Michael Wesley

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Michael Wesley is Professor of National Security at the Australian National University. Previously he was Executive Director of the Lowy Institute for International Policy, a Professor of International Relations and Director of the Griffith Asia Institute at Griffith University, and a Visiting Fellow at the University of Hong Kong and Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou, China. Prior to this, he was the Assistant Director-General for Transnational Issues at the Office of National Assessments, and a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of New South Wales.

Between 2007 and 2009, Dr Wesley was the Editor of the Australian Journal of International Affairs and a Chief Investigator in the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security (CEPS). He has served on the Australian Research Council’s College of Experts and the Queensland Art Gallery’s Board of Trustees.

In April 2008, he was Co-Chair (with Foreign Minister Stephen Smith) of one of the ten issue streams at the Australian government’s 2020 Summit and gave the keynote speech at the Summit. Dr Wesley is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.

His most recent books are Energy Security in Asia (Routledge, 2007); The Howard Paradox: Australian Diplomacy in Asia 1996–2006 (ABC Books, 2007); and (with Allan Gyngell) Making Australian Foreign Policy, 2nd edition, (Cambridge University Press, 2007).

Articles

Empire of delusion

EssayANYONE INTERESTED IN power must visit Persepolis. Its ruins stand defiantly in a parched valley in southern Iran, the ultimate statement of humans’ capacity to dominate vast multitudes of their fellow humans. Amid the intricately carved stairways, walls and...

The meaning of China

EssayTHE WORLD HAS been watching for China's rise for a very long time. 'Let China sleep; when she wakes she will shake the world,' said Napoleon. Even at the end of World War II, when China lay devastated by...

Claustrophobia

PolicyWHILE THE WORLD watched Ian Thorpe race Pieter van den Hoogenband in the hundred metres freestyle final at the Sydney Olympics, queues of between fifteen and fifty cars snaked out of the driveways of petrol stations across London. A...

Howard’s way: northerly neighbours and western friends

EssayIT IS VERY hard to find good, objective writing about the philosophies, motivations and political skills of this country's second-longest-serving prime minister. It seems to have been difficult for many commentators to approach John Howard objectively. There is a...

Reality beyond the whiteboard

EssayIn May 2003, a week after President Bush had declared victory in Iraq from the foredeck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, I made my first visit to Washington carrying the embossed green diplomatic passport of an Australian official. Our embassy...

Location, location, location

EssayI WAS MORE tired than I'd ever been when the fleet of black Volkswagens arrived. We watched them pull into the hotel forecourt from our table in the lobby cafe. All the other tables were empty and set for...

The search for moral security

EssayTHE SUICIDE BOMBER who carried out the September 9, 2004, attack on the Australian Embassy in Jakarta was Heri Kurniawan, known as Golun, a 30-year-old from the village of Cigarung in west Java. As he travelled to Jakarta to...

Mandate of heaven

EssayWHEN HE KNEW we were moving to Australia, my father wrote to two friends in Brisbane asking where our family should settle. He was looking for a town rather than a city, but not too small. It had to...

Made in China

EssayFOR THE FIRST in history, a communist country is in a position to bring down global capitalism. The Chinese Communist Party, if it were to sell the $763 billion in US Treasury bonds it holds, would trigger a massive...

The land at the end of the world

EssayTHE INVASION OF Australia just didn't make any sense. A huge, dry, bulbous tile, sitting at the end of a chain of shards that dribbled out from Asia. Unlike the smaller islands in the chain, it had no exotic...

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