When is off the shelf not off the shelf? When it takes an age for the shopper to decide that he wants a little from product A and a little from product B. A great …
ASPI’s just released Strategy Paper on Australia’s regional defence diplomacy provides a useful snapshot of what Australia’s defence engagement currently involves and where it might usefully head. It’s not as strong, however, on where we’ve …
Is Russia about to become another brick in the wall between Fiji and its Western friends? The official visit by Fiji’s Prime Minister, Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama, to Russia in late June has further developed a …
Australian strategic analysts don’t spend much time thinking about ‘soft power’—Harvard academic Joe Nye’s pithy label for the range of cultural, educational, and other forms of influence that states can use, through attraction rather than …
Japan has released Defence Of Japan 2013, its annual defence white paper—ASPI’s Ben Schreer had a piece on it earlier in the week. The document shows increasing tension in Tokyo over security in North East Asia. The …
After more than a decade of involvement in the Middle East, Australia’s in the process of pivoting back to our own region and looking for new strategies for Defence re-engagement. In the past, the Defence …
It’s been a year since The Strategist kicked off as ASPI’s official blog—and what a year it’s been! We’d like to say a big thanks to all our readers and social media followers for helping …
The gathering’s theme was ‘Security and Cooperation in the Asia Pacific Region,’ yet the US–China relationship dominated. The symposium run by the China Institute for International Strategic Studies was free of academic mumbo-jumbo. The sessions, at …
The Japanese government released its annual Defense White Paper (DWP) on Tuesday. In comparison with last year’s version it displays a harsher attitude towards China, indicating that Japan’s defence policy could shift further in coming …
The latest issue of the Kokoda Foundation’s Security Challenges journal is a special edition that collects contributions on ‘The Defence White Paper 2013’. ASPI is well represented, and the abstracts of our papers are reprinted …
To paraphrase Julia Gillard in her farewell press conference, the three categories of ‘maddy’, ‘straight’ and ‘fixer’ do not explain everything about political leaders, but nor do they explain nothing. As the previous column said, …
In mid-June, as Presidents Xi and Obama strived to build bonhomie in the arid desert east of Los Angeles, a US–Japanese armada was purposefully massing off the coast, preparing for a simulated invasion of southern …