Articles by: "Robert Ayson"
Why values count

As regular folks in Canberra were closing down for the summer break, Graeme Dobell was on a writing roll for The Strategist. He questioned the still freshly minted Prime Minister’s attachment to values in Australia’s …

An injection of funds for the NZDF?

One thing New Zealand is never accused of internationally is throwing too much money around on defence. Those impressions aren’t about to be challenged any time soon, but Defence Minister Jonathan’s Coleman’s recent speech to …

Dollars for Defence, or defence for dollars?

In one of his first comments as the Defence Minister in Tony Abbott’s new government, David Johnston said that the ADF needs to be equipped to help safeguard regional sealanes. It’s easy to see this …

Amphibious ANZACs?

For a while now defence officials and analysts on both sides of the Tasman have been looking for ways to re-energise the Australia-New Zealand relationship. It’s almost as if the two neighbours were becoming too …

Behind the Indo-Pacific Smokescreen

View Larger Map My favourite line about Australian strategic thinking belongs to Graeme Dobell. The ‘arc of instability’, he quipped on more than one occasion, was a polite way of talking about Indonesia. Having read …

What the Kiwis want from trans-Tasman defence relations

It’s hard to get folks excited about the Australian–New Zealand defence relationship. It’s uncontroversial because we’re already close partners in a fairly low octane South Pacific neighbourhood, where we’re expected to work together. And it’s …