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Foreign Policy

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The role of think tanks in a fragmenting global system

Last month I spent time in a tank thinking about think tanks. Admittedly it was a very architecturally interesting tank at The Graduate Institute Geneva, which this year hosted the Global Think Tank Summit with the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program at the University of Pennsylvania. It was

By Melissa Conley Tyler

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Australian recognised by UN's chemical weapons watchdog

A scientist and WMD expert with the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO), Dr Robert (Bob) Mathews, has been honoured by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) for his contributions to chemical weapons disarmament in a ceremony on 1 December in The Hague. Dr

By John Tilemann

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Lima climate conference: Slow movement on Planet UNFCCC

As haggard negotiators left the UN climate change conference in Lima in the early hours of Sunday morning, many observers noted the contrast between the political acrimony that characterised the final days of these tortured discussions and the sense of optimism that many felt going into the talks

By Fergus Green

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G20 Brisbane Summit: Australia's adolescence on show

Australia had a prime chance to demonstrate its adult status in chairing the G20 Summit this year. What did it do with the opportunity? It showcased some of the characteristic behaviours of an adolescent country, my term for Australia in a new Lowy Institute Paper. Tantalisingly, it also showed

By Peter Hartcher

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East Timor, Australia and the 'Timor Gap'

Tom Allard recently reported in the Sydney Morning Herald that Australia and East Timor are ready to restart talks on the maritime boundary between the two countries, with all its complications of petroleum revenues and history. The tradition is to keep these talks under wraps, but Allard's article

By Stephen Grenville

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Modi in Australia: An unprecedented level of engagement

Narendra Modi has just concluded his first visit to Australia, the first by any Indian prime minister in 28 years. Combined with Prime Minister Abbott's visit to India in September and multilateral interactions at the East Asia Summit and G20, this marks an unprecedented level of engagement between

By Danielle Rajendram

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Adolescent Australia's road to adulthood

In his new Lowy Institute Paper, Peter Hartcher is correct when he writes that Australia is an adolescent country. However, I believe the roots of our adolescent behaviour lie deep in the lack of maturity of our national consciousness. The juvenile language of our leaders, our false bravado, and

By Andrew Catsaras

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'The Embassy' and DFAT's consular role: Helping Australians travel smarter

By Justin Brown, acting Deputy Secretary of DFAT with responsibility for consular, passports, corporate administration and information management. He has been Australia's High Commissioner to Canada, Ambassador for the Environment and Deputy of Australia's Mission to the European Union in Brussels

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Australia and the AIIB: A lost opportunity

The debate about whether Australia should join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) has gone beyond the realm of economic development and investment to hit at the core of Australia's apparent security dilemma. The initial concern revolved around the governance arrangements and whether

By Philippa Brant

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Whitlam's Indonesia leadership was far from 'visionary'

It is certainly fitting to examine Gough Whitlam's foreign policy record and considerable achievements. However, in seeking to whitewash the controversy over Whitlam's role leading up to Indonesia's brutal invasion of East Timor in December 1975, Gary Hogan's piece does us all a great disservice.

By Anthony Burke

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Whitlam's visionary leadership on Indonesia

As commentators rightly eulogise Gough Whitlam's foreign policy achievements, most of the attention has focused on his grand outreach to communist China and the independence of Papua New Guinea. These two acts were conspicuous hallmarks of Whitlam's game-changing diplomatic moments. A 1979 Peter

By Gary Hogan

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Can Australia remain a top 20 nation?

A few times over the past year, Minister for Foreign Affairs Julie Bishop has referred to Australia as a 'top 20 nation' or a 'top 20 country'. She prefers this to the standard description of Australia as a middle power, a term she has mostly avoided. As she responded to the Sydney Morning Herald's

By Melissa Conley Tyler

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Ebola: Lessons from earlier pandemic scares

In July 2014, Australia's Chief Medical Officer, Dr Chris Baggoley, assured us that the risk of the deadly Ebola virus spreading to Australia from West Africa was very low. At that stage, cases of this most recent outbreak of the disease had been confined to West African countries and in particular

By Annmaree O’Keeffe

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Ebola: It is time for Australia to act

By Catherine King MP, Federal Shadow Minister For Health and the Member for Ballarat. The Ebola crisis is no longer a humanitarian crisis for West Africa; it now poses a direct threat to world economic growth and if not contained, will spread well beyond the borders of Sierra Leone, Liberia and

By Catherine King

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Australian public diplomacy the real loser in ABC cuts

Journalists are often advised to report the story, not become part of it, but Australia's coverage of and broadcasting to Asia have been making headlines for years. In 2014, the trend has continued with the Federal Government eviscerating its publicly funded overseas television service, Australia

By Christopher Kremmer

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ABC bureaux closures: Sacrificing the bang for the bucks?

