Jennifer Parker | 10 March 2026 *Originally published in the Australian Financial Review on 10 March 2026 Image: A Royal Australian Air Force E-7A Wedgetail comes in to land as it arrives at Nellis Air Force Base, United States, for Exercise Bamboo Eagle 26-1. Defence images/ LACW Nell Bradbury Eight days into the escalating conflict between the United States, Israel and Iran, Australia has announced a limited contribution to help under-attack Gulf states detect and shoot down Iranian missiles and drones. While the outcome of the conflict remains far from certain and few people would pretend to know how a war of this scale will unfold, Australia is right to support the United States and the defence of the Gulf states under attack, within limits. Within these limits is Australia’s contribution of an airborne early warning aircraft and air-to-air missiles to help defend Gulf partners from Iranian missile and drone attacks. Tehran has spent decades building the capability and networks needed to destabilise the region, threaten maritime trade and project coercion well beyond the Middle East. Much of the Australian debate has focused narrowly on whether the use of force complies with international law . That question matters. But a binary fixation on the letter of the law risks missing the broader strategic reality: Iran’s behaviour has long posed a challenge that the international community has struggled to address decisively. Under the United Nations Charter, the lawful use of force is confined to two situations: self-defence or authorisation by the UN Security Council. While legal scholars debate the boundaries of collective or pre-emptive self-defence, actions that fall outside those criteria are meant to sit within the authority of the Security Council. Historically, the Security Council has authorised major military action, including the defence of South Korea in 1950 and the liberation of Kuwait during the first Gulf War in 1991. But in 2026, the Security Council has largely ceased to function as an effective mechanism for responding to major threats to international peace and security. This paralysis has been most obvious in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, carried out by a permanent member of the Security Council itself. But it was evident earlier in the Security Council’s failure to prevent North Korea from developing nuclear weapons before its first test in 2006. In the absence of a functioning Security Council, the international system lacks a clear mechanism to address emerging security threats. Iran has become one of those threats through both its advancing nuclear capabilities and the network of proxies it supports across the Middle East. “A disciplined US intervention in Iran serves Australian, regional and global interests, even if it brings short-term economic costs.” This is the delicate legal and political dance national leaders are now performing, one rarely stated openly. As Mark Carney observed at the World Economic Forum in Davos, “the story of the international rules-based order was partially false”. International law has served middle powers like Australia well, underpinning decades of security and prosperity. But there are moments when the legal framework struggles to deal with emerging threats. Even without a clear self-defence justification, action against Iran still serves Australia’s security interests. This does not mean that might makes right, or that international law should be abandoned. But there are moments when the international system simply struggles to deal with regional and global threats. It is in this context that degrading Iran’s military capability and proxy network is in Australia’s interests. The government’s position of qualified defensive support to the Gulf states is therefore the right one. Not because Australia automatically backs everything the United States does, but because doing so advances Australia’s own security interests. A limited Australian deployment to help defend Gulf states from Iranian missile and drone attacks would also be consistent with that approach. But the key word is limited. Australia should not provide open-ended support. Lengthy Middle East commitments have often undermined Australian Defence Force preparedness and distracted from China’s growing military challenge in our region. A targeted contribution helping detect and defend against missile and drone attacks on Gulf states is strategically sensible. A further naval contribution to help keep the Strait of Hormuz open, as Australia has done previously, would also support global trade and energy security. The strait remains one of the world’s most important maritime choke points. Done properly, this approach allows Australia to achieve several objectives at once.

Jennifer Parker | 6 March 2026 *Originally published in The Strategist on 6 March 2026 Image: Rodney Braithwaite/Department of Defence . Fifty years after the Tange reforms created the modern Australian Defence Force, Australia faces a structural problem that few are willing to confront: steady erosion of the service chiefs’ authority. Over successive reviews and reorganisations, the chiefs have kept responsibility for generating, preparing and sustaining the Royal Australian Navy, Australian Army and Royal Australian Air Force. But they have progressively lost the authority needed for this. In an era described by our leaders as the most challenging strategic environment since World War II, this dilution of authority risks leaving Australia less prepared for crisis or conflict. If the government is serious about structural reform, restoring meaningful authority to the service chiefs must be part of the conversation. Defence Minister Richard Marles told The Australian ’s Defending Australia conference in June that structural reform was coming, insisting everything was on the table to ensure Defence was fit for purpose. The government delivered in December, announcing a new Defence Delivery Agency and calling it the most consequential defence reform in 50 years. It is indeed significant. But the most consequential change of the past half century has been the progressive centralisation of authority away from the services themselves. It was half a century ago that the Defence Force Reorganisation Act implemented the recommendations of the 1973 review by defence secretary Sir Arthur Tange. That reform abolished the separate departments of Navy, Army, Air Force and Supply, created a single Department of Defence and consolidated the services under what is now the chief of defence force, forming the Australian Defence Force. The next major shift came with the 1997 establishment of Headquarters Australian Theatre, now Joint Operations Command . It greatly improved joint operations but also moved operational responsibility from the service chiefs to a joint commander. The chiefs were left responsible for generating, training and sustaining their forces but increasingly without the matching authority. Almost every review since Tange has deepened centralisation. Among the most significant was the 2023 creation of the Military Personnel Division , which shifted career management and broader workforce issues to a joint three-star role, leaving the service chiefs with limited influence over their own people. Many of these reforms were driven by a peacetime search for efficiency. But Australia is no longer in a business-as-usual environment. The most challenging strategic circumstances since WWII demand a force that is effective, not merely efficient. A lesson from the war in Ukraine is that over-centralisation can become a serious liability, while decentralisation is a major source of resilience and adaptability. Australia learnt this the hard way at the outbreak of WWII. In 1939, the government was forced to create a standalone Department of the Navy because the existing Defence Department could not expand the RAN fast enough and support national coordination efforts. This model may not be viable in 2025, but our own wartime experience shows that excessive centralisation does not work when rapid adaptation is required. Authority is dispersed across Defence, and accountability for preparing the services is blurred. This only deepens the challenge of preparing the ADF for the real possibility of conflict in our region and, as the chief of defence force warned in June, the prospect of fighting from Australian soil. Each service must rebuild its culture, workforce, capability and preparedness to meet the prospect of potential conflict, or a military crisis short of it. Only the service chiefs can provide that. There is an additional national responsibility. In a crisis, the services are critical in managing national requirements, ports, airspace, coastal shipping and more. Such tasks are too vast to be managed fully by Joint Operations Command. They also demand domain expertise and clear leadership, but the continued erosion of the chiefs’ authority leaves them unable to meet that obligation. This is not a call to return to the pre-Tange era or to move away from joint operations, both of which have brought important benefits. There is clear value in commonality and in centralising some elements of capability and workforce, but common processes do not require removing overall control from the service chiefs. This is a call to examine our Defence structure, as Tange did in 1973, and ask whether it remains the most effective model for the challenges ahead. Within that structure, we must determine what role the service chiefs should play as heads of profession in preparing their forces and in supporting the nation during a broader security crisis. This should include serious consideration of restoring four-star rank to the service chiefs, subordinate by function to the chief of defence force but clearly positioned above other groups, to re-establish authority over the forces they are charged to prepare. This would be consistent with the structures used by many of our key partners. The Defence Delivery Agency is not the most significant reform in 50 years, but the willingness to rethink Defence at the scale proposed above would be. If we are serious about preparing for the challenges ahead, any structural reform must restore real authority to the service chiefs so they can build and shape their forces to be ready to fight.

