Allan Behm is Advisor, International & Security Affairs Program at the Australia Institute. He has a significant publishing record and is a respected commentator in the media. He specialises in international and security policy development and policy analysis.
Try as you might, you can’t make sense of the chaos in which random acts of violence occur. Chaos is unstructured — it has no rules. So when the inexplicable happens, we are hard-wired to ask “why”? if only to protect ourselves against reoccurrence. But to answer is impossible.
When did Russia win the war in Ukraine? Or when did Ukraine lose its war with Russia — not quite the same thing. Or when did President Trump hand Ukraine — or at least the valuable Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine — to President Putin? Again, not quite the same thing.
With dozens of strategic bombers and nine Carrier Strike Groups, the United States likes to maintain a near-permanent display of its military might (what defence groupies call “strategic posture”) around the globe. Until it can’t.
The botched execution of a Death Row inmate in Tennessee and her emergency transfer to hospital is a reminder — if we need one — of the brutality and callousness of much of America's approach to law and justice. For all the institutional and structural resonances between America and Australia, the differences between our civic values are as stark as ever.
Spare a thought for Saudi Arabia. Its almost-omnipotent leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) notwithstanding, it’s in dire straits — and not just in the Strait of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb. Its faith-based security strategy has left it in a diabolical position, with immeasurable consequences for the Middle East as a whole.
As America’s international behaviour since 9/11 so clearly demonstrates, the damage of 9/11 is burned deeply into the American psyche. America is perpetually hyper-vigilant, and perpetually defensive. It constantly reaches for military solutions to complex problems where diplomacy and some self-reflection might offer better outcomes.
Prime Minister Albanese didn’t look too enthusiastic as he set off for Palau on 31 August. He knows that Palau is another example of where insignificant does not mean inconsequential.
It’s not often that Sarah Ferguson’s ABC current affairs program 7.30 can be compared with Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, the new meme for everything. Odysseus navigated between a rock (Scylla) and a hard place (Charybdis, the whirlpool) to save his ship, his men and himself. One suspects that the Minister for Defence Industry, Pat Conroy, following his tricky 7.30 interview on 29 July 2026, now finds himself aligned with Homer’s imperfect hero.
At a conference where harmony and light and a continually beaming Prime Minister came at the expense of any serious discussion of AUKUS (or gas exports tax or Middle East issues for that matter), cementing AUKUS into South Australia’s industrial fabric looks like a monument to the Defence Minister’s role as the AUKUS enforcer.
Every Presidency runs an implicit profit and loss account. The Trump presidency is no different. But the profit and loss account is: Trump’s personal profits from the office of President are in the billions, while America’s losses in terms of authority, credibility, legitimacy and standing are spiralling by the day.
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