US President-elect Joe Biden has made it clear that diplomacy will be at the centre of his administration’s foreign policy. Biden has pledged to rejoin the Paris climate agreement on day one of his administration, …
There are a lot of moving parts involved in the ramp-up of the government’s naval shipbuilding enterprise. It’s hard for anybody to keep track of them all, particularly as new pieces of information are sporadically …
Three weeks after Americans went to the polls, the morass of conspiracy theories and disinformation surrounding the election and its results continues to grow. Although the US is half a world away, Australians don’t have …
When Joe Biden made his first speech as president-elect of the United States, he declared that a revived America would ‘lead not by the example of our power, but by the power of our example’. …
At a US Air Force base in Ohio 25 years ago, the European continent’s most devastating war since 1945 came to an end with the Dayton Agreement. After three and a half years, the war …
To ensure the digital sovereignty of communities in northern Australia, intensive effort is needed to build greater digital capacity and the social infrastructure to enable it. The region has long suffered from a digital deficit. …
Apocalyptic works of fiction, like Stephen King’s The stand and Wolfgang Petersen’s Outbreak, have a relatively standard script for pandemics. Think an initially small-scale mystery illness identified by a weary doctor. Cue the scene where …
Australia’s domestic intelligence agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, released a rare public statement last week aimed at raising awareness about the use of social media and professional networking services for espionage purposes. ‘Think before …
The US presidential transition has generated much uncertainty not only for the American public, but also for many of America’s allies and adversaries around the world. Affected most acutely are the countries whose futures hinge …
Modern businesses are so reliant on computer technology that it has been suggested ‘software is eating the world’. Companies depend on IT not only to run their operations, but also to get a competitive advantage. …
Fifty years ago this month, Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs was born, casting aside its old moniker, External Affairs. The name changed as Australia changed. The switch from External Affairs to Foreign Affairs was a …
Sir Angus Houston, who as an air chief marshal led the Australian Defence Force from 2005 to 2011, says he’s greatly saddened by evidence that Australian special forces soldiers committed war crimes in Afghanistan. ‘After …
The report on the Afghanistan inquiry conducted by Major General Paul Brereton could not have come to a more devastating judgement: what happened ‘is possibly the most disgraceful episode in Australia’s military history’. The report …
In this episode, ASPI’s Brendan Nicholson and Peter Jennings talk about Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s recent visit to Japan to meet with Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and the in-principle reciprocal access agreement. They …
Yesterday it was confirmed in the Brereton report that there’s ‘credible information’ to substantiate the unlawful killing of 39 people by Australian special forces personnel in Afghanistan. These shocking allegations led Prime Minister Scott Morrison …
Over decades, successive Australian governments have found it politically convenient to call on special forces units when they needed to send troops into harm’s way. The rationale has been that highly trained members of the …
None of us has a memory of internal European borders. Instead of collecting national stamps as children, we collected the first euros with different symbols of European capitals. Our generation has been thoroughly shaped by …
Donald Trump’s mulish refusal to accept defeat in the US presidential election is alarming observers of American politics. Their concerns are heightened by public demonstrations supporting Trump’s demagogic populism, his reactionary political attitudes, and his …
After a four-year-long investigation into allegation that members of Australian special forces committed war crimes in Afghanistan, 25 soldiers stand accused of murdering 39 unarmed Afghan civilians or prisoners and cruelly treating two others. Some …
The former Treasury deputy secretary and member of ASPI’s inaugural council Des Moore sadly passed away in Melbourne on 1 November at the age of 88. As David Uren noted in his tribute published in …