After this week, Prime Minister Tony Abbott might be forgiven for wanting to revise his ‘more Jakarta and less Geneva’ mantra. (More Wellington, anyone?) The apparent leaking of the Australian Signal’s Directorate information about Indonesian …
Peter Jennings and Karl Claxton’s recent ASPI Special Report A stitch in time: Preserving peace on Bougainville represents an important—and necessary—attempt to move Bougainville to the centre stage of Australian foreign and strategic policy debates. …
Recent posts on The Strategist have looked at Indonesia’s future strategic choices between the US (and its allies) and China. Daniel Grant presents an interesting view that Jakarta won’t easily side with Washington, even in …
Thanks to Ed Snowden, the whole world now knows about the NSA’s surveillance capabilities. In his thoughtful and timely piece on The Strategist, Klee Aiken asks if the mass surveillance of big data really keeps …
Nic Stuart made a straightforward point last Wednesday: if you want an amphibious capability, make your case. I do, so I will. But at least there has been plenty of debate. By a rough count …
One thing New Zealand is never accused of internationally is throwing too much money around on defence. Those impressions aren’t about to be challenged any time soon, but Defence Minister Jonathan’s Coleman’s recent speech to …
Peter Layton’s article on ‘The Navy We Need’ makes some interesting points, but puts the platform cart before the function horse, despite his interest in the US Navy’s ideas of ‘presence’. He also falls into …
In a previous post, I detailed a number of recent incidents that have occurred involving Indonesia in the South China Sea, pointing out that the these incidents have occurred out to the furthest extent of …
There was heartache this week after a near miss in talks with Iran. On a similar note, this article in The National Interest suggests that nuclear history may at least rhyme, with Russia modernising its nuclear force. So it …
The announcements over the last week that the Army has sacked six of the officers involved in the ‘Jedi Council’ and the ADFA cadet involved in the Skype scandal are very welcome. For most Australians, …
The Commonwealth and security are seldom words that inhabit the same sentence, let alone a discussion. Despite the Commonwealth’s vast network of nations in every habitable continent, ranging from developed, developing, and emerging economies, the …
In June 2013 China once again surprised the world scientific community by introducing the fastest supercomputer in the world, the Tianhe-2 or Milky Way-2. TOP500 project lists the top 500 supercomputers of the world on …
Once again the pages of The Strategist are filled with a vigorous discussion of the future shape of Australia’s amphibious capability. It’s a debate well worth having, because the decisions that are made will potentially …
The idea of Big data, the bane of privacy and civil liberty activists, now conjures up Edward Snowden, the NSA, and mass surveillance. It’s also regularly presented as a critical tool for national security. So does …
Once again battle has been joined on the shape of Australia’s next Navy. While this may appear as merely differing opinions on our future navy’s role, lurking barely submerged are the omnipresent (sea) battles over …
I’m a journalist. This means, self-evidently, that I bring precious little expertise to any discussion of strategic policy. Apart from, perhaps, some experience (I’m not quite as young as I look) and an interest in …
Western intelligence agencies are finding themselves under increasing public scrutiny from lawmakers as the fallout of the Snowden leaks continues. In the UK, the heads of the three national intelligence agencies appeared at an open …
The ADF has done a lot to harmonise its capability to fulfil military objectives. But government must think beyond the ADF when looking at how we will prepare an amphibious capability that will fulfil national …
The almost-eternal profession of covert intelligence collection and analysis (a.k.a. spying) has been much in the news of late, with the US National Security Agency and Australia’s own Signals Directorate sharing headlines across the region …
As with Vietnam, so with Iraq and Afghanistan; Australia is avoiding any alliance blowback over evident disasters and misjudgements. Here’s one of the advantages of being the small ally—usually only a small part of the …