Jennifer Parker | 1 March 2026 *Originally published in The Sydney Morning Herald on 1 March 2026 Image: President Donald J. Trump Monitors U.S. Military Operations in Iran: Operation Epic Fury, February 28, 2026. White House Twitter Account Last night, a missile struck the United States 5th Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, a base where I served in 2023. That strike is a reminder of how much the strategic landscape has hardened in recent years. The United States and Israel have struck Iran. Tehran has responded immediately, targeting US and Israeli forces across the Gulf. This is not a limited reprise of last year’s strike on Iran’s nuclear program. The objective now appears broader. Washington appears to be attempting something far more ambitious than its limited strike in June 2025. It is seeking to remove what it views as a persistent source of instability in the region: the regime of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei , who US President Donald Trump says was killed in the strikes on his compound. It is a significant gamble. Whether it succeeds will not be clear for some time. How did we get here, and what does it mean for Australia? The answer to both is complex. Much will be written in coming days about the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the 1983 bombing of US Marines in Beirut, and the attack on USS Cole in Yemen in 2000. But the more relevant point is what Iran has represented strategically over the past two decades. In recent years, Iran has acted as a destabilising force across the Middle East, relying on proxies to conduct attacks in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Israel, with Iranian-linked activity also reported in Australia last year. This has been reinforced by direct action, including the 2019 missile strikes on Saudi Arabia and persistent harassment of commercial shipping. Some incidents make headlines. Many do not. Iran’s 2019 campaign of attacking merchant vessels in the Gulf of Oman, including the seizure of a commercial ship in the Strait of Hormuz, had tangible consequences. War risk insurance premiums rose sharply for vessels transiting the strait, a waterway through which roughly a quarter of the world’s oil flows. It was this pattern of attacks that prompted my 2020 Royal Australian Navy deployment to the Middle East as part of the International Maritime Security Construct , helping protect freedom of navigation through one of the world’s most critical chokepoints. Since 1979, the US and its allies have repeatedly surged forces to manage instability linked to Iran, while also in the past two decades sustaining major commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Middle East has consumed strategic attention, military resources and political capital. That sustained focus constrained Washington’s ability to compete as effectively as it might have with China. The Indo-Pacific was emerging as the central theatre of strategic competition while the US and its allies remained absorbed elsewhere. Washington has attempted to step back. During my time at the US 5th Fleet in Bahrain from 2022 to 2023, US naval force flow in the Middle East was at its lowest level in decades. Yet the Middle East still matters. The US has enduring allies and economic interests there, and Iran’s destabilising activity continued to draw American forces back. In 2025 and 2026, aircraft carriers were diverted from the Indo-Pacific, where they were intended to deter China, to respond to crises in the Middle East. For a country that identifies China as its primary strategic competitor, that reallocation sits uneasily with its stated priorities. Iran has also advanced a nuclear program with long-term weapons ambitions. There is no publicly available evidence that it was on the verge of acquiring a nuclear weapon, and many assessments suggest it remained years away, if at all. Even so, Iran’s hardened and dispersed nuclear infrastructure ensured that it would remain a persistent strategic complication for the US. Facilities constructed deep underground and bolstered against air attack are difficult to reconcile with a purely civilian nuclear intent. In his address following the strikes, President Trump indicated that regime change in Tehran was an objective, though not the sole one. That rhetoric raises the stakes. Moving from degrading capability to seeking political transformation alters the scale and risk of the undertaking. There is no widely accepted historical example of air power alone producing regime change without ground invasion, internal uprising or elite defection. US efforts at regime transformation in the Middle East have produced mixed results at best. This is therefore a high-risk strategic play. If this succeeds, it could remove one persistent adversary from the US’ strategic calculus and allow greater focus on the Indo-Pacific. For Australia, China’s military modernisation and coercive behaviour in our region represent the most consequential long-term security challenge. Sustained US attention there matters to our strategic outlook. Periods of American distraction have carried costs. While Washington was absorbed in the Middle East, China accelerated island building and militarisation in the South China Sea. More recently, weapons support to Ukraine and operations against the Houthis have drawn down stockpiles and strained force availability. This attack on Iran may be an attempt to consolidate commitments rather than expand them. It may fail. It may deepen instability. But if it succeeds, it could strengthen deterrence in the Indo-Pacific and, in doing so, enhance Australia’s security.

