I read with interest the contribution of my colleague Patrick Walters regarding the end of domestic car manufacturing and its implications for Australian defence industry. My point is that if we had a healthy defence …
Amid the attention given to the installation of a new government in Canberra, the Australian media didn’t, as far as I’m aware, notice the death in September of Chin Peng. That name probably means little …
Last week General Motors Holden, spurred by some cavalier observations by federal government ministers, heralded the death-knell for the Australian automotive manufacturing industry. It’s been a long time coming but it’s a safe bet that …
In his words about the argument with China, Tony Abbott quickly scored the trifecta: alliance, interests and values. These are the three things nations go to war for. And within days of China’s announcement on …
In the Chinese Buddhist tradition, as we flail in the ‘bitter sea’ of existential illusion, we only need to ‘turn to the other shore,’ constituted by the Buddhist path, in order to find Enlightenment. Australia …
It’ll be an awkward Christmas in Pyongyang. North Korea said today that Kim Jong-Un’s uncle, Jang Song Thaek, has been executed. The official North Korean news agency KCNA said: The accused Jang brought together undesirable …
Benjamin Schreer’s decoding of the Defence Minister’s speech at ASPI’s National Security Dinner smokes any number of rabbits out of their burrows. Perhaps the most enticing of these rodents is the question of what the …
The existence or absence of an Australian ‘School’ of international relations is one of the billabongs in the river of argument about Australia’s place in the world. The academics have this specialist dispute to themselves. …
The title of this post sounds outrageous. How can there be any shortcomings of the next Defence White Paper (DWP) when it’s yet to be written? But the next DWP won’t emerge from thin air—it’ll …
This post is adapted from the authors’ paper Australian defence: challenges for the new government, published in the latest edition of Security Challenges. There’s a set of enduring policy principles that have guided the defence …
Ten days after street protests in Bangkok escalated into violence that killed five people and injured many, Thailand’s democracy hangs in the balance. Facing revived mass demonstrations by ‘yellow-shirt’ opponents in Bangkok following a brief …
This exercise showed we have made great progress in our amphibious capability and in joint effects. I know everyone involved has gained new experiences and skills, learned much about working with our sister services, and …
Over the past couple of days, I joined a couple of my ASPI colleagues at a second track ‘Quad plus’ dialogue convened in Canberra by the Washington-based Heritage Foundation. (A second track dialogue involves academics …
Ideas about the future lie at the heart of strategic thinking. As major capability acquisitions often take years to decide or implement, and countries are stuck with the results for decades, strategy is partly governed …
The puzzle that is the Chinese policy making process has been taunting analysts over the last few weeks. First, a handful of Strategist posts (here, here and here) discussed whether incidents involving China’s maritime law …
As the new Defence Minister and his team contemplate the task in front of them, we thought it might be worth dipping into the ASPI archives for useful tips. Back in 2011 we published a …
Last week, David Schaefer introduced an interesting new dimension to the big data debate developing on The Strategist, that of cybersecurity. With defenders of metadata collection hammering home the counter-terrorism angle, the future utility of …
Last week, Defence Minister David Johnston spoke at ASPI’s National Security Dinner. As usual, security pundits and journalists read between the lines of the Senator’s speech in terms of deeper meanings for Australia’s strategic and …
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has travelled to Jakarta to meet with her counterpart Marty Natalegawa to help mend a rift in Australia–Indonesia relations, which has come in the wake of a recent spying scandal that led to …
The effective management of the fish stocks in the Pacific is important for the food security, healthy ocean ecosystems and livelihood security for those regional states. In many ways, sustainable fisheries help to underpin regional …