Australia in the World

Alexander Downer served as Australian foreign minister from 1996 to 2007. When we judge historical events, we tend to do so out of context. Yet to understand decisions and to judge them, you have to understand the context. Soon after I became foreign minister, the Secretary General of the UN

Contrary to my dark mood yesterday about Australia becoming an international laughing stock, it looks like the whole thing was something of a non-event for the foreign media, particularly if you compare it to the international stir Julia Gillard caused with her misogyny speech. As for the blogs, a

Below, a comment from Jorge Bechara on Rodger Shanahan's Bob Carr's Selective Indignation. But first, Andrew Johnson: I appreciate that Gary Hogan has expanded on his contribution and rightly points out that he is bringing his own experience into the understanding of Indonesia and its

Geraldine Doogue is patron of the Australian Peacekeeping Memorial Project and presenter of ABC RN's 'Saturday Extra'. Geraldine wrote a three-part Interpreter series on Australian peacekeeping.  Last Wednesday, in the midst of a busy March week of tumultuous political news, came one

Andrew Butcher from the Asia New Zealand Foundation watched Michael Fullilove's interview with Senator Joe Lieberman, and asks via Twitter how the Brits will feel about Lieberman's characterisation of the US-Australia relationship. Describing the US-Australia relationship as 'closest' would

Violence happens around the world each and every day. Sometimes it gets reported in the media, and on special occasions it is deemed worthy of official condemnation. No government has time to condemn each and every action, so the incidents they do condemn should have some resonance with the

Back in October last year, my colleague Alex Oliver posted an item about the case of Alexandra Bean, an Australian who had been detained in Libya. Alex wrote that Foreign Minister Bob Carr 'is beginning to comprehend the intractability of the consular conundrum: managing the soaring demand for

Professor Wadan Narsey is an Adjunct Professor at The Cairns Institute. Jonathan Schultz's recently completed PhD thesis, Overseeing and Overlooking: Australian Engagement with the Pacific Islands 1988-2007, presents a somewhat scathing indictment of Australian foreign policy towards the Pacific,

Like Sam, I had high expectations for the Four Corners report on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and was a little disappointed. To butcher Mark Twain, Four Corners may not repeat itself but it does rhyme. Last night's story on the JSF was eerily similar to this story from back in 2007, also by

Peter Jennings, Executive Director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, writes: I have been taken out of context by Joel Negin, who refers to me in a recent Interpreter blog on the importance of Africa in this way: The Executive Director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute

For Australia, the principal threat posed by the growth of China's military power is not yet to its direct strategic interests but rather to the US-led order from which much of Australia's security derives. As China's ongoing accumulation of advanced air, maritime and surveillance capabilities

Last July I expressed scepticism about the idea that Tony Abbott's fondness for the 'anglosphere' implied that he was too focused on Australia's traditional partners and didn't fully appreciate the opportunities and challenges of a rising Asia. The release of the Liberal Party's new policy booklet

It may seem odd that Prime Minister Julia Gillard would use the occasion of the launch of the nation's first ever formal national security strategy to endorse the view that the 'national security decade' is over.  This begins to make sense, though, when you note the strategy's conclusion

We're going to have substantive commentary on the newly released National Security Strategy over coming days, but as a first offering, I wanted to alert readers to Michael L'Estrange's op-ed in today's Australian (to get around the Oz's paywall, just Google the article's headline and click on the

Satish Chand is a Professor in the School of Business, University of New South Wales. Last December it was revealed in the media that the Australian Government would divert $375 million from its foreign aid budget (of a total $5.2 billion) to fund the onshore processing of asylum seekers arriving

Late last year I traveled to Port Moresby to interview some of PNG's newly elected MPs for the Lowy Institute's Leadership Mapping Project. Earlier interviews in this latest series were with Deputy Opposition leader Sam Basil, and one of the three female MPs, Governor Julie Soso. One of the most