The campaign to drive Islamic State (IS) out of Syria stands weakened as thousands of Kurdish fighters have been drawn away to defend Afrin after Turkey sent troops across the border. In their absence, hundreds …
Debate: "General"
The Communist Party of China’s (CPC) decision this week to eliminate presidential term limits seems to open the door for President Xi Jinping to be not just ‘Chairman of Everything’, but also ‘Chairman Forever’. The …
In an earlier post I highlighted that Australia is set to embrace a more active role in space. This shift away from a primarily earth-bound focus on space opens up some interesting possibilities. Certainly, we’ve …
Throughout the last half-century, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has occupied a variety of roles in Australian strategic thinking. Australia has been supportive, fearful, fascinated, distant and neglectful. It has even contemplated joining. …
The beat Floating in a winter wonderland A Canadian man attempted to escape police by floating down a river on an ice block. Police in Moncton had responded to a reported assault Thursday morning and …
When, on a visit to Warsaw in 1970, German Chancellor Willy Brandt suddenly dropped to his knees before the Monument to the Ghetto Uprising, Władysław Gomułka, Poland’s communist leader, whispered, ‘wrong monument’. Gomułka would have …
Those who follow large-scale Defence acquisitions might think they know which project the following statement—taken directly from Defence’s own project reporting—refers to: The … acquisition originally intended to procure a largely commercial off-the-shelf (or military …
Some years ago, Christine Leah and I published an article that explored Australian thinking about nuclear weapons and strategy. We argued that for more than six decades Australians had essentially espoused ‘three visions of the …
As anticipated, Donald Trump’s recent US national security strategy (NSS) airbrushed climate change out of existence. If only it were that easy. Although not surprising, the removal of climate change as an issue of strategic …
The Cold War lasted four decades, in many ways both beginning and ending in Berlin. The good news is that it stayed cold—largely because nuclear weapons introduced a discipline missing from previous great-power rivalries—and that …
Being Russian, North Korean or Chinese at this moment in history and watching liberal democracies must be odd but satisfying. Commentators, analysts and former politicians in Western Europe, America and among American allies in the …
To watch the Chinese censorship apparatus working in overdrive in the past 48 hours has been to see it reach its reductio ad absurdum in real time. So sensitive are the proposed changes to the …