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The Australian. Hugh White. 25 June 2022. Our pro-war with China posture will do us great damage even if it never comes to war itself. As long as America ... more ...

The Strategist. John Garrick and Yan C. Bennett. 17 Jun 2022. President Xi Jinping’s ‘China dream’ now extends across the Pacific Ocean, where his foreign minister, Wang Yi, recently completed a Pacific islands tour of sweeping ambition. Set against the backdrop of China’s stagnating ... more ...

Why China Isn’t Poised to Invade Foreign Affairs. Andrew J. Nathan. 23 June , 2022 Concern is growing in Taiwan, in the United States, and among U.S. allies in Asia that China is preparing to attack Taiwan ... more ...

USNI. Mallory Shelbourne. 15 June, 2022 A bipartisan group of House lawmakers on Wednesday unveiled legislation that would help the Royal Australian ... more ...

The Spectator Australia. Jarrod Brady. 15 June 2022. Amidst the foreboding context of a declining West and a rising China, the Australian Defence Force is historically weak and shows little sign of changing course. The ADF is beset by a threefold disease of absent ... more ...

The laws set by the United Nations 40 years ago no longer suit the fight against modern-day crime on the high seas. The Lowy Institute. Thu Nguyen Hoang Anh. 9 June 2022. ... more ...

Marles warns build up is the biggest since WWII; concerned about Solomon deal NikkeiAsia. Rurika Imahashi and Kaori Takahashi. 14 June, 2022 TOKYO – China’s rapid military buildup is the biggest in ... more ...

War On The Rocks. Joe Bruhl. 14 June 2022. America’s ambivalence toward Africa puts it at a dangerous disadvantage there — and impacts U.S. leadership around the globe. While Washington focuses on the Russian military threat in Eastern Europe and Chinese expansionism in the ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. 6 Jun 2022.Michael Shoebridge. The 26 May incident where a Chinese fighter aircraft fired flares and chaff at an Australian maritime patrol aircraft in international airspace above the South China Sea, risking a potentially fatal crash, is not an isolated episode. ... more ...

The Australian. Peter Dutton. 8 June 2022. When the AUKUS agreement was signed last ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. Marcus Hellyer. 8 Jun 2022 In March, shortly before federal election, the Coalition government released a defence budget that continued its record of delivering the funding it promised in the 2016 defence white paper and 2020 defence strategic update. For 2022–23, ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. Richard Dunley. 2 Jun 2022. Since the AUKUS announcement was made in September last year, a huge amount of ink has been spilled discussing the capabilities of nuclear-powered submarines, the merits of the potential designs, and the challenges of ensuring the ... more ...

Spectator Australia. Jarrad Brady. 1 June 2022. Australia is facing an existential crisis that demands immediate and radical action. The confluence of China’s rise, a declining America, and the parlous state of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) pose the gravest threat to Australia since ... more ...

The United States should pursue offensive mining capabilities against China in the Yellow Sea and the Pearl River Delta. USNI. Proceedings. Commander Victor Duenow, U.S. Navy. June 2022. ... more ...

Washington fears a possible Chinese invasion by 2027. It will need all the help it can get Nikkei Asia. Ken Moriyasu. 1 June 2022. ... more ...

The Australian. Greg Sheridan. 5 June 2022. An open letter to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Defence Minister Richard Marles Dear Anthony and Richard, Congratulations on your election win – majority ... more ...

War-Gaming Reveals How a U.S.-Chinese Conflict Might Escalate Foreign Affairs. Stacie L. Pettyjohn and Becca Wasser. 20 May, 2022. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has raised the specter of nuclear ... more ...

Compelling evidence suggests the Hornet CO deliberately filed a misleading report after the puzzling ‘flight to nowhere’ in the Pacific war’s pivotal battle. USNI Proceedings. Craig L. Symonds. May 2012 ... more ...

How Commercial Satellites Are Upending Conflict Foreign Affairs. Erik Lin-Greenberg & Theo Milonopoulos. 30 May, 2022 Days after Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky delivered an emotional address to the European Parliament, pleading for ... more ...

The Thousand-Year Struggle Over Ukraine Foreign Affairs. Anna Reid. May/June 2022 On the evening of February 21, 2022, three days before Russian forces began the largest land invasion on the European continent since World War II, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave an angry televised ... more ...

While the contributions U.S. codebreakers made to victory at Midway are well known, cryptanalysts played a similarly important—though less appreciated—role in determining Japanese intentions leading up to the Battle of the Coral Sea. USNI. Proceedings. John Prados. June 2022. ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. Brahma Chellaney. 24 May 2022 With global attention focused on Russia’s war in Ukraine, China’s territorial expansionism in Asia—especially its expanding border conflict with India—has largely fallen off the international community’s radar. Yet, in the vast glaciated heights of the Himalayas, ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. John Coyne. 25 May 2022 It took a while, but the idea that Australia’s strategic environment has become more uncertain seems to have been accepted by policymakers. Also largely accepted is that this period won’t just pass—in time, historians might measure ... more ...

The Royal Navy will soon have three new frigate classes, namely the Type 26, Type 31 and Type 32 but how much do you really know about them? This brief guide should bring you up to speed on the basics. UK Defence Journal. George Allison. 25 May, 2022. ... more ...

War On The Rocks. Zack Cooper and Gregory Poling. 24 May 2022. The biggest announcement from President Joe Biden’s trip to Asia may be the one that got the least attention. The Quad, a grouping consisting of Australia, India, Japan, and the United States, ... more ...

Security pact tests old benefactors like Australia amid vaccine diplomacy rush Nikkei Asia. Elizabeth Beattie. 17 May, 2022 ... more ...

CIMSEC. Robert C. Rubel. 18 MAY, 2022. Thomas Friedman’s 13 April New York Times opinion piece recounts an interview with John Arquilla, a distinguished former grand strategy instructor at the Naval Postgraduate School. In explaining Ukraine’s impressive military performance in the face of ... more ...

War On The Rocks. Mike Pietrucha. 18 May, 2022 Russia’s invasion of Ukraine set off a flurry of handwringing over Taiwan. Russia, in this interpretation, “broke the ice” by attacking Ukraine, emboldening China versus Taiwan. But any such action by China would likely run ... more ...

Security pact tests old benefactors like Australia amid vaccine diplomacy rush Nikkei Asia. Elizabeth Beattie. 17 May 2022. TOKYO – Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison boasted in March about how his country’s COVID-19 vaccine aid to Pacific islands had prevented a Chinese “incursion” into the region. About two weeks later, ... more ...

Calls to cut burden drowned by need for U.S. and Japan to face off China Nikkei Asia. Yukio Tajima, Ryo Nemoto, and Shogo Kodama. 14 May, 2022 TOKYO/NAHA, Okinawa – Sunday ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. Peter Jennings. 10 May 2022. Unexpectedly, the loudest exchange in the pre-election debate between Prime Minister Scott Morrison and opposition leader Anthony Albanese on Sunday night was over the Port of Darwin. The 99-year lease of the port to a Chinese ... more ...

CIMSEC. Richard Mosier. 12 May, 2022 The concept for Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO) is based on three bedrock tenets: the distributed force must be hard-to-find, hard-to-kill, and lethal. For decades, the Navy has been focused on and has continuously improved its fleet defense capabilities ... more ...

Dear NHSA Members and Volunteers in NSW, Although this message is primarily addressed to those of you resident in Sydney, please read the attachment and pass it on to others in Sydney whom you feel may have an interest in supporting your Society. The attachment is an appeal for volunteers ... more ...

