Australia’s leaders from both sides of politics have been paying greater attention to Indonesia; there’s been more official engagement, as well as new diplomatic and defence initiatives in the past year. And we’ve been describing …
Tony Abbott’s speech today to the RSL National Conference sets out some important pointers on the shape of defence policy under a future Coalition government. On spending, it’s been clear for some time that the …
Just to put into perspective what a 3% real increase in the Defence budget amounts to over a decade, the table below shows how a baseline budget of $25 billion would evolve over ten years …
Dear ASPI, I have a ‘friend’ who has an embarrassing problem with defence planning. It seems no matter what he tries, it ends up expensive and unsatisfactory. What can he do? Worried of Parliament Hill Dear …
If I understand Peter Jennings correctly, his response to Leon Panetta’s visit to New Zealand consists of three parts. First, there is a touch of bemusement about how far the United States has bent over …
Those who doubt America’s commitment to ‘rebalancing’ its strategic priorities to the Asia-Pacific should consider the effort Washington is making to strengthen ties with New Zealand. US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s visit to Auckland on …
In his June 2012 visit to India, Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta gave a speech that described India as central to the United States’ Indian Ocean strategy. As he put it: ‘America is at …
As usual, we’ve compiled a mix of new reports and articles for your weekend reading pleasure as well as events for the coming week. First up is some defence industry news. The consolidation of global …
Abandonment, entrapment, and the future of US conventional extended deterrence in East Asia (part I)
In a recent contribution to The Strategist, Rod Lyon argues convincingly that Australia needs to engage its US ally over the future credibility of its nuclear extended deterrence posture in Asia. It doesn’t stop there. …
Andrew Davies has a good stab at the nexus between government revenues and the defence budget in his recent post, but I think he might be giving the government a bit too much latitude. The …
Oceans are crucial to the future of developing countries. No one in the development sector would disagree. AusAID recently commemorated World Ocean Day and explained its current activities in this area. No doubt there is …
The grand strategy framework discussed in previous posts helps structure our thinking but when applying it we need to apply context and judgement in order to produce an actionable plan. The first step is to …
Regular contributor Peter Layton drew my attention to the final chart in the ‘Tax Chartacular’ at the Mark the Graph blog. It shows Australia’s total taxation burden 1959–2011 as a proportion of the nominal GDP. It …
As a country that’s acutely aware of its own interests in the oceans around it, you’d think that Australia would be playing a leading role in ocean management and development in the wider region. But …
For those who find the US–India relationship complex and at times down right confusing the resolution is simple. There are actually five US–India relationships: the government to government relationship; the military to military relationship; the …
On one esoteric but important issue in the forthcoming Defence White Paper, Australian policymakers should be talking to Washington. That’s the issue of extended nuclear deterrence and assurance. The United States ‘extends’ a nuclear umbrella …
In an age of increasingly competitive multilateralism, success will go to those countries best able to diversify their interests and manage a wide range of bilateral relationships. This will be no small challenge for Australia. …
The government’s recent announcement of a further delay to the $7.9 billion Air Warfare Destroyer (AWD) project has been met with a degree of cynicism. Although the government says that the delay is needed to preserve workforce …
On Monday we promised to provide some suggestions for implementing the recent 364-page report from the Senate Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Reference Committee on ‘Procurement procedures for Defence capital projects’. Today we’ll discuss one …
I think that Alex Tewes has created a ‘straw man’ version of my argument in his rejoinder rather than dealing with my serious suggestions. My proposal to make Defence leadership’s views public, as well as …