Indonesia–Australia: the death of false sentiment

Next month, Indonesia’s president Joko Widodo will visit Washington—one of several trips he’s made this year including to Beijing and Tokyo. With major powers in the Indo-Pacific seeking enhanced bilateral ties with Indonesia, Jakarta’s attention …

Two cheers for Forward Defence

Was Australian strategy in the third quarter of the twentieth century, generally known as forward defence, a strategic disaster? After the fall of Saigon in 1975 the concept of ‘forward defence’ was widely discredited, along …

The Beat, CT Scan and Checkpoint

The Beat Agreement on firearms information The Law, Crime and Community Safety Council—a forum for national Attorneys-General, police and emergency services ministers—met last Friday to fast-track a new firearms database. The National Firearms Interface will …

Cost of Defence 2015 launched

On the morning after the Federal Budget I posted a version of the above graph along with some basic numbers describing what’s going on. Today, my final analysis of the budget is launched. Not much …

The limits of [American] power

Hanoi is one of the best settings in which to contemplate the limits of American power. The Vietnam War showed that a determined adversary (with substantial help from two major powers) can resist even a …

The Rohingya crisis: a regional perspective

When Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi used the term ‘pull factor’ in a recent interview, she was reprising an expression coined four decades ago to describe how the promise of resettlement was the reason for …

Cyber wrap

The Japanese government has released a draft version of the country’s updated cyber strategy, due for release in June 2015 (PDF – Japanese only). The strategy, presented at a cyber security taskforce meeting on Monday …

Defending Australia: going it alone

The rumour doing the rounds last year was that the Prime Minister had contemplated a unilateral deployment of a battalion of Australian soldiers to Ukraine to secure the crash site of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17, …

Saving the AWD project—too little, too late?

To properly understand last week’s announcement from the government about the beleaguered Air Warfare Destroyer (AWD) project, some background is needed. Back in June 2014, the government received the independent ‘White–Winter report’ into the project. …

Sea, air and land updates

Sea State Last week, TKMS opened its dockyards in Kiel to visiting Australian defence writers to discuss its submarine and surface fleet operations. The Germans have displayed a transparency in the competitive evaluation process that …

The 2015 Defence White Paper: show us the money

The adjectives applied by the government to describe the forthcoming Defence White Paper and its accompanying plan for the ADF include ‘fully costed’, ‘externally assured’, ‘achievable’, ‘affordable’, ‘credible’, ‘realistic’, ‘properly funded’ and ‘enduring’. This is …

If you can’t beat them, build an R2-D2

I’ve recently discussed two trends in military technology. The week before lasts’ post on the 1990s non-revolution in military affairs argued that low-tech adversaries simply make themselves scarce when faced with a technologically superior foe. …

Thailand’s border timber war

The illegal harvesting and smuggling of the rare and valuable Siamese Rosewood (Dalbergia cochinchinensis) across the Thai-Cambodian border is an issue that’s landed on ASEAN member states’ desks yet again. On 7 May, the Environmental …

Tony Abbott and a Japanese sub

Tony Abbott wants a Japanese submarine. To repeat: Australia’s Prime Minister really wants a Japanese boat. If Australia hadn’t embarked on a ‘competitive evaluation process’ pitting Japan against France and Germany, this hack would argue …

ASPI suggests

Headlining today’s wrap-up are three must-read pieces on Australia’s strategic choices and China. In the first, Bonnie Glaser (who’s visiting Australia at the moment) argues that ‘Australia should join the US to implement a cost imposition strategy …

Jokowi: why the game is not the same

It was widely expected that President Joko Widodo would present far more diplomatic problems for Australia, than did his predecessor, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Over the past eight months it has become apparent just how much more …