India’s decision last month to revoke Kashmir’s autonomy and statehood, break it into two union territories and merge them fully with the Indian union caught everyone unawares. The changes give effect to the Bharatiya Janata …
Debate: "General"
Sea state The Department of Defence is scoping ways to modernise its submarine shipyard in Adelaide so that the navy’s Collins-class submarines can continue to be serviced there. This comes amid political and industrial tensions …
Back in 2016, Australia launched a new national cybersecurity strategy.* The strategy covers a four-year period to 2020, and given the changes in the security environment, an update is now clearly warranted. To that end, …
It is now 50 years since diplomatic relations were formally established between the Commonwealth of Australia and the Kingdom of Afghanistan. Superficially, the two countries might seem to have little in common. While each has …
On Saturday, Iran announced that it had begun feeding uranium gas into a cascade of 20 IR-6 centrifuges and a second cascade of 20 IR-4 centrifuges, both of which provide Tehran with a significantly faster …
My colleague Graeme Dobell declared recently that ‘Scott Morrison’s embrace of the “Pacific family” is goddamn genius.’ I have expressed a more cautionary view that claiming a place in the Pacific family could have unintended …
The Australian Defence Force has a heavy dependence on satellite communications for force coordination at long range. Satellites such as those that make up the US GPS network are critical for weapons guidance and joint …
With Britain as the mother country and the US as the alliance father, Australia has a dysfunctional family. Mum has gone nuts; dad has gone rogue. The anchors of the Anglosphere are angry and adrift, …
The world One of this week’s biggest headlines was the withdrawal of the extradition bill in Hong Kong, the potential passage of which spurred the protests that have rocked the city for months. While this …
Welcome to ‘The Strategist Six’, a feature that provides a glimpse into the thinking of prominent academics, government officials, military officers, reporters and interesting individuals from around the world. 1. How is your government coping …
Mass shootings such as those in El Paso and Las Vegas and terror attacks such as those in New Zealand and Norway, along with the rise of nationalist, anti-immigrant, populist political parties, have put the …
In How to defend Australia, Hugh White refers to the ‘deepest national objectives: security, prosperity and identity’, observing that states seem ‘willing to risk war to pursue these objectives, even at potentially appalling cost’. Security, …