Australia's region is facing mounting maritime tensions. This tells us much about the fraying of international order and the capacity of international law to deal with maritime disputes.

Military covenants try to build civil-military relationships on the foundation of a social contract, but is that true for the Australian Defence Force?

At a time when hypermasculine figures dominate the world stage, it’s not possible to be sanguine about equality. A sustained and active effort is required to roll back sexism.

The rules-based international order has become a rhetorical centrepiece of Australian international policy. One of the challenges in the current moment is that the rules and principles that were built on the foundation of American primacy are being questioned as power shifts.

Australia is playing a major role in international economic rule-making through its aggressive pursuit of preferential trade agreements. So how well do the trade rules it is promoting help advance Australia's foreign policy objectives?

Legal protection of whistleblowers is integral to ensuring that public bodies uphold transparency and accountability values. However, international organisations often do not provide the same protections as democratic states such as Australia.

Everything Australia wants to do as a country depends on its ability to understand the rest of the world. To that end, governments can, have and should lead public opinion.

If Australia insists only Chinese student voices critical of their government are authentic, a majority will be alienated and this would be an affront to Australian values.

There’s no doubt the way Australia engages with China is the most important issue in Australian foreign relations, combining complexity and consequence.

The Rohingya crisis in Myanmar continues to escalate and the international community has yet to decide on an effective response.

While Sea Shepherd has announced it will no longer shadow Japan's whaling fleet, philosophy and law still offer a path to a possible resolution of the international dispute.