Articles

By John T. Kuehn: The ship of state that we call the United States is adrift at the political-strategic level or what some may call the grand strategic level. 24-hour news cycles, a president (and Congress) addicted to tweeting and posturing, an ambivalent and often ignorant public, and a complete failure by the national and sometimes international media to discern what is of value from what is pabulum has led to strategic gridlock in the foreign policy of the United States.

The Minister for Defence Industry, Christopher Pyne, and the Minister for Finance, Senator Mathias Cormann, announced (December 2017) a workforce package that will bolster...

The story of the RAN Bridging Train and its remarkable service in the Gallipoli campaign is the subject of the Australian Naval History...

On the 75th anniversary of the final action of HMAS Armidale (I), the Royal Australian Navy has again paused to mark the loss of...

By Norman Friedman* In October, General Dynamics announced that its Knifefish unmanned underwater vehicle, which is to be part of the mine countermeasures module of...

JFD Australia has conducted two weeks of intensive exercises in submarine rescue off the coast of Western Australia. In some of the world’s most...

By W. Alejandro Sanchez* The Argentine Navy’s submarine ARA San Juan (S-42) disappeared in the South Atlantic, off the coast of Argentina, on 15 November. At the time of this writing, a multinational effort is underway to locate the platform and its 44-person crew. This tragic accident has prompted a discussion in Argentina regarding whether the country’s armed forces are being allocated sufficient budgets to repair or replace aging equipment. Additionally, the San Juan incident must be placed in a wider discussion about civil-military relations, defense budgets, and the present and future of South American submarines.

The Foreign Policy White Paper has much to commend it. But if there are few questions to be asked in these areas, there is a need to explore the weight which the Paper attaches to international rules, rules based orders and indeed ‘values’, Ric Smith writes.

By James Goldrick* This is an edited extract of a speech delivered to open the Australia-UK Asia Dialogue, co-hosted by the Lowy Institute and Ditchley Foundation, and supported by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Whether or not Brexit was a wise move for the United Kingdom, British efforts in the aftermath to push the case for a ‘Global Britain’ are both sensible and inevitable. Britain is right to remind itself and others that it remains, among other things, the world’s fifth largest economy, a member of the UN Security Council and of the nuclear club, and a significant player in many global activities. An increased British diplomatic and economic presence within the Indo-Pacific is a welcome development. But the accompanying promises of greater military engagement in the Indo-Pacific and elsewhere do not ring true.

By Brendan Thomas-Noone* America’s military-technological advantage, an aspect of its strategic power since the end of the Cold War, is eroding. In response, the Pentagon launched the third offset strategy in 2014—a department-wide effort to find new ways, both technological and institutional, to leap ahead of its competitors. In a new report for the United States Studies Centre, I argue that for the US the third offset is partly an answer to matching its stagnating defence budget with its strategic ambitions.