It is often said that good fortune in politics comes down to timing—the same could be said of policy. Excellent policy work can be swept away by a change of government or ministerial reshuffle. Looking …
My previous posts have observed that the core force should have two principal attributes: it should be the base from which expansion should occur in the event of major strategic deterioration, and it should be …
A continuous theme of successive White Papers has been that our strategic challenges in the South Pacific come not from powerful states, but from weak ones. The idea that weak South Pacific states pose a …
With characteristic precision, Mark Thomson has put his finger on the primary question for Australian defence policy today: not how much should we spend on the ADF, but what do we want it to do? …
Mark Thomson thinks that the recent irrational and irresponsible reduction in defence funding is retrievable. He thinks that we do not need a larger or stronger force than we have at the moment. He says that …
Choosing which grand strategy to use depends on how others can be influenced—however, this is only half of the matter. There is also an internal dimension where the power is developed that the external dimension …
New Zealanders have always discounted claims that Canberra’s defence purse-strings are being tightened—until now. The days when the proportion of Australian GDP devoted to defence was twice the New Zealand level of roughly 1% appear …
As I pointed out in my previous post, there’s a much-neglected policy principle embedded in the conceptual framework that guides Australian defence planning: in the event of major deterioration in Australia’s strategic circumstances, the Government …
Before turning its attention to the future force structure of the ADF, the team writing the 2013 Defence White Paper will have to grapple with the rising cost of even maintaining the existing force. This …
In the 2009 Defence White Paper, the Government expected the ADF to carry out a number of tasks. In addition to its core war fighting roles, there were a number of secondary tasks, including missions …
The twin notions of force expansion and warning time have been integral to Australian defence planning since the 1970s. Yet over the years the focus on these issues has been neither strong nor consistent. Today, …
Defence Minister Stephen Smith used his ASPI speech on Wednesday night to make the definitive case for bringing the White Paper forward by a year. Close followers of the defence debate will be familiar with …