Peter Jennings is right. Australia is a G20 power and has global interests. But those facts must be set alongside others, not so encouraging, that relate to Australia’s position on the global stage. In all …
Debate: "Strategy"
I’m grateful to Andrew Carr, Rod Lyon and John Blaxland for taking up the debate about Australia’s role as a ‘top 20’ global power. It’s obvious we disagree on some fundamental points about designing the …
Following the interest in recent Strategist posts on top five fighter aircraft and battleships, I offer another top five list (actually top six) of Australia’s best post-war strategic policy decisions. Three selection criteria were applied: …
When discussing what ‘strategy’ is—or isn’t—we surely need to distinguish between strategy and grand strategy, not least because of the longer timescales, wider disciplines and deeper understandings involved with the latter. Australian grand strategy stems …
The debate over what constitutes strategy has been enjoyable but, inevitably, failed to reach a shared agreement over the proper shape of the beast. That’s all to the good because strategy is a big concept …
The strategy debate on this blog has come to resemble a major crisis in the South China Sea where the interactions between multiple claimants almost take on a life of their own. What started with …
I found Brendan Taylor’s view that Foreign Affairs shouldn’t do strategy because they don’t have a ‘few battalions hidden away in the bowels of ‘Gareth’s Gazebo’ somewhat bizarre. Along with the Defence Minister, Foreign Minister …
Peter Jennings’ post ‘Why doesn’t DFAT do strategy’ has resulted in a series of posts that explore both the nature of strategy and the claim that DFAT doesn’t do strategy. This claim, readers will recall, …
As readers of this post will undoubtedly recall from schooldays spent declining Greek nouns, the word strategos means ‘general’; hence our word, ‘strategy’, or the ‘art of generalship’. Of course leadership in war was never …
Strategy has long been a contested concept. Yet despite all of the debate surrounding the term, strategy ultimately concerns the relationship between military means and political ends. As the British strategist and military historian Basil …
The debate between Peter Jennings and Robert Ayson over whether DFAT does ‘strategy’ has opened up a rich vein of thinking. In essence, the debate has been less about what DFAT does or doesn’t do, …
In asking why Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade doesn’t do strategy, Peter Jennings has posed an important question. But the question begs at least two assumptions. The first is that the government agency …