Mike Gilligan
Dr Mike Gilligan worked for 20 years in defence policy and evaluating military proposals for development, including time in the Pentagon on military balances in Asia.
Mike's recent articles
21 September 2025
Australia has no alternative to biting America’s bullet
John Menadue argues it is time for Australia to separate itself from US policy and preparations to confront China militarily.
8 August 2025
Layered perversion of Australia's defence policy
An amazing thing has happened. Our taxpayer-funded think-tank Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) has commissioned analysis by Robert Macklin which shows that the public debate on Australia’s defence has been biased.
15 June 2025
Why Australia needs a defence minister
The Virgina class submarine has been repurposed since the Republicans took the White House. So, Australia’s biggest ever military project has entered another stratosphere of farce.
27 April 2025
If I were defence minister...
On becoming Australia’s new defence minister, I will advise cabinet at its first meeting that our nation is at a perilous, strategic crossroad.
15 March 2025
Is PM Albanese about to amaze Australia?
Amazing? PM Albanese is the first Australian prime minister since John Curtin to push back publicly on our security against a global leader since John Curtin recognised the danger of an exploitative Britain eight decades ago. Curtin acted. Could it be that Albanese just might act too?
26 February 2025
The fragility of Australia’s security
This time it’s different. America has detailed plans for Australia to play a role in breaking China. Not unlike the role of Ukraine against Russia. Or countless other parallels. That’s what is in the pipeline for Australia. Decades of war at oscillating levels, designed to drain China, mounted largely by America’s friends in Asia, under supervision.
15 January 2025
America preying on our universities
The US is exploiting a privileged position in our society with formalised access to powerful means for shaping Australians’ attitudes to security. It purports to be ally and friend, but where’s the respect?
20 November 2024
America, We are out of your China fight
Australia must leave the China debacle, constructively. In withdrawing from America’s aggression against China, we should offer our diplomacy as a patient bridge between China and the US. That will take time. America will become even more extreme before it considers peaceful coexistence with China. Meanwhile our action will be a moderating influence, as we pick up our own distracted security priorities.
25 September 2024
Whither Australia’s war against China ?
Those espousing our embrace of America’s war against China start with the assertion that it is China’s aggression and aim for regional hegemony which must be resisted. No doubt China sees that in reverse – America as an overbearing, deeply hostile power perched on the edge of Asia pursuing hegemony at each end of the Eurasian continent. Blustering and freely admitting that it alone is not sufficiently powerful, pressuring “allies” for its ends – ruthlessly demanding more defence expenditure and economic and trade sacrifices. Australia is not alone – ask Japan and the Philippines.
14 September 2024
Albanese has a second chance with AUKUS
Australia is to spend mind-boggling money to weaken its own security. Minister RIchard Marles has released a National Defence Strategy which centres on what he calls “projection”. That is, Australian forces threatening China from China’s surrounding waters. The Albanese Government’s defence policy manufactures grievous risk for Australia. That risk must be understood by the government.
31 August 2024
Returning to Australia’s bedrock for security
Richard Marles’ double-speak knows no bounds. His national strategy is entirely contrived to deliver “projection” for America’s ends, without mentioning that Australia is now merely one cog in the unfolding US war machinery across the periphery of Asia. Which is what Paul Keating is saying.
14 June 2024
Walking into war with China: an American trap hidden in plain sight
There is no question that the path to war has been set against Russia and China. Nor is there doubt that the brunt will be borne by US allies, as the US has repeatedly proclaimed its “gratitude” to allies without which its geostrategy would be impossible. The question remaining is when war will require allies to shed blood.
8 May 2024
The end of US primacy: facing Australia’s existential security question
Nothing Australia does – with or without AUKUS – will make any difference to the collective capacity to either deter or defeat China in the next decade, which is the time frame that counts. That means the only prudent choice for Australia’s military strategy is to prepare to defend ourselves from major powers such as China without American support” - Hugh White.
22 March 2024
Australia entrapped in war against China for America
The Australian Government’s bipartisan planned war on China must dominate the next election. Australia’s democracy is currently dead to war, and to America. But the ballot box is the only recourse for Australians.
