Sam Roggeveen

Director, International Security Program
Areas of expertise

Australian foreign and defence policy, China’s military forces, US defence and foreign policy, drones and other military technology. Also, trends in global democracy.

Sam Roggeveen
Biography
Publications
News and media

Sam Roggeveen is Director of the Lowy Institute’s International Security Program. He is the author of The Echidna Strategy: Australia's Search for Power and Peace, published by La Trobe University Press in 2023.

Before joining the Lowy Institute, Sam was a senior strategic analyst in Australia’s peak intelligence agency, the Office of National Assessments, where his work dealt mainly with North Asian strategic affairs, including nuclear strategy and Asian military forces. Sam also worked on arms control policy in Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs, and as an analyst in the Defence Intelligence Organisation.

Sam has a long-standing interest in politics and political philosophy, and in 2019 he wrote Our Very Own Brexit: Australia's Hollow Politics and Where it Could Lead Us, about the hollowing out of Western democracy and its implications for Australia. 

Sam writes for newspapers and magazines in Australia and around the world, and is a regular commentator on the Lowy Institute’s digital magazine, The Interpreter, of which he was the founding editor from 2007 to 2014.

Sam also serves as lead editor at the Lowy Institute, and editor of the Lowy Institute Papers.

Our Very Own Brexit
Lowy Institute Papers
Our Very Own Brexit
Australia’s Hollow Politics and Where It Could Lead Us
In conversation: Weak parties, hollow politics, and democratic danger
In conversation: Weak parties, hollow politics, and democratic danger
Could a radical break with Asia be the cost of a growing dislocation of the political parties and the Australian public?
The sharp sword: China and the drone threat to Australia
The sharp sword: China and the drone threat to Australia
Combat drones could loiter over targets for hours longer than a crewed aircraft, posing a very different type of threat.
Are Trumpians or Boltonians in charge?
Commentary
Are Trumpians or Boltonians in charge?
The US alliance is the great totem of Australia's foreign policy, before which our major parties kneel. But they should look up once in a while, lest the tectonic plates shift…
Book review: Hugh White’s How to Defend Australia
Book review: Hugh White’s How to Defend Australia
This quietly radical book calls on Australia to plan as if our US alliance will diminish to the point of vanishing.
National security: Australians and their elites
National security: Australians and their elites
A tour through this year’s Lowy Institute Poll to see where the public differs from political leaders.
Fierravanti-Wells’ outburst tells more than just a China story
Fierravanti-Wells’ outburst tells more than just a China story
A Liberal senator’s spectacular break with party discipline shows differences on Beijing cut across partisan lines.
Australia’s election: what the hell just happened?
Australia’s election: what the hell just happened?
Don’t assume the last decade of political chaos is over as the major parties remain drained of authority and purpose.
Is Australia Next?
Commentary
Is Australia Next?
Amid the sound and fury of US President Donald Trump, European populists, and Brexiteers, it is tempting to think that Australia has been spared from the political turmoil…
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