A journalist since 1971, Graeme Dobell has been writing about international affairs for Inside Story since 2011.
Books & arts
The Indo-Pacific’s new age of power politics
Graeme Dobell
29 October 2025
Southeast Asia has moved to the centre of China–US rivalry
National affairs
In the court of the distractible king
Graeme Dobell
21 October 2025
Wins for Australia at the White House and a wack for the ambassador
National affairs
Fifty years later, an alliance with PNG
Graeme Dobell
3 October 2025
With an eye on Indonesia and then on China, Australia finally strikes a defence deal with our nearest neightbour
International
Seizing Washington
Graeme Dobell
9 September 2025
Gore Vidal’s message for Americans: “We are Trump; he is us”
Books & arts
Australia in the world
Graeme Dobell
8 August 2025
An indispensable seventy-year record of foreign policy reaches its thirteenth volume
Books & arts
A post-American world
Graeme Dobell
22 July 2025
The Australian flag faces the American eagle in the new world disorder
National affairs
Iran and the US alliance
Graeme Dobell
23 June 2025
How Australia viewed the weekend bombing
National affairs
On parade in a new age of wars
Graeme Dobell
19 June 2025
As Iran and Israel wage war, big military parades are held in the United States and Britain
Essays & reportage
John Howard’s masterful blunder
Graeme Dobell
29 May 2025
He achieved his goal, but Australia’s alliance-led march to Iraq lacked a vital ingredient
National affairs
Uncertain allies
Graeme Dobell
28 April 2025
What history tells Australia about the US alliance
Books & arts
The many meanings of Melanesia
Graeme Dobell
25 March 2025
An Australian journalist’s slow journey from Fiji to New Guinea
Books & arts
Secret world
Graeme Dobell
4 February 2025
The intelligencer who built Australia’s spy service
Books & arts
The journalist and the dictator
Graeme Dobell
13 January 2025
Incensed by efforts to reinvent former Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos, a former foreign correspondent sets the record straight
Books & arts
Chill winds
Graeme Dobell
19 September 2024
The great geopolitical struggle of our time, cold war 2.0, is cyber war and proxy war and tech war, economic face-off and nuclear brinkmanship
Books & arts
How Australia does security and foreign policy
Graeme Dobell
11 July 2024
A nation with its own continent looks at the world via geography and culture
Books & arts
Long war
Graeme Dobell
9 April 2024
How Vladimir Putin’s empire dream became Ukraine’s war and an international nightmare
Books & arts
The father of “soft power”
Graeme Dobell
28 March 2024
An eighty-year retrospective from the American academic who changed the way nations attract and argue
Books & arts
Domino days
Graeme Dobell
14 December 2023
Fifty years later, the Vietnam war still echoes around Southeast Asia and across the Pacific
Books & arts
Memoirs of a Middle East tragic
Graeme Dobell
12 July 2023
A summing up by an Australian diplomat who loved the Arab world
Books & arts
Fire, ash and official secrecy
Graeme Dobell
5 June 2023
The authorised history of Australia’s role in East Timor’s 1999–2000 crisis reveals as much about Canberra as it does about Dili
Books & arts
The past catches up
Graeme Dobell
7 March 2023
An Australian diplomat follows le Carré and Greene among spies and moles
Books & arts
Conquered by China
Graeme Dobell
26 October 2021
How a boy from the bush was seduced by the Asian giant
Books & arts
The power and proximity of the dragon
Graeme Dobell
2 May 2021
How can Southeast Asian countries embrace China without being crushed?
Books & arts
Carrying on till she’s carried out
Graeme Dobell
27 October 2020
Books | Silence may be golden, says Madeleine Albright, but it won’t win many arguments
Books & arts
The morality of presidents
Graeme Dobell
12 August 2020
Books | We can never know the consequences of foreign policy, says the man who coined “soft power.” All we know are the means
Books & arts
Malaysia’s amazing political rollercoaster
Graeme Dobell
12 May 2020
Books | Winning elections in Southeast Asia is tough — and then what do you do?
Essays & reportage
The meaning of Anzac Day
Graeme Dobell
24 April 2020
Australia has reshaped its understanding of what we mark on 25 April
Books & arts
The heart of a reconnected world
Graeme Dobell
23 March 2020
Books | How the Asia-Pacific became the Indo-Pacific, with a brief stop-off in the Asian century
Books & arts
Of maps and minds
Graeme Dobell
10 February 2020
Can Australia embrace a regional identity?
Books & arts
Military mosaic
Graeme Dobell
15 April 2019
Books | A former diplomat tells the story of the “talented cross-section” of Fiji’s youth who enlisted in the British Army in 1962
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