The recent debate here on The Strategist between Paul Dibb and Hugh White over how Australia ought to respond to an unprovoked Chinese attack on the island of Taiwan touches upon an issue of deep …
Articles by: "Rod Lyon"
On 17 January, US President Donald Trump went down to the Pentagon to speak at the launch of his administration’s long-awaited Missile Defense Review (MDR). The MDR is the previously missing fourth wheel of the …
Over recent years, a somewhat geeky debate has emerged among the exponents of deterrence and assurance. Although the discussion typically occurs between Americans and nationals of an allied country, it’s overly simplistic to describe it …
Originally published 28 February 2018. Some years ago, Christine Leah and I published an article that explored Australian thinking about nuclear weapons and strategy. We argued that for more than six decades Australians had essentially …
The network of US alliances built in the early years of the Cold War has proven remarkably resilient. Nowadays, it’s easy—and wrong—to take that resilience for granted. Back in 1997, Stephen Walt, analysing alliance durability, …
President Donald Trump’s statement over the weekend that the US plans to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia underlines the current pace of strategic change. A nuclear order forged primarily during …
Australia has long been ‘the lucky country’—basking in endless beaches, summer barbecues, democratic government, and mineral wealth. It’s also been lucky in terms of its strategic policy, able to ride the coat-tails of a global …
In the wake of the recent North Korea – South Korea summit, it has become clearer than ever how Kim Jong-un defines ‘denuclearisation’: it’s a series of limited unilateral declarations which constrain the North’s nuclear …
I read with interest the recent Strategist posts (here and here) written by my former colleague Andrew Davies, outlining his conversion to the anti-nuclear cause. Andrew’s views are always worth listening to, but on this …
A fractious NATO summit—including, apparently, an implied threat by President Donald Trump to leave the alliance—shows it’s not too early to be thinking about a post-alliance future. So in this post, I intend to unpack …
President Donald Trump’s disdain for alliance commitments suggests that we might be heading into a new era in geopolitics—an era characterised by a post-alliance US. While US allies will be hoping fervently that that isn’t …
There’s a line in Taoist philosophy that says, ‘The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao.’ It’s a cautionary principle that should underpin one’s reading of the final joint declaration from the …