Australia’s coup culture isn’t about generals rolling over politicians and tanks rolling through the streets. The Oz coup culture is concerned with what political party rooms do to unpopular leaders. The willingness of parties to …
Although it took place a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Star Wars has again been making headlines this week, not only due to the release of The Force Awakens, but also …
President Joko Widodo knows better than anyone that the reason he chose Sudirman Said as mines and energy minister last October wasn’t because of Said’s knowledge of mining and oil and gas but because Widodo …
The NSW Police Force’s revised approach to violent armed offenders represents a necessary alteration of Australian police response tactics. While bladed weapons, homemade explosives, and even cars have featured in jihadist plots during 2015, there …
Exactly one hundred years ago, one of the most remarkable operations in military history occurred at the Dardanelles with the evacuation in December 1915 of 83,000 Australian, New Zealand, British and Indian troops from the …
The Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague has been hearing arguments recently in The Republic of Philippines v The People’s Republic of China case over competing claims in the South China Sea. The …
The Beat Combatting the tobacco trade The US State Department recently released a new report, The Global Illicit Trade in Tobacco: A Threat to National Security, in support of the US National Strategy to Combat …
I was thrilled to see that ‘ASPI suggests’ recently made reference to Star Wars—the film series, not the missile defence system—by way of a September 2009 article from The Economist on the lack of counterinsurgency …
The Paris agreement on climate change is a big win for President Obama, particularly given that he’s invested a lot of political capital in this issue, especially in his second term when he no longer …
China’s military activities on its ocean frontier have given rise to a fear that it’s seeking to expand its power at the expense of others now that it has a more powerful navy. The essence …
We’re kicking off this week over the ditch with our Kiwi friends who have been very busy on the cyber policy front. In Auckland last Friday, Communications Minister Amy Adams launched an updated version of …
Several weeks ago, at a border security conference in London, I thought I was going to see something akin to the recent Ukrainian parliament brawl. A British MP and a Migration Watch representative separately declared …
I recently attended a fascinating ASPI forum on developments in the South China Sea. The forum came against the backdrop of the second round of arbitral tribunal hearings at The Hague on the Philippines’ historic …
In his recent post here on The Strategist, Professor Mark Beeson raises a number of questions which, he believes, we usually overlook in our rush to address more immediate policy debates. His central question—from the …
The world is different following adoption of the Paris Agreement on 12 December. We now have a new orientation for the global economy set by the ambition of governments to put a limit to climate …
Sea State Last week, the US Navy’s lead Zumwalt-class destroyer commenced its first sea trial. The vessel departed from the Bath Iron Works shipyard in Maine for its open ocean trials, eight years after construction …
John Coyne’s recent Strategist post raises some interesting questions for intelligence agencies and their paymasters; namely, what are the capabilities that agencies require to continue to protect our security, and what’s a reasonable expectation of …
There are growing fears that Southeast Asia is rapidly emerging as a new beachhead for the extremism of Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Particular attention has focused on Indonesia, the world’s most …
With the Government confirming that it has received three proposals under the future submarine competitive evaluation process (CEP) it’s worth considering where we’re headed. There’s a consensus emerging among analysts and commentators that the CEP …
The north of Australia is booming with recognition of significant export opportunities into Asian markets across a number commodity types. In the first quarter of 2014, just over 90,000 cattle were exported from Darwin, mostly …