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.
Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles has released the defence strategy you have when you don’t have a defence strategy. What the Deputy Prime Minister offers as justification for this strategy requiring large dollops of recurrent and prospective spending, amounts to little more than a collection of unsupported, and possibly unsupportable, assertions.
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As we line up at the petrol bowser to pay 60 cents per litre more – and rising – than we did before the US and Israel attacked Iran, we should remind ourselves how indebted we are to Don and Bibi. And indebted is the word. Iran’s approach to asymmetric warfare hits the global community’s hip pocket hard, as it is intended to do. Erosion of political support is the result.
Prime Minister Curtin’s Christmas 1941 newspaper column advised the Australian people that henceforth we would look to America as our protector rather than Britain. To have questioned our trust in the USA at that time would have been unthinkable. A decade later, under Prime Minister Menzies, trust was cemented into the ANZUS treaty, which has remained the cornerstone of Australia’ security and self-confidence ever since. It has become an article of faith.
For some strange reason, foursomes are back in vogue. Maybe it’s the persistence of Bridge Clubs, or the strange return of American Foursomes in the golfing world. How else can one explain the hold that quadrilaterals have over the imaginations of defence planners in the US and Australia?
On Sunday 15 February, Prime Minister Albanese and Defence Industry Minister Conroy, with South Australian Premier Malinauskas in tow, launched the new AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine construction site at Osborne, to the west of Adelaide. Defence Minister Marles was conspicuously inconspicuous.
Here’s a question that everyone should be asking as global rupture (to use Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s word) spreads. What’s the best way to make the world more lawless, more chaotic and much more dangerous? The answer is stunningly simple. Defund the institutions responsible for managing the international rules-based order.
Japan’s Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, may be a demon on the drum kit. She is most certainly a skilful politician. Her decisive victory in Japan’s elections last weekend shows just how deft she is in playing the China card.
NATO is in its death throes, with US President Donald Trump smashing the trust that underpins it. But while NATO members have the ability to go their own way, things are not so clear-cut for ANZUS
The final months of 2025 saw Prime Minister Albanese undertake a series of embarrassingly underwhelming visits to Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea. The focus of the visits was enhanced security arrangements designed more to constrain China’s attempts to strengthen its own security relationships with the Pacific and less to build a sustainable security culture among the nations of the Pacific.