Jennifer Parker | 27 February 2026 Image: Image of the battle cruiser HMAS Australia : Royal Australian Navy Sea Power Centre . 1 March 1901 marked the establishment of Australia’s Commonwealth military and naval forces, the foundation of today’s Royal Australian Navy and Australian Army . The sea service’s initial title was ‘Commonwealth Naval Forces’; a decade later King George V granted the title ‘Royal Australian Navy’. When the new fleet steamed through Sydney Heads in October 1913, Australians lined the harbour to witness a visible expression of sovereignty that had long rested with Britain. From the outset, some of Australia’s strategic thinkers understood a simple truth: the nation’s prosperity and security would rest on control of its surrounding seas. As an island continent dependent on maritime trade, Australia’s economic lifelines have always run across the sea. In the early decades of federation, that burden was largely carried by the Royal Navy. The fall of Singapore in 1942 exposed the limits of that assumption. The Royal Navy was not coming. Australia turned to the US Navy instead. The underlying reality did not change. Maritime power sits at the centre of Australia’s security. One hundred and twenty-five years after federation, the RAN faces a demanding decade as it seeks to renew its surface fleet and submarine force. The maritime domain is more contested than at any time since World War II. Attacks on maritime infrastructure and merchant shipping, rapid naval build-ups and the erosion of restraints on the use of force all point to intensifying strategic competition at sea. Yet it is across this domain that Australia’s critical lifelines travel: fuel, fertiliser, chemicals, pharmaceuticals and other essentials on which both the economy and the ability to fight depend. For decades, distance has been described as Australia’s strategic advantage, the sea cast as a moat. But Australia’s early strategists recognised a harder truth that remains valid today. The sea is also our vulnerability. Access to secure seaborne supply is not peripheral to national security. It is central to it. Yet Australia’s naval force structure has not always kept pace with that reality. The growing willingness of states to resort to military force and the resulting contestation of the maritime domain therefore represents Australia’s central military challenge. That reality was underscored in 2025 by the arrival of two separate Chinese naval task groups operating near Australia. It marked a significant shift: a regional power demonstrating the capacity to operate sustained naval forces in Australia’s approaches and, if required, put maritime lifelines at risk. Australia faces its most demanding strategic environment since WWII, and the RAN arguably confronts its most consequential period of reform. It must operate in an increasingly contested maritime domain while simultaneously recapitalising its fleet and introducing new capabilities. As technology evolves and the methods of warfare adapt, the RAN will be required to shoulder a broader set of responsibilities than it did in either of the world wars, while adapting to long range strike, uncrewed systems, intensified undersea competition, cyber operations and contestation in space. All of this is unfolding at a time when Australia is a fundamentally different country—demographically, politically and industrially—from the one that fought the world wars. The default reliance first on the Royal Navy and then on the US Navy no longer sits comfortably with contemporary expectations of sovereignty and responsibility. The alliance with the United States remains central to Australia’s security, but the notion that Washington would assume primary responsibility for Australia’s defence, as it effectively did in 1942, is unlikely to be acceptable to a modern Australia. After decades of delayed decisions , Australia now fields one of its smallest and oldest surface combatant fleets since WWII, alongside an ageing Collins-class submarine force and limited surge capacity in the Naval Reserve . Plans are in place to arrest that decline through the Hunter-class frigates, the acquisition of Japanese-designed Mogami-class frigates, and  the transition to nuclear-powered submarines under AUKUS. But these capabilities will not arrive until the 2030s, and each brings its own workforce, industrial and operational challenges for the RAN. Amid this period of change and challenge, the RAN must also reconnect with the Australian public, as it did in 1913 when the first fleet unit, a formation led by the battle cruiser HMAS Australia , sailed through Sydney Heads. Naval power has always required public understanding and political backing. Acquiring the first fleet unit was not inevitable. It was argued for forcefully in the national press by the then Captain William Creswell , the architect of Australia’s naval foundations. That same clarity of purpose will be required again to bring the public along on AUKUS and continuous naval shipbuilding. The RAN must be present in the national debate. The 125th anniversary of the RAN is more than commemoration; it is a reminder that maritime security remains central to Australia’s national survival, and that the choices made in this decade will determine whether the RAN can meet the demands placed upon it. One hundred and twenty-five years on, the RAN enters a decisive decade. It demands resolve from the navy and the nation it serves.

Jennifer Parker | 19 February 2026 *Originally published in the Lowy Institutes The Interpreter on 19 February 2026 The silence around a second Chinese naval deployment near Australia cost the public a chance to understand the risks. Image: A People’s Liberation Army-Navy Jiangkai-class frigate of the type that accompanied an amphibious ship (ADF/Defence Imagery) In parliamentary hearings earlier this month, Australia’s Chief of Defence Force confirmed for the first time that a Chinese navy amphibious ship had operated weeks beforehand in Australia’s near region. The deployment formed part of a second Chinese naval task group that operated close to Australia in 2025, following the circumnavigation of the continent by three Chinese warships in February and March last year. The earlier voyage drew attention. This one did not. That does not make it less significant. It represents a further demonstration of China’s growing capacity to project naval power toward Australia. Why does this matter? Because China is a major power in the region with which Australia’s national security interests are not aligned , and it now possesses the maritime capability to operate in ways that expose Australia’s greatest structural vulnerability, dependence on the sea. At Senate Estimates hearings on 11 February, the Chief of Defence Force confirmed that the December 2025 task group, comprising a Yushen class amphibious assault ship, a Renhai class cruiser, a Jiangkai class frigate and a Fuchi class replenishment vessel, transited into the Pacific, operating through the southwest Pacific near Noumea and north through the island chains and Papua New Guinea. It then approached Australia’s Exclusive Economic Zone, coming within five or seven nautical miles before heading north. Chinese naval vessels are entitled under international law to enter Australia’s Exclusive Economic Zone and may conduct exercises there, including gunnery activities . But Australia’s northeastern Exclusive Economic Zone is not a transit corridor. It is not analogous to the Taiwan Strait en route to Japan or the Exclusive Economic Zones of Southeast Asian states. This doesn’t mean China should not operate there, but it does mean Australia should pay explicit attention to why it would want to operate there. Few countries have historically possessed both the capability and the intent to operate naval forces in proximity to Australia. China is now demonstrating both. China’s two task group deployments near Australia in 2025 underscore how fundamentally Australia’s strategic environment has changed. Each demonstration of capability was intended to send a signal to Australia and the neighbourhood: that China now possesses a modern and comprehensive maritime capability able to reach and sustain operations in Australia’s near region. These specific task groups were not a threat. But they were not trivial. They are a reminder that Australia should weigh this evolving capability carefully when making decisions that may run counter to China’s interests. The issue is not whether Chinese ships should operate in or near Australia’s Exclusive Economic Zone. Under international law they can. To argue China should not do so would undermine Australia’s long-standing support for freedom of navigation, the very principle that underpins Australian naval deployments. The issue is what this development means for Australia’s security as the regional balance shifts. The ability to reach and operate near Australia is historically significant. Distance from major theatres of conflict has long been seen as a strength. Yet Australia’s geography has also created vulnerability because of a deep dependence on maritime trade and secure sea lines. Few countries have historically possessed both the capability and the intent to operate naval forces in proximity to Australia. China is now demonstrating both. This is unfolding in a world that has changed markedly from the relative stability many assumed in the 1990s, early 2000s and even the pre-Covid period. The erosion of post-Cold War restraint on the use of force, the weakening of multilateral institutions and increasingly transactional politics point to a more contested era. As Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney described it, this is a rupture – a view echoed by European leaders at last weekend’s Munich Security Conference . In this environment, Australia must adjust. There is work to be done in strengthening military capability, and defence spending remains underwhelming . But the most significant shift required is in national resilience and psychological preparedness. That means strengthening supply chains, improving civil preparedness and ensuring Australians understand the risks inherent in a more contested region. These elements of preparedness have received far less attention than platforms and budgets. There are many practical steps that Australia can take to strengthen resilience and psychological preparedness. But it begins with honesty about the challenge. Australians should not be learning only through Senate Estimates hearings – and weeks after the fact – that a foreign naval task group intentionally operated close to the country’s waters as a demonstration of capability. This event could have been an opportunity to build public understanding of how the region is changing, using a concrete example people can grasp. Not to provoke alarm or overreaction, as occurred during the first transit, but to explain clearly what it signifies. The phrase deployed by Australian politicians that the country faces “the most challenging strategic circumstances since the Second World War” risks becoming abstract. Events like the Chinese naval deployment give it meaning. If Australia is serious about preparedness, the public must be treated as capable of understanding the strategic environment it now faces.

