Defence & Security

The strategic order and the nature of conflict are changing. Security competition between nations and military strategy are growing in complexity even as new transnational challenges deepen. The Lowy Institute’s experts in security and defence look at changing strategic relations, security architecture, nuclear strategy, military capabilities and defence and intelligence policy.

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Bringing home Australian children trapped in Syrian camps

The Covid-19 pandemic has dominated global and local news to such an extent for the last 18 months that there remains room for little else. But the aftermath of military campaigns in the broader Middle East has continued to generate headlines. Most recently it was the debate over Canberra’s

By Rodger Shanahan

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US-China rivalries: What matters for ASEAN

An interesting discussion about how Australia should respond to US President Joe Biden’s call for closer alignment and cooperation among democratic states has featured in a recent series of articles on The Interpreter. Between them, Susannah Patton and Ashley Townshend, Michael Green, Ben

By Nurliana Kamaruddin

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Bringing the grey zone into focus

Australia’s 2020 Defence Strategic Update was, by the standards of such publications, a hard-hitting document. It had a particularly strong focus on grey zone activities, seen as increasingly troubling the Indo-Pacific and involving “military and non-military forms of assertiveness and coercion

By Peter Layton

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Russia’s National Security Strategy: Same book, new cover

“The weak get beaten,” declared Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2004 after the Beslan tragedy. Russia’s recently-unveiled new National Security Strategy bears the stamp of Putin’s world view. It is not a revolutionary document, but builds on familiar themes identified in its 2015

By Ian Hill

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China’s law on conscription under revision

Last December the Chinese government released its updated National Defence Law in order to rectify the law with changes in the organisation, structure and missions of the Chinese armed forces undertaken over the past two decades, especially those resulting from force-wide reforms initiated on 31

By Dennis J. Blasko

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Afghanistan, Australia and the visa conundrum

With the advance of the Taliban in parts of Afghanistan and the withdrawal of coalition forces, the question of how to help Afghans who worked intimately with Australian forces has become a significant media and political issue. Former Prime Minister John Howard, who dispatched Australian troops to

By Rodger Shanahan

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Abandoning Afghanistan won’t bring peace

Bagram airbase, the nerve centre of US and allied forces operations in Afghanistan, turned into a ghost town over the American Independence Day 4 July weekend. Reports indicate that US forces left in the dead of night on 2 July without informing their Afghan counterparts. Afghans are stunned that

By Nishank Motwani

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Australia right to back Biden on democracy

Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s recent speech, “A world order that favours freedom”, has some foreign policy commentators worried that Australia is signing up to more misguided US democracy evangelism. Australian suspicion of American liberal internationalism has a long history. And it’s

By Ben Scott

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A zero-trust approach to cyber security

Amid the steady deterioration of the US–China relationship in recent years, China has become the focus of a new narrative on cyber risks, with one company targeted in particular, China’s champion of 5G technology, Huawei. Australia was the first country to ban Huawei from a 5G rollout, in 2018

By David Morris

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Standing with Afghanistan: Inclusion and women’s rights in peace talks

The agreement signed by the United States and the Taliban in February 2020 sought to end America’s (and Australia’s) longest-running war. After nearly two decades of conflict, the US and NATO allies committed to withdrawing all foreign military personnel from Afghanistan. In exchange, the

By Azadah Raz Mohammad, Jenna Sapiano, Felicity Gerry, Jacqui True

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Jagged sphere

China’s quest for infrastructure and influence in mainland Southeast Asia

By Greg Raymond

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The risks of escalating strategic competition in the Pacific Islands

When US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Pacific Island leaders about the dangers of “economic coercion” and “retribution” in an address on 2 June, he echoed a familiar view. By virtue of their “smallness” and “remoteness” Pacific Island states are presumed to be vulnerable

By Joanne Wallis

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Maladies, remedies and optimising security

Last week, Peter Dutton gave his first speech as Minister for Defence. In his remarks and follow up Q&A, Dutton touched on the increasing risk of war “especially through miscalculation or misunderstanding”, the challenge of China, and the relationship with the United States as being “

By Victor Abramowicz

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An alliance of democracies is essential

Susannah Patton and Ashley Townshend argued in The Interpreter last week that the Morrison government should steer the Biden administration away from a coalition of world democracies since that would narrow Australian and American influence in the Indo-Pacific. An inflexible insistence that

By Michael J Green

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Myanmar, terrorism and the demands of international politics

During the 1970s and 1980s, when international terrorism was capturing global headlines and exercising the minds of governments and security experts, there were heated arguments over how to describe this kind of political violence. It was more than just a theoretical exercise, as a rigorous

By Andrew Selth

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Australia should steer the US off a values-based Indo-Pacific strategy

En route to his first in-person meeting with President Joe Biden this weekend, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has called for coordinated action among liberal democracies to compete with China in the Indo-Pacific. His speech to the Perth USAsia Centre on Wednesday will be well-received by the US

By Susannah Patton, Ashley Townshend

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Can violent extremist content online be eliminated?

