In Peter Layton’s recent post Australia’s many ‘maritime strategies’ he noted that: [A] maritime strategy of land force expeditionary warfare across the Indonesian archipelago… sounds somewhat reminiscent of the last days of WWII, when Australia …
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The combination of the rise of China, interest in new submarines and debates on the Army’s future role has sparked a renewed interest in maritime strategy. There are several alternative maritime strategies in play, often …
If we learn more from losses than wins, then the Canberra system has much to gain from examining its lousy performance in the processes that took Australia to war in Vietnam and Iraq. For Australia, …
Graeme Dobell makes some contentious arguments about Australia’s decision-making processes when determining our involvement in the American-led Iraq war of ten years ago. They are contentious because many of Canberra’s mandarins remain in place, people …
Earlier posts (here, here and here) have looked at force structure from an Australian perspective, but in reality the American alliance dominates all our defence discussions. So our thinking about future force structure alternatives and …
Marcus Fielding’s response to my force structure post raises several interesting points, in particular, that ‘…it’s entirely appropriate for Australia to restructure to be able to lead and provide force-level support to regional coalitions.’ In …
Peter Layton’s recent post raises some important questions about force structure but ultimately comes up with an overly simplified characterisation of the alternatives. Peter describes the two ends of the force structure continuum in overly …
For Australia, force structure decisions don’t solely revolve around national considerations. The alliance with America has a major influence. In thinking about force structures we have two choices at either end of a continuum: either …
The new National Security Strategy has much to commend it in terms of ambition and intent, although its real strength is probably as a comprehensive public information overview document. This is an important matter in …
As we enter US President Barack Obama’s second term, one of the key strategic questions for Australia is what happens to America’s ‘pivot’ towards the Asia–Pacific. Announced in late 2011, it signalled a renewed US …
The next White Paper’s conclusions on the overall force balance will be closely studied. While whether current or future wars receive priority and the numbers of wars to be fought concurrently might be big strategic …
In a recent post on force structure, Peter Layton dramatically highlighted the continuing tension between future capabilities and existing requirements. The problem is, of course, (as Andrew Davies likes to say) that there are a …