Lowy Institute. The Interpreter. Sam Roggeveen. 10 May 2022. Frustrating Beijing’s ambitions to create a sphere of influence is overwhelmingly a diplomatic task, not a military one. ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. Bob Moyse.12 May 2022. The electioneering in Australia over the security agreement between China and Solomon Islands has obscured important questions about why the deal came about and its future implications. At the core of China’s grey-zone tactics is the principle ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. Marcus Hellyer.11 May 2022. There will be much celebration of the Royal Australian Navy’s achievements at this week’s Indo-Pacific Sea Power Conference and maritime exposition. They are significant. Five years of Indo-Pacific Endeavour activities have demonstrated the navy’s ability to generate ... more ...

Don’t say we haven’t been warned The Spectator. Dimitri Burshtein. 7 May 2022. The recently signed security pact between the Solomon Islands and the People’s Republic of China is a shot across Australia’s bow. It warrants a thorough reassessment of security strategies and policies ... more ...

War On The Rocks. Conrad Crane. 9 May 2022. At the turn of the 20th century, Polish Jewish banker Ivan Bloch compiled a detailed analysis of the potential effects of war between major powers. He saw a world of interconnected economies with vast industrial ... more ...

The world looks very different when viewed from the North Pole. Dr Pippa Malmgren’s Post 18 April 2022 We see the Finns moving their tractors to the border with Russia and banning all vehicles with Russian ... more ...

Organizations and people who can rapidly and effectively adapt are more likely to prevail. USNI Proceedings. Captain Gerard Roncolato, U.S. Navy (Retired). May 2022. ... more ...

Destruction of critical infrastructure by long-range precision strikes has become the Russian Navy’s newest mission. Proceedings, May 2022. Commander Joshua Menks, U.S. Navy, and Michael B. Petersen ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. Lesley Seebeck. 4 May 2022. The early days in any great undertaking can be chaotic. The AUKUS partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States was announced last September, and it may be a little premature to worry about ... more ...

Watching Russian setbacks in Ukraine, Washington eyes expanded fuel storage in Japan Nikkei Asia. Ryo Nakamura. 4 May, 2022. WASHINGTON – The U.S. ... more ...

SMH. Peter Hartcher. 3 May 2022. Beijing may have established the political foundation for a military base in Solomon Islands, but Australia has options for responding. Other than fuming and threatening. Australian politicians like to call the South Pacific region “Australia’s backyard”. So what do you do if the tendril ... more ...

War On The Rocks. David Finkelstein. 2 May 2022. Among those observing the Russian military’s ongoing operations in Ukraine, few will be watching and assessing its performance more intensely than those in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Analysing the wars of other countries ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. Peter Jennings. 28 Apr 2022. Australia’s Pacific security problem is simple: we’re not thinking big enough about our role and we have convinced ourselves that we’re incapable of moving quickly to counter China. Canberra policymaking has dumbed down. Note how big ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. Brahma Chellaney. 28 Apr 2022. When the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue was first conceived as a strategic coalition of the Indo-Pacific’s four leading democracies, many doubted that it would amount to much. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi mocked it as a ‘headline-grabbing ... more ...

A naval base in Equatorial Guinea would be a calamity for Washington Nikkei Asia. Liam Gibson. 30 April 2022. How ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. Andrew Davies. 28 Apr 2022 Just for a change, there’s a bit of heat around discussions of the future of armour and surface ships. I thought ASPI analyst William Leben’s recent Strategist piece was a good one in its attempt to ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. David Shackleton . 28 Apr 2022. In 2009, Australia’s government decided that it would replace eight Anzac-class frigates with nine ships optimised for antisubmarine warfare (ASW). There was no justification in the Royal Australian Navy capstone doctrine for acquiring and optimising ... more ...

Spectator. Christopher Blattman. 26 April 2022. As horror mounts over Russia’s war crimes, the clamour for Vladimir Putin to be held to account is growing. Joe Biden has accused Russia of committing genocide in Ukraine and has labelled the Russian president a ‘war criminal’. ... more ...

Quadrant. Peter Smith. 27 April 2022. _AP News flash, April 27, 2036: The longstanding president of the Independent Republic of Western Australia (IRWA), Mark McGowan, has announced his government’s intention to sign a security pact with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Western Australia ... more ...

War On The Rocks. Andrew Goodman. 26 April 2022. Observers commonly describe Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as a reckless gamble. But the Putin I came to know in St. Petersburg during the early 1990s was not a gambler in the classic sense, much less a ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. James Jeffrey. 19 Apr 2022. Once better known for its distinctive style of making potent coffee and its gelatinous confectionary cubes called Turkish Delight, these days Turkey is making a name for itself through a more deadly means: as a major ... more ...

War On The Rocks. B.J. Armstrong. 21 April 2022. The Russian invasion of Ukraine appears, on the surface, to be a land war. Newspapers lead with photographs of burned-out tanks, and on television and online we hear about the Belorussian border and truck convoys ... more ...

In Sydney, the NWOA will form up in Castlereagh Street between Hunter Street and Martin Place at 0915. We will be positioned astern of the Naval Association and ahead of YARRA. The march is expected to step off at 0930. ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. Peter Jennings. 21 Apr 2022. China’s treaty on security cooperation with Solomon Islands has two key purposes. First, it helps to extend the military reach of the People’s Liberation Army, complicating America’s task of moving its own forces through the Pacific. ... more ...

The Australian. Ben Packham. 21 April 2022. Australia and the US are bracing for the rapid deployment of ­Chinese security forces to ... more ...

Modern Australian military theorists must look back to the Falklands War to glean essential lessons in distributed lethality and logistics in remote and island centric warfare, writes former naval officer and defence industry analyst Chris Skinner. On 12 April 1982, the United Kingdom declared ... more ...

The Lowy Institute. Susannah Patton. 20 April 2022. Australia’s relationships with countries in Southeast Asia are not bad. The prime minister or foreign minister could happily turn up in any regional ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. Paul Greenfield and Jon Stanford. 13 Apr 2022. Since the British Type 26 was announced as the reference design for Royal Australian Navy’s nine Hunter-class frigates, the program has been controversial. The recent leaked report on the system design review was ... more ...

War on the Rocks. Jason W. Davidson. 14 April 2022. In the midst of Russia’s assault on Ukraine, NATO turned 73. Strangely, this might be the alliance’s best year ever. Or at least it seems that way: There is an emerging consensus among policymakers ... more ...

CIMSEC. David Scott. 14 April 2022. Currently, much of the attention given to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is focused on the land and air domains; but the Russian Federation Navy has also played a role in the Black Sea, where there has been some ... more ...

_“GPS is an enormous bargaining chip for Vladimir Putin” – George Beebe, former Chief Russia Analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency _ C4ISRNET. Dana A. Goward and Rep. John Garamendi. 13 April 2022. On November 15, 2021 a missile streaked into space from Russia, ... more ...

Center for International Maritime Security. Michael B. Petersen. 11 April 2022. How might Russian maritime forces be brought to bear against the United States and its allies? This question is particularly critical as fears of inadvertent escalation in Ukraine increase. Understanding the answer requires ... more ...

It depends whom you ask. Task & Purpose. Jeff Schogol. 8 April, 2022 While ... more ...

British Foreign Policy Group. Sophie Gaston & Rana Mitter. 7 April 2022. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the military and humanitarian crisis it has precipitated in our European neighbourhood has compelled a range of questions about another security theatre – the Indo-Pacific – and ... more ...

Port City Colombo catches eyes in Hong Kong and beyond, but turmoil poses risks Nikkei Asia. Marwaan Macan-Markar. 5 April, 2022. ... more ...

The Strategist. John Coyne. 6 Apr 2022 If you’re confused about what’s happening with the Port of Darwin after last week’s federal budget and the media coverage that followed, you’re not the only one. It’s always a challenge to penetrate the veil of Canberra’s ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. Sam Goldsmith. 5 Apr 2022. ‘Vampire! Vampire! Vampire!’—three words that would send shivers down the spine of any ship’s captain. This is because ‘vampire’ is the US military’s brevity code for a hostile anti-ship missile. Typically, advanced anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCMs) ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. Marcus Hellyer. 7 Apr 2022. The government delivered a barrage of missile announcements over the past couple of days. It’s not easy to distinguish what’s new from a semi-announcement of something that’s already been announced or is an existing part of ... more ...

