US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced on 22 April that the United States will terminate the ‘significant reduction exceptions’ for existing importers of Iranian oil. From 2 May, the waivers that have been in …
NATO and ANZUS are cousins. The defining family characteristic of the two alliances is the central, essential role of the United States. NATO is a complex organism of 29 members; in comparison, ANZUS—just the US …
The world The terror attack in Sri Lanka has proved to be an inflection point for jihadi terrorism in South Asia. As the world tries to make sense of the tragedy, here’s an informative Twitter …
This article is part of a series on women, peace and security that The Strategist is publishing in recognition of International Women’s Day. It’s been nearly 20 years since the UN Security Council adopted resolution 1325 (UNSCR …
The Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka rank among the deadliest terrorist attacks in modern history, and underscore the metastasising scourge of Islamist violence in Asia. Radical Islamist groups, some affiliated with larger extremist networks, …
Enough time has passed for the presumptions about the international environment, the strategic logic and the national objectives of the 2016 defence white paper (DWP 2016) to be assessed. This record of Australia’s strategic policy …
Prime Minister W.M. (Billy) Hughes spent several months in England in 1916 getting to know the wartime decision-makers, attending British cabinet meetings, lobbying for Australia’s trading interests, seeking a greater voice for Australia in future …
Taiwan is walking an increasingly fine line between its security and economic interests when it comes to major Chinese technology companies—and it’s about to get (even more) political. Last Friday, the Taiwanese government announced an …
It’s hard to argue against the importance of a modern coastal city in Australia’s Top End to geopolitics, the economy and the nation’s security. Darwin’s long history as a military post attests to that. Populations …
A popular narrative holds that the European Parliament elections in May will be Act III in the populist drama that began in 2016 with the United Kingdom’s Brexit referendum and US President Donald Trump’s election. …
Welcome to ‘The Strategist Six’, a feature that provides a glimpse into the thinking of prominent academics, government officials, military officers, reporters and interesting individuals from around the world. 1. As director of the Australian War …
It has been nearly 60 years since the philosopher and historian Thomas Kuhn wrote his influential book The structure of scientific revolutions. Kuhn’s thesis was simple but heretical: breakthroughs in science occur not through the …
Sea state Today marks the 70th anniversary of the formation of China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy. Beijing has invited more than 10 countries to take part in a fleet review and is expecting naval delegations …
People were chanting, praying and crying, or just frozen in total disbelief, as the flames engulfed ‘their’ cathedral of Notre Dame, the object of their individual and collective memory. The emotions of those who witnessed …
‘Relations with Indonesia have provided the crucible of modern Australian foreign policy.’ —Bruce Grant, 1972 The great Australian scribe, Bruce Grant, penned that thought about Indonesia–Australia tests and trials in the year of a seminal …
We’re taking a couple of days off from publishing duties over the Easter break. We’ll return to our normal programming on Tuesday, starting with Graeme Dobell’s look at two neighbours that have been going through …
Exploiting Kashmiri disaffection and the transnational jihadist movement, Pakistan is waging a deadly guerrilla war against India in Kashmir. Usually, of course, sponsoring an insurgency in a more powerful neighbouring country would provoke a very …
The beat Millions of New Zealanders flagged in police database An investigation by the Otago Daily Times has revealed that 40% of New Zealand’s population has been flagged in a police database—that’s nearly 2 million …
Five years ago this month, a small force of ‘little green men’—soldiers wearing no national insignia—seized control of a police station in Sloviansk, a small village in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast. Thus began the second …
Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has come a long way in a short time in its embrace of digital tools and technology. DFAT, and most of our embassies around the world, now have …