IS-ISSS 2025 Proposal

My proposal under consideration for IS-ISSS 2025.

I’ve just submitted the following two proposals that are under consideration for IS-ISSS 2025 - the International Studies Association’s annual conference for its International Security sub-section, which will be held in Washington DC on 16th-18th October 2025.

Crafting Superordinate Goals To Deal With Extreme Cases In International Security: Teaching Lessons From Australia

International Security is dominated in 2025 by extreme cases: the on-going Russo-Ukranian War; Israel-Iran pre-emptive and retaliatory strategic bombings; North Korea's nuclear brinkmanship; ideologically motivated violent non-state actors; and extreme risks. This paper focuses on the United States-China nuclear dyad; Australia's role in the AUKUS security compact in the Indo-Pacific, and its spillover into domestic oriented contentious politics. The Red Team / Team B hypothesis is that Australia's defence and national security establishment (variants of its politico-military strategic subcultures) have decision-maker misperception about Pillar 1's credible deterrence in a potential brinkmanship crisis involving Taiwan. Australia's opportunity to contribute includes reframing adversarial strategic cultures as opportunities for Track II dialogues, military diplomacy, and regional security dialogues. I draw on initial "lessons learned" from an Early Career Academic period (2023-2025) tutoring, facilitating, and marking student assessments in Politics and Foreign Policy classes at Monash University's School of Politics and International Relations. I integrate this with insights from two other pivotal mentee experiences: involvement in the Gravesian / Spiral Dynamics community with Dr Don Edward Beck, Chris Cowan, and Natasha Todorovic-Cowan (1997-2015) and with the late United States Army's Lt. Col. Dr Michael A. Aquino (1995-2019).