Articles by: "Rod Lyon"
Australia and ASEAN

Graeme Dobell and Matt Davies have both written engaging contributions respectively for and against Australia’s possible future membership of ASEAN. I’m grateful to Graeme for presenting so cogently the arguments for Australia’s seeking admission. But …

Has Russia violated the INF treaty?

Since 2013, when rumours first began to circulate in the US mainstream media that Russia might have violated the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, analysts have been trying to clarify the nature of the breach …

The US and assurance anxieties in Asia

The US ‘rebalance’ to the Asia–Pacific has been under way since late 2011. Then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrote in October 2011 of a ‘strategic turn to the region…to secure and sustain America’s global …

Nuclear disarmament and nuclear order

There’s an unfortunate truth about nuclear disarmament: it’s further away now than it was in 1995 when the NPT was indefinitely extended. NPT extension capped a number of positive milestones, not least the end of …

Five birds

The recent announcement that the government would seek a continuous ship-building program in South Australia has attracted endorsement (from Warren King) and criticism (from Nic Stuart and Hugh White among others). But in this post …

The Iranian nuclear deal: good or bad?

The detailed nuclear agreement concluded recently between Iran and six world powers has found itself the subject of an intense debate. The White House has described the deal as a major achievement that blocks Iran’s …

The return of the deterrence problem

With nuclear modernisation programs under way across a range of countries, Russia asserting its right to deploy nuclear weapons in the Crimea, NATO reviewing the role of nuclear weapons in the alliance, and a recent …

Waterloo and what came after

Yesterday was the 200th anniversary of the battle of Waterloo. It’s not an anniversary likely to attract much attention in the average Aussie pub, but perhaps one that strategists might like to mark. The battle …