A telemovie or an information campaign?

How does a government dissuade someone half a world away from making a life threatening decision? Australia’s federal government has commissioned a $4.1m telemovie for release this year, designed to dissuade asylum seekers from coming …

Naval shipbuilding: thinking beyond the cost curve

As an early RAN submission to the former Force Structure Committee’s strategic policy consideration of the ANZAC frigate put it so breathlessly, ‘Australia is an island continent surrounded by sea’. The pleonasm notwithstanding, the proposition’s …

The demise of the Defence Materiel Organisation

Following the recommendations of the First Principles Review, the government has agreed to move the quasi-independent Defence Materiel Organisation (DMO) back into Defence. In its place will rise the new Capability Acquisition and Sustainment (CAS) …

Reflections on the nuclear deal with Iran

Since the early April release of the Parameters for a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action Regarding the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Nuclear Program, commentators have been vocal and divided about its merits and demerits. I’m …

The Beat and CT Scan

This week in The Beat – more problems in Australia’s ‘ice’ epidemic, big money in European organised crime and news for Serial fans. And this week in Counterterrorism Scan, Australian foreign fighters, counterterror in the Asia-Pacific …

Hillary and Australia

In between steaming bowls of organic steel-cut oats and workouts deploying the one-legged Romanian deadlift, supple Bob Carr’s Diary of a Foreign Minister heaps praise on Hillary Clinton, ‘a world-historical figure’ for her energy, sharpness …

First Principles Review: a plan to stick to

Below a welter of cliché and bamboozling modern management mumbo jumbo in the First Principles Review of Defence, there lurks much sound advice. The government has bought it all except for an unconvincing recommendation about …

Ivory and transnational crime: big issues in Laos

Laos People’s Democratic Republic (LPDR) has become a regionally significant hub for transnational organised crime syndicates. Faced with serious border security challenges brought on by its shared borders, endemic corruption and central location in Southeast …

Sea, air and land updates

Sea State Last Thursday, the US Navy’s Naval Intelligence Office released an unclassified report on the Chinese Navy (PLAN), the first in six years. The report provides the public with a wider analysis of issues …

Iran: cutting a deal with the Great Satan

In 2003, a ‘perfect storm’ of intersecting developments saw Tehran caught with one hand in the nuclear weapon cookie jar (secretly enriching uranium), despite having joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and given assurances that it …

Iran, China and the new silk road

On Thursday 2 April, the political framework for a final comprehensive agreement on Iran’s nuclear programme was finally agreed to. In anticipation of potential future sanctions relief, China took a number of immediate steps to …

Malcolm Fraser’s foreign policy pillars

On 11 September 1980, Malcolm Fraser stood in the House of Representatives to describe the four pillars of Australian foreign policy. The Prime Minister’s statement listed the ‘four essential components of our foreign policy’ in …

ASPI suggests

For the best reading picks, podcasts and news in international security and defence, here’s ASPI Suggests. Kicking off today is the Iran nuclear deal; read Martin Skold’s piece on strategy blog The Bridge that grapples with the tension between …

One Defence: leave it to Peever

Smiling faces beam from the cover of Creating One Defence. These happy folks, with photos balanced for gender and Service, are pleased that Defence business processes have had their 36th substantive review since 1973. They …