Minister for Defence Peter Dutton has announced that the Australian Government will support the Australian Strategic Policy Institute to open an office in Washington DC.
“The whole ASPI team is delighted at the Government's decision to support the opening of a Washington DC Office," Chair of the ASPI Council Lt Gen (Ret'd) Ken Gillespie said.
"We are particularly pleased that this comes at the time of the 70th Anniversary of the US-Australia alliance and also in ASPI’s 20th year of operations.
"Australia has a deep interest in contributing to strategic policy thinking in Washington DC through that city’s lively think tank community.
"I am grateful to Mr Dutton for his endorsement of the quality, depth and value of ASPI’s work in contributing to contestability of policy advice.”
How the US engages with the Indo-Pacific region, with China, with America’s regional friends and with treaty allies matters profoundly to Australia and to global security.
ASPI says it will seek to further strengthen the bilateral relationship by becoming a more active participant in US think tank debates about defence and national security.
These think tanks are often the source of new policy ideas and are designed to be able to experiment, develop and explain innovative policy ideas.
“ASPI’s Washington DC office will operate as a branch and be an integral part of ASPI in Canberra, as such, the business model will mirror ASPI’s which has been successfully developed over twenty years," Executive Director of ASPI Peter Jennings said.
"ASPI’s work focuses on non-partisan empirically grounded original research, a capacity for policy innovation and an ability to shape real-world policy outcomes."