Kim Beazley on the US alliance and Australia’s defence and international security. 

From May 2016 to July 2018, Kim Beazley was a distinguished fellow at ASPI and, freed from the constraints of his ministerial, political and ambassadorial roles, he wrote with relish and spoke at ASPI events with flair and great enjoyment about Australia’s defence and international security.

Here we collect Kim’s writing for The Strategist, ASPI’s commentary and analysis site, because the depth of his knowledge and the urgency of his message are simply too valuable to be consigned to the cyber wasteland.

Beazley has spent a professional lifetime being deeply immersed in the design and implementation of Australia’s defence and security policy. He steered his side of politics through the global anti-nuclear unrest of the early 1980s to craft an approach to Australia’s alliance with the United States which still enjoys immense support across Australia’s political divide.

Beazley thought his way through the challenges of designing the right force structure for the Australian Defence Force and, largely, this is the force we have today: bigger and better equipped but still reliant on the alliance at a time when Washington has turned inward.