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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