There’s been talk lately about so-called plans for the US Navy battle force inventory to return to 350 vessels. President-elect Trump has pledged to begin the biggest naval build-up since the 1980s. The USN inventory …
Debate: "General"
UN peacekeepers are often deployed when there’s no longer any peace to keep. In the current strategic environment of non-state actors, peacekeeping has also become increasingly complex and non-traditional in character. Despite those new challenges, …
US President-elect Donald Trump has said a lot about foreign affairs, without really saying anything at all. His muddled statements offer little insight into what kind of foreign policy he will actually pursue, and there …
The US government’s largest contracted military shipbuilder, Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII), recently opened an office in Canberra. It seems unlikely that HII would’ve done that without encouragement from the US government, via the US Navy. …
It’s easy to see why the Indo-Pacific concept is so popular in both Canberra and Washington. Managing China’s rise would be much easier if East Asia and South Asia really do coalesce to form a …
Sea State The British Ministry of Defence last week admitted that the Royal Navy’s fleet of frigates and destroyers would be losing their primary over-the-horizon anti-surface weapons due to cost-cutting measures. The Royal Navy will …
The 1 Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) scandal has allegedly seen US$3.5 billion in tax dollars misappropriated by elites, revealing high levels of political corruption in the country. The issue is hidden by the dominance of …
We’ve come full circle on nuclear disarmament. In the late 1950s, the Aldermaston Easter marches (from the British Atomic Weapons Establishment near Aldermaston to Trafalgar Square in London) urged British governments to ‘Ban the Bomb’. …
Australia’s strategic antennae are highly sensitive. In recent years those antennae have had many reasons to twitch, chief amongst them being China’s rise and the disruption it’s causing to the region. One of the most …
Are economists partly responsible for Donald Trump’s shocking victory in the US presidential election? Even if they may not have stopped Trump, economists would have had a greater impact on the public debate had they …
‘If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.’ As the Pivot passes, Asia confronts a new President who seems to think all the US needs is a bigger and better hammer. …
The US election postmortem continued this week, and no doubt will for many weeks to come. Through front pages and Twitter feeds, readers have been pummelled by a veritable avalanche of analysis, which we won’t …