Originally published 21 February 2019. It doesn’t get much bigger than attacking the home of democracy—parliament house—and a country’s major political parties only months out from a federal election. In his statement on these attacks, …
President Donald Trump’s public response to Iranian missile strikes on two US airbases in Iraq suggests that he and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have reached a mutual ‘no war’ agreement. Barring any miscalculation …
Editors’ picks for 2019: ‘AI and autonomous systems are urgent priorities for today’s defence force’
Originally published 29 April 2019. The 2016 defence white paper and the decades-long integrated investment program will deliver a future force that includes 72 joint strike fighters, several hundred infantry fighting vehicles, nine new frigates …
Originally published 29 April 2019. The United Nations can sometimes be a figure of fun for its breathless commitment to the dullest of minutia, but spare a thought for the members of the UN Somalia …
Originally published 5 November 2019. We’ve known for a while that SEA 1000, the Defence Department’s future submarine program, is going to cost a lot of money—we just haven’t known exactly how much. But as …
Qassem Soleimani’s assassination in an American attack at Baghdad airport, on US President Donald Trump’s orders, could be a prelude to a full-scale war between the US and Iran despite the reluctance of both sides …
Originally published 2 August 2019. The backlash abroad against Xi Jinping’s China, at least in developed nations, has spread rapidly in the last year. Some smaller countries, like Australia and Canada, feel patronised and bullied. …
Originally published 28 May 2019. I recently sailed onboard the landing helicopter dock and Royal Australian Navy flagship HMAS Canberra from Vietnam to Singapore, as one of several academic sea-riders invited to observe Indo-Pacific Endeavour 2019 (IPE 19), …
Originally published 12 December 2019. When David Nicolson and his fellow soldiers in Combat Team Alpha from the Royal Australian Regiment’s 2nd Battalion served in a remote outpost in Afghanistan’s Mirabad Valley, there was a …
Originally published 14 March 2019. Judgements about the changing shape of the global order are the stuff of current international discourse. We face a world order in transition. Our current order, built in the age …
Originally published 4 June 2019. In the immediate aftermath, I was unwilling to speak about my experience of Tiananmen. In Beijing, where I stayed until the end of 1990, there was no need to talk …
Originally published 11 July 2019. This year is proving to be something of a watershed in technology. Government and professional bodies are considering or acting on controls around technologies such as artificial intelligence and encryption. The United States, like Australia and New Zealand, banned …
Originally published 2 March 2019. Just over 20 years ago, a letter from Australian prime minister John Howard to the president of Indonesia, B.J. Habibie, set in motion a chain of events that would lead …
Originally published 6 March 2019. We are entering a new era in the security of Australia, not because of terrorism, the rise of China or even the cybersecurity threat, but because of climate change. As …
The Strategist team is taking a bit of a break. Starting on Boxing Day, we’ll be republishing some of our favourite posts from 2019. Thank you very much for reading and supporting The Strategist over the …
In How to defend Australia, I argued that if we are to take our defence seriously, we need to prepare to defend Australia from a major Asian power independently. That is necessary, I said, because …
‘A spectre is haunting the rich world. It is the spectre of ungovernability’, began an editorial in The Economist earlier this year, paraphrasing the opening line of The Communist Manifesto. But it is not only …
It was a lively evening recently at Hurricane’s, the new Australian ribs joint in Beijing, with pin-up snowboarder Scotty James charming a large crowd of excited young Chinese as the snow swirled around outside—a seemingly …
When the Cold War ended, many pundits anticipated a new era in which geoeconomics would determine geopolitics. As economic integration progressed, they predicted, the rules-based order would take root globally. Countries would comply with international …
‘The stability and economic progress of Papua New Guinea, other Pacific island countries and Timor-Leste is of fundamental importance to Australia.’ Australian foreign policy white paper, 2017 Australia’s deepest, oldest instinct in the South Pacific …