North Korea, war and ANZUS

President Trump’s excitable rhetoric about US military options in relation to North Korea—‘fire and fury’, ‘locked and loaded’—has attracted considerable media attention in recent days. But look behind the rhetoric. Allied decision-makers are starting to …

Cyber wrap

Getting a handle on the ‘cyber’ It’s been a big week in internet regulation, with unsavoury activities being plugged left and right. GoDaddy, a major domain registration service, evicted the Daily Stormer from its platform, …

Can South Korea save the day?

As North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un’s and US President Donald Trump’s war of words escalated, Independence Day celebrations—commemorating the Korean peninsula’s 1945 liberation from Japanese colonial rule—was unfolding in both North and South Korea. The …

Pakistan post-Sharif: expect little change

On 1 August, the parliament of Pakistan overwhelmingly elected Shahid Khaqan Abbasi as the new prime minister following the Supreme Court’s decision to unanimously declare that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was not ‘honest’ and that …

Home affairs: painting over the cracks?

If our domestic security agencies’ past operational achievements (see, for example, here and here) are anything to go by, the success of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s Home Affairs portfolio seems inevitable. Turnbull could be forgiven …

Vetting the vetters

I agree with Peter Jennings’ assessment that the 2017 Independent Intelligence Review seems to have been almost overshadowed by the Turnbull government’s announcement of the new Home Affairs portfolio. The 23 major recommendations of the …

Calling the Chinese bully’s bluff

The more power China has accumulated, the more it has attempted to achieve its foreign-policy objectives with bluff, bluster, and bullying. But, as its Himalayan border standoff with India’s military continues, the limits of this …

Oz foreign policy temperature

The snow on the Brindabella Range was icing Canberra’s wind as I slipped into Old Parliament House to take the temperature of Oz international policy and check the strategic weather forecasts. The prophets of the …

ASPI suggests

Welcome back, dear readers, for another ‘ASPI suggests’ full of ‘fire, fury and, frankly, power’. And a big thanks to M’sieur James Mugg for diligently shepherding this feature for the past couple of weeks … …