5 March 2024
Podcast: A rapacious America and the loss of Australian sovereignty
John Menadue, Editor-in-Chief of Pearls and Irritations, interviews Dr Mike Gilligan on the challenge of building a self-reliant Australian defence force, dealing with a rapacious America intent on its own interests, avoiding a US-proxy war with China, and the loss of Australian sovereignty under the 2014 Force Posture Agreement (FPA).
23 February 2024
Australian defence: from self-reliance to subsidising US war with China
Our leaders have rendered us America’s pawn, contractually. Australia has abrogated the right to choose peace with China. Dumbly. Unnecessarily. Deceitfully. For political ends. We once had a leader who put Australia’s security before the desires of a distant, powerful protector. What is the prospect of chancing upon another of Curtinian quality?
1 September 2023
Albanese’s fealty to America: Shouldn’t we be white hot with rage?
Like Paul Keating, Australians should be angry. Australia’s security is at risk. No other nation is so foolish, so self- delusional, so divorced from the basics of statecraft, nor so feckless with its citizens' security in pursuit of America’s objectives. Shouldn’t we be white hot with rage at this government’s abdication of sovereignty?
7 July 2023
De-risking Australia: separating our vital interests from America’s
Does it really matter that Australia’s defence policy has no moorings, and is created unaware of past pain, lessons and policy responses? By agents with unknown interests. And that American influence has been ushered into this void, most recently by Minister Marles?
25 May 2023
Reclaiming Australia’s strategic character
America feels above any need to explain its calamitous geostrategic actions. Of course, it has no obligation to. But its character is revealed as being comfortable with threat fabrication, on a grand scale. It is practised at making war on false premise. And appears energised by it, not repentant. Deception, including of allies, is integral to its geostrategic armoury.
2 May 2023
Labor’s serial betrayal of Australia
Make no mistake, the Albanese government knows that in joining the US fight against China, Australia will be left defenceless on American withdrawal. And only a dodo could not know this risk is high. Maybe the government doesn’t appreciate that war for America is different. It is the war which matters, not the result. “Winning” is incidental.
22 April 2023
Wong’s two card trick on Australians
Minister Wong’s speech to the National Press Club demonstrates that when she lays her cards on the table they do not present truly. A mathematician would advise to multiply her claims by minus one. Australia is well along on a path to make, not avert, war with China. Peace holds no weight with this government. Australians must count on failed leadership from our leaders, henceforth.
29 March 2023
Has the USA captured Australia’s fourth estate?
The uniformly negative reaction of the national press gallery to former PM Paul Keating’s views on Australia’s security raises questions not just of its intellectual adequacy but of whether the media has been captured by and is knowingly serving the United States at Australia’s expense.
16 March 2023
Keating exposes ministerial incompetence in Albanese Government
Speaking out strongly against AUKUS at the Press Club yesterday, Paul Keating’s concern is that Australia’s security has been laid limp upon the altar of small target politics by the two key Ministers - Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Defence Minister Richard Marles.
3 March 2023
Beyond words: Labor’s betrayal of Australia
From our Minister for Foreign Affairs Australians must expect ever more duplicity, more smoothing the path to war orchestrated by America, for America’s ends. It’s a struggle for words to convey the enormity of what we face. It is beyond our politicians. Australia is being dragged into war. No doubt.
18 February 2023
The Abdication of Australian Sovereignty
Reducing the risk of Australia becoming trapped in an American war in Asia, again, requires the Australian government to give notice now to the United States that it wishes to withdraw from the Force Posture Agreement.
24 January 2023
Four dud PMs - geo-strategically barren, unable to identify Australia’s interests
The risks for Australia in joining another “failed” American war, this one contrived to crush China, are worse than even-money, and climbing. The consequences verge on existential.
