revelatory and realistic commentator on defence’. But, as he himself might …
Policymakers are generally uninterested in, if not actively contemptuous of, the scribblings of academics. There have, of course, been some notable exceptions to this general pattern, and even some individuals who managed to be both. …
It really does make a difference who occupies the White House. Acknowledging that point seems beyond many commentators and policymakers in Australia. Yet, failing to recognise how important individuals can be may leave allies floundering …
