Sam Roggeveen's Bio | People

People | experts Sam Roggeveen

Director, International Security Program

Lowy Institute

Areas of ExpertiseChina’s military forces, US defence and foreign policy, Australian foreign and defence policy, drones and other military technology, blogs and online media.

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What’s missing from the Strategic Update

Cute but not cuddly – the goal for defence should be to impose unacceptable costs on a predator that tries to attack.

By Sam Roggeveen

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Wuhan lab claims: Is Australia questioning China? Or the US? Both?

Leaked claims, supposed intelligence dossiers, angry outbursts. Lowy experts look to make sense of a Covid controversy.

By Ben Scott, Sam Roggeveen, Natasha Kassam

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Helping Indonesia to help ourselves

Originally published in the Australian Financial Review

By Roland Rajah, Sam Roggeveen

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Who will be the 21st century’s rule maker?

Asia needs a new order for the post-American era, and it cannot be a liberal one.

By Sam Roggeveen

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China, Australia, and the gulf between leaders and led

The biggest shift in Australia’s strategic circumstances in a century will test our politics as much as our US alliance.

By Sam Roggeveen

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US-China competition in Asia: Who risks wins

Victory in great power games have rested on military might far more than the attractiveness of a leadership model.

By Sam Roggeveen

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Why the day of the party is done

Originally published in the Australian Financial Review

By Sam Roggeveen

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Our Very Own Brexit: Response to reviewers

It is the decline of the traditional parties that destabilises our politics, not burgeoning right-wing populism.

By Sam Roggeveen

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Favourites of 2019: The Twitterverse

Occasionally inspiring and frequently very funny, Twitter is the great modern meeting point – mostly.

By Sam Roggeveen

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Australia’s Brexit?

Loss of confidence in political parties could translate into disengagement from our region. Originally published in Inside Story

By Sam Roggeveen

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When our security makes the neighbours feel vulnerable

Talk of new bombers ignores one important fact about the region: Australia is not in charge anymore.

By Sam Roggeveen

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Our Very Own Brexit

Australia’s Hollow Politics and Where It Could Lead Us

By Sam Roggeveen

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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?

By George Megalogenis, Sam Roggeveen

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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.

By Sam Roggeveen

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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 again and the totem topples. Originally published in the Australian Financial Review

By Sam Roggeveen

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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.

By Sam Roggeveen

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National security: Australians and their elites

A tour through this year’s Lowy Institute Poll to see where the public differs from political leaders.

By Sam Roggeveen

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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.

By Sam Roggeveen

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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.

By Sam Roggeveen

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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 sweeping Western democracies. But if one focuses not on the rise of populism but on the decline of the mainstream, Australia no

By Sam Roggeveen

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How open should Australia be about the China challenge?

Andrew Robb wants Australian officials to say more about China’s alleged behaviour.

By Sam Roggeveen

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Hanoi summit: Trump walks but time is on Kim Jong Un's side

Originally published in Australian Financial Review

By Sam Roggeveen

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What is the F-35 for, exactly?

Australia’s first two new stealth fighters have taken to local skies. Now what?

By Sam Roggeveen

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Brexit warning for Australia: Voter immigration concerns an easy fringe target

Originally published in Australian Financial Review

By Sam Roggeveen

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Book Review: the Clinton fiction

Clinton’s book has nothing new to say about politics but it may offer some insight into his assessment of the world.

By Sam Roggeveen

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Was Jim Mattis really the “last adult in the room”?

Mattis said Trump deserves a defense secretary “whose views are better aligned with yours”. Does such a person exist?

By Sam Roggeveen

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What I missed this year: America pushes back

There has been a clear shift in US thinking regarding China's long term trajectory.

By Sam Roggeveen

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Beware of joining US in a cold war it can’t win

Published in The Australian on 21 November 2018

By Sam Roggeveen

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Combat drones: Australia’s uncertain future

When it comes to stealthy combat drones, momentum is with China right now. That’s a problem for Australia.

By Sam Roggeveen

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More than words needed to meet the China challenge

There appears to be little evidence of the US preparing itself for a whole-of-nation competition with China.

By Sam Roggeveen

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Scott Morrison gets ready for Asia’s summit season

Yes, familiar themes abound, but there was plenty of interest in the PM’s first big foreign policy speech.

By Sam Roggeveen

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Holiday Monday

Today is a public holiday for staff at the Lowy Institute.

By Sam Roggeveen

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No, Australia has not caught the Trump bug

Rather than an outsider, Peter Dutton is a party loyalist who tried to rescue his party against a wealthy outsider.

By Sam Roggeveen

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Liberal leadership spill: The democratic arc of instability

Originally published in Australian Financial Review.

By Sam Roggeveen

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Australia’s political shakeup is evidence of the decline of party politics

Originally published in Washington Post

By Sam Roggeveen

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Malcolm Turnbull: ruling the void

There is a malaise in Western politics of which Australia’s instability is merely one symptom.

By Sam Roggeveen

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Keep calm and carry on: a message to Trump critics

With two-and-a-half years still to go in Trump’s first term, this level of outrage just cannot be maintained.

By Sam Roggeveen

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US Navy sails into Taiwan sunset

Whereas in 1996 America’s affirmations of support for Taiwan were genuine, they are now a bluff.

By Sam Roggeveen

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Trump–Kim summit: negotiating weakness

The real agenda in US–North Korea talks may be economic and political, rather than about arms.

By Sam Roggeveen

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Three reasons why the Singapore summit had to happen

Originally published in the Sydney Morning Herald

By Sam Roggeveen

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Singapore summit: the case for guarded optimism

The US and North Korea are far apart, but look beneath the surface and there is a chance for agreement.

By Sam Roggeveen

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Why China isn’t planning to storm Taiwan’s beaches

China’s navy has grown dramatically, but not its amphibious forces.

By Sam Roggeveen

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China’s first homebuilt carrier sails: so what?

Soon, China will be the only country other than the US to operate more than one large aircraft carrier.

By Sam Roggeveen

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China is catching up to the US, except on this key measure

The Lowy Institute Power Index shows that China remains a lonely superpower. Does that matter?

By Sam Roggeveen

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The other North Korea question: How important is the Korean Peninsula to the US?

Historians may come to see North Korea’s nuclear-armed ballistic missiles as the trigger that unravels America’s strategic leadership of Asia. Originally published in the Australian Financial Review on 29 March 2018

By Sam Roggeveen