This paper asks where Australia's long economic expansion came from, what its defining characteristics are, and where it is going.

Most Australians agree that our country needs strong defence forces, but we are much less sure about what exactly we need them for. As a result we find it hard to decide what kind of military capabilities Australia should have. Today these decisions seem harder than ever, with little light being shed by acrimonious debates...

The competition for diplomatic recognition between China and Taiwan is destabilising Island states in the South Pacific, making Pacific politics more corrupt and violent. The Solomon Islands provides the clearest evidence of what happens when an island state becomes a battleground in this contest. Australia is in the front line in the South Pacific. Australia...

The immersion of foreign terrorists in the long-running Moro Islamic insurgency in the southern Philippines turned the Philippines into a front line in the regional war on terror. The direct links between terrorist safe havens in Mindanao and the Bali bombings of 2002 and 2005 brought this traumatically home to Australia. The decade-old peace process...

In the last three and a half years, 'Iraq' has come to stand for many things beyond a geographical location and a state: a political and moral commitment; the first testing of a new and hugely ambitious strategic doctrine; a bloody, many-sided conflict involving terrible atrocities; examples of hubris and incompetence; a bitter debate and...