Articles by: "Peter Layton"
Designing an Australian grand strategy for China

For Australia, China looms large, but the reverse is not necessarily true. The Chinese Communist Party has many pressing issues domestically in managing 1.3 billion people and the world’s second largest economy, and internationally with …

Social mobilisation in a contested environment

As geostrategic circumstances darken, there’s new interest in military mobilisation. For Australia, that involves moving the Australian Defence Force beyond its normal peacetime rate of effort. It can be an all-of-nation mobilisation for the ‘big’ …

A grand strategy Plan A for Australia?

Worry abounds. There are calls for radically new defence policies, a defence Plan B, a doubling of defence spending, a nuclear deterrent, a conventional one and, most recently, a national security strategy. However, before jumping …

Five fifth-generation warfare dilemmas

The future of the ADF is ‘fifth generation’, or at least the Chiefs of Army, Navy and Air Force think so. It might’ve been just a passing fad, given that the term originated as a …