Yet more on ‘strategy’

As readers of this post will undoubtedly recall from schooldays spent declining Greek nouns, the word strategos means ‘general’; hence our word, ‘strategy’, or the ‘art of generalship’. Of course leadership in war was never …

Abe and a resurgent Japan

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has chalked up a string of wins lately—all in the field of strategic policy. The visit by President Obama led to a public strengthening of US commitments to defence of …

The lost meaning of strategy

Strategy has long been a contested concept. Yet despite all of the debate surrounding the term, strategy ultimately concerns the relationship between military means and political ends. As the British strategist and military historian Basil …

Cyber wrap

The 2014–15 Australian Federal Budget was released last night, and many are still likely digesting its key points. Although criticised for going back on election promises after announcing deep spending cuts and more taxes, the …

How to buy a submarine, American style

A couple of weeks ago the Pentagon announced that it had awarded a contract for another ten Virginia class nuclear attack submarines (SSNs). The headline price was US$17.6 billion, or about $1.76 billion per boat, …

What’s strategy?

The debate between Peter Jennings and Robert Ayson over whether DFAT does ‘strategy’ has opened up a rich vein of thinking. In essence, the debate has been less about what DFAT does or doesn’t do, …

When America sees Australia

When American thinkers turn their eyes to Australia they can describe sharp shapes and strange colours that surprise the citizens of Oz. Sometimes the view offered in an American accent is just a bit of …

ASPI suggests

Welcome back to our weekly round-up of new reports, podcasts and other news in the defence, security and strategy world. Today’s headlining item is a timely exploration by Usman Hamid on New Mandala of the …

Defence funding: three cheers for 2%

Numerous commentators have criticised the government’s promise to raise defence expenditure to 2% of GDP within a decade. Given the seeming arbitrariness of such a figure, and strategists’ desire for precision-guided policy prescriptions, the sceptics …

Is DFAT doing more strategy than we think?

In asking why Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade doesn’t do strategy, Peter Jennings has posed an important question. But the question begs at least two assumptions. The first is that the government agency …

Domestic politics as a game-changer in Asia

Rod Lyon recently argued that an interesting feature of geostrategic competition in Asia is the search for ‘game-changers’ in military technology. Regional governments’ search for such ‘force-multiplier-level enhancements’ is one source of the present moment’s …

An anti-alliance Prime Minister

After more than a century of federation, we have a PM pointing us towards armed neutrality, and who doesn’t want to be closely aligned to a great and powerful friend. Granted, it’s a PM who …

Cyber wrap

The big cyber news out of the US this week was the Obama Administration’s release of the results of its three-month review into ‘big data’ and privacy. The report found that while big data can …