I agree with Will Leben, who wrote in The Strategist about his mistakes, that an important element of being a commentator is being accountable and taking responsibility for things you got wrong. In that spirit, …
Articles by: "Melissa Conley Tyler"
Britain’s decision to cut foreign aid to fund defence spending overlooks the preventive role of foreign aid. It follows the pause and review of USAID activities and is an approach to foreign aid that Australia …
There’s growing awareness that Australia’s international development program is one of the tools of national power that Australia can use to shape the world around it. The danger is that if ‘influence’ becomes an unstated …
When Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong visited Dili last month, one of the projects she highlighted was the Timor-Leste South Submarine Cable. This is a positive contribution to Timor-Leste’s digital infrastructure. However, to fully …
The government’s new international development policy, released last week, has some interesting implications for defence. In particular, it completes the process of aligning messaging across the different arms of statecraft on their important and complementary …
Maritime security is a term that can mean almost anything. For many, it conjures images of big-ticket ‘hard security’ issues like military modernisation, island-building, freedom-of-navigation operations, maritime surveillance, grey-zone tactics and maritime militia. But maritime …
In a budget speech that focused on domestic priorities, Treasurer Jim Chalmers’s only international announcement was of a package allocating $1.9 billion to strengthening Australia’s relationships in the Pacific. It wasn’t a surprise that the …
Combating illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU fishing) is key to the integrity of the international legal framework and the rules-based international order. A report by the Asia-Pacific Development, Diplomacy & Defence Dialogue (AP4D) considers this problem …
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made headlines over the weekend when his claim the Ukraine war was ‘launched against’ Russia provoked laughter from the audience during a forum in India. But I was in the room and …
Australian policymakers have increasingly spoken of the need to use all the tools of statecraft in international engagement. This includes statements by the prime minister, defence minister, foreign ministers (current, former and shadow), minister for development, chief of the defence force and others. So, what does ‘all …
On this day 22 years ago, the United Nations Security Council adopted resolution 1325 in recognition of the fact that women experience and are affected by conflict in different ways to men. Since then, a …
There’s a paradox at the heart of Australia’s security cooperation with its Pacific island neighbours. On the one hand, the Pacific will always be an area of great strategic significance for Australia, meaning that Australia …