The Australian. Greg Sheridan. 5 April 2022. If Australia could guarantee its ­security through announcements, we would be the most secure nation in the world. The government has finally decided ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. Peter Jennings. 4 Apr 2022. In the new cold war, Southeast Asia is becoming a contested zone where China, the US and its allies are fighting to sustain their access and influence. This matters deeply to Australia because the superpower that ... more ...

The Australian. Greg Sheridan. 2 April 2022. We should not take peace in the Indo-Pacific for granted.” – Defence Minister Peter Dutton “It does change the calculus if Chinese Navy vessels ... more ...

Spectator. Gabriel Gavin. 31 March 2022. Russian forces have reportedly been ordered to watch last year’s state-funded propaganda film Sky. The Kremlin-funded drama follows the lives of Russian airmen in Syria, where an estimated 18,000 people are believed to have died in Moscow’s bombings. ... more ...

Russia’s Setbacks in Eastern Ukraine Show Why It Can’t Win the Wider War Foreign Affairs. Brian Milakovsky. 31 March 2022. On March 25, the deputy chief of the Russian military declared that the main emphasis of Russia’s brutal one-month-old Ukraine invasion ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. David Feeney. 31 Mar 2022. The war in Ukraine has several features with which we in Australia are already familiar. The Ukrainian state has dominated the information war in our news cycles and social media. We have seen images of smashed ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. Malcolm Davis. 31 Mar 2022. News that a draft security agreement between Solomon Islands and China may soon be formalised has raised concerns in Canberra that Beijing could use it to establish a military base on Australia’s northern doorstep. If the ... more ...

Center for International Maritime Security. Michael Knickerbocker. 29 March, 2022. The People’s Liberation Army – Navy, PLA(N), has rapidly modernized and grown their fleet with advanced warships and weapons. China’s fleet expansion and widening air defense system reach threaten the United States’ power projection ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. Michael Shoebridge. 23 Mar 2022. It’s disturbing to see $18–27 billion of Australian government money about to be spent on more than 400 heavily armoured ‘infantry fighting vehicles’ when we’re busily watching yet another conflict in which military vehicles like these ... more ...

Strategy relies on a steady progression of actions to outmanoeuvre rival states Nikkei Asia. Brahma Chellaney. 29 March, 2022. ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. Peter Briggs. 22 Mar 2022. I should start by affirming my support for Australia’s transition to nuclear-propelled attack submarines, or SSNs, as my detailed study, delivered to the Department of Defence in 2013, and my public advocacy implies. I think it ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. Ulas Yildirim. 23 Mar 2022. During the 2020 Nagarno-Karabakh conflict, Azerbaijani forces used expendable drones to target Armenia’s conventional forces and destroy their tanks, artillery and air-defence systems. The conflict provides a broad example of how a competent irregular or asymmetric ... more ...

How to End a War That No One Is Likely to Win Foreign Affairs. Liana Fix and Michael Kimmage. 23 March, 2022 The twentieth century’s two world wars are an endless source of precedents and analogies. The lead-up to World War II produced the ... more ...

CIMSEC. Ryan Martinson. 21 March 2022. Today, Chinese underwater gliders operate throughout the Indo-Pacific, from the Bay of Bengal to the Bering Sea, from high seas to sovereign waters. These winged, torpedo-like submersibles are being deployed in droves to collect information about the marine ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. Marcus Hellyer. 17 March 2022. Last week, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced an increase of 18,500 to the Department of Defence’s full-time workforce by 2040. I’ll spare you the (semi-)snarky commentary about (semi-)announcements this time and get straight to unpacking what ... more ...

War On The Rocks. Jelena Vićić and Rupal N. Mehta. 14 March 2022. Nearly three weeks ago, U.S. President Joe Biden was purportedly presented with a range of cyber options to counter the Russian invasion of Ukraine. So far, not much is known about ... more ...

At a small lunchtime ceremony on Friday 11 March, at the Bodalla Hotel, Bodalla, on the south coast of NSW, Vice Admiral Robert Andrew Kevin Walls, AO, RAN (Rtd) was made a Life Member of the Association. The award recognised VADM Walls’ long-standing commitment to the Association, and his leadership, ... more ...

USNI Proceedings. Captain Robert McFarlin, USN. March 2022. Attention to award! For extraordinary courage and disregard for his own personal safety during the attack on the Fleet in Pearl Harbor . ... more ...

In Ukraine, Good Intentions Can’t Redeem a Bad Idea Foreign Affairs. Richard K. Betts. 10 March, 2022. Faced with a brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine, many Americans and Europeans are pushing for their governments to provide as much military support as possible ... more ...

Spectator Australia. Mary Dejevsky. 8 March 2022. Russia is now as closed off to the world as the Soviet Union was before Mikhail Gorbachev made his first tentative steps towards glasnost more than 40 years ago. Pretty much all the progress that post-Soviet Russia ... more ...

Moscow aims to use Arctic waters as strategic link between Asia and Europe Nikkei Asia. Ko Sakai. 13 March, 2022 ... more ...

War On The Rocks. John D. Maurer. 10 March 2022. The ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine and Vladimir Putin’s recent nuclear threats against his neighbors are drawing renewed attention to the critical importance of nuclear weapons. Putin’s recent threats, while outrageous, are only the ... more ...

Robert Service, a leading historian of Russia, says Moscow will win the war but will lose the peace and fail to subjugate Ukraine. How Putin could be deposed. Wall Street Journal. Tunku Varadarajan. 4 March 2022. The Russian invasion of Ukraine resulted from two immense ... more ...

Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Maldives are keen in engage and will help plug a gap in Australia’s Indo Pacific strategy. The Lowy Institute. David Brewster. 2 March 2022. Australia’s ... more ...

Joe Biden is poised to follow Jimmy Carter’s fate unless he applies history from 50 years ago to rescue his presidency from terminal malaise. The Australian. Niall Ferguson. 3 March 2022. It is just over a year ... more ...

War On The Rocks. Calder Walton. 28 February 2022. In a press conference at the end of last week, U.S. President Joe Biden said he was “convinced” that Russian President Vladimir Putin had decided to invade Ukraine. Asked why, he said simply: “We have ... more ...

The New Yok Times. Thomas L. Friedman. 25 February 2022. The seven most dangerous words in journalism are: “The world will never be the same.” In ... more ...

Russia’s Invasion Could Unleash Forces the Kremlin Can’t Control Foreign Affairs. Douglas London. 26 February, 2022 Russian forces have struck targets across Ukraine and seized ... more ...

To appreciate Putin’s intent, you only have to look at Russian history The Spectator. Niall Ferguson. 25 February 2022. ‘War’, in Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz’s most famous dictum, ‘is nothing but a continuation of politics with the admixture of other means.’ A ... more ...

WOTR. Chris Dougherty. 23 February, 2022 Far from being a deterrent to aggression, American military bases in Asia are a tempting target. U.S. Indo-Pacific bases are vulnerable to myriad Chinese attacks. Threats to airbases are especially worrying since they host so much concentrated U.S. ... more ...

Centre for Strategic and International Studies. Benjamin Jensen, Bonnie Lin & Carolina Ramos. 16 February, 2022 The Issue This brief explores escalation dynamics in China’s grey zone campaign targeting Taiwan based on the results of 20 crisis simulations. CSIS finds that U.S. policymakers face shadow risk in grey zone confrontations: ... more ...

War on the Rocks. Zack Cooper. 21 February, 2022 For those watching for signs of the Biden administration adopting a more deliberate and strategic approach to Asia, last week delivered fodder for both optimists and pessimists, as the administration released its Indo-Pacific Strategy. This ... more ...

