A greater emphasis on subnational diplomacy, particularly regional Australia’s links to the Pacific, presents a significant opportunity for Australia’s regional foreign policy. When Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister James Marape met with Cairns Mayor Amy …
The rules-based international order may yet benefit, in net terms, as countries respond to disruptive US policy. Indeed, we could see other states choosing not to double down on the existing order, instead working to …
For the first time in its 47-year history, Australia’s Office of National Intelligence (ONI, previously Office of National Assessments [ONA]) is led by a woman: Kathy Klugman, senior diplomat and prime-ministerial adviser. Today’s deteriorating strategic …
The release of the Defence Estate Audit on 4 February marks another milestone in the government’s effort to reshape Australia’s defence posture. It seeks to rationalise the commonwealth’s largest infrastructure portfolio and is a long-overdue …
Australia’s food and energy security strategy needs to move beyond stability-based planning and instead address sustained volatility in the Indo-Pacific. Current policy thinking often treats disruption as episodic and recoverable. But the strategic environment shaping …
The biggest and most immediate threat to space systems isn’t anti-satellite weaponry; it’s hacking. In October 2025, a group of computer scientists from the University of California, San Diego and the University of Maryland undertook a …
China’s ambassador has chosen a public platform to apply pressure on Australia, shape domestic debate and threaten retaliation over a sovereign national-security decision. With this, Beijing has transformed a policy review on Chinese control of …
While the government’s Future Made in Australia Act is framed as an economic security initiative, its largest funding commitments are directed toward carbon abatement rather than the preservation of broad-based industrial capability. This imbalance becomes …
By decisively consolidating his personal power, President Xi Jinping’s latest purge of senior military leadership increases strategic risk for Australia and the rest of the Indo-Pacific. The investigation of two of China’s most senior military …
An audit of Australia’s military landholdings and the government’s response to it, both issued on 4 February, mark the most significant reform of the assets in decades. Long expected, the audit lands at a critical …
The expiration of the New START agreement between the United States and Russia on 5 February marks the near-complete collapse of an arms control system that once made nuclear competition predictable, verifiable and contained. The …
Canberra can no longer assume that Washington will underpin regional stability or the rules-based order, the foundational premise of modern Australian strategic planning. Australian policymakers must grapple with the prospect that the destabilising behaviour of …
Last week X’s head of product, Nikita Bier, made an allegation of enormous consequence with remarkable casualness: China controls millions of spam accounts used to censor the platform during periods of political unrest. Responding publicly …
The New START treaty between the United States and Russia expires on 5 February, leaving no binding arms control agreement or guardrails between the two countries. For the past 15 years, the treaty has limited …
Security is not a settled state nor about always guaranteeing stability. It is about reassurance and trust amid instability and threat, and it is maintained with a shared acceptance that risk can be managed but …
The Trump administration’s new defence and security policies affect the Indo-Pacific less through fresh promises than through fresh requirements for allies—and for Australia, that shift is immediate and concrete. The message is not ‘trust us’ …
Governments need to move beyond faith in market self-correction and legacy institutions and instead build disciplined arrangements in small groups of countries to align public policy with private capital. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s …
If there is a flourishing future for Australia in a region dominated by China (and without a US presence) I want to know about it. I cannot imagine it, but it seems many critics of …
With repeated purges, Xi Jinping increasingly resembles Joseph Stalin in controlling the regime that he leads. The Chinese Communist Party general secretary and national president shows widespread distrust of lieutenants. Their loyalty to him earlier …
NASA’s upcoming Artemis II mission is not just a technological milestone; it is a signal to allies, competitors, industries and future generations. Artemis II will see four astronauts circle the Moon and come back. It …
