Risks are growing that China-centric maritime incidents could lead to war in Asia. Authors Rory Medcalf and Raoul Heinrichs, with maritime adviser Justin Jones, examine the drivers of Asia’s growing maritime ‘crisis of confidence’, including clashes of sovereignty, national pride and military strategy. They examine the prospects for confidence-building measures to reduce those dangers, and...

New questions this year cover attitudes towards the US alliance and the war in Afghanistan, opinions on basing US forces in Australia, WikiLeaks, foreign aid and the intervention in Libya. The Poll also repeated questions asked in previous years, revealing trends in public opinion on topics such as climate change, asylum seekers, and attitudes towards...

This paper argues that Australia's current defence strategy does not correspond with the realities of it's security situation. The plan for the modernisation of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) is focused on expensive maritime and air capabilities for conflicts that the ADF couldn’t fight alone. Consequently, the ADF is exposed with an atrophying ground force...

This paper argues that if Australia continues to exclude nuclear power, it will likely remain the OECD's highest per capita greenhouse gas emitter. The governments of most major industrial economies have concluded that if the world is serious about mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, nuclear power, along with conservation and renewables, must be part of the...

In this paper, global experts and emerging scholars share their core assessments on the future of the so-called nuclear umbrella. For decades, extended nuclear deterrence (END) has supported stability and non-proliferation. But questions need to be asked about whether and how it might effectively endure in a changing world. Is END somehow coming to an...