Canberra should look beyond the Quad and to its own backyard for an all-weather strategic friend. The Interpreter. Sam Roggeveen. 15 February 2022. he fuss made ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. Brendan Nicholson. 18 Feb 2022 Despite a strong focus on air and naval power, the commander of the United States Army in the Pacific says land forces will play a crucial role in any future ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. Marcus Hellyer. 15 Feb 2022. It’s a brutal time to be a Commonwealth public servant working on the budget. Portfolio additional estimates statements—the mid-year budget update for portfolio agencies—were tabled on Friday, yet with the 2022–23 budget brought forward to late ... more ...

Center for International Maritime Security. Adam Greco. 17 February 2022. For centuries, merchant vessels have passed from the Indian Ocean to Eastern Asia through a small waterway nestled inside Southeast Asia. The Strait of Malacca (SoM) is the Strait south of the Malay Peninsula ... more ...

How Fear of China Is Forging a New World Order Foreign Affairs. Michael Beckley. March/April 2022 The international order is falling apart, and everyone seems to know how to fix it. According to some, the United States ... more ...

Cyberattacks are analogous to physical warfare; the success of an offensive will determine its detrimental effect. Naval Technology. Norbert Neumann. 7 February 2022. The increased digitalisation of navies has led to an increased interest in implementing cybersecurity solutions. Cyberattacks are analogous to physical warfare; ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. Peter Jennings. 10 Feb 2022 For the moment, Defence Minister Peter Dutton has decided to stick with the troubled Hunter-class frigate program. With his usual candour, he told The Australian last week: ‘We looked very carefully at this project and we’ve ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. Paul Dibb. 10 February 2022. Why has Russia’s President Vladimir Putin become so aggressive in his attitude to the US, NATO and Ukraine? In this article, I begin by examining the disintegration of the former Soviet Union and how it is ... more ...

U.S. Navy Proceedings. Captain Doug Stephens. February 2022 ... more ...

The role of commercial fishing vessels in disrupting military activities is not new. However, the democratisation of military technology has enabled civilians and clandestine military operators to play an expanding role in the modern hybrid maritime battlespace. Defence Connect. 7 February 2022. Last week ... more ...

A new US report casts doubt on the legality of Chinese maritime claims by also critically examining Australian practice. Lowy Institute. The Interpreter. David Letts & Donald Rothwell. 3 February 2022 Barely noticed, but nevertheless of some international legal consequence, is the latest effort ... more ...

Trap atop the hill: omens of China’s decline drive Xi Jinping to aggressiveness Nikkei Asia. 1 February, 2022 BEIJING/TAIPEI/TOKYO – Seemingly stronger than ever before, China has ... more ...

What America Must Do To Prevent a Successful Chinese Invasion Foreign Affairs. Mike Gallagher. 1 February, 2022 In March 2021, Admiral Philip S. Davidson, then the commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, informed Congress that China could invade Taiwan within ... more ...

The Australian. Tony Abbott. 31 January 2022. What do Australians think about a more powerful country invading and subjugating a nation of 44 million people; how ready are we for the global ... more ...

War on the Rocks. Kharis Templeman. 27 January 2021 Russia’s military buildup around Ukraine has triggered the most serious crisis in relations between Russia and the West since the end of the Cold War. Over 100,000 Russian troops are deployed near the border with ... more ...

War on the Rocks. Joshua Rovner. 26 January 2022. President Joe Biden doesn’t have a plan for China. Or, more precisely, the Biden administration has failed to articulate its approach to grand strategy in East Asia. Before taking office, Biden emphasized the centrality of ... more ...

Russia’s leadership is alert to the changed military circumstances even while it clings to historic ambitions. The Interpreter. Alexey Muraviev. 21 January 2022. The first round of Russia-United States-Europe strategic consultations, held between 10 and 13 ... more ...

Jakarta’s ambitions for a maritime alliance with its ASEAN neighbours is the right response to intimidation from China. Lowy Institute. The Interpreter. Huynh Tam Sang. 24 January 2022. Tensions with China over the South ... more ...

Lowy Institute. The Interpreter. Peter Layton. 21 January 2022. Over the last several years, the relationship with China has become increasingly awkward for both Australia and ... more ...

The Alliance Is Too Big—and Too Provocative—for Its Own Good Foreign Affairs. Michael Kimmage. 17 January, 2022 The NATO alliance is ill suited to twenty-first-century Europe. This is not because Russian President Vladimir Putin says it ... more ...

The Australian. Peter Jennings. 21 January 2022. As Defence’s deputy secretary for strategy between 2009 and 2012, I asked US counterparts on three occasions about the likelihood they would share submarine ... more ...

Does America Have More Rivals Than It Can Handle? Foreign Affairs. Hal Brands. 18 January, 2022 The first year of Joe Biden’s presidency ended as it began, with the United States facing crises on multiple ... more ...

A Honolulu couple and their family provided the admiral with a peaceful respite as he wrestled with the stress of war and command. Proceedings. Captain Michael A. Lilly, U.S. Navy (Retired). January 2022 ... more ...

Ukraine and Kazakhstan become test cases for an old idea as a new reality Nikkei Asia. EIJI Furukawa Contributing writer. 19 January, 2022 KYIV – On Ukraine’s eastern ... more ...

The Strategist. Charles Edel.13 Jan 2022. September was a dizzying month in Australian foreign policy, especially in the Australian–American relationship. In quick succession were the 70th anniversary of ANZUS, the announcement of the new AUKUS defence partnership, the annual AUSMIN consultations and the Quad’s ... more ...

Lowy Institute. The Interpreter. David Brewster. 10 January 2022. Like Australia in the Pacific, India has been pursuing its own Indian Ocean island step-up, largely driven by concerns about China’s ... more ...

Wang Yi’s visits to the Maldives and Sri Lanka signal Beijing’s priorities fairly clearly: it’s focusing on South Asia and the Indian Ocean. The Diplomat. Mohamed Zeeshan. 10 January, 2022 ... more ...

Dive beneath the surface of our seas and it’s as though the Cold War never really ended The Telegraph. Dominic Nicholls. 8 January 2022\ ... more ...

The Ukraine situation reminds this Cold War historian of the Berlin crisis of 1958-61. Wall Street Journal. Adam O’Neal. 7 January, 2022 This year dawned, 30 years after the Soviet Union’s dissolution, amid shades of the Cold War. Russian paratroopers deployed to Kazakhstan this ... more ...

War on the Rocks. Jeffrey W. Hornung, 5 January 2022 The message from U.S. senior military leaders has been very clear recently: They are very, very worried about a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. For example, retired U.S. Indo-Pacific Command commander Adm. Phil Davidson, his ... more ...

War On The Rocks. Pierre Morcos. 4 January, 2022 The September announcement of the Australia-United Kingdom-United States security partnership (commonly known as AUKUS) shined a multi-billion dollar, nuclear-powered spotlight on the divergence between French and American approaches to China. The French government saw AUKUS ... more ...

The Australian. Peter Jennings. 5 January 2022. One of the strengths in Australia’s relationship with Japan is our shared ability to deliver substance as opposed to verbal bombast unmoored to practical outcomes. Australia claims to have strategic partnerships with many countries, usually ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. 4 Jan 2022. Peter Jennings. As 2021 dragged to an exhausting end, the international strategic outlook remained bleak. Authoritarian regimes are threatening conflict in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. The key democracies look distracted, internally riven and unwilling to defend ... more ...

The Australian. Nina L. Khrushcheva. 4 January 2022. With thousands of Russian troops massed near Ukraine’s border, the announcement that Russia and the US soon will hold security talks is undoubtedly welcome. While a de-escalation of tensions is hardly guaranteed, it is a lot ... more ...

