In How to defend Australia, I argued that if we are to take our defence seriously, we need to prepare to defend Australia from a major Asian power independently. That is necessary, I said, because …
Debate: "General"
‘A spectre is haunting the rich world. It is the spectre of ungovernability’, began an editorial in The Economist earlier this year, paraphrasing the opening line of The Communist Manifesto. But it is not only …
It was a lively evening recently at Hurricane’s, the new Australian ribs joint in Beijing, with pin-up snowboarder Scotty James charming a large crowd of excited young Chinese as the snow swirled around outside—a seemingly …
When the Cold War ended, many pundits anticipated a new era in which geoeconomics would determine geopolitics. As economic integration progressed, they predicted, the rules-based order would take root globally. Countries would comply with international …
‘The stability and economic progress of Papua New Guinea, other Pacific island countries and Timor-Leste is of fundamental importance to Australia.’ Australian foreign policy white paper, 2017 Australia’s deepest, oldest instinct in the South Pacific …
As I looked back at the article I wrote this time last year, I was disappointed to see the bad had remained, the good had turned, and the ugly got worse. In saying that, glimmers …
The Australian continent is in an excellent position when it comes to launching payloads into space, because its north is so close to the equator. Only Kourou in French Guiana—the European Space Agency’s main launch …
The question of whether new international rules should be developed to prohibit or restrict the use of autonomous weapon systems has preoccupied governments, academics and arms-control proponents for the better part of a decade. Many …
Conflict over trade dominated the economic headlines in 2019, so it’s surprising that the year ended with significant progress on three trade agreements. Each tells a different story about the outlook both for the global …
Over recent years, Australian governments have made a conscious decision to recast their shorthand description of the strategic region within which they live. In brief, they’ve moved away from describing that region as the ‘Asia–Pacific’ …
It was 5 August 1990, just days after Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had invaded and conquered all of Kuwait, and US President George H.W. Bush could not have been clearer as he spoke from the South …
The year 2014 was just as significant as 1914. Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula elicited a weak response from the West and highlighted a larger strategic problem: the erosion of the liberal-democratic world order. …