By Robbin Laird November 2025 articles published in The Australian reveal a troubling disconnect at the heart of Australian policy toward China, one that raises fundamental questions about how democracies should respond to authoritarian pressure while maintaining essential economic relationships. The contrast between Foreign Minister Penny Wong's carefully calibrated diplomatic…
By Robbin Laird My latest book on Australian defence has focused on the significant challenge facing liberal democracies to develop credible defense in depth capabilities that extend far beyond traditional force structures to encompass whole-of-society considerations. The contemporary security environment demands a fundamental reimagining of how nations prepare for, deter,…
John Blackburn, Air Vice Marshal (Retired) of the Royal Australian Air Force, stands as a leading Australian figure in advancing the discourse on national resilience, from traditional defense concepts to critical infrastructure protection and energy security. His journey, professional background, major published works, and founding of the Institute for Integrated…
By Nick Dowling In 2016, on a stage at Ohio State, I was asked to debate Donald Trump’s foreign policy. My answer was blunt: there wasn’t one. Trump wasn’t a neoclassical realist. He wasn’t an isolationist. He wasn’t anything you could diagram in an IR textbook. He improvised. And it…
By Robbin Laird The traditional architecture of naval power centered on capital ships projecting force through manned platforms is approaching obsolescence. Western navies stand at an inflection point where incremental adaptation will no longer suffice. The emergence, proliferation, and rapid development of maritime autonomous systems (MAS) demands nothing less than…
By Robbin Laird The January 3, 2026 U.S. operation in Venezuela can be understood not as an isolated hemispheric intervention, but as a deliberate strike against Russia's external energy ecosystem and sanctions-evasion machinery, designed to erode Moscow's war-fighting capacity in Ukraine over time. What is being reordered is not merely…
By Robbin Laird While finalizing my book to be published later this year, The Lessons From the Drone Wars, I watched a fascinating Wall Street Journal video which highlighted how a drone command center in Ukraine was operating against the Russian aggressor. Throughout the video they showed calibrated attacks on…
The Second Line of Defense effort has been focused on providing a venue for the expression of fresh thinking about the way ahead to deal with global challenges and defense innovation which can allow the military forces of the liberal democracies to compete effectively with their authoritarian competitors. Second Line…