Joint military exercises and technology sharing are seen as tools in to limit U.S. might abroad Wall Street Journal. Brett Forrest (Washington), Ann M. Simmons (Moscow) and Chao Deng (Taipei) Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping oversaw an ambitious joint military exercise in China this summer, which ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. 24 Dec 2021 Brendan Nicholson. Former defence minister Kim Beazley has delivered a sobering comparison between how Australia dealt with the lead-up to World War II and the complex and deteriorating strategic situation it faces ... more ...

War on the Rocks. Jonathan Panter and Johnathan Falcone. 28 December 2021. Two subjects are nearly inescapable in commentary about the U.S. Navy today. The first is the much-maligned, 15-year saga of the littoral combat ship (LCS), which has provided an unfortunate case study ... more ...

Things will begin to heat up in two key dimensions Nikkei Asia. James Stavridis. 26 December, 2021 ... more ...

Something about the new Australia, UK and US deal suggests it could detract from the value and usefulness of the Quad. The Interpreter. Abhijit Singh. 22 December 2021. ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. 22 Dec 2021 Michael Shoebridge. Australia is ending the year in much better shape than we ended 2020. That’s so even though our region is still a dangerous place, and an aggressive China under Xi ... more ...

But Beijing expected to choose cautiously to avoid political risks Nikkei Asia. Ryo Nakamura, Ken Moriyasu and Tsukasa Hadano. 22 December, 2021 WASHINGTON/NEW YORK/ BEIJING – China is reportedly looking to build ... more ...

A Conflict Would Be Long and Messy Foreign Affairs. Hal Brands and Michael Beckley. 16 December, 2021 he United States is getting serious about the threat of war with China. The U.S. ... more ...

Recent military exercises with ASEAN a Russian foreign policy milestone Nikkei Asia. Danil Bochkov. 20 December, 2021 ... more ...

What I said then, and what I think now, about the nuclear- powered subs announcement that caught everyone by surprise. The Interpreter. Sam Roggeveen. 13 December 2021. ... more ...

But U.S. Power Faces Threats at Home. The Lowy Institute. Michael Fullilove, Hervé Lemahieu. 7 December 2021. Time and momentum are on our side,” declared Chinese President Xi Jinping in January. But developments this year have not borne out Xi’s confidence about China’s inexorable ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. 14 Dec 2021 Sam Goldsmith. The threat spectrum for surface combatants—ships that can engage air, surface, subsurface and shore targets—is rapidly expanding and increasingly lethal. Threats include mines, torpedoes, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and swarms ... more ...

The dangers of NATO’s Ukrainian policy Spectator. Owen Matthews. 11 December 2021. Over the last nine weeks Vladimir Putin has moved more than 90,000 troops to the borders of Ukraine and, according to US intelligence, ordered his military planners to draw up detailed blueprints ... more ...

Biden Must Make America’s Commitment Clear to China—and the World Foreign Affairs. Richard Haass and David Sacks. 13 December, 2021. Over the past year, the questions of whether China will forcibly move against Taiwan and how ... more ...

Nikkei Asia. Hiroyuki Akita. 10 December, 2021. TOKYO – MI6, the U.K.’s foreign intelligence service that cinema ... more ...

The Australian, Editorial. 12 December 2021. Defence Minister Peter Dutton is correct when he says China’s angry reaction to the AUKUS security alliance between Australia, the US and Britain, including threats of retribution, is “irrational” in view of Beijing’s own military expansion. In September, China claimed AUKUS would trigger a ... more ...

Most indigenous Kanaks favour a split, but European residents tend to favour status quo Nikkei Asia. Michael Field. 7 December 2021. ... more ...

China strategy dominated New Zealand’s foreign policy year, but the government has yet to find a consistent position. The Diplomat. Geoffrey Miller. 11 December, 2021. Ambiguity and contradiction over China have been hallmarks of New Zealand’s foreign policy throughout 2021. In this respect, the ... more ...

How does it connect to the Quad, the Sydney Dialogue, ASEAN and Indo-Pacific security? ASPI Strategic Insights. Michael Shoebridge. 8 December 2021. Why did AUKUS happen? Because the world changed. The Australia–UK–US partnership announced by US President ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. 9 Dec 2021. Paul Dibb. This month marks 30 years since the USSR collapsed voluntarily. It’s rare in world history that such a militarily powerful empire disappears without going to war. The Soviet Union had 12,000 strategic nuclear warheads, 260 divisions ... more ...

The forward presence mission is taking a toll on the fleet and the force. USN Proceedings. The Honorable Robert O. Work. December 2021. ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. 2 Dec 2021 Anastasia Kapetas. In the debate about what AUKUS is and what it might become, much has been made of the idea that in an era of heightened geopolitical competition, Australia possesses some ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. 29 Nov 2021.Richard Herr and Aziz Mohammed. Karl Marx claimed, ‘History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce’, suggesting that failing to learn from experience tells something about those in power. At the first repeat, all the ensuing misfortunes are ... more ...

Japan and U.S. struggle to put fraught history to rest Nikkei Asia. Naoya Yoshino. 1 December 2021. TOKYO – Dec. 7 marks the 80th anniversary of the Japanese attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The surprise attack, which came on ... more ...

The Australian. Greg Sheridan. 2 December 2021. Two announcements illustrate, and exacerbate, the extreme contradiction at the heart of all Australian defence policy. The US will increase the troop numbers it rotates through northern Australia, as well as ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. 25 Nov 2021. Sam Goldsmith. Picking the right design for the Royal Australian Navy’s nuclear-powered submarines is extraordinarily complex and difficult choices will need to be made. There are two contenders, the Royal Navy’s Astute-class submarine and the US Navy’s Virginia-class ... more ...

USNI Proceedings. Norman Friedman. November 2021 In September, the Australian government announced ... more ...

Learning the Right Lessons of the Past Foreign Affairs. Li Chen and Odd Arne Westad. 29 November, 2021 In February 1961, at the outset of his presidency, John F. Kennedy wrote a personal letter to the Soviet ... more ...

“The future is extremely bright for this line of research.” Task&Purpose. David Roza. 24 November, 2021. ... more ...

Resentment against Chinese business people is longstanding and has fuelled violence in Honiara’s Chinatown. The Diplomat. Rod McGuirk. 26 November 2021. The Solomon Islands’ decision to switch its diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing has been blamed for arson ... more ...

Deep sea drones are revolutionising marine science. But the military potential makes transparency essential. Lowy Institute. The Interpreter. 23 November 2021. According to the Indonesia Ocean Justice Initiative, between 2018 and January ... more ...

Can an American-Led Coalition Prevent the Next War? Foreign Affairs. Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr. 17 November, 2021 For many of the last 30 years, the notion that the United States was locked in direct contest with other great powers seemed as outdated as the Cold War itself. Instead, successive U.S. ... more ...

The Australian. Hugh White. 22 November 2021. The question no longer seems hypothetical. Last year the Prime Minister compared the dangers today to those of the late ... more ...

Brussels Should Borrow and Spend More on Security Foreign Affairs. Max Bergmann and Benjamin Haddad. 18 November 2021. Security and defense are suddenly back on Europe’s agenda. The United States’ chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan—which ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. John Garrick. 12 Nov 2021. The Antarctic Treaty System, which has governed affairs in Antarctica since 1961, is struggling under the weight of great-power competition. Through gaps in governance frameworks, states are exploiting the treaty and its subordinate protocols to pursue ... more ...

How Beijing’s Nuclear Buildup Threatens Stability Foreign Affairs. Abraham Denmark and Caitlin Talmadge. 19 November, 2021. Recent weeks have seen an explosion of worry in the United States about China’s nuclear program. A Pentagon report released in early November ... more ...

Is Beijing Building a Rival Alliance System? Foreign Affairs. Patricia M. Kim. 15 November, 2021 The United States’ network of alliances has long been a central pillar of its foreign policy—and, as competition with ... more ...

