How did Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping in just a decade manage to dismantle the collective leadership system carefully crafted by Deng Xiaoping, sour China’s relations with most of its neighbours and set …
China has gone from peaceful rise to rising by pieces, as it smashes the nascent regional security order. Not much peace in prospect as China forcefully asserts its ownership over pieces of the East China …
On 23 November, Beijing declared an East China Sea Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ), which not only overlaps significantly with Japan’s but also with Taiwan’s and South Korea’s ADIZs. While the Chinese Ministry of Defense insists …
Echoing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s description of his war in Ukraine, China’s Xi Jinping has released a directive that licenses his armed forces to conduct ‘special military operations’. This involves the People’s Liberation Army using …
US President Joe Biden has found his mission: to secure the West by strengthening its liberal democracies against authoritarian temptations, both foreign and domestic. Having witnessed both an attempted coup and steeply rising socioeconomic inequalities …
The Hong Kong protests have Xi Jinping in a bind. For all the talk of China’s power and the power of the president-for-life within China, he has faced no good choices in the Hong Kong …
At the 2017 Munich Security Conference, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov announced the end of the post–Cold War world and Russia’s aim to build a ‘post-West’ world order. That caused a huge outcry, mostly among …
This week is the 73rd anniversary of perhaps the most complex joint and integrated military operation in history. Operation Overlord, the 1944 D-Day invasion of Europe, involved the largest amphibious armada ever seen, and brought …
The foreign fighters of the Islamic State terror group, or Daesh, must be eliminated in Iraq and Syria to stop them coming home to carry out attacks in Australia and the region, says Defence Minister …
China is starting to give Asia a big case of initiative fatigue. Too many ideas, too much activism. As Simon and Garfunkel crooned, ‘slow down, you’re moving too fast!’ Xi Jinping confirms he’s the most …
Last week I spoke at a conference on ‘Peace and Security in East Asia’ in Taipei, jointly organised by the Taiwanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and National Chengchi University. The main topic discussed was China’s …
When talking about current defence and security matters there seems strong agreement on at least one characteristic: that the future is uncertain. Of course that’s true, and many things could potentially happen but, even so, …