5 February 2026 | Jennifer Parker *Originally published in The Australian on 5 February 2026 Image: Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence the Hon. Richard Marles MP and Assistant Minister for Defence, the Hon Peter Khalil MP with Minister for Finance Senator the Hon Katy Gallagher speaking at a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra. (Kym Smith / Defence Images ) The release of the Defence Estate Audit marks another milestone in the Albanese government’s effort to reshape Australia’s defence posture. It seeks to rationalise the commonwealth’s largest infrastructure portfolio and is a long-overdue step in that reform agenda. Much of its logic is sound. But taken as a whole, the review entrenches three strategic mistakes that risk weakening our defence preparedness. Much of the attention will rightly focus on the 67 Defence-owned sites slated for divestment or partial divestment, the sustainment funding the government expects to recoup, and future capital returns from property sales. History suggests, however, that some of these returns may take decades to materialise. There will also be reflection on the history of the bases being lost. While the government is correct that history should not determine the structure of the defence estate, these decisions will land hard for many who have served. Service is not easily reduced to financial ­incentives. The government is right to make difficult decisions about the estate. The challenge is that decisions about Australia’s defence posture, which should drive estate planning, depend on a clear understanding of how the force would mobilise in a crisis or conflict, and what role the reserve force is expected to play. Neither question has yet been resolved. Reducing the defence estate without clarity on mobilisation or reserve force structure therefore carries strategic risk. The estate review was driven by the Defence Strategic Review and its call for an enterprise-wide audit of Defence estate and infrastructure. This was largely because of the cost of sustaining ageing and underused infrastructure. However, the original terms of reference for the Defence Strategic Review also required it to examine mobilisation in the event of a crisis, including Defence’s ­ability to mobilise at scale for the defence of Australia. Defence leadership warned publicly in June 2025 that Australia should be preparing for this. Yet the unclassified public version of the Defence Strategic Review did not outline a plan to address the challenge. Mobilising at scale requires training facilities, space and locations accessible to the public – requirements that need to be understood before undertaking what the government has described as the most significant change to the Defence estate in Australia’s history. The Defence Strategic Review also recommended a comprehensive strategic review of the Australian Defence Force reserves. This was necessary because the reserve structures of all three services have changed fundamentally since the last time Australia prepared to fight from its own territory. In the navy, for example, there is very limited recruitment of civilians ­directly from the street. There are serious questions about how the Naval Reserve could be employed in a crisis beyond reinforcing administrative functions. The original purpose of the Naval Reserve was to retain and mobilise a mariner base drawn from the civilian population. It no longer performs this function. The 2024 Strategic Review of the Australian Defence Force Reserves was not, in practice, a strategic review, failing to address the strategic contribution of the reserves. Any genuine review would require restructuring across all three services reserve forces, with clear implications for the ­Defence estate, particularly for ­facilities located close to major population centres. The absence of this work before the estate audit calls into question whether the current estate is suited to the force structure Australia needs, not what it has. The final, and perhaps most fundamental, of the three strategic issues is the review’s emphasis on integration. Since the 2023 Defence Strategic Review, integration has become a catch-all concept used to describe the ability of the services to operate seam­lessly together, but in practice frequently pursued through decisions that drive centralisation and ­diminish the role and identity of the individual services. This is reflected in two recommendations contained in the Defence Estate Review. The first proposes further due diligence on consolidating all domain command headquarters into a single location to accelerate the transition to an integrated force. The second recommends renaming bases in a way that removes service identity. Together, these measures go to the heart of how integ­ration is being interpreted and ­implemented. The army, navy and air force are not interchangeable. They perform distinct operational functions and play different roles in supporting mobilisation of civilian capability. While joint operations will remain central to Australia’s future defence, history offers a clear warning against excessive centralisation. The Defence Estate Review is welcome and important. But without first resolving how Australia would mobilise in a crisis, or what reserve force role and structure is required, it is impossible to determine the defence posture and estate Australia actually requires. These questions are urgent. The continued erosion of the services’ authority through overcentralisation risks introducing a critical vulnerability in crisis or conflict. That is a risk Australia should not bake into its defence structure during the most testing strategic circumstances we have faced in generations.