Quadrant. John O’Sullivan (Editor, International). 11 November 2021. When I first heard the announcement of AUKUS, I wondered idly if this apparently bold initiative was a rapidly-put-together response to the shambles of America’s Afghan withdrawal to demonstrate that the US retained its capacity for ... more ...

Navy Lookout. 11 November 2021. The political and strategic ramifications of the AUKUS pact announced in September continue to reverberate but the details of how Australia will actually acquire nuclear-powered submarines have been rather overlooked. Here we focus on the daunting technical, industrial and ... more ...

A Pentagon report projects a 460-ship Chinese fleet by the 2030s. The Diplomat. Steven Stashwick. 09 November, 2021. U.S. ... more ...

THE LOWY INSTITUTE. Gatra Priyandita & Ben Herscovitch. 8 Nov 2021. Amid Jakarta’s diplomatic shots across Canberra’s bow over AUKUS, ... more ...

Adani’s multimillion-dollar investment in Colombo not only makes commercial sense, it’s a strategic game-changer, too. The Lowy Institute. Chulanee Attanayake. 9 November 2021. On 30 September, Adani Group, India’s largest private port operator, signed what has been reported as a US$700 million agreement to build ... more ...

Australian Institute of International Affairs. Shaun Cameron. 3 November 2021. Climate change has allowed for new energy resources and trade routes to be exploited in the Arctic. This has resulted in growing great power competition between the US, Russia, and China in the region. ... more ...

USNI Proceedings. Trent Hone. November 2021 To execute flexible deterrence and limited war, options must range from diplomacy to military power—necessitating command of the seas. ... more ...

Defense News. Lyle Goldstein. 30 October 2021 ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. 2 Nov 2021. Marcus Hellyer. Serious risks are being realised in the Royal Australian Navy’s twin transitions in its surface combatant and submarine fleets. As Australia’s strategic circumstances become more dangerous, Defence needs to adopt hedging measures to actively address the ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. Simon Cotton. 4 Nov 2021. As tensions across the Taiwan Strait rise, pressure is growing on the US administration to deter China more effectively by giving up on strategic ambiguity and moving towards a policy of strategic clarity. Indeed, last month ... more ...

USNI. John Grady. 29 October, 2021 Australia needs “bigger, better submarines now, not two decades from now” to counter China’s “extreme bullying” of nations across the Indo-Pacific, former Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Friday. ... more ...

USNI. John Grady. 3 November, 2021 ... more ...

USNI Proceedings. Commander Rob Brodie, U.S. Navy, and Rear Admiral T. Q. Donaldson V, U.S. Navy (Retired). October 2021 In 1942, a German captain warned his fellow U-boat commanders: “The most dangerous feature of American waters ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. Michael Shoebridge. 28 Oct 2021. Most of Defence’s grilling in Senate estimates yesterday was about plans and issues around getting eight nuclear submarines for the Royal Australian Navy. There was forensic questioning about who said what to whom about the cancellation ... more ...

What the Election Will Mean for the Country’s Defense Policy Foreign Affairs. Sheila A. Smith. 28 October, 2021 Japan has a new prime minister, and in the year ahead, Fumio Kishida will likely chart ... more ...

Nikkei Asia. Kentaro Amoto. 27 October, 2021 SINGAPORE – An undercurrent of unease over the intensifying superpower rivalry and the new AUKUS ... more ...

The Diplomat. Mercy A. Kuo. 27 October, 2021 The Diplomat author Mercy Kuo regularly engages subject-matter experts, policy practitioners, and ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. Baani Grewal and Nathan Ruser. 21 Oct 2021 India–China border tensions have become one of the Indo-Pacific’s defining territorial disputes. The ongoing Ladakh crisis ended more than three decades of confidence-building measures and border agreements in June 2020 with the deaths ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. 21 Oct 2021 Richard N. Haass. Colin Powell, former US national security adviser, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and secretary of state, who died this week at the age of 84, was ... more ...

America, China, and the Echoes of History Foreign Affairs. Hal Brands and John Lewis Gaddis. November/December 2021. Is the world entering a new cold war? Our answer is yes and no. Yes if we mean a protracted international rivalry, for cold wars in this ... more ...

War’s Sci-Fi Future Foreign Affairs. Christian Brose. In 1898, a Polish banker and self-taught military expert named Jan Bloch published The Future of War, the culmination of his long obsession with the impact of modern technology ... more ...

The new Great Game: Central Asia struggles to balance three powers Nikkei Asia. Yohei Ishikawa. 20 October, 2021 ... more ...

A Force for Good in the Changing International Order Foreign Affairs. Tsai Ing-wen (President of Taiwan). November/December 2021 The story of Taiwan is one of resilience—of a country upholding democratic, progressive values while facing ... more ...

Indo-Pacific Security Depends on Reviving Bilateral Defense Dialogue Foreign Affairs. Chris Li and Eric Rosenbach. 15 October, 2021 Nearly nine months into the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden, Washington’s relationship with Beijing has sunk to a historic ... more ...

The Australian. Paul Kelly. 16 October 2021 Given Chinese President Xi Jinping’s intimidation of Taiwan to affirm reunification with its alleged breakaway province, Taiwan now ... more ...

Beijing Is Running Out of Time to Remake the World Foreign Affairs. Michael Beckley and Hal Brands. 1 October, 2021 The prevailing consensus, in Washington and overseas, is that China is surging past ... more ...

The Australian. Dennis Shanahan. 12 October 2021 The US’s Virginia-class nuclear submarine is the best option for Australia according to a former US Navy secretary who believes training for Australian crews on the subs could begin “right now”. Richard Spencer, the ... more ...

The two “strategic cousins” could grow closer as a result of their shared frictions with an increasingly assertive China. The Diplomat. Philip Citowicki and John Blaxland. 11 October 2021 Canada and Australia can be viewed as something like strategic cousins: similar in many respects ... more ...

USNI NEWS. Heather Mongilio. 6 October 2021. ANNAPOLIS, Md. — The Navy’s approach to China is to deter, not to fight a war, Secretary of ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. Ron Huisken. 7 Oct 2021. In a world largely inured to shocks, the announcement that Australia, in partnership with the United States and the United Kingdom, would acquire nuclear-powered submarines was a bombshell. We haven’t over-egged this development—it was dramatic. It ... more ...

The Benefits of AUKUS Outweigh the Proliferation Risks Foreign Affairs. Caitlin Talmadge. 27 September, 2021 The United States’ decision to sell nuclear-powered submarines to Australia is coming under fire from some experts on nuclear nonproliferation. These critics fear that ... more ...

Backlash Is Building—but Beijing Can’t Seem to Recalibrate Foreign Affairs. Peter Martin. 6 October, 2021 In early 2017, China appeared to be on a roll. Its economy was beating estimates. President Xi Jinping was implementing the country’s ... more ...

Lowy Institute. The Interpreter. Oriana Skyla Mastro & Zack Cooper. 5 Oct 2021 When Barack Obama announced the rebalance to Asia in 2011, he also revealed ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. 28 Sep 2021 Ramesh Thakur. In its first comment on the new AUKUS partnership, The Economist said it represents the shifting of geopolitical tectonic plates. The defence implications for Australia and the regional and global ... more ...

Center for International Maritime Security. Micah Petersen and Addison McLamb. 21 September 2021. As the final boardwalk shop on Kandahar Airfield closed its doors for the last time, reality hit home: this time the United States was actually leaving Afghanistan. A decade ago, thousands ... more ...

The Australian. Chris Patten. 26 September 2021 The basic text making the case for an international-relations rulebook was provided by the ancient Greek historian Thucydides in his account of the Peloponnesian ... more ...

Fights Over Small Places Could Spark the Next Big War Foreign Affairs. Dan Altman. 24 September 2021 The relationship between conquest and conflict may seem straightforward: start a war, prevail on the ... more ...