Two years ago, New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and France’s President Emmanuel Macron called together governments and tech companies to act to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online. The first Christchurch Call to Action summit was held in Paris in May 2019, two

By Christine Agius, Belinda Barnet

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Australia's South China Sea Challenges

Canberra needs to work with Southeast Asia to address looming South China Sea challenges from China and the US

By Malcolm Cook

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How Gaza occupies Indonesia’s identity wars

Indonesia’s public debate over the issue of Palestinian rights was reawakened by the latest violence, which claimed at least 243 lives in Gaza and 12 in Israel before an eventual ceasefire. Social media was especially animated by vehement arguments as most Indonesians – 86.7% of whom identify as

By Johannes Nugroho

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The challenge to the Abraham Accords

For countries party to the so-called Abraham Accords – the series of diplomatic agreements that normalised relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco and were much-lauded by the Trump administration – the latest outbreak of violence between Israel and the

By Rodger Shanahan

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Long-ago battle in Solomon Islands keeps claiming lives

Solomon Islands is littered with unexploded bombs, a legacy of the Second World War as the site of one of the fiercest battles between Japan and the United States in the Pacific. Much of the population across the islands still live with unknown quantities of explosive remains left behind from the

By Gina Kekea

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Indonesia responds to the cyber dark side

The “DarkSide” ransomware cyber-attack on the US-based gasoline facility Colonial Pipeline, which has disrupted East Coast fuel supplies and invoked emergency legislation, has once again highlighted the vulnerability of a nation’s critical infrastructure to malicious cyber activity. In

By Greta Nabbs-Keller, RM Wibawanto Nugroho Widodo

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The Crisis after the Crisis: How Ladakh will Shape India’s Competition with China

The border crisis in Ladakh may end in war or peace — or it may never end

By Arzan Tarapore

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Pakistani Taliban turn on China

A deadly bomb blast rocked the Serena Hotel last month in Pakistan’s south-western city of Quetta, leaving five dead and 12 critically injured. The bomb exploded just as a VIP guest and his entourage were barely five minutes away from the site. He was Nong Rong, Ambassador of the People’s

By Adnan Aamir

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Submission to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security: Inquiry into extremist movements and radicalism in Australia

On 19 February, Lowy Institute Research Fellow Lydia Khalil made a submission to the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Intelligence and Security inquiry into extremist movements and radicalism in Australia.

By Lydia Khalil

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No surprise: Spying from space is a good thing

Espionage is a surprisingly familiar topic for something that is supposed to take place in secret. From James Bond movies to stories of Mata Hari to disclosures by Edward Snowden and others, the average citizen has seen countless examples of what is supposed to be a covert craft. Strangely,

By Bryan R. Early, Erik Gartzke

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The Quad’s uneasy place in Southeast Asia

Last month, the leaders of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue – the United States, Japan, India and Australia – met for the first time. Promising to strive for a region that is “free, open, inclusive, healthy, anchored by democratic values, and unconstrained by coercion”, the Quad

By Ivy Kwek

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Iran-US-Israel: Boxing out of the shadows

Just as the negotiations between Tehran and Washington appear to be making some, albeit slow, progress over the United State rejoining the nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, several incidents between Israel and Iran have again highlighted just how actively the two

By Rodger Shanahan

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The Quad (finally) delivers: Can it be sustained?

On 19 March, the leaders of four important democracies of the Indo-Pacific region – the United States, Japan, Australia and India – held (virtually) their first-ever “Quad Summit.” This meeting at the leaders’ level of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue was significant on two counts. It

By Susan Thornton

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An interim government would bring ruin to Afghanistan

The Afghan government is fighting for survival as external and internal actors exploit its weaknesses in preparation for a US exit. The latest US initiatives to bring “a responsible end” to the Afghan war will likely have the opposite effect, pushing the Afghan government closer to a knife’s

By Nishank Motwani

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The Mozambique Channel is the next security hotspot

The waters off Mozambique are becoming a major new security hotspot in the Indian Ocean. An Islamist insurrection in northern Mozambique that the government seems powerless to suppress has also increasingly led to disruption in the Mozambique Channel, a key global shipping route. The Quad countries

By David Brewster

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Lessons from Christchurch

The tragedy of 51 people murdered and many more injured two years ago by an Australian-born far-right extremist was commemorated in Christchurch this week by the New Zealand government along with family and friends of the victims. For the community – in New Zealand most importantly, but also in

By Hannah Léser

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Aggressive sea control isn’t an option for India’s navy

An interesting debate has emerged in the pages of The Interpreter involving maritime strategy. Arzan Tarapore wrote an article last month arguing that India should prioritise a sea denial strategy in the Indian Ocean aimed at “reinforcing defensive bulwarks “ that could dissuade China from “

By Abhijit Singh

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The US and the Rules-Based Order: Testing the plan

