From 17 to 25 May 2019 , the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle and his escort conducted a series of exercises in the Bay of Bengal with representatives from the United States Marines, Australia and Japan. [maxgallery id="125387"] Dubbed "La Pérouse", this series of naval exercises allows France to maintain…
By Eamon Hamilton The Secretary-General of the United Nations, and other dignitaries, toured the South-West Pacific with the assistance of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). António Guterres visited Fiji, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu from May 14-18. His visited included attendance at the Pacific Islands Forum and bilateral talks with regional…
The defeat of Labor was not widely expected in Australia. Scott Morrison led the Liberals to a largely unanticipated electoral victory. This will mean that as PM in which he clearly led the coalition to victory he will have more authority initially than might be normal in the Aussie context.…
By Kenneth Maxell Frank D. McCann, professor of history emeritus at the University of New Hampshire, has long been an observer of US-Brazilian military relationships. He knows both sides very intimately. He taught at West Point in the 1960s during the Vietnam War. He met privately with the Vice-President of…
By Richard Weitz Last month, Second Line of Defense attended the eighht annual Moscow Conference on International Security (MCIS-2019), which met from April 24-26. The Russian capital was surprisingly warm, with the temperature higher than in Washington, but the frigidity of the Russian-U.S. relationship was pervasive at the conference. The…
By Robbin Laird Clearly, Europe is in crisis. In my own view, it faces a double constitutional crisis. Brexit is an internal constitutional crisis in the "United" Kingdom and poses a constitutional crisis within the European "Union" which is itself undergoing significant regional devolution. The continental European economies are facing…
By Ed Timperlake As the Guaidó forces on the streets of Venezuela were losing the tactical battle, a strategic defeat was rapidly approaching, that is until the president made an historic phone call to President Putin. That call accomplished a most important objective: President Trump personally built new strategic maneuvering space,…
By Marcus Hellyer Yesterday (April 29, 2019) from the election campaign trail in Western Australia, Prime Minister Scott Morrison made some naval shipbuilding announcements relating to the Royal Australian Navy’s mine-clearing and hydrographic capabilities. Speaking from the Henderson shipyard south of Perth, he announced that more ships would be built in ……
