Australia’s space sector is making steady progress towards establishing a sovereign space capability, both for civil and commercial roles and for defence and national security tasks. It’s also continuing to play a crucial role in …
In a year when Australian and other parts of the world have been battered by savage storms, intense bushfires, a pandemic or a combination of all three, it’s time to rethink how we approach threats …
Media speculation has gone into overdrive since the assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist on Friday. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was an important albeit little-known figure in the Iranian government and was the head of research and …
The world has entered potentially the most dangerous days of Donald Trump’s presidency. The US president, who has refused to acknowledge his election loss, is in a trigger-happy position to ignite a foreign policy crisis …
Three weeks after a divisive US election and multiple challenges of the results by President Donald Trump, the official transition to President-elect Joe Biden was finally allowed to begin. Biden’s first cabinet choices (all familiar, …
After staging three revolutions in two decades, one could argue that the people of Kyrgyzstan have accumulated unique knowledge of how it’s done. Then again, because new problems have emerged each time, there are clearly …
A retired secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs is fulminating that the department is in a deplorable ‘crisis’. ‘The quality and conduct of Australia’s foreign relations are suffering’, he writes. The government doesn’t love …
How could 39 alleged unlawful killings of Afghan people by members of Australia’s special forces have occurred over years while no officer in command of those soldiers knew about or had reasonable grounds to suspect …
In this episode, The Strategist’s Brendan Nicholson speaks with Samantha Crompvoets, founder and director of Rapid Context, who carried out a review that uncovered claims that Australian special forces soldiers had committed war crimes in …
For several years, Japan has been investing heavily in its diplomatic engagement with Indian Ocean island states and may now need to consider how to better extend that engagement to environmental security challenges. A recent …
As the nature of war has changed in recent decades to involve proportionally more civilians, and internal conflicts continue to tear nations apart, we cannot achieve sustainable peace without involving women more closely in preventing …
Last month, an 18-year-old Chechen immigrant stalked, stabbed and decapitated history teacher Samuel Paty in a Paris suburb near the middle school where he worked. Soon after, a Quran-carrying Tunisian man beheaded a woman and …
In the first two parts of this series, I looked at what we’ve learned recently about Defence’s naval shipbuilding enterprise and how the Hunter-class frigates are coming along. Now let’s turn to what’s happening with …
In the first part of this series, I looked at what we’ve learned recently about Defence’s naval shipbuilding enterprise. In this instalment and the next one, I’ll focus on what we’ve learned about individual projects, …
On 10 November, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan informed Armenia that he was surrendering to end his country’s war with Azerbaijan. That prompted massive protests which put the future of the government and the surrender itself in …
Is the Covid-19 pandemic about to tear Solomon Islands apart? The sensible answer is, probably not. But the consequences of the pandemic, including jostling among China, Taiwan and even the US, certainly have the potential …
Devising an effective strategy to compete, cooperate and coexist with China will be one of US President-elect Joe Biden’s toughest foreign policy challenges. And over the next two months, Sino-American relations are almost certain to …
In 2019, only a few months before Covid-19 hit, Samoa suffered a disastrous measles epidemic. The lessons from that epidemic have shaped Samoa’s hardline response to Covid-19 and offer important insights about maintaining public trust …
US President-elect Joe Biden’s income-redistribution and green-energy programs are set to be eviscerated by the US Senate, even if the Democrats gain a spare majority by winning both Senate run-off races in the southern state …
Planet A At the G20 summit this week, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga pledged that his country would be carbon neutral by 2050. This would see Japan—the world’s seventh largest emitter of greenhouse gases—join Europe …