Shielding the Republic: Barack Obama and the Jeffersonian Tradition of American Foreign Policy

President Barack Obama’s foreign policy has confounded critics from both the left and right in American politics. This analysis argues that this is because Obama’s foreign policy exhibits affinities with the least prominent of the four traditions of American foreign policy identified by Walter...

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The Belt and Road Initiative: China’s New Grand Strategy?

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Live and Learn: Availability Biases and Beliefs about Military Power

Do leaders learn more about military force from firsthand experience with the armed forces or their nation’s last war? Despite a resurgence of interest in the effects of leaders and their beliefs on international conflict and war, we still know little about which mechanisms cause what beliefs. I...

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When Proliferation Causes Peace: The Psychology of Nuclear Crises

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North Korea and Nuclear Weapons: Entering The New Era of Deterrence

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Understanding the Return of the Jacksonian Tradition

The 2016 presidential election demonstrated the rise of a “restraint constituency” in American politics that openly questions Washington’s bipartisan post-Cold War pursuit of a grand strategy of primacy or liberal hegemony. This constituency has been animated by the return of the Jacksonian...

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Weakest links: cyber governance and the threat to mid-sized enterprises

In partnership with the Macquarie Telecom Group, the NSC conducted a research project to acquire qualitative and quantitative insights into the governance of cyber security risks in Australian medium-sized businesses and government agencies. The governance of cyber security has become a pressing...

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Executive and Professional Development Programs

The National Security College (NSC) is a unique partnership between the Australian Government and the Australian National University, established specifically to teach and research in the fields of national security and public policy. Executive Development programs are comprehensive in scope,...

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Indo-Pacific maritime security: challenges and cooperation

This collection of papers comes for a major international conference on Indo-Pacific maritime security convened by the NSC in March 2016. The Indo-Pacific is becoming widely recognised as the global centre of gravity, whether in terms of economic interaction, demographics, transnational security...

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Strategic Plan 2016 - 2018

The NSC is pleased to publish its updated Strategic Plan for 2016-18, which explains our governance, functions, outcomes and performance measures for this period.

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