By Paul Dibb The coronavirus pandemic will affect the power of countries in different ways. The biggest impact will be reductions in the economic, and therefore military, strength and relative power of competing major states. The American historian Walter Russell Mead says that ‘the balance of world power could change significantly as…
By Pierre Tran Paris - Naval Group seeks to cut costs in a “savings plan” and conserve cash in response to a slowdown in shipbuilding due to the Codevi 19 crisis, the company said. “While the productive activity of all Naval Group’s shipyards has been reduced, Naval Group is launching…
On April 17, 2020, the Norwegian government released its Long Term Defence Plan. The plan reaffirmed Norway’s commitment to increased defense spending and joint force modernization. But it also underscored the continued efforts on national resilience which the current Coronavirus-19 crisis has underscored as a key requirement for national defense…
By Robbin Laird With a growing array of single service initiatives designed to compete for “deterrence badges” in the great power competition, there is a clear danger of splintering deterrence rather than reinforcing it. In my recent discussion with Dr. Paul Bracken, the nuclear weapons expert, underscored the key importance…
By Robbin Laird The Coronavirus crisis and its management by the liberal democracies is clearly and inflection point. Moving forward choices will be made shaping the decade ahead in terms of basic national strategies as well as with allies. A key aspect of shaping a way ahead clearly will be…
By Paul Dibb Two important military developments recently should give China pause for thought. The first one is the announcement by Prime Minister Scott Morrison of a $1.1 billion upgrade to the Royal Australian Air Force base at Tindal, which is about 300 kilometres south of Darwin, to lengthen the…
By John Blackburn As we deal with the ongoing bushfire disaster in Australia it is worth reflecting on the report the Department of Home Affairs National Resilience Taskforce did in 2018 on Australia's disaster risk and vulnerabilities. The aim of the report was to help understand where to prioritize collective…
By Pierre Tran Paris - France seeks to maintain close ties with Britain after Brexit on a bilateral and multilateral basis, with the Macron administration proposing a European council for security and defense as an institutional link, a government official said. The Dec. 12th election resulted in the UK seeing…
