The beat German police commandos caught funnelling ammunition to doomsday groups In Germany, four special operations police commandos have been arrested for giving ammunition to far-right ‘doomsday prepper’ groups. Prosecutors allege that as long ago …
What do French President Emmanuel Macron and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe have in common? For one thing, they both believe that, by stroking US President Donald Trump’s fragile ego, they can coax him into …
The proximate cause of the recent public protests in Hong Kong, which culminated on 16 June with an unprecedented 2 million people in the streets, was an ill-advised extradition bill to allow the transfer of …
On a five-year timetable, we’re due for another defence white paper (DWP) in 2021. The last one took the best part of two years to prepare, so starting one now would be about right. If …
Managing relations with China is the most challenging foreign and security policy problem facing Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his re-elected government. It will demand a rigorous whole-of-government response coordinated by the prime minister’s department …
During ASPI’s recent panel discussion on the Pacific, Graeme Dobell referred to the Fiji–Australia Vuvale Partnership as an important pointer to Australia’s future ‘step-up’ relations with the Pacific islands region. He had written earlier this …
New Zealand’s Defence capability plan 2019 (DCP ’19), released last week, lays out ways to spend the NZ$20 billion pledged to defence by the coalition government early in its tenure. It clearly knits together future …
Successful defence white papers have to find the right resting place between four sets of demands: politics; strategy and policy; military capability; and money. That’s what makes them so interesting, and also so hard to …
Sea state The Royal Australian Navy’s longest-serving ship docked in Sydney Harbour for the last time on Sunday morning. HMAS Success, known by sailors as the ‘Battle Tanker’, is a fuel-replenishment ship which has carried …
ASPI’s three recent reports on the Pacific—by Richard Herr; Graeme Dobell; and John Lee—reflect the widening discussion in Australia of the region’s shifting dynamics. As Dobell put it, Canberra’s deep strategic denial instinct is roused. …
Australia and China convened the inaugural Australia–China High-Level Security Dialogue in Sydney in April 2017. The joint statement from the dialogue outlined a range of areas for future law enforcement cooperation: combating transnational crime—including counter-narcotics …
For months, the biggest subject of cable traffic back home from the Indonesian embassy in Washington was a US law placing sanctions on any country that breached comprehensive US sanctions on Russia. Then either late …
In January 2018, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani publicly admitted that without American support, his government and the Afghan National Army couldn’t last very long. That remains the case today: the government is in disarray and …
US President Donald Trump’s administration has singled out Iran—even more than Russia, China or North Korea—with sustained pressure over the past two and a half years. The United States has withdrawn from the 2015 nuclear …
The term ‘Indo-Pacific’ reflects and frames surging strategic rivalry in the place we call ‘the region’. The Indo-Pacific becomes a controversial label attached to a power contest. As with any construct—political, social, diplomatic, strategic—it’s about …
Western democracies risk being outmanoeuvred by totalitarian powers unrestrained by rules and willing to use information campaigns, cyber operations, theft of intellectual property, coercion and propaganda to weaken them, Australia’s Defence Force chief has warned. …
The world The people of Hong Kong are waging a strong protest against a proposed law that would allow them to be extradited to mainland China. Here’s a useful collection of CNN stories that covers …
President Donald Trump’s latest ploy to garner funding for a border wall between the US and Mexico was to try to impose a minimum 5% tariff on Mexican imports from 10 June. The move was …
Last week I spoke at a workshop sponsored by the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre and the National Security College at the ANU on the topic ‘How does the “Pacific” fit into the “Indo-Pacific”? The changing …
The world has been riveted by the protests raging in Hong Kong against the city government’s proposed law to allow the extradition of criminal suspects to mainland China. About one million people—roughly one-seventh of the …