16 January 2023
America’s cruel game with Australia
Australia’s security policy is a mess. We have been betrayed by our national leaders. Without exception, from Prime Minister Gillard on - with Anthony Albanese shaping up to join - the sell-out to America’s war neurosis is complete. Our leaders have been party to the fabrication of China as a military threat to Australia, by inviting a US military offence against China to settle here and be developed.
4 January 2023
Once defence minister’s spending fiction and the big sell-out
America’s confected strategy to contain China for its own ends has to be separated from Australia’s self-reliant defence, with clarity. The Strategic Defence Review must staunch the bleeding.
6 December 2022
We are useful idiots for the US war industry and its followers in Australia
America believes that it should run the world unchallenged in all dimensions of statehood.
16 November 2022
How defence will ruin Australia
China has no interest in attacking Australia. But once America ensconces its B52 strike aircraft at Tindal, Australia perforce becomes a hot target for missile attack. Protection for Tindal will be an imperative, requiring Iron Dome technology, at vast cost without certainty. No financial provision exists for ballistic missile defence at Tindal.
8 November 2022
Why Labor can’t be trusted with Australia’s security. It started with US Marines in Darwin
Basing nuclear capable B52 bombers at the Tindal airbase is an abrupt, unambiguous sign that our government believes it is Australia’s interest for China to feel threatened with American nuclear strike from our soil. At America’s pleasure.
26 October 2022
Let’s not miss the basics in the Defence Strategic Review
It's time to inter the Hollywood ANZUS which has deceived Australians into believing a US security guarantee is necessary and unquestioningly available should we be attacked.
13 October 2022
The Defence Strategic Review: AUKUS is the wrong submarine for Australian needs
Any new submarine for defending Australia should be built around our experience. Our needs are idiosyncratic. The Defence Strategic Review should find that Australia’s defence interests would be served only by a new submarine designed for Australia’s peculiar northern waters. If we cannot have submarines designed for our conditions, the platform should be removed from our force structure.
30 September 2022
Defence Strategic Review - Is defending Australia dead?
The last decade of Australia’s defence policy has swung from successful focus on our own defence, by ourself, to one heavily influenced by the US strategic determination to dominate China militarily. Thereby conservative governments have invited risk to our nation needlessly and been wrong-headed enough to subsidise it.
18 September 2022
The Defence Strategic Review: Understanding Australia’s existing defence capability is critical
At this time, Australia should be able to rely on its own defence of the nation’s sea and air approaches, operating from infrastructure here. We have no reason to require US armed intervention for our security. That is a significant milestone coming after some fifty years of single-minded capital and activity programs. An example of tenacious public policy delivering big, complex outcomes.
17 September 2022
The Defence Strategic Review: The Hollywood version of ANZUS
It is highly unlikely that China would threaten Australian territory unless we become enmeshed in containment by the US.
26 August 2022
Our Air Force is already 'operating against China'
Australia is seemingly as eager as ever to be pushed out on a plank by our American friends, professionally. Ever the faithful “patsy”.
11 August 2022
Australia’s defence strategic review - facts and fallacies
In preparation for the Defence Strategic Review the government has not informed Australians of any threat which challenges our security, much less a spectrum of them up to “most concerning”.
28 July 2022
Deceiving cabinet colleagues on submarines? Surely not
Which Australian Defence Minister convinced the Hawke Cabinet to create a submarine production industry at Port Adelaide with no commercial prospects, its product being of only marginal benefit to our defence, with zero local construction expertise, at extraordinary cost to taxpayers yet available economically elsewhere - while obscuring the finding by his Department that submarines suffer critical limitations in defending Australia?
19 July 2022
Our Defence Minister spurns realism, imperilling Australia
Behind the militarese the professionals know this means that Australia will cough up as much money and forces as necessary to fight China in a high-intensity war on China’s doorstep.
4 July 2022
It’s time – for a top-down review of defence
Labor has a big reputation to protect on defence reform. At historic turning points in Australia’s security it was mostly Labor governments which turned up and delivered.
29 June 2022
Oh, for a Prime Minister honest about Australia's security
How did it come to this? Australia’s defence policy has been baldly sacrificed to US interests via AUKUS with little public discourse.