With all the ‘Days of Our Lives’ action in parliament a new Defence White Paper seems so far down the list of political priorities as to seem almost irrelevant. Prime Minister Gillard announced the election date …
Earlier this week, the RUSI ACT asked Ben Schreer and myself to talk about the next Defence White Paper. This is a challenge because we’re going to get a new Defence White Paper (DWP) in …
It’s uncommon for the US Defense Department to be moved by North Korean rhetoric and war-mongering, but the recent escalation of threats has succeeded in eliciting a response from the Pentagon. The US announced over …
The battle in the Southern Ocean this year has been going on both at sea and in the courts. The Antarctic whaling conflict between activists and whalers worsened last month, with collisions and damage as …
In every relationship, personal, professional and diplomatic, negotiations and their subsequent compromises take place every day. Advantages are leveraged and exploited continuously. Some situations see small concessions or trade offs for mutual satisfaction while others …
President Obama’s recent comments in an interview with an Israeli TV show about the Iranian nuclear program are a timely reminder that the issue hasn’t gone away. In the interview, which aired on 14 March, …
For a sovereign democratic nation, Andrew Davies’ contribution ‘The who, what, where, and why of the future submarine’ posits some alarming notions. The first relates to an assumption that irrespective of a direct threat to …
What of the issue of nuclear deterrence in the US–Australia alliance, and more generally in the western Pacific region? For some, in America as well as Australia and elsewhere, this is chiefly a matter of …
As the military modernisation the Asia Pacific continues, Taiwan is now looking at whether it can build its own submarine fleet. If you’ve seen the movie Argo—the Hollywood version of the rescue of six US …
In my last blog post I explored how the New York Times hacking incident had raised the stakes in the cyber domain to an unprecedented degree. Having had time to reflect on this statement, I’ve …
In March 2011, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard recognised the importance of the Australia–United States alliance by funding the three-year Alliance 21 project. Led by the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, …
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 …