After spending over a week in Saudi Arabia following his unexpected resignation, then visiting France, Saad Hariri, Lebanon’s former prime minister, is expected to arrive back in Lebanon later today. He has accused Iran of …
There’s been a lot of press in the past few years about the potential impact of quantum technologies. The casual observer exposed to the more breathless sort of reporting could be forgiven for thinking that …
‘The goalposts weren’t just moved, they were cut down and used for firewood.’ That’s how former Defence Department secretary Dennis Richardson characterised the impact of defence budget cuts as the three-year political cycle drove the …
Sea state Attention is back on the South China Sea as China and ASEAN officially announced negotiations on the text of a code of conduct in the disputed waterway. There’s little optimism that the negotiations …
Yemen is a humanitarian disaster. It was a failed state even before its most recent civil war began nearly three years ago. But Saudi Arabian meddling is exacerbating the crisis and there’s no resolution in …
The government is expected to announce soon the successful bidder for Project SEA 1180, to replace the 13 Armidale-class patrol boats with 12 larger offshore patrol vessels (OPVs) to fulfil the maritime constabulary role, with …
Paul Dibb and Richard Brabin-Smith have written a significant ASPI paper that may well mark a turning point in Australia’s efforts to adapt to the new strategic circumstances we confront in Asia. That policymakers of …
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. ‘Fifth generation’ is a term …
On 7 July, 122 states voted to adopt a new Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. It articulates the world’s collective revulsion at the humanitarian consequences of the use of nuclear weapons, under any …
Asia’s summit season is bountiful. Flowers bloom, weeds sprout, thorns thrive, all coloured by policy and politics and the personalities of leaders. The APEC summit and the East Asia Summit (EAS) bring lots of people …
The world It’s summit season in Southeast Asia. This week all the big names of the Asia–Pacific descended on Vietnam and the Philippines for the 31st ASEAN Summit and related meetings (such as APEC and …
Is the world sliding dangerously towards cyber Armageddon? Let us hope not; but let us also apprehend the threat, and focus on what to do about it. One country after another has begun exploring options …
In a significant achievement for Australian foreign policy, UN members elected Australia to the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) last month. Australia will serve a three-year term commencing 1 January 2018. It now has the …
Are there any guarantees in life? Of course not.* But it’s possible to improve the odds of success in just about every area of human endeavour, and that includes developing innovation projects in the defence …
Sadly, hermeneutics—or exegesis as it was formerly known—is not much in vogue these days. Maybe that reflects the fact that most of us rely on translation for our glimpses into the texts written in ancient …
The beat Hate crime in the US The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program released the 2016 hate crime statistics, which show an increase for the second year in a row. A total of 6,121 crimes …
This week, the UN is meeting for a fourth time to discuss how ‘lethal autonomous weapons systems’ (LAWS) should be governed within the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. NGOs such as the Campaign to Stop …
Times change and we change with them, as the saying goes. Much the same could be said of warning times: as our strategic circumstances change, so we should reassess the consequences for contingencies that the …
Rod Lyon (‘The Nuclear ban “pledge”: how’s it tracking?’) is predictably underwhelmed by the idea of Australian parliamentarians pledging their support for the recently concluded Nuclear Weapons Prohibition Treaty (NWPT). He and I have totally …
I started to read Andrew Harrison’s recent Strategist post, ‘“Capability” saves lives’, with some interest, but that soon changed to disappointment as the narrowness of his definition of capability became clear. Like most military professionals …