At the mid-point of Labor’s three-year term, the international strategy and statecraft of the new government is more fully formed than its domestic identity. Global turmoil—the polycrisis—has quickly tested and tempered the government’s world view. Whatever …
The 2023 defence strategic review has been broadly welcomed across the Australian strategic policy commentariat. The reasons for that, and the analysis of what it means, however, are oddly diverse. Deputy Prime Minister and Defence …
In a report on the UK government’s Indo-Pacific policy, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee calls for the United Kingdom to propose to Australia and the United States that Japan, along with South Korea, …
At the US Institute of Peace’s Interorganizational Global Forum on security cooperation in the Pacific islands in September, the US emphasised a ‘whole-of-government effort’ in engaging with the region that involves cabinet-secretary-level meetings, an intelligence …
Australia hasn’t been truly sovereign in its own right since 1788. The head of state remains a foreign monarch. Generations of Australians have been lulled into forgetting this reality by the cultural familiarity of the …
The analysis of the Royal Australian Navy’s surface combatant fleet that flowed from the defence strategic review (DSR) has been presented to the government but no decisions on new capabilities will be announced until 2024. …
A year after being appointed chief of the Royal Australian Navy, Vice Admiral Mark Hammond admits to frustration when he’s asked why Australia needs a potent navy. ‘I wish that we were in a different …
Part 1 of this series examined how the RAN could contribute to Australia’s new strategy of deterrence by denial as expressed through the 2023 defence strategic review (DSR). Part 2 analysed the RAN’s primary tasks …
The wars raging in Europe and the Middle East remind us that conflicts erupt suddenly. It’s a point that some AUKUS critics have seized on to say Australia and its partners are not making sufficient …
Part 1 of this series examined how the Royal Australian Navy contributes to the new national defence strategy of deterrence by denial. This part analyses the primary tasks the RAN must be capable of. A …
The Royal Australian Navy stands at a watershed. A child of the Royal Navy, the RAN shifted its primary relationship to the US Navy after World War II, buying predominantly American equipment from the 1960s. …
The AUKUS program—sweeping in the intimacy and level of its proposed cooperation—has enjoyed a high level of bipartisan support among the Australian political elite. First agreed by the Coalition government in September 2021, it was …
