Sydney Member Briefing - Defence challenges 2035
Please join us for the Lowy Institute’s first event in its series of Corporate and Government briefings for 2015 at a roundtable luncheon with Rory Medcalf, Nonresident Fellow of the Lowy Institute and Head of the National Security College at the Australian National University.
At the luncheon, Rory will lead a discussion on Australia’s security environment in coming decades. In a recent analysis, Defence challenges 2035: securing Australia’s lifelines, Rory and co-author James Brown argued that as the Australian Government prepares its 2015 Defence White Paper it will need to consider growing risks not just to the Australian homeland, but to Australia’s lifelines to the wider world. In the lead-up to the publication of that White Paper, it is timely to take stock of these challenges.
Rory Medcalf is a Nonresident Fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy.
Professor Medcalf is Head of the National Security College at the Australian National University. His professional background spans diplomacy, journalism, think tanks and intelligence analysis. He was Director of the Lowy Institute’s International Security Program from 2007 to 2015. He has worked as a senior strategic analyst with the Office of National Assessments, Canberra's peak intelligence analysis agency. His experience as an Australian diplomat included a posting to New Delhi, a secondment to the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, truce monitoring after the civil conflict in Bougainville and policy development on Asian security institutions. He has contributed to three landmark reports on nuclear arms control and disarmament including the Canberra Commission and the Tokyo Forum. His earlier work in journalism was commended in Australia’s leading media awards, the Walkleys. He has been active in developing Australia's relations with India, including as founding convener and co-chair of the Australia-India Roundtable, the leading informal policy dialogue between the two countries.
In 2014 the Australian Government appointed him to an expert panel providing independent advice on the 2015 Defence White Paper. His current research areas include Australia's strategic and defence challenges, the further development of his work on an Indo-Pacific concept of the Asian strategic environment, and prospects for maritime and nuclear stability in Indo-Pacific Asia, on which he is leading two major projects funded by the MacArthur Foundation. Professor Medcalf is a member of the editorial board of the Australian Journal of International Affairs, a member of the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Nuclear Security, and a nonresident fellow with the Brookings Institution and the Seapower Centre of the Royal Australian Navy.