3 February 2026 | Jennifer Parker *Originally published in the Lowy Institute's The Interpreter on 3 February 2026 Image: Royal Australia Navy (Susan Mossop/Defence Images) Australian maritime security is entering a period of profound change. The planned expansion of the Royal Australian Navy’s surface combatant fleet, the introduction of nuclear-powered submarines, and the reality of having no strategic warning time are forcing a hard look at how the Navy generates and sustains its workforce. Yet one element remains under-examined: the Naval Reserve. Long treated as a mechanism for individual backfill rather than operational effect, the Naval Reserve has the potential to play a far more important role in Australia’s maritime defence, if it is properly re-imagined. The 2023 Defence Strategic Review was explicit that the ADF Reserves must provide the expansion base for the force in times of crisis, calling for a comprehensive review of reserve service, including consideration of a Ready Reserve Scheme. The Department of Defence delivered with its December 2024 Strategic Review of the Australian Defence Force Reserves , but its recommendations lacked ambition and stopped short of defining a clear strategic role for reserve forces. Instead, the Review leans heavily on centralisation while sidestepping the harder question of how reserves should be structured to deliver operational effect. As the 2024 Strategic Review notes, with limited specialist exceptions only the Army Reserve recruits directly from the civilian workforce at scale, while Navy and Air Force reserves are overwhelmingly drawn from former permanent members. For the Naval Reserve, this is a strategic limitation and constrains the size and diversity of Australia’s mariner pool at a time when Australia should be actively building mechanisms to enable future mobilisation of this workforce, a marked departure from past practice. Historically, the Naval Reserve was explicitly conceived as a mechanism to expand Australia’s mariner base for mobilisation, a role it fulfilled decisively in the Second World War. Navy and Air Force reserves are overwhelmingly drawn from former permanent members. During this period, the Royal Australian Naval Reserve played a central role in enabling Australia to expand its naval power at speed and scale. Reservists were mobilised in large numbers to crew auxiliary and patrol vessels, operate harbour and coastal defences, and provide essential seamanship, engineering and logistics skills across the fleet, forming the backbone of wartime mariner generation. This effort was enabled through port-based reserve organisations in major ports, which recruited, trained, administered and mobilised reservists, a system formalised after the war period as Naval Reserve Port Divisions. These structures allowed the Navy to draw directly from the civilian population, expanding the mariner base in peacetime and allowing for the rapid mobilisation of trained personnel in war. This shift supported a deliberately slimmed down force shaped by Cold War peace dividends and the assumption that major conflict was remote. That context has changed, and the Naval Reserve must change with it, including a return to directly recruiting reserve members from the civilian workforce into formed units designed to deliver clear operational capabilities. As the 2024 Strategic Review notes, the Naval Reserve is almost entirely comprised of former permanent force personnel who fill individual “backfill or round-out” roles within existing Navy structures or Defence groups. The Review is equally blunt about the consequences, observing that “further training opportunities are generally not afforded to Navy reservists and career progression is limited”, resulting in an inability to maintain currency or attain the qualifications required for promotion. By contrast, the US Navy Reserve recruits from scratch, trains to active duty standards, and provides a standing mobilisation and surge capability. When it comes to the Naval Reserve, Australia must learn from its own history. So what is the solution? The starting point must be to clearly define the roles the Royal Australian Navy expects its reserve force to perform. Initial priorities could include port and critical infrastructure protection, including the operation of uncrewed surface and undersea vessels; underwater battle damage inspection and repair; the provision of maritime security for Australian and allied merchant vessels; and the crewing and sustainment of coastal and auxiliary craft. Framing the Naval Reserve around defined operational tasks rather than ad hoc supplementation would allow it to function as a credible contributor to maritime security and mobilisation. Restructuring the Naval Reserve around defined capabilities and regional commands would enable from-scratch recruiting and give the reserve force a clear strategic purpose. Such a model would also support coherent training pipelines, the maintenance of professional currency, and meaningful career progression, while allowing broader skill sets to be managed deliberately to supplement capability gaps across the fleet. When it comes to the Naval Reserve, Australia must learn from its own history. The Reserve delivers its greatest value when it is designed as a strategic capability, not when it is confined to individual supplementation in predominantly administrative roles. The current Naval Reserve structure is a product of an era in which major conflict was seen as remote. That assumption no longer holds. As I have argued elsewhere , the Navy will be unable to grow the mariner base required for its future roles or to support broader mobilisation through recruitment and retention alone. A structural rethink is required, and the Naval Reserve is the obvious place to begin.

Jennifer Parker | 23 January 2026 *Originally published in the Australian on 23 January 2026 Image: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney 21 January 2026 (on X) It is not even the end of January, yet 2026 is already marking a decisive break in the global order, and in Australia’s place within it. China ended 2025 with its largest military activity around Taiwan under Exercise Justice Mission. The United States has escalated pressure on Venezuela through a high-profile intervention, but it is the maritime pressure campaign behind it that should most concern Australia. And NATO unity is fraying as President Trump reintroduces coercive power politics, including threats against Greenland. As Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney put it bluntly at Davos this week: “We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.” Australia can no longer afford to treat this moment as abstract. The implications for our security are immediate. Instinctively, Australia is a country that prefers to look inward, But that instinct is dangerous. Australia must pay far closer attention to how the world is changing and what those changes mean for our security and prosperity. The international system is being reshaped by several forces, most notably renewed great-power competition. Too often this is reduced to a false binary choice between the United States and China. It is not, and never has been. That oversimplification has plagued Australian strategic thinking for too long. President Trump’s threats against Greenland, and what they reveal about the United States in 2026, do not lessen the risks posed by China’s military build-up or its increasingly assertive use of force in the region. Australia must confront both realities at once. These realities are further complicated by Australia’s greatest strategic vulnerability: its dependence on maritime trade. Recent US interdictions of shadow-fleet tankers linked to Venezuela demonstrate how easily a trade-dependent nation can be economically coerced through targeted maritime disruption. Australia is systemically exposed. Nearly 99 per cent of Australia’s imports and exports move through the maritime domain. So how should Australia respond? Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney offered a clear answer in a speech that is likely to be studied for years to come. “We know the old order is not coming back. We shouldn’t mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy, but we believe that from the fracture we can build something bigger, better, stronger, more just. This is the task of the middle powers.” Australia is one such middle power, with significant regional and global standing. Yet we have underinvested in key elements of national power. Addressing that gap is now an urgent strategic priority. Australia’s standing ensures it is routinely invited into key rooms. That access must be used more deliberately to build issue selective regional minilateral and multilateral partnerships. For too long, Australia has assumed diplomacy can be done on the cheap. It cannot. Diplomatic power will be central to navigating an uncertain world and strengthening the collective voice of middle powers. Although the Albanese Government has increased DFAT funding, Australia’s diplomatic heft has not been restored. Our foreign service remains thinner, more stretched, and less influential than it was in the 1990s, despite a far more complex and contested strategic environment. Increasing Australia’s diplomatic heft is also essential to diversifying our external relationships and reducing systemic vulnerability. Australia has begun to do this with partners such as Japan and the Philippines, but this effort must go much further. Deeper and more sustained engagement is needed with India, South Korea, Indonesia and Europe. Diplomatic diversification must also be matched by a harder conversation at home about economic vulnerability. That includes a serious examination of industrial policy, but also Australia’s central Achilles heel: excessive trade dependence on China. A stable relationship with China remains critical, but the scale of Australia’s economic exposure is no longer prudent. Rebalancing will be difficult and gradual, but allowing such concentrated dependence to persist constitutes a clear strategic vulnerability. Diversification must be matched by the deliberate building of domestic resilience, economically, technologically and, critically, institutionally. For too long Australia has taken the strength of its institutions for granted. As ASIO Director Mike Burgess repeatedly warned in 2025, Australia’s institutions face growing pressure from both foreign interference and domestic fracture. Building national resilience in a world defined by power politics also requires stronger military resilience. The United States remains Australia’s central security ally. That alliance has endured shifts in global order, policy disagreement and changes of leadership in Washington. Australia should not step away from it. But we have become overly dependent, not by choice, but through strategic complacency. Australia must strengthen its capacity for self defence and pursue greater self reliance within the alliance. That will require increased defence investment and bolder leadership. Australia is a fortunate nation, but fortune is not strategy. The fractures reshaping the global order are no longer abstract or distant. It is not even the end of January, yet 2026 is already proving to be a pivotal year. Australia must respond as the influential actor it is, by rebuilding the balance of its national power, strengthening diplomatic heft, investing in military capability and reinforcing domestic resilience. This moment demands action, not nostalgia. Australia must seize it.

15 January 2025 | Jennifer Parker *Originally published in ASPI's The Strategist on 15 January 2025 Images: Image of the Ship’s Company of HMAS Canberra lining the upper decks as JS Makinami sails past in 2021: Nadav Harel/Royal Australian Navy . The Royal Australian Navy’s greatest challenge isn’t introducing nuclear submarines and considerably expanding the surface fleet, as daunting as those objectives are. Rather, it is transitioning from a peacetime force to one with a maritime warfighting culture capable of employing these vessels effectively. That shift must be anchored in a unifying principle: warfighting mariners first. The principle should unify all naval members around a shared warfighting mariner identity, regardless of role. Naval theorists have long observed that navies shaped by prolonged peacetime tend to optimise for peacetime demands, rather than warfighting. In The Rules of the Game , Andrew Gordon demonstrates how a peacetime naval culture in the Royal Navy before World War I, shaped by promotion systems, accountability mechanisms and informal professional norms, persisted into battle and constrained command behaviour at the moment initiative mattered most. The US Navy also learned this lesson early in the Pacific war. Around 30 percent of submarine commanding officers were relieved between 1942 and 1943, not for lack of competence but because they had been shaped by a peacetime system that rewarded caution and procedural compliance. This is not the familiar debate over ratcatchers versus regulators . It is a more fundamental conversation about the purpose of a navy and how that purpose must drive the structure, skills and culture of the RAN. This is easier said than done: articulating intent is far simpler than making and selling hard choices. The lesson from the US Pacific submarine campaign, the Battle of Jutland and wider naval history is clear. A navy cannot assume it can simply switch to warfighting when required. The question then is what the blueprint for warfighting mariners first should be. The first step lies in personnel structure. Does the RAN have the right mix of officers and sailors for the task ahead? In the first quarter of this century, it expanded the number of officer and sailor workgroups with no or limited seagoing roles. Some of this growth improved bureaucratic functions, while some supported emerging capabilities, particularly in the cyber and space domains. But the question now is whether these workgroups are essential for a navy that must rapidly expand its seagoing footprint. The uncomfortable answer is that some are not. The follow-on questions are whether these roles are essential to the Australian Defence Force and if so, whether they belong in other services. Generating cyber and space professionals across all three services, for example, is inefficient. Either the army or air force should be designated as the lead service to provide personnel for this the capability, allowing the RAN to refocus on its core task at sea. Where these functions are bureaucratic and have no seagoing role, the question is whether they are better performed by civilians or by seagoing personnel who have reached a stage in their career where seagoing service is no longer required or no longer feasible. This is not about devaluing individual or workgroup contributions but about whether the RAN is structured around its core purpose. Recruitment targets alone will not sustain an expanded surface fleet and nuclear-powered submarines without increasing the proportion of the workforce with a genuine seagoing liability. Once the core workgroups of a warfighting navy are consolidated, the next step is training. If the RAN is to unify around the principle of mariners first, every workgroup must possess a baseline level of warfighting mariner skills. This will be unpopular in some quarters, but it is essential. Beyond reorienting the RAN around its core purpose, this would build depth and redundancy so personnel can go to sea when required or support broader maritime mobilisation. The hard reality is that naval war is a war of attrition. If conflict comes, the RAN will need a deep and resilient pool of trained mariners to draw from. After structure and training comes promotion and pay. Promotion reform is achievable within existing arrangements; pay reform is not. As Gordon’s analysis of Jutland shows, promotion systems that reward compliance and risk avoidance in peacetime shape behaviour in war, constraining initiative when it matters most. The services are not interchangeable, and integrated promotion structures will not help the RAN select the leaders it needs to crew and command ships at sea. Pay is harder. The legislated structure of the Defence Force Remuneration Tribunal limits flexibility, but a remuneration system that disincentivises arduous seagoing roles will ultimately defeat any attempt to reform navy culture or structure. This issue cannot be avoided, even if it requires legislative change. Responding to the deteriorating strategic environment and preparing for future conflict requires a fundamental shift. It demands a culture focused on warfighting at sea and unified by the principle of mariners first. History is unambiguous on this point. From Jutland to the US submarine campaign in the Pacific, navies shaped by peacetime systems do not automatically adapt in war. This shift will not occur by declaration. It requires a deliberate blueprint for structural change. For the RAN, that means consolidating officer and sailor workgroups, establishing a baseline level of mariner qualification and warfighting understanding across the workforce, and aligning promotion systems to support a warfighting culture. These changes will be difficult and, in some cases, unpopular. But they are necessary if the RAN is to prepare its people for the challenges ahead.

