It is a matter of national concern when senior ADF officers prefer to talk about climate change rather than military art, and define strategy in the language of corporate governance rather than that of Clausewitz. Moreover, when Special Forces soldiers can be accused of war crimes—but no senior officers are held accountable—something is wrong in the professional culture of the ADF

If China takes Taiwan in a fait accompli, US credibility in Asia would be shattered. To prevent such an epoch-changing shift, former CIA hand Elbridge Colby argues in an important new book that Beijing must be forced assume the burden of any offensive it undertakes while standing condemned before the altar of world opinion,. In other words, to replay Athens at Syracuse, Germany in the Battle of Britain, and Argentina in the Falklands

Thirteen defence ministers have come and gone since 2001, a ceaseless churn that has seen incumbents obliged to co-ordinate rather than control. With three distinct and horizontally divided components -- the political class, civilian bureaucracy and the profession of arms -- the result has been a collective failure to coordinate aims and policies

Hitler’s disdain for many of his generals was exacerbated by his philosophy on the role of war in human affairs. Far more than Clausewitz’s “politics by other means”, it was an extension of biological domination in which ecstatic violence was the highest expression of the life force

It was always hubris for Western policy-makers and intellectuals to think that a resurgent China would or could be contentedly integrated into a US-led international system. Beijing's recent conduct further bolsters the case for a sweeping rejuvenation of thinking about defence and national security

I have yet to find any respected social scientist who […]

Perhaps the best single defence against suicide ideation in the ranks is for the ADF to uphold the natural grace of the military profession—a grace that underlies an ethos of service and steadfastness of spirit—and which embeds these virtues in a community of comrades

In the Stoic catechism there is no such category as 'victimhood'. Rather, there is empowerment by perception -- a cultivation of an invincibility of the will through a mixture of Socratic self-examination and controlling the emotions. Sadly, such sentiments are at odds with a self-indulgent age

The reconstruction of the past is not an end in […]