Defence & Security

Today The Interpreter concludes its discussion on Australia's Defence Challenges, a sponsored partnership with the Department of Defence aimed at supporting external engagement ahead of the 2013 Defence White Paper and related processes. Several months ago we established the aims of this blog 

Hugh White and I have been debating the subject of sea control and sea denial. As part of that exchange, Hugh posed questions to me which were related to particular scenarios. The difficulty with postulating any scenario is that it can be treated as one of those 'Yes Minister' irregular verbs: your

Jeffrey Grey is a Professor of History at the University of New South Wales, Canberra (ADFA), and foundation Director of the Australian Centre for the Study of Armed Conflict and Society. Democracies display a lamentable inclination to believe in 'peace dividends' and to retrench military

Markus Pfister writes: To sum it up: Surely then both Hugh White and James Goldrick can agree that we need to aim first for sea denial, and when that has been achieved we could and should spend the balance of our naval resources on achieving some degree of sea control, and that this worthy aim

Nic Stuart writes: What makes the current debate between James Goldrick and Hugh White so interesting is that it's grounded in capabilities – both platforms and systems. This is the hard edge of the defence debate; where our desire to have strategic options meets budgetary and political

Many thanks to James Goldrick for his responses to my recent Monthly discussion of maritime strategy in Australia's defence. James' recent retirement from the RAN is a loss to the ADF, but a gain to public debate, because he has long been the ADF's most learned maritime strategist. So I welcome

Rear Admiral (ret'd) James Goldrick AM, CSC is a Visiting Fellow at the Lowy Institute. This is the final post in a three-part series. Part 2 challenged claims by Lowy colleague Hugh White that Australia doesn't rely on the sea. Part 1 argued against White's assertion that sea control cannot be

Rear Admiral (ret'd) James Goldrick AM, CSC is a Visiting Fellow at the Lowy Institute. In this three-part series he challenges claims by Lowy colleague Hugh White that Australia cannot achieve sea control. In my previous post  I pointed out how Hugh White's article, A Middling Power: Why

Jerry Hofhuis is an intern in the Lowy Institute's International Security Program. Indonesia's military is bolstering border security along the southern region of West Java, in part to address the 'smuggling of migrants to Australia'. An International Crisis Group report on Afghanistan argues 

Tom Hyland is a freelance journalist and former foreign editor of The Age and The Sunday Age. This is the first of a two-part post. When Australian troops go on patrol with the Afghan army, and things turn nasty, who’s in charge? The question, which goes to the heart of  Australia's effort

Brett Biddington is a retired RAAF officer who consults on space and cyberspace matters. In the past five years, Australian policy makers in and beyond Defence have devoted a lot more attention to Australia's interest in space and to developing appropriate policy settings. Since December 2008,

Major Gen (Retd) Jim Molan is author of Running the War in Iraq. Sam Roggeveen asks an interesting question: if you face an uncertain strategic future, how do you structure a defence force? Any threat from a major Asian land power is so unpredictable at present that to structure the ADF only

Below, Nic Stuart responds to Sam Roggeveen\'s post asking how defence planning can occur when our ability to forecast the future is so poor. But first, Lindsay Bignell: Without knowing the probabilities of which scenarios are more or less likely, it would seem sensible to plan on that

Bernardo Camejo writes: There\'s been a lot of debate going on about defence spending in Australia, mainly among experts who know what they\'re talking about, and whose opinions should be heeded by policy-makers. I\'d like to add my two cents to the argument, not because I want to contradict

Major Gen (Retd) Jim Molan is author of Running the War in Iraq. It was fascinating to watch the announcement by the Minister and the Chief of Air Force on the purchase of the Boeing EA-18G Growler advanced electronic warfare capability. The system will be acquired using a US purchasing

Major Gen (Retd) Jim Molan is author of Running the War in Iraq. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute is a significant national resource for the consideration of strategic and security issues, and its people are truly world class. Rod Lyon recently put out a paper titled Strategic Contours: