As the government offers new hints at the ‘optimal path’ for the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarines, the questions about the viability of the project mount. The political pressure to out-muscle the Coalition on ‘national security’, if that’s what is driving the Labor government’s enthusiasm for this impending car-crash, should not be allowed to undermine the national Continue reading »
Defence and Security
The perceptive Singaporian diplomat Kishore Mahbubani remarked recently that: ‘Australia’s strategic dilemma in the twenty-first century is simple: it can choose to be a bridge between East and West in the Asian Century—or the tip of the spear projecting Western power into Asia.’ He clearly believed that it was a matter of deliberate choice, a Continue reading »
To paraphrase former US President, Theodore Roosevelt, Australia’s national security is best achieved by talking softly while carrying a formidable stick as a deterrent. For decades following World War II, American leadership provided both security and economic order for the Indo-Pacific region. This rules-based system underpinned stability and unprecedented economic growth and prosperity in our Continue reading »
General Mike Minahan, head of the United States Air Force’s Air Mobility Command has sent a message to the world. It is blunt, threatening and sinister. ‘My gut tells me we will fight in 2025.’ The General sent his message as a memorandum to the leadership of the 110,000 strong USAF, with the unambiguous title, Continue reading »
Australia has been persuaded, enticed and strongarmed into taking gravely dangerous decisions. But Australia is a sovereign state and its fingerprints are, ultimately, all over the formation of its terrible abdication of national independence. We need to pay particular attention to a definitive insight advanced by Paul Keating: Taiwan is not a vital Australian interest. Continue reading »
What role is Australia playing in the diplomacy that ultimately will end the Ukraine conflict and prevent war over Taiwan? Even the most hawkish cannot seriously believe such conflicts will end militarily. The roll call of countries where the civilian population endures armed conflict is seemingly endless. When the conflict is primarily about a struggle Continue reading »
There is universal assent that we are in a period of geopolitical tension and flux. In a rough chronology, 1815-1914 was the era of British hegemony, the not-so-peaceful Pax Britannica. What followed between 1914 and 1945 was a disastrous period of two world wars and the Great Depression. The end of World War II marked Continue reading »
There is in the American psyche, the Hollywood psyche, the false notion that any other major power will be just like America. The view can be terrible but wrong. Dostoevsky (if I may be excused for mentioning a Russian) wrote of how people only see a mirror when they converse. Sir Harold Nicholson, spouse of Continue reading »
The unravelling military situation in Ukraine means that Biden’s best option is to negotiate, a new RAND report argues. The sooner the better. There is the awful danger that continued procrastination will propel the hapless Biden administration into precipitating nuclear war. The issue of how to approach negotiations to end America’s proxy war against Russia Continue reading »
In anticipation of the Defence Strategic Review (DSR) it would be advisable to stock up on a numbing agent. While the words used might seem familiar to those whose tongue is English, a close reading of the text will reveal that it is written in late-contemporary American – a form of communication as different from Continue reading »