The latest news from the ABC bunker is that while Lateline may survive the latest round of cuts, the bureaux in Tokyo and Delhi may be shut down. The ABC Board met yesterday, reportedly to decide on measures to achieve efficiencies of up to $100m following the Budget and the Lewis Review, and in

By Alex Oliver

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Terrorism at home: The law cannot save us

I picked up my tickets for tomorrow's AFL Grand Final the other day. My team, the Sydney Swans, is playing and I should be excited to be going. Instead, I have been infected by the unease gripping Melbourne. I ask myself, am I taking a risk by attending the game? We are told by our political

By Cynthia Banham

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Why Australia should join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank

At the upcoming APEC Summit in Beijing, China is hoping to announce a formal MoU for the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Offers to join the Bank have been sent around the region, including to Australia. So should Australia sign on? Little is publicly known about how the Bank would work

By Philippa Brant

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Fiji's elections: Four lessons for Australian diplomacy

Now that Fiji has held its first elections in eight years, it is time to take stock of the lessons for Australian diplomacy. These lessons should inform Australia's approach to the Pacific island region, including in responses to future political upheaval, which is all but certain to take place.

By Jonathan Schultz

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UN Climate Change Summit: A chance for Australia's environmental diplomacy

The UN Climate Change Summit is taking place in New York tomorrow, with attendance by several world leaders including US President Barack Obama and UK Prime Minister David Cameron. Over the past weekend, nearly 300,000 people marched in the streets of New York to urge a global consensus on

By Saleem Ali

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The other humanitarian crisis

The ramping up of the international effort against ISIS has consumed much of the world media's attention in the last few weeks. However, there is another international crisis unfolding that has killed on a comparable scale, and which threatens to claim many more lives. The Ebola epidemic

By Tim Mayfield

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Is Abbott spreading Australia too thin?

Two months ago, as Prime Minister Abbott's globalist reflexes were becoming increasingly apparent, I offered a perspective from Washington that the US should welcome a more prominent role for Australia on the world stage. I argued that America's steadfast ally had unique normative, diplomatic and

By Ely Ratner

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Great Australian foreign policy speeches: Howard on 9/11 and the US alliance

Michael Fullilove began our series on great speeches about Australia's place in the world with a selection of ten speeches, here and here. Graeme Dobell's first pick in this series was Bob Hawke's APEC creation speech. His second choice is John Howard's speech on the US alliance and Australia's

By Graeme Dobell

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Ten speeches on Australia's place in the world (part 2)

Part 1 of this series reviewed great speeches on Australia's place in the world, from Federation to Vietnam. In this post, I look at the period from Vietnam to Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17. 1. Robert Hughes, 'The culture of complaint', New York, 14 January 1992 Bob Hughes was one of our great

By Michael Fullilove

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MH17 crash site: A police-led approach is the right solution

Last night Prime Minister Tony Abbott announced that Australia has prepositioned 50 Australian Federal Police officers, presumably from the International Deployment Group, in London. The Foreign Minister is on her way to Kiev to personally negotiate access to the crash site for the AFP and Australia

By James Brown

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Australia's new activism: The view from Washington

When US officials talk about the US-Australia alliance, they almost always highlight, as President Obama did in his November 2011 speech in Canberra, that Australians have fought alongside Americans 'in every single major conflict of the past hundred years.' This is a fact to be celebrated, but

By Ely Ratner

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Syria, MH17 and the art of the possible at the UN

Australian diplomacy at the UN has kicked up a gear over the last two weeks. On 14 July the Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 2165, drafted by Australia, Jordan and Luxembourg, setting up a new mechanism to facilitate humanitarian aid deliveries to Syria. And yesterday it approved

By Richard Gowan

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MH17: The Australians get their resolution

