Maritime Security

Boris Johnson’s ebullient pronouncements last week on a future Royal Navy freedom of navigation 'operation' in the Indo-Pacific region have attracted attention, but also criticism. At the press conference following the “2+2” meeting of Australian/UK defence and foreign ministers (AUKMIN), on

After many months of intense debate inside the Obama Administration, the US conducted a freedom of navigation operation (FONOP) in the South China Sea on 26 October. The destroyer USS Lassen sailed for over an hour within 12 nautical miles of Subi Reef, a low tide elevation (LTE; a feature that was

US-India relations are in good shape. The personal relationship between Modi and Obama appears excellent, there are big, ambitious ideas in the pipeline – like US assistance to Indian carrier development – and the strategic dialogue is getting deeper in several ways. But things are falling

Hegemon is a wickedly interactive multi-player/multi-round geostrategic game devised by the Potomac Foundation. Each player represents a country, fielding certain economic and military resources and possessing (secret) objectives. Ranged across a gods-eye planetary gameboard, Hegemon is the '

It's increasingly clear that China intends to use its artificial islands in the South China Sea for military purposes. Admiral Harry Harris, commander of US Pacific Command, delivered this assessment on a panel that I was privileged to be part of at the Aspen Security Forum last week. Harris

Source: IMB data, compiled by Elliot Brennan. On 1 April, a Malaysia-flagged tanker was attacked and hijacked by 15 to 25 armed pirates off the coast of Borneo. The crew was held hostage at gunpoint while the pirates transferred the tanker's gas cargo to their own vessel before escaping. The

The US-Japan Defence Cooperation Guidelines are best thought of as an occasional re-branding exercise for the US-Japan alliance in response to changing strategic conditions. Following a review, a revised version of the Guidelines was announced on 27 April. The 1960 Treaty of Mutual Cooperation

This week’s Quick Comment podcast is with the new head of ANU’s National Security College and Lowy Institute Nonresident Fellow, Professor Rory Medcalf, who last night delivered a speech in which he argued that Australia needs to rethink how it approaches and considers national security and

One of the most important aspects of the recent dramatic shift in US-India relations has been the convergence in the two states' narratives about Asia. It's easy to forget that this change is palpable not just over a four-decade period, but even in the past six years alone. In 2009, early in his

Within China's bureaucratic system, sometimes it is in an agency's interest to compete with others, rather than coordinate, in order to advance its own bureaucratic power and receive more funding. Linda Jakobson's recent Lowy Report, China's Unpredictable Maritime Security Actors, highlights

'China will work with other countries to further promote a harmonious maritime order.' Even after years of studying the maritime tensions on China's periphery, I had to check that I had not misread the 9 December Xinhua dispatch quoting Liu Jieyi, China's Ambassador to the UN. These reassuring

Last week's Fifth Xiangshan Forum in Beijing demonstrated just how difficult it will be to resolve disputes in the South China Sea as long as key parties believe history must arbitrate the veracity of claims to sovereignty over contested islands. Scholars, officials and military officers from all

Three books published this year contemplate Asia's most vexing problem. Taken together, they provide a thorough understanding of the contest in the South China Sea. Still, they leave the reader with one large puzzle. Asia's Cauldron recounts, in Robert Kaplan's readable travelogue style, the

'They put knives on our throats and threatened to kill us if we resist,' the deputy captain of a Vietnamese-flagged ship told reporters after his oil tanker was hijacked earlier this month.  It was the twelfth hijacking attempt since April around the Malacca Straits, and the fifth successful

From a strategic perspective, the bottom line attraction for states seeking to acquire nuclear ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) is survivability. States possessing SSBNs cannot be victims of a disarming first strike.  They will always possess the ability to strike back with submarine launched

Chinese submarine support ship in Colombo Port, Sri Lanka. (PLA photo.) The visit of the Chinese Type 039 'Song' class submarine to Colombo, Sri Lanka, earlier this month passed with little notice, but it's the first time one of the People's Liberation Army-Navy's (PLA-N) diesel-powered submarines