Articles by: "Rod Lyon"
The Southeast Asian emphasis in DWP2013

Defence White Paper 2013 breaks new ground in a number of areas—but at the big picture level, the most striking aspect of the paper is its revaluation of Southeast Asia. In place of the vague …

Time for double or nothing with North Korea

In a recent article in Foreign Affairs, Robert Art and Robert Jervis wrote about the late Kenneth Waltz’s unique contribution to the field of international politics.  One of the things Waltz brought to his research was an interest …

North Korea: still sliding towards the abyss?

Spurred on by Tanya Ogilvie-White’s post on Friday, I want to add some thoughts to the mix on the current situation on the Korean peninsula. What do we know about what’s really driving decision-making in …

Iran, and the approaching nuclear red-line

President Obama’s recent comments in an interview with an Israeli TV show about the Iranian nuclear program are a timely reminder that the issue hasn’t gone away. In the interview, which aired on 14 March, …

ANZUS, Article 8 – has its time come?

On 5 September 1952, Richard Casey, the Minister for External Affairs, provided the Australian House of Representatives with a report on the first meeting of the ANZUS Council in Honolulu about a month earlier. The …

Do alliances work?

With ANZUS a core pillar of our own strategic policy, it should come as no surprise that Australians frequently turn (and return) to the subject of just how reliable that alliance is. Most of the …

Pine Gap – technically speaking, Australia has a choice

Cam Hawker’s recent Strategist post, ‘Stuck in the middle with you’, suffers from five major fallacies. First, it assumes that Australia–US joint facilities predetermine the strategic relationship between Canberra and Washington. Second, it assumes that …

Romney and the case of the lost Asia

Mitt Romney’s speech to the Virginia Military Institute on 8 October was, as he said, his chance to lay out the ‘vision’ for US foreign policy under his presidency. But anyone living in Asia reading …