Cyber law enforcement has been on a roll as of late. After a busy May indicting Chinese hackers and combating the Blackshades Remote Access Tool, an international team including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Europol, …
Barack Obama’s West Point speech shows a man tired of the presidency, weighed down by the war in Afghanistan and unsure of America’s role in the world. Obama is having his LBJ moment. Johnson fought …
Narendra Modi’s election as India’s Prime Minister has fired the hopes of Australian India-watchers keen to forge a stronger strategic partnership between Canberra and New Delhi. As Canberra has recast its strategic geography in Indo-Pacific …
President Obama’s explanation of his foreign policy has come and gone, but he has won few converts. True, he tells a credible story about continuing US leadership, exceptionalism, and the intermeshing of unilateral and multilateral …
I listened last week as my colleague Mark Thomson launched this year’s budget brief. One of Mark’s points was that spending on any defence related proposal should be weighed against the gains in security that’ll …
The theme of last year’s Shangri-La dialogue was the need to build trust and confidence. As Vietnam’s Prime Minister, Nguyen Tan Dung, said then: ‘If trust is lost, all is lost’. Well, trust is lost. This …
The Australian Defence Minister thinks Asia’s security situation is potentially ‘dire’ even ‘catastrophic’. But David Johnston twice assured his Shangri-La audience that the regional impact of the US marines rotating through Darwin on the strategic …
The biggest question facing Asia is becoming even starker because leaders are giving such different answers. The leaders of the US, China and Japan have just illustrated the conundrum that Rod Lyon outlined in his …
The Japanese Prime Minister came to Singapore to announce Japan will have a military and security role in Asia’s future. Shinzo Abe told the Shangri-La dialogue: ‘Japan intends to play an even greater and more …
Still reporting from Washington DC, this week’s ‘Suggests’ is jam-packed with links, reports, podcasts and videos on strategy, security and defence. I’m kicking off today with a general shout-out for a handful of stellar American …
Peter Jennings picks up a theme that has been working its way through the Western security community for some years now, and quite explicitly so since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: hard power is back. That’s …
In my last post, I considered the operational and technical challenges of Australia acquiring F-35B STOVL Joint Strike Fighters and operating them from the Canberra class LHDs. In an ideal budget environment, were the decision …
Just as humour is good provided it’s funny, promises are good provided they’re kept. This year’s defence budget was about a promise; the Prime Minister’s election promise to boost defence spending to 2% of GDP …
When discussing what ‘strategy’ is—or isn’t—we surely need to distinguish between strategy and grand strategy, not least because of the longer timescales, wider disciplines and deeper understandings involved with the latter. Australian grand strategy stems …
The Asian security architecture has long been defined by two sets of arrangements: a US-centred set of alliance arrangements, and an ASEAN-centred set of institutions. The conundrum of the modern Asian security environment is that …
The fallout and back-and-forth between China and America has continued after last week’s announcement by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder of indictments against five Chinese military officers for ‘serious cybersecurity breaches’. (If you missed the …
Defence watchers have been surprised by recent suggestions emerging from the Abbott Government that Australia could consider acquiring the Lockheed-Martin F-35B Joint Strike Fighter to complement the 72 F-35A JSFs already ordered. What might initially …
It was refreshing to see some positive news emerging from the United Nations recently, with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointing the first-ever female force commander of a UN peacekeeping mission. Major-General Kristen Lund from Norway will …
Earlier this year, I cited the case of the tourist expedition ship Akademik Shokalskiy, which became entrapped near Commonwealth Bay in the waters of Australia’s Antarctic Territory, as showing up serious limitations of Australia’s weakening …
2014 is the year hard power re-emerged as the driving force in international affairs. Hard power is the actual or threatened use of military force to achieve national objectives. It’s an ugly thing, supposedly a …