The Antarctic region is of immense strategic importance to Australia, not only because Australia claims 42% of Antarctica, but also because the Antarctic Treaty provides that all of the planet below 60 degrees South is …
The Beat Australian fugitive reappears When his bank Nugan Hand collapsed and his associate Frank Nugan was found dead in 1980, Michael Hand disappeared and a coroner concluded that he’d died. However, one of Australia’s …
Different countries and regions across the African continent have been subject to a range of brutal terrorist activities in recent years. They have included hostage-taking incidents and deadly attacks on the Tigantourine gas facility in …
This week’s release in the ADF capability snapshot series takes a look at the Royal Australian Navy. (Here’s a link to last week’s RAAF paper.) Again, there’s a lot more good news than bad in …
Australians as always will make their own judgments about 1975 and hindsight, of course, offers 20/20 vision. For what it’s worth, I believed then, and I still do, that Sir John Kerr should have given …
Tomorrow Australia’s Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will sit down with Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) for some valuable face time. Just over a year into his presidency, Jokowi has already had some experience dealing with Australian …
My Strategist post on Monday has stimulated considerable interest from readers in respect of the claimed People’s Liberation Army (PLA) connections with Landbridge. To provide further information and allow people to make their own assessments of the connections, …
News this week that companies bidding to build Australia’s next generation of submarines could be targets of Russian and Chinese hackers hasn’t surprised anyone. But it remains to be seen if Defence will adopt the …
China’s land reclamation in the South China Sea has generated concern across Asia about China’s challenge to US strategic primacy in the Western Pacific. The US has belatedly responded to this challenge with a single …
Will the Paris climate change conference measure up? The answer to that question, of course, depends on what success is measured against. And it’s important that we not only have a clear idea of the …
Sea State Last week the destroyer USS Donald Cook visited Turkey’s Aksaz naval base on Turkey’s southwest coast for joint Turkey–US exercises. Elements of the Turkish naval force present included submarines, surface and air defence …
A nation’s border security is intrinsically linked to its national security. There should be no doubt that perceptions of border security impact upon public confidence in a government’s security strategies; after all, the protection of …
Peter Jennings’ ‘Darwin: storm in a port’ has brought to broader attention the apparent nonchalance with which the lease of the port of Darwin by Chinese firm Landbridge has been treated by many parts of …
Social media has been alive with chatter about the finalised UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and how they might influence security and development policy globally. To us, there’s no better example of the need to …
John Howard’s decision to go to war in Iraq was constructed on a fib. The fib was used repeatedly throughout 2002 and almost to the very start of the invasion in 2003. The fib was …
Update: ICYMI Henry Kissinger penned a WSJ op-ed back in mid-October entitled, ‘A path out of the Middle East collapse’. Headlining the first Suggests for November is an Intelligence Squared debate on the topic ‘Containment …
Evidence presented to Senate Estimates hearings on 21 October over the 99-year lease of the Port of Darwin to a Chinese company shines new light on the elements of the decision. The issue points to …
In the first part of this post, I stressed how the ADF currently lags well behind other Western militaries in recognising the urgency of addressing climate change and security. In a recent Climate Council report …
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has recently shown a more open-minded approach to Australia’s nuclear future. In a radio interview in South Australia in late October he speculated on the possibility of a nuclear industry in …
The Beat Australian–Chinese taskforce policing ice The Australian Federal Police and the Chinese National Narcotics Control Commission have launched a new initiative to counter the trafficking of illicit drugs. Joint Taskforce Blaze, which will be …