Media
Why India isn’t going to save Australia from China’s power
BY HUGH WHITE AO Will India save us from China? The Indo-Pacific concept that now lies at the heart of Australia’s foreign policy assumes that it will. It is founded on the belief that as America’s...
Australia’s one step forward, two steps back in the Pacific
BY JOANNE WALLIS In 2016, former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull expressed Australia’s commitment to a ‘step-change’ in its engagement with the Pacific Islands. The 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper...
Security in 'Society 5.0'
BY CHRISTOPHER HOBSON and TOBIAS BURGERS As Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s time in power has continued, the policy initiatives for addressing Japan’s major structural challenges have proliferated. Most...
ASEAN Regional Forum: less might be more
BY ANTHONY MILNER & RON HUISKEN The ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) – with its unwieldy number of member states (27) and preoccupation with dialogue (a “talk shop”) – has been declared a failure time...
After the tragedy, attention turns to how it happened
BY CLIVE WILLIAMS Four phases follow events like the tragedy in Christchurch – shock and disbelief, grieving, a search for answers, and new countermeasures. The shocked New Zealand reaction to the...
Canberra’s growing silence on US leadership in Asia
BY HUGH WHITE Sometimes what is left out of a major policy speech is as important as what is said. This was certainly true late January when Australia’s Defence Minister Christopher Pyne spoke about...
When Australian nuclear weapons could make sense
BY STEPHAN FRUEHLING This article was originally published by The Strategist. What a way to start a year! The debate initiated by three former Australian deputy secretaries of defence—Hugh White,...
Trust in short supply when there are no shared values
BY PAUL DIBB This article originally appeared in The Australian on 23 Jan 2019. In the Australian debate about the priority to be given to the economic relationship with China versus the national...
Competing Pacific narratives
BY JOANNE WALLIS This article was originally published by East Asia Forum. Two narratives dominated geopolitical discussions of the Pacific islands in 2018 — that of the Blue Pacific and the Indo-...
Who is watching the watchers? It's a bureaucratic maze
BY JOHN BLAXLAND. Guarding Australia in an alphabet soup of spy organisations, Australia needs a new National Security Adviser to balance competing advice with clear strategy. The government...