In a period of limited and increasingly constrained defence resources, both the United States and Australia need to be looking for defence options that promise especially high leverage in the context of the changing military …
Earlier this month, The Economist carried a front-page story on ‘Aspiring Africa’ with the tag-line: ‘The world’s fastest growing continent’. The article praised the significant progress that has occurred in Africa over the last decade, …
The way Australia goes to war hasn’t changed in a century. The Prime Minister declares the deployment or announces the conflict and the troops march and the ships sail. This is the leader’s most profound …
Graeme Dobell makes some contentious arguments about Australia’s decision-making processes when determining our involvement in the American-led Iraq war of ten years ago. They are contentious because many of Canberra’s mandarins remain in place, people …
What lies ahead for US policies affecting Australia? Paradoxically, the greatest doubt about America’s strength in the world comes from within the US itself. Obama’s second term foreign policy will probably resemble his 2008 campaign …
One of the key questions US allies and partners have been asking is whether America will actually be able to pull off the Asia–Pacific ‘pivot’. More than twelve months after the announcement there are doubts …
Graeme Dobell’s contributions are always entertaining and frequently insightful, which makes it forgivable if now and again his arguments are well wide of the mark. We had one such moment with his piece reflecting on …
As you may have noticed from ‘ASPI suggests’, Harry White has joined ASPI as not only as an analyst but a member of the Strategist editorial team. He has written on issues including defence capability, …
In my recent post on the workshop that ASPI and the Submarine Institute of Australia held in February, I described the significant points we agreed on. This time around, we’re going to look at the points of …
Recent media coverage of the Senkaku/Diaoyu stand-off has painted the picture of a powder-keg so dangerous it could force Australia to make stark Cold War-style choices; either helping to stare down or else bending over …
Over the last decade, security dilemmas on the Korean peninsula have become progressively more ‘hybrid’ and multi-faceted. Traditional conventional threats, scenarios and contingencies linked to high intensity conventional wars, have been converging with a range …
Media reporting indicates that we’ll soon see an announcement about the acquisition of twelve extra F/A-18F Super Hornet fighter aircraft at a cost of US$3.6 billion. This will be a classic example of a ministerially …
North Korea’s most recent nuclear test has provoked some extraordinary reactions from media commentators in the past few weeks, some of which suggest a somewhat one-dimensional view of the nature of nuclear decision-making and the …
Sam Bateman recently reminded us that both in the South China Sea and East China Sea incidents involving patrol vessels, warships, military aircraft, fishing and research vessels of the littoral countries are now occurring more …
Australia’s politicians stood up and took both bows and bruises for their stance on the Iraq war. John Howard promised he wouldn’t recant on the Iraq war, just as he wouldn’t recant on Vietnam. He’s …
Today’s a public holiday in Canberra so we’re taking a short break from regular blogging, but here’s our weekly round-up of news, reports and events in the defence, NatSec and strategy world. First up, Dewi …
In basketball, a pivot is a tactic, not a strategy. Yet the US pivot to Asia looms as a strategic shift of fundamental import. This is high-level strategy that responds to the gravitational effect of …
It’s March 2013, and looking ahead to September 2014—when Indonesia’s new president should be elected—it’s too early to speculate on the result. In fact, we’re not even sure who’ll line up for the race. But …
Asian powers are complicating an uninterrupted thirty-year peace by becoming a bumper market for the international and regional weapons trade. Now that standards of living in Asia are on the rise, and internal stability is …
Based on what they read in the national press or hear the talking heads on TV say, Australians could be forgiven for thinking that the Americans and Chinese are totally at loggerheads. We keep getting …