Last week, I identified some of the possible dilemmas for US conventional deterrence in East Asia, so it’s now worth looking in more detail what this might mean for Australia. At least four points can …
Since the United States is our biggest ally, as generations of white papers have told us, it’s fair to say we want to be interoperable with their forces in a coalition setting. With this in …
In a recent contribution to The Strategist, Rod Lyon argues convincingly that Australia needs to engage its US ally over the future credibility of its nuclear extended deterrence posture in Asia. It doesn’t stop there. …
There is an emerging consensus that the United States is challenging China’s dominance in Myanmar, with analysts reporting signals of ‘Myanmar’s shift from China’s orbit toward the West’. This apparent shift was brought into focus …
In my last post, I outlined the development of the long-standing defence relationship between Australia and Malaysia. While there is strong history between both militaries, the difference in the ways in which they are utilised …
It might actually be said that Australia is Malaysia’s closest military cooperation partner. The close defence relationship between our countries is one that has come about due to various factors, including the common security umbrella …
The defence budget of the Republic of Indonesia has seen a significant increase in 2012, reaching US$8 billion—an increase of 29.5% from the previous year. The funding increase is intended to meet Indonesia’s minimum essential …
In the last budget, which saw Defence take a hammering in terms of cuts (the details of which ASPI has covered in numerous documents and posts), little has been said about the sanctity of the …
In a recent article in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Siegfried Hecker from Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation suggested North Korea could conduct a third nuclear weapon test within as little as two …
Andrew’s recent chart demonstrated how Australia’s defence spending equals the combined budgets of the five biggest spending ASEAN countries. Charts like this do a great job of communicating the magnitudes of spending involved, and put …
There has already been some debate about the insurance analogy on this blog. I personally like the theme as it makes it easy to explain Defence funding to those not familiar with what our defence …
If, as the saying has it, the exchange rate between words and pictures really is 1000 to 1, that’s too good a deal to pass up. Each week The Strategist will bring you some graphs …