14 January 2026 | Jennifer Parker *Originally published in the Sydney Morning Herald online 14 January and in print on 15 January 2026 Image: 2021 British Nuclear Submarine, HMS Astute, is alongside at Fleet Base West, Rockingham in Western Australia. The submarine is part of a larger task group and is enjoying some well earned time off in the Perth area after more than seven months on deployment. Defence Images As with 2025 , early 2026 again sees AUKUS, Australia’s plan to acquire a nuclear-powered submarine capability, back in the headlines . This time the focus is claims by a former Royal Navy admiral and former director of nuclear policy in the UK Ministry of Defence about the parlous state of the UK’s nuclear submarine industrial base. And he’s right. From the availability of the UK’s nuclear-powered attack boats and nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarines, the more than a decade it took to build the recently commissioned HMS Agamemnon , and concerns about nuclear core production, the challenges are real. But they do not spell failure for Australia’s nuclear-powered submarine ambition under AUKUS, nor for the co-design and co-build of an AUKUS-class submarine. AUKUS helps address some of these challenges for the UK, which needs AUKUS to succeed. Despite the headlines, AUKUS is not on the rocks. So what are the UK’s challenges? In short, they are serious and largely the product of decades of underinvestment, limited focus, and a shortage of experienced personnel . The UK operates both nuclear-powered attack submarines and nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarines, and the strain across this force should not be underestimated. There were credible reports in 2025 that maintenance delays and availability issues left the UK with no attack submarines at sea at points during the year. For an island nation dependent on maritime trade, and whose status as a nuclear power rests solely on its ballistic missile submarines, this is a significant problem. These pressures are compounded by the need to replace the ageing ballistic missile submarine fleet with a new class due to enter service in the 2030s. While the UK government insists this program is on schedule, it depends on the successful production of a new nuclear reactor at the Rolls-Royce facility that Australia is now investing in for the AUKUS-class submarine. That reactor core production program has been rated red in the last three UK infrastructure assessments, meaning immediate action is required to avoid significant delay. This matters directly for AUKUS because the UK has been explicit that replacing its ballistic missile submarines is its top priority. It has no alternative means of deploying nuclear weapons. For Australia, the lesson from the UK’s experience is straightforward. Complex defence capability requires sustained investment. Attempts to do it on the cheap inevitably fail. So how does this affect AUKUS? First, these issues are not new. They were understood when the optimal pathway was announced in March 2023. Some critics argue the UK is not a key AUKUS partner and should remain focused on Russia in the Euro-Atlantic rather than the Indo-Pacific. That view misunderstands why the UK is invested in AUKUS. As an island nation, the UK shares Australia’s dependence on the undersea domain for its security, particularly as Russian submarine activity near UK waters increases. Claims that underwater drones can replace submarines do not withstand scrutiny. This is why countries around the world are increasing investing in submarine capability. The UK is therefore an invested partner. AUKUS will not resolve all of its submarine challenges, but it helps in two important ways. Shared design and construction of an AUKUS-class submarine with Australia reduces costs and strengthens the supply chain. Australian investment in the UK industrial base, particularly at the Rolls-Royce reactor facility, directly targets constraints in reactor core production. Calls to abandon phase three and rely solely on US-built submarines overlook both the strain on the US industrial base and one of AUKUS’s core purposes. Expanding nuclear submarine construction capacity among allies matters. Naval wars are wars of attrition, and the ability to build remains decisive. Since the announcement of AUKUS, Australia’s debate has too often assumed the sky is falling, or that the submarine is already sinking. In 2025 the focus was whether a returning President Donald Trump would support AUKUS, a question he settled directly in October . The optimal pathway is exactly that. It is a multi-decade program operating in an uncertain strategic environment with three partners, and it will not always run to plan. There may be delays to phase three because of the UK submarine industrial base, and it is important to be clear-eyed about how long the UK has taken to build submarines and the challenges it faces. It also remains essential that the UK builds the AUKUS-class submarine before Australia. If delays occur, Australia will need to adapt, including by considering the option of acquiring five rather than three Virginia-class submarines from the United States. But amid the focus on what is not perfect, Australia consistently overlooks what has already been achieved. Australians are now undertaking nuclear-powered submarine maintenance at home. More than 170 Royal Australian Navy officers and sailors have trained in the United States, with around 70 serving aboard Virginia-class submarines. Trilateral and bilateral treaties are in place, and the initiative has endured changes of government in all three countries. AUKUS has performed remarkably well since its announcement. That does not mean there will not be problems, changes, or delays. There will be. We should approach these issues with a clear head and confidence in our ability to work through them. For the UK, the choice is simple. If it wants to remain a nuclear power in a deteriorating strategic environment, it must fix its submarine enterprise. AUKUS helps it do that.