Diego Garcia expected to help Royal Navy project strength from base in Oman Nikkei Asia. Rhyannon Bartlett-Imadegawa. 24 September 21 ... more ...

The cargo, not the ships, should guide Australia’s responses to potential threats against seaborne trade and supply. The Interpreter. Peter Layton. 20 Sep 2021. China’s maritime warfare capabilities become more potent almost daily. Thomas Shugart’s new ... more ...

First thoughts on the consequences of a truly momentous decision. Lowy Institute. The Interpreter. Sam Roggeveen. 16 Sep 2021 Australia is about to join an exclusive ... more ...

Ambassador vows pact won’t affect bloc’s ‘centrality’ in regional architecture Nikkei Asia. Kentaro IWamoto. 21 September 2021 SINGAPORE – Australia is striving to ease concerns ... more ...

Spectator Australia. Stephen Daisley 18 September 2021. The awkwardly-named AUKUS agreement reflects Washington’s escalating concern about China’s dominance in the Indo-Pacific. It signals London’s determination to be more, not less, involved in the global community after Brexit and the retreat from Afghanistan. Ultimately, however, ... more ...

‘One-child army’ more inclined to add unmanned aircraft and ballistic missiles Nikkei Asia. Tetsuro Kosaka. 19 September 2021. TOKYO – The Chinese Communist Party has unintentionally revealed weaknesses of the ... more ...

Complaints about America’s attention to the region need to be put in proper context. The Interpreter. Jun Yan Chang, Collin Koh. 15 Sep 2021. . The dust has ... more ...

Will a Divided World Survive Common Threats? Foreign Affairs. Thomas Wright. September/October 2021. Before the COVID-19 pandemic began, Washington was coalescing around a new bipartisan consensus: great-power competition, especially with China, ought to be the main organizing principle of U.S. ... more ...

Warship design is on the precipice of a new revolution. Navies are looking at the potential of un-crewed, lean-crewed and multirole vessels as part of their fleets. RAND Europe research leader James Black discusses what defines a warship in the 21st century. Naval Technology. August 2021. ... more ...

Centre for Strategic and International Studies. Daniel F. Runde. 16 September 2021 The moment of serious U.S. reengagement with the Western Hemisphere is long overdue. Six decades after the launch of the Alliance for Progress, the United States is once again in need of an ambitious framework for regional engagement. ... more ...

Quadrant. Antony Carr. 10 September 2021 I was wondering how long it would take for American commentators to come up with semi-plausible reasons for continuing to support a President who has overseen the most comprehensive and humiliating defeat in US history. Until recently we’ve ... more ...

More warships in disputed waters may cause instability. But the presence of navies from afar sends a clear message, too. The Lowy Institute, The Interpreter. Loro Horta. 2 September 2021 ... more ...

What’s Bad for Washington Isn’t Necessarily Good for Beijing Foreign Affairs. Seth G. Jones and Jude Blanchette. 13 September 2021 The hasty and tumultuous U.S. drawdown from Afghanistan and the Taliban’s subsequent military victory ... more ...

Australia is big enough and rich enough to defend itself in these frightening times; we just choose not to. What are the options if China succeeds in pushing the US out of the region? The Australian. Jim Molan. 11 September 2021. ... more ...

A Smarter Counterterrorism Approach Is Now Within Reach Foreign Affairs. Article by Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon. 10 September, 2021. Among the many bitter ironies of the collapse of the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan, few are as ... more ...

Beijing has been boosting its influence in the region after US retreat Nikkei News. Article by Katsuhiko Meshino. 10 September 2021 TOKYO – More than a few people ... more ...

USNI NEWS. Mallory Shelbourne. 7 September 2021. ABOARD THE LITTORAL COMBAT SHIP USS KANSAS CITY, OFF THE COAST OF CALIFORNIA – With the ... more ...

Maritime diplomacy is the key to India’s more muscular China strategy The Diplomat. Article by Sreeram Chaulia. 09 September 2021. ... more ...

“Sea control” is not about dominating waters but only to the extent necessary to ensure the movement needed. The Lowy Institute. The Interpreter. James Goldrick. 3 September 2021. Tom Shugart’s Lowy Institute analysis of the rising maritime capabilities of China’s ... more ...

All wars are forever when you don’t know what you’re fighting for. Front Page. 17Aug 2021. Daniel Greenfield. Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism. “Afghanistan’s collapse: ... more ...

The Australian. Tom Switzer. 6 September 2021. September 11 is not just shorthand for the terrorist attacks 20 years ago. It also takes in the US ... more ...

Does Washington Worry Too Much About Threats? Foreign Affairs. By Tanisha M. Fazal. September/October 2021. As U.S. President Joe Biden seeks to resurrect American leadership on the world stage, the perennial question of how the United States should respond to international crises looms large. In his latest book, the political ... more ...

Centre For Independent Studies. Tom Switzer. 25 August 2021. The American effort to remake Afghanistan as a viable democratic state has ended in failure. It’s tragic for those in this war-torn country who long for peace and stability. For the US, the tragedy involves ... more ...

The Brookings Institute. 2 August 2021. The following is an excerpt from “The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order” by former Brookings Fellow Rush Doshi. This introductory chapter summarizes the book’s argument. It explains that U.S.-China competition is over regional and global order, outlines what Chinese-led order ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. 2 Sep 2021.Tomohiko Taniguchi. Australia’s strategic value to Japan can be summed up in three points. Australia is Japan’s partner in bearing the torch of democracy, a quasi-ally with which Japan will work to maintain the Indo-Pacific as a free and ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. 2 Sep 2021.Ron Huisken. Earlier this year, freelance analysts in the United States confirmed vague Pentagon speculation since around 2018 that China intended to expand its force of land-based strategic missiles capable of reaching most or all of the US. These ... more ...

A war in Asia would be a true test of the “unbreakable” bonds said to define the US-Australia relationship. The Lowy Institute. The Interpreter. Sam Roggeveen. 1 September 2021. The ... more ...

In a game of diplomatic spot-the-difference, a sense of continuity is evident at recent AUSMIN meetings. The Lowy Institute. The Interpreter. Daniel Flitton. 1 Sep21. Call it a measure of remarkable diplomatic consistency. Every year since 2013, at least one of two familiar ... more ...

What the War on Terror Cost America Foreign Affairs. Article by Elliot Ackerman. September/October 2021 My first mission as a paramilitary officer with the CIA was against a top-ten al Qaeda target. It was the autumn of 2009, and I had been deployed in ... more ...

America’s Broken Civil-Military Relationship Imperils National Security Foreign Affairs. Article by Risa Brooks, Jim Golby, and Heidi Urben. May/June 2021. When U.S. President Donald Trump left office on January 20, many of those concerned about ... more ...

Recent events have seen a modern Australian military member emerging – vocal, humanitarian and politically active. Lowy Institute, The Interpreter. Cate Carter. 25Aug21. Events this year have meant that uniformed ... more ...

Lowy Institute. The Interpreter. Hugh White. 27August21 Recognising the limits to Australia’s military potential. ... more ...

Beijing will be the first major power to recognize the new regime Nikkea Asia. James Stavridis. 21 August, 2021 Admiral James Stavridis was 16th ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. 20 Aug 2021. Malcolm Davis. The arms control community has been gripped by the discovery that China appears to be building hundreds of new missile silos. The development raises the prospect that China may be breaking out of its traditional ‘minimum ... more ...

Foreign Affairs. Angela Stent. 16 August, 2021 _Why Moscow’s Moves Could Determine the Future of Navigation _ On July 25, President Vladimir Putin gave a rousing speech in St. Petersburg to mark the 325th anniversary of ... more ...

Wall Street Journal. Tunku Varadarajan. 20 August 2021. He offers unsparing words about Trump and Biden, a defense of nation-building, and he says U.S. soldiers may have to re-enter Kabul in force to rescue Americans. As Americans despair over the Afghanistan catastrophe, few have ... more ...

