Was Australian strategy in the third quarter of the twentieth century, generally known as forward defence, a strategic disaster? After the fall of Saigon in 1975 the concept of ‘forward defence’ was widely discredited, along …
David McDonough gave a stout defence of the Air Warfare Destroyer on this blog. In several respects it’s a superior platform to our existing fleet and some proposed alternatives—namely, the smaller, cheaper ships suggested by …
Sir James Plimsoll was a strategist. While his illustrious foreign service career might suggest that he was more an implementer than a crafter of policy, those of us who were privileged to see him at …
Across much of the globe, the First World War—‘the war to end all wars’—still exercises a fierce hold on popular imagination. And many aspects of the war remain a subject of debate, more so than …
Hands up if you agree that Anzac encapsulates ‘the unique qualities that gave birth to our national identity: courage, mateship, sacrifice, generosity, freedom and a fair go for all’. I can see almost all hands …