As America’s relative power wanes and its resources are stretched, Australia needs a defence policy fit for the times.

About this event

Our speaker, Group Captain (rtd) Dr Peter Layton, is a Visiting Fellow at the Griffith Asia Institute and is an Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London. He worked at the Pentagon where he was awarded the US Secretary of Defense’s Exceptional Public Service Medal.

Countries use grand strategies to try to create a better future. They are most important for nations that have only limited money, people and material and so must focus them on the truly essential, not the frivolous.

Australia is now devising new grand strategies set against a troubling backdrop of real wars, exemplified by Ukraine, and imagined wars such as a possible future conflict involving China. For this, Australia needs to work out the future it wants, the national power to apply to get there and how to build the national power required. These are not easy issues but they impact us all. How are we going in tackling them?

Peter contributes regularly to the public policy debate on defence and foreign affairs issues and is the author of the book Grand Strategy, copies of which will be on sale at this talk.

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