Trend stories are always about the warmth of the water and the health of the frog. How close to boiling is the water, how much capacity does the frog have to respond? Asia’s darkest trend …
The government doesn’t seem to understand the words it has been saying on submarines. It has committed to a ‘competitive evaluation process’ for the future submarine project—a term not used in defence circles—and some seem …
We’ve written a lot about the future submarine project over the years. Last year, Mark Thomson and I surveyed the possible range of acquisition strategies the government could opt to pursue. We made the observation …
The dramatic hostage crisis in Syria ended tragically with the execution of two Japanese hostages and a Jordanian pilot by ISIS militants. Kunihiko Miyake, a former Japanese diplomat, described the crisis as a ‘9/11 for …
Japan’s discovering that being a ‘normal’ state in international relations isn’t all beer and skittles. The brutal death of two Japanese hostages at the hands of Islamic State is, in an ugly back-handed way, confirmation …