US President Joe Biden this month issued an Interim National Security Guidance which will, in his words, “convey my vision for how America will engage the world”. He has directed departments and agencies “to align their actions with this guidance”. This document also provides some answers

By Ben Scott

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The Quad gives a boost to India’s vaccine diplomacy

The most notable takeaway from the first-ever “Quad” leaders meeting involving the US, India, Japan and Australia at the weekend was the agreement on expanding the global vaccine supply. The vaccination capacity of India will be increased to produce 1 billion doses by 2022, the leaders announced

By Teesta Prakash

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A new “concert” to govern the Indo-Pacific

The joint statement issued following the weekend meeting of the four “Quad” leaders was titled “The Spirit of the Quad”. This title could be read as either self-affirmation or self-praise. The Quad’s first summit of leaders was a somewhat informal affair, held virtually amid a global

By Pang Zhongying

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An oil spill nobody owns

What does the continuing, low-intensity conflict between Israel and Iran have to do with the mysterious oil spill that has washed ashore along the coast of Israel and southern Lebanon in recent weeks, leaving a costly ecological disaster? Nothing at all was the first assumption. But as more

By Rodger Shanahan

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Russia wants to be a power to be reckoned with in the Indian Ocean

February this year was marked by a heightened Russian naval activity in the Indian Ocean. Russian naval task groups drawn from the Baltic and Black Sea fleets took part in two international naval exercises – one with Iran and another as part of Pakistan-led multilateral exercise AMAN 21. Russia’

By Alexey Muraviev

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Sea denial is not enough: An Australian and Indian perspective

In recent years – and for good reason - the strategic commentariat in both Australia and India has become increasingly concerned with the rise of China’s maritime power and the potential threat that this development poses for both nations. How each nation should respond is a difficult problem,

By James Goldrick, Sudarshan Y. Shrikhande

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Agalega: A glimpse of India’s remote island military base

The small, remote Mauritian island of North Agalega, located in the south-western Indian Ocean, 1,122 kilometres north of Mauritius, is currently a hive of construction activity. India sought access to the islands in 2015 to develop as an air and naval staging point for surveillance of the south-

By Samuel Bashfield

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How far would Australia go in defence of the rules-based order?

Last month, I alerted Interpreter readers to a new Lowy Institute debate feature on America and the Rules-based Order. In my comments about the debate, I said that Australia faced “the biggest foreign and security policy challenge of all: defending ourselves and our interests without the help of

By Sam Roggeveen

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India must be realistic about Russia relations

The visit to Moscow by India’s Foreign Secretary Harsh Shringla on 17–18 February was his first overseas trip outside South Asia during the corona crisis, underscoring the importance India attaches to its strategic partnership with Russia. But it is a relationship where New Delhi must also be

By Anita Inder Singh

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Australia’s silence on Chagos dispute doesn’t help

Australia’s defence of the rules-based international order is based on enlightened self-interest. As the 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper made plain: “We will act on the principle that Australia will be safer and more prosperous in a global order based on agreed rules rather than one based on the

By Benjamin Herscovitch

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What are China’s leaders saying about the South China Sea?

When China began three days of military exercises in the South China Sea’s Gulf of Tonkin back in January, some observers speculated that Beijing was testing the new Biden administration. Harsh words from Beijing accompanied the exercises, with China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin

By Oriana Skylar Mastro

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Terrorism and New Zealand’s dual citizenship conundrum

Last week, the issue of depriving an individual of their citizenship because of terrorist activity made headlines once again. An alleged Islamic State member, Suhayra Aden, had been detained by Turkish authorities crossing from Syria into Turkey and was being readied for deportation to New Zealand.

By Rodger Shanahan

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Afghanistan: To leave or not to leave

The peace agreement between the United States and Taliban signed in Doha last February is likely to be scrapped if the US and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation unilaterally decide to stay in Afghanistan beyond 1 May, the withdrawal deadline set in the agreement. With a presence of around 10

By Syed Fazl-e-Haider

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Democracy vs autocracy: Biden’s “inflection point”

US President Joe Biden’s address to the Munich Security Conference last week was notable for this statement: We are in the midst of a fundamental debate about the future and direction of our world. We’re at an inflection point between those who argue that, given all the challenges

By Sam Roggeveen

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Eyes on the Prize: Australia, China, and the Antarctic Treaty System

Despite China’s increasing assertiveness in Antarctica, the Antarctic Treaty System is not failing and Australia should refrain from geostrategic panic

By Claire Young

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The power of example: America’s presence in Diego Garcia

In remarks delivered at the US State Department in early February, President Joe Biden championed the rule of law as part of “America’s abiding advantage” and spelled out his vision for a nation leading “not just by the example of our power but by the power of our example”. In its swing

By Blake Herzinger

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Scottish independence and the implications for British defence

For the better part of a decade, the United Kingdom has witnessed a deteriorating security environment, whether from a more aggressive Russia, a retreating United States or the implications posed by Brexit. It is for this reason that the British government has raised two important approaches.

By Conor McLaughlin

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