Asia Pacific Security
A note to Congressional Republicans: Why the neocon formula won't work in Asia
Last month, a majority of the Republicans in the US Senate sent an open letter to the leadership of Iran.
In it, they declared that any deal on Iranian nuclear technology between…
America's China consensus slowly unravels
For a long time American (and Australian) thinking about China has been dominated by a broad consensus that, despite many signs of growing assertiveness, Beijing does not pose a…
Will space and cyber operations affect ADF force structure?
Over the past month, The Interpreter has hosted a debate on Australian defence strategy initiated by Alan Dupont's Lowy analysis paper, Full-Spectrum Defence.
The discussion so…
Jihadi recruitment: The Taliban moves to the bottom of the class
On 4 April 2015 the Afghan Taliban made an interesting move: it released a biography of its leader Mullah Omar in order to commemorate the 19th anniversary of his leadership. For…
Ashton Carter's Northeast Asia visit looks south
Ashton Carter's inaugural trip to Asia as US Secretary of Defense went about as smoothly as he could have hoped.
The logic of visiting Tokyo and Seoul ahead of other capitals in…
French elections reverberate in New Caledonia
You might wonder whether the result of the recent second round of French departmental elections – with Nicolas Sarkozy taking credit for the UMP's win…
What Asia's leaders should (but won't) say about the 70th anniversary of the Pacific War
Seventy years ago this year, the long project of Japanese imperialism in the Pacific came to an end.
In the West, this anniversary will be rolled together with the war against…
The coming nuclearisation of the Indian Ocean
While the world focuses on the dangers that a nuclear-armed Iran could present in the Middle East, a potentially more dangerous and unstable nuclear proliferation is occurring in…
Shambaugh's China disaster scenario examined
'Always predict disaster', a shrewd academic economist told me some years ago. 'If it happens, you are proved right. And if it doesn't, then catastrophe was avoided by people…
Do we need 'full-spectrum defence'?
The first thing to say about Alan Dupont's recent paper is that he is absolutely correct about the dire condition of Australian strategic policy.
As he suggests, we lack a…