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Australia's new government is committed to delivering the next defence white paper in 2015. The two previous white papers took a predominantly risk-management approach to Southeast Asia, generally ignored the strategic opportunities in the region, treated it as a stand-alone region largely unrelated to developments in East Asia and failed to link Australia's policies in Southeast Asia with the broader goal of helping to ensure greater strategic stability in Asia by putting constraints on Chinese assertiveness and encouraging its peaceful rise. After offering a summary of recent Australian defence thinking on Southeast Asia, this paper outlines why managing China is the key variable when it comes to strategic stability in the region. It then examines how China's strategy and behaviour can be shaped and influenced by events and relationships in Southeast Asia, and offers some suggestions as to the role Australia can seek to play in Southeast Asia that relates to Canberra's China-focused objectives and strategic stability in Asia more broadly If that can be achieved in the 2015 defence white paper, Australia - which is often criticized for being preoccupied primarily with managing the relationship with its superpower ally the United States - will demonstrate to itself and Asia that its heavy reliance on the ANZUS treaty is no barrier to strategic creativity in Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the new (2013) Japan's National Security Strategy and its relationship with the actual changes in the regional and global strategic landscape. The connections between the new Japanese perspectives on the subject and the recent U.S decision to focus its military Power in the Asia Pacific region will be specially stressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On July 30 the European Union started its second largest military operation so far. However, for the EU, interventions abroad for security and peace are nothing new. The EU is involved in security interventions on three continents and in 11 missions. In parallel, the project of European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) is being advanced by the member states with battle groups, a European gendarmerie, and the Defence Agency. However, the more the EU extends its security policy engagement the more diffuse ESDP's political and strategic profile seems to be. In fact, at the end of 2003 the member states adopted the EU's first common security strategy, but even this document leaves a number of crucial issues unanswered, above all what EU military intervention would involve. A political and societal debate concerning what European Security and Defence Policy wishes to achieve, as well as its limitations and requirements, is urgent. The central question is the following: Is ESDP under the conditions of the twenty-first century defined primarily as a defense or as a political project? A juxtaposition of the concepts "offensive (self-) defense" and "human security" illustrates the conceptual and strategic alternatives facing Europe in security policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]