The Covid-19 pandemic is accelerating three fundamental geopolitical trends: the rise of Asia, the decline of the United States, and the strengthening of Germany within Europe. Combined, these shifts may well prefigure the world of …
In my previous post, I noted that there seemed to be no appreciable difference in fatality rates for US states that instituted lockdowns early or late, or among European countries whose social-distancing and lockdown measures …
In an open letter to Prime Minister Scott Morrison on 19 April, more than 200 economists rejected commentators’ calls for a rapid return to work and labelled the notion of a ‘trade-off’ between public health …
Sea state Two upgraded Jin-class submarines have entered service in the Chinese navy. The nuclear-powered submarines are the latest in a series of significant additions to the People’s Liberation Army Navy over the past year. …
I had been captive in Afghanistan for about two weeks when the government of my home country, Canada, contacted those attempting to negotiate my release. They told negotiators to get me on the phone the …
When the renowned British economist John Maynard Keynes was asked what he did when the facts changed, he replied: ‘I change my mind. What do you do?’ I’m not sure whether Prime Minister Scott Morrison …
The continued strength of the iron ore price is surprising, given the collapse of oil, which traders have recently been willing to pay buyers for if they’ll agree to offload full tankers. Oil and iron …
As Australia faces compounding risks to its national security, our government’s ability to handle them appropriately and efficiently will continue to be tested. One significant element of a national readiness strategy that’s missing from most …
Previous posts in this series have described how three prime ministers appointed the same man, Justice Robert Marsden Hope, to conduct three inquiries into Australia’s intelligence agencies, and discussed the skills and approach that Hope …
A new layer of snow has settled atop the iciness of Australia’s relations with China. Beijing and Canberra bite and bicker over Covid-19. The words are hot but they speak of frigid relations. The diplomatic …
‘This is not a discrete one-off episode’, warned Jeremy Farrar, the head of Wellcome Trust, a global health research foundation. ‘[T]his is now an endemic human infection.’ Covid-19, as Farrar suggests, knows no boundaries, geographic, …
In the years leading up to the global Covid-19 crisis, Australia, like many countries, failed to heed health specialists’ warnings on the likelihood and consequences of a global pandemic. Critical pandemic readiness was an insurance …
In this episode, Hannah Smith of ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre and the Australian National University’s Katherine Mansted speak about their new ASPI report, Weaponised deep fakes. Deep fakes are digital forgeries created through artificial …
The Covid-19 pandemic has changed the way we think about national resilience in the face of global crises. It’s shown us, brutally, how such disasters can cascade around an interconnected, interdependent world. It also invites …
As Winston Churchill once observed, too many people who ‘stumble over the truth’ will ‘pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened’. But in the case of Covid-19, the world has been …
This article is part of ASPI’s 2020 series on women, peace and security. Diverse women’s voices are often left out of discussions about security in the Pacific. This is despite this year marking two decades …
Africa is no stranger to epidemics and public health crises. Ebola is estimated to have killed more than 11,000 people in West Africa in 2014–16, and more recently claimed over 2,000 lives in the eastern …
In October 2019, Defence Minister Linda Reynolds announced that ‘Defence is working through a re-assessment of the strategic underpinnings of the 2016 Defence White Paper’. The review was to be completed in early 2020. Given …
Amid rapid geopolitical change at the start of the 2020s, unfolding now in the Covid-19 crisis, nuclear weapons manifest grim continuity with the previous century. Especially persistent is a capability that has existed since the …
Commentary on equipping the Australian Defence Force tends to focus on high-end combat capabilities such as frigates, fighter aircraft and armoured vehicles. Much less is written about the assets and infrastructure that support those capabilities. …