The UN Security Council observes a minute's silence for the MH17 victims. (UN photo.) The clocks at the UN were approaching midnight on Sunday night when the Security Council concluded an emergency session on the Gaza conflict, and then immediately reconvened for consultations on an Australian

By Nick Bryant

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Assessing Australia's UN performance

Prime Minister Tony Abbott visited New York this week and, as leaders have to do when in the Big Apple, got together with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to discuss the state of the world. The meeting may focus some attention on Australia's two-year tenure as a member of the UN Security Council,

By Richard Gowan

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The demise of the Australia Network

May should have been a milestone month for Australian international broadcasting, and arguably the most celebratory in the 13-year history of the Australia Network. ABC executives were due to sign a prized deal with the Shanghai Media Group, giving the ABC the most extensive access to Chinese

By Nick Bryant

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Why Bob Carr's book matters

It was all a trick. A simple scam played on a clueless tabloid media to sell more books. And didn't they oblige! As soon as Bob Carr's Diary of a Foreign Minister hit the shelves, they searched the book for scandal, and found a man apparently addicted to perks and privilege. The Daily Telegraph

By Sam Roggeveen

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Julie Bishop's first six months (and first 43 speeches)

Last week marked Julie Bishop's first six months as foreign minister. When she was sworn in as Australia's 38th minister for foreign affairs on 18 September 2013, she could have not been better prepared for the job. As shadow minister from 2009 to 2013 she had developed both her knowledge and her

By Melissa Conley Tyler

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Abbott sees a more liberal China ahead

Well, all glory is indeed fleeting. Having just given The Interpreter a pat on the back for our Asia coverage, I'm embarrassed to admit that we are late to Prime Minister Abbott's Asia Society speech, delivered on Tuesday to set the scene for his early-April Asia trip. The speech is trade

By Sam Roggeveen

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Spying row: Why Indonesia is tougher on Canberra than on Washington

Australia has copped the ire and sarcasm of Indonesian foreign minister Marty Natalegawa over fresh spying allegations reported in the New York Times last weekend. Meanwhile, the US, Australia’s alleged partner in the reported espionage, has emerged unscathed. As Natalegawa welcomed US

By Catriona Croft-Cusworth

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Lessons for Australia from the Swiss referendum on immigration quotas

On Sunday, a referendum proposal to re-introduce strict quotas for immigration from European Union countries was passed in Switzerland by a tiny majority of 50.3% of voters. The Swiss constitution provides no recourse for appeal, and the Swiss Government will now need to renegotiate its agreement

By Khalid Koser

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International events in 2014 will test Australian Government's climate credibility

After its first few months, the Abbott Government's domestic and international climate credibility is threadbare, as is its commitment to commercialising clean energy alternatives. Threadbare, but not yet in complete tatters. This year will be revealing. 2014 will determine whether the Abbott

By John Connor

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East China Sea: Is Australia hitting the 'pause' button on the Japan relationship?

Maybe Robert E Kelly is right that there has been too much gnashing of teeth and tearing of clothes over the very short change given to Asia in Barack Obama’s 2014 State of the Union address. But as indicated by the title, this is the President's one big annual speech about America, so it is

By Robert Ayson

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Last call for the Australia Network?

And now the news: the Australia Network (described in The Australian's story as the 'Asian broadcasting service') is ‘likely to be scrapped in the May budget’. No surprise, coming on the heels of the Prime Minister's comments that the ABC lacks 'basic affection for the home team', following

By Alex Oliver

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What Peter Cosgrove thinks about Indonesia

Australia's incoming Governor-General has put many of his thoughts to paper in various publications and talks in recent years. No doubt they will be subject to close examination by commentators before he is sworn in in March. Cosgrove has had a lot to do and say about Indonesia during the past

By Peter McCawley

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Australia-Indonesia relations: Getting ahead of the curve

Gary Hogan brings a light touch to explaining the otherwise depressing oscillations of the Australian-Indonesian relationship, but his sine-wave theory conveys the wrong policy message. It's as if the oscillations are inevitable, even pre-ordained. Of course there is a fair bit of reversion-to-

By Stephen Grenville

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Spying on Kristiani Herawati: A loss of judgement

The Weekend Australian carried a ‘well-sourced’ article defending our listening in on Kristiani Herawati, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's wife. Quoting the usual ‘well-connected insider who asked not to be named’, it argues that she was a legitimate target because she was

By Stephen Grenville

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