Nikkei Asia. Hiroyuki Akita. 17 August 2021 Beijing and Moscow fear extremists flooding into Central Asia as Taliban return A U.S. defeat in war should be good news for China and Russia, considering that any blow to American prestige and leadership is a win ... more ...

Lowy Institute. Thomas Shugart. 9 August 2021. Beijing’s maritime and aerospace capabilities will have serious implications in the event of an Indo-Pacific power play. KEY FINDINGS China’s recent military development constitutes the greatest expansion of maritime and aerospace power in generations ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. 18 Aug 2021. John Howard. This post is an excerpt from the new ASPI publication ANZUS at 70: the past, present and future of the alliance. I first met President George W Bush on 10 September 2001. I had travelled to ... more ...

ASPI. 17 Aug 2021. Michael Shoebridge. The collapse of the Afghan government and Afghan National Security Forces once US and NATO military support ended has been graphic and rapid. There are many analyses about the folly of US President Joe Biden’s administration and ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. 19 Aug 2021.Marcus Hellyer. The government has announced an 18-month delay to the Royal Australian Navy’s Hunter-class future frigate program. Is this a sign that the project is in serious trouble? Or is it simply an overdue recognition of the reality ... more ...

The Strategist. 12 Aug 2021.James Goldrick. In the first years of the 20th century, shared perceptions of the potential threat from Japan began to bring Australia and America together. President Theodore Roosevelt’s dispatch of 16 battleships of the US Navy on a round-the-world cruise ... more ...

ANI. Louis Martin-Vézian. August 2021 On the morning of June 23, 2021, the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Defender departed its port of call in Odessa, Ukraine, and made way for Batumi, Georgia. While in transit, the destroyer conducted a Freedom of Navigation Operation (FONOP) ... more ...

The Diplomat. Mercy A. Kuo. 12 Aug 21. The Diplomat author Mercy Kuo regularly engages subject-matter experts, policy practitioners, and strategic thinkers across the globe for their diverse insights into U.S. Asia policy. This conversation with Robert Ward, Japan chair and director of Geo-economics ... more ...

Foreign Affairs. By Kevin Rudd. 6 August 2021 Its Success Poses a Major Threat to Beijing’s Ambitions When former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe invited officials from Australia, India, and the ... more ...

Nikkei Asia. Louise Watt. June 2021 Officials split on whether ‘gray zone’ intimidation or rogue vessels ... more ...

The Spectator. Shabnam Nasimi. 10 Aug 2021 There is a common misconception that America somehow imposed democracy on Afghanistan. In reality, Afghans welcomed the opportunity to live in a more liberal country after the Taleban was forced out ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. 4 Aug 2021. Joseph S. Nye. During the four decades of the Cold War, the United States had a grand strategy focused on containing the power of the Soviet Union. Yet by the 1990s, following the Soviet Union’s collapse, America ... more ...

CIMSEC. 4 Aug 21. Collin Fox. Precision munitions have been sinking warships for the better part of a century, but never before have they been so capable, so widely proliferated, or benefited so much from omniscient surveillance and precise targeting. These convergent factors ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. 5 Aug 2021. Michael Shoebridge. Wargaming of US, Australian and other partner militaries in conflict with the People’s Liberation Army after China attacks Taiwan shows the allied forces lose. That means our force structures need to change fast. Scenarios for ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. 4 Aug 2021.David Brewster and Samuel Bashfield. The Indian Ocean is an increasingly contested strategic environment. A growing Chinese naval presence raises the prospect that Beijing may seek to challenge US naval dominance, potentially sparking a competitive naval arms race in ... more ...

Published in The Diplomat. Bonnie Girard. 30 July 2021. The U.K.’s naval presence in East Asia has provoked an angry response from China. On July 1, 1997, the government of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II handed over its ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. Paul Dibb. 26 Jul 2021. In the face of an increasing torrent of abuse from Beijing, Canberra should seek a much clearer commitment from Washington that its United States ally will retaliate if China launches a missile attack against Australia. ... more ...

Australian Institute of International Affairs. Professor James Laurenceson. 29 July 2021 A litmus test is at hand of just how far domestic politics and vague national security “threats” now drive Australian government decision-making towards China. The test involves the Chinese company, Landbridge, and ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. Jim Molan. 30 Jul 2021. Over many decades, Hans Ohff and Jon Stanford have made significant contributions to the defence debate in Australia and they’ve have earned the right to comment. As Australian shipbuilders and submariners engaged in the highest level ... more ...

Centre For Independent Studies. Tom Tugendhat. 6 July2021. After Australia was hit with harsh Chinese trade tariffs on wine, one country stepped up: In Britain, we took one—or rather several—for the team, and imports of South Australia’s finest surged 30 percent. Britain is now ... more ...

ASPI. By John Coyne and Teagan Westendorf. July2021 Darwin Harbour and the port facilities along its eastern arm have a long history of disregard, disrepair and haphazard investment and control by successive governments dating back to the close of World ... more ...

The Lowy Institute. The Interpreter. Ameya Pratap Singh Urvi Tembey. July 2020. _Control over key rivers effectively gives China a chokehold on India’s economy – and poses a wider regional threat. _ ... more ...

Foreign Affairs. Jacqueline L. Hazelton. 15 July 2021 How America Gets Counterinsurgency Wrong After two decades, the United States is finally leaving Afghanistan, and only 2,500 U.S. troops remain in Iraq. In both countries, the insurgencies continue. It ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. 15 Jul 2021 Marcus Hellyer. The Royal Australian Navy is in the early stages of a long transition that is notable for its strategic risk. Both its core surface and subsurface combat fleets are ageing ... more ...

Lowy Institute. The Interpreter. Pratik Jakhar. 12 July 2021 Five years ago the Philippines largely squandered a crucial legal win. But it’s not too late to marshal support. ... more ...

Copyright U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings. Reprinted with permission. The United States and its allies must have sufficient combat power in key theatres such that the enemy will hesitate to undertake hostile operations. By Admiral James Stavridis, U.S. Navy (Retired). July 2021 Proceedings. ... more ...

Why America Failed in Afghanistan Foreign Affairs. Christina Lamb. July/August 2021 In 2008, I interviewed the United Kingdom’s then outgoing military commander in Afghanistan, Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, in a dusty firebase in Helmand Province, where international troops had been battling the Taliban on a daily basis for territory that kept ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. 7 Jul 2021 Hans J. Ohff and Jon Stanford. When Prime Minister Scott Morrison compared Australia’s strategic situation to that in 1939, he was right in two respects. We have again put too much ... more ...

The Race to Consolidate Power and Stave Off Disaster Foreign Affairs. Jude Blanchette. July 2021. Xi Jinping is a man on a mission. After coming to power in late 2012, he moved rapidly to consolidate his political authority, purge ... more ...

Military standoffs along the Himalayan border continue to intensify NikkeiAsia. Brahma Chellaney. 7 July2021 Chinese ... more ...

ASPI. The Strategist. 30 Jun 2021 David Kilcullen. In 2009, senior Australian Army officer Chris Field wrote that, for the Australian Defence Force to win in 21st century conflicts, we must ‘recognise that asymmetry is not the sole ... more ...

USNI News. Sam LaGrone. 29June21. Last year, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command quietly packed the combat system from a guided-missile destroyer into about the size of a footlocker, took it ashore and ... more ...

https://www.c4isrnet.com. By Mark Pomerleau. 29 June 2021. WASHINGTON — The United States ranks as the world’s top cyber superpower, according to a new study published ... more ...

The U.S. Navy was key to victory in the Persian Gulf War—which set the fleet on a new course for a new strategic era. US Naval Institute January 2021 - By Edward J. Marolda Operation Desert Storm (17 January–28 February 1991) witnessed the U.S. Navy’s evolution from a force zeroed ... more ...