United States security strategy is changing and how its allies deal with this change raises multiple issues Australia must now consider.
At the recent KPMG/AFR defence and national security roundtable, Alan Dupont, professor of international security at the University of New South Wales, strongly defined the new security challenge for Australia and the US. Read more
The Australian Defence Force (ADF) needs to develop a full-spectrum defence strategy which includes cyber weapons according to a new report by Professor Alan Dupont.
Full Spectrum Defence: Re-thinking the fundamentals of Australian defence strategy, published by the Lowy Institute, notes that the ADF has a maritime, land and aerial approach to defence. Read more
Dr. Jonathan Spyer spoke at an AIJAC co-sponsored function in Melbourne, Australia.
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Hugh White, Professor of Strategic Studies at the Australian National University, and Alan Dupont, Professor of International Security at the University of New South Wales discuss, China’s strategy in the South China Sea. Read more
As Henry Kissinger and others have observed, Asia is emerging as the center of gravity in the international system. The rapid economic growth that began with Japan during the 1960s spread to South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore in the 1970s; China in the 1980s; and India in the 1990s. As has become indisputable, throughout history, prosperity brings power in its train. Read more
History will remember Mikhail Gorbachev as the man who destroyed Soviet Communism by trying to save it. Despite his subsequent veneration by some Western liberals, Gorbachev was no liberal himself. A true believer in state socialism, he nevertheless recognized that the Soviet system was grossly inefficient and that an entrenched and unchecked Party-State bureaucracy posed a fundamental obstacle to meaningful economic reforms. Read more
Alan talks with Alan Jones at 2GB about the international relations expert about the Islamic terror threat.
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In the two years since he was named general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping has moved swiftly to consolidate his personal grip on political power. Xi has established “leading small groups,” which he chairs, to handle the most pressing domestic and foreign policy problems. Read more
Few doubt that China’s rise is this era’s principal driver of strategic change, just as the United States’ equally influential ascendancy shaped the last. But earlier optimism that the Middle Kingdom’s re-emergence as a major power would be largely benign is fading as evidence mounts that Beijing is determined to press its territorial and resource claims in the vitally important seas of the Western Pacific. In barely the blink of a geopolitical eye, China’s once lauded charm offensive has given way to exactly the kind of coercive behavior its critics have long predicted. In a 3,000-mile maritime arc running from the East China Sea to the southern reaches of the South China Sea, Beijing is at loggerheads with many of its neighbors, including erstwhile friends, over several linked territorial and resource disputes. If not wisely managed, these disputes could bring East Asia’s long peace to a premature and bloody end.
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When Tony Abbott and his colleagues on the National Security Committee of cabinet sit down to have their first serious look at defence this week they will find a dispirited and disjointed department in need of direction and renewal. Read more