9 January 2025 | Jennifer Parker *Originally published in The Lowy Institute's The Interpreter on 9 January 2025 Image: US European Command Twitter Recent US boardings of oil tankers linked to Venezuela have prompted claims of piracy and illegality under international law. In reality, many of these boardings rest on a sound legal basis. Boarding vessels at sea is a routine naval activity permitted in limited circumstances under international law. This explainer outlines the international law governing maritime boardings and how it applies to the Venezuela cases. Boarding operations on the high seas, beyond the 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone, are governed by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). While the US has not ratified UNCLOS because of domestic concerns over its deep seabed provisions, it recognises the Convention as reflecting customary international law and complies with it. Under UNCLOS, any warship may board a vessel on the high seas if it is stateless. Recent commentary has described US boardings as piracy, a term often used loosely. In law, piracy has a narrow definition under UNCLOS; it is limited to violent acts carried out for private ends by private vessels on the high seas. Whatever view one takes of the broader US campaign, these boardings do not meet the legal definition of piracy. Under UNCLOS, primary legal authority over a vessel rests with its flag state, the country where the ship is registered, which is responsible for what occurs on board. There are, however, limited exceptions. Article 110 sets out five circumstances in which a warship from any state may board a foreign vessel on the high seas: where there are reasonable grounds to suspect the vessel is engaged in piracy, the slave trade, unauthorised broadcasting, is stateless, or is falsely claiming a nationality. These exceptions exist because piracy and slavery are treated as offences of universal concern, allowing any state to intervene regardless of the vessel’s flag. The question of statelessness is central to the recent US boardings. Under UNCLOS, any warship may board a vessel on the high seas if it is stateless, meaning it is not lawfully registered with any country or is falsely claiming a nationality. This is particularly relevant to shadow fleet vessels used to move sanctioned oil. They often operate outside normal maritime regulatory frameworks, including safety, insurance, and reporting requirements. This appears to have been the case with several recent boardings linked to Venezuela. In one instance, a vessel falsely claimed it was Guyana -flagged. Where a vessel cannot demonstrate a genuine flag state, it may be treated as stateless and boarded under international law. Another common feature of shadow fleet operations is the use of flags of convenience. In such cases, the flag state retains jurisdiction but in my experience will commonly authorise a boarding by another state’s warship, because they have no real connection with the vessel. This appears to have occurred in the boarding of the tanker Centuries on 20 December 2025, when the US intercepted the vessel with the authorisation of Panama, its flag state. A more complicated case study is the 7 January 2026 boarding of the vessel formerly known as Bella 1 , now operating as Marinera in the Atlantic near Iceland, which was initially treated as stateless. When approached for boarding, the vessel refused consent and began crossing the Atlantic. During the transit, it painted a Russian flag on its hull and claimed to be registered as a Russian vessel.  Boarding vessels at sea is a routine naval activity permitted in limited circumstances under international law. This is precisely the scenario anticipated by the drafters of UNCLOS. Article 92 makes clear that a ship may not change its flag during a voyage except in cases of a genuine transfer of ownership or formal change of registry. Simply repainting a flag or asserting a new nationality mid-voyage has no legal effect. However, as technology has allowed for the registration of vessels online at sea, there is an open question about whether it was formally registered to Russia at the time of boarding. This is in many ways a new consideration for UNCLOS and may set a precedent. On the available information, when the vessel was boarded by the US on 7 January, that boarding was likely lawful under the international law of the sea, because it was not lawfully registered. Other aspects of the US pressure campaign on Venezuela raise serious and legitimate questions under international law.  The tanker boardings, however, rest on a different international legal footing. Their lawfulness does not derive from unilateral US sanctions or from the existence of a blockade. The US has not established a lawful naval blockade, and what is occurring is better understood in legal terms as a form of quarantine, a distinction that warrants separate and more detailed discussion.  Instead, the boardings are grounded in the law of the sea itself. UNCLOS permits the boarding of stateless vessels and allows boardings with the consent of a vessel’s flag state where jurisdiction exists. Where applicable, US sanctions and arrest warrants may follow these actions as a matter of domestic law, but they do not themselves provide the international legal basis for the boardings. The tanker boardings appear consistent with international law, although the Bella 1 episode and its attempted reflagging at sea will likely be debated by maritime lawyers for years to come.

5 January 2026 | Jennifer Parker *Originally published in the Sydney Morning Herald on 5 January 2026 Image: Operation Absolute Resolve ( White House Twitter Account ). The image was confronting: Venezuela’s President, Nicolás Maduro , handcuffed aboard a United States warship, the USS Iwo Jima . It was a moment that made clear 2026 will be no calmer than the year before. From Australia, this may appear a distant drama in the Americas, tied to Washington’s long-running efforts to counter narcotics trafficking. But that framing misses the point. What unfolded in Venezuela exposes a growing tension at the heart of today’s global order. On one hand sits a faltering system of international law, anchored in the UN Charter, designed to restrain the use of force. On the other sits deterrence aimed at preventing use of force, increasingly tested in a world where adversaries question the willingness of major powers to act. The US response signals a decision to privilege deterrence over legal restraint. The consequences may be stark, but the reality of geopolitics is rarely clean. Recognising that reality is not the same as endorsing it. This shift matters well beyond Latin America, particularly in the Indo-Pacific. It suggests a United States prepared to act decisively, and unilaterally, when it judges its interests to be at stake. These actions are controversial and ethically fraught in international law terms. That judgment should not be confused with sympathy for Maduro, an authoritarian leader whose rule has been marked by widely criticised elections and documented human rights violations. They also reinforce American deterrence at a time when its credibility is being tested. For Australia, the implication is unavoidable. Our security depends on a major ally willing to back its words with force, even as the rules governing that force come under strain. That tension between law and deterrence did not emerge overnight. Since the end of World War II, the use of force has been governed by the UN Charter, which permits military action only with Security Council authorisation or in self-defence. With the Council paralysed, states are increasingly willing to use force to pursue foreign policy objectives, a trend reflected in the seizure of Maduro. The past few years have seen a steady return to use of force as a tool of statecraft. Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine continued, conflict escalated across the Middle East and tensions flared elsewhere in Asia. The taboo on use of force has weakened, not because the rules no longer exist, but because the institutions meant to enforce them are failing and states see advantage in using force. The implication is stark. States can no longer rely on a broadly peaceful international environment, or on international law alone, to prevent the use of force. They must actively discourage it. This is where deterrence comes in. While US action in Venezuela illustrates the erosion of legal restraint on the use of force, it also sends a different signal. It demonstrates US seriousness about deterrence. Generalisations on deterrence should be avoided, but at its most basic it rests on capability, credibility and communication. The US action in Venezuela may yet produce ill-fated consequences. But the willingness to act, particularly after explicitly signalling that it would, mirrors earlier US strikes against Iran in June 2025. Together, these actions suggest a Trump administration that is not isolationist and is prepared to use force. For deterrence, that willingness matters. Credibility is built not on statements, but on follow-through. And for Australia, whose security depends heavily on the credibility of its principal ally, that reality may be uncomfortable, but it may also make Australia safer in an increasingly dangerous world. But Australia cannot outsource its security to its ally. It is not the United States’ responsibility to defend Australia . That burden rests with us. In a world where the use of force is again a tool of statecraft, Australia must adapt to strategic reality rather than nostalgia. That means reassessing the effectiveness of our own deterrence strategy, particularly its credibility and capability. The 2026 National Defence Strategy and Integrated Investment Program provide an opportunity to do so. But strategy without investment is illusion. Credible deterrence requires sustained commitment, resolve and money. The lesson from US actions this week, ethics aside, is clear. Deterrence depends on capability and the demonstrated willingness to use it. An island nation with a small, ageing navy and limited missile defence cannot afford complacency. Australia must pay attention to Venezuela, to Europe, to the Middle East and to China’s actions around Taiwan and the South China Sea. These are not disconnected crises. They are signals of a world that has changed, and of hard choices Australia can no longer afford to avoid.