Reinventing Realism: Australia's Foreign and Defence Policy at the Millennium

TY - BOOK

T1 - Reinventing Realism

T2 - Australia's Foreign and Defence Policy at the Millennium

AU - Smith, M.L.R.

AU - Jones, David Martin

PY - 2000

Y1 - 2000

N2 - In September 199 Australia took over the leading role in the United Nations Intervention Force in East Timor. The event crystallized the reversal of a foreign policy orthodoxy that for the best part of 25 years had regarded Austraila's role as one of inexorable integration into an economically dynamic Asia. Yet the fracturing of political stability in the region following the Asian financial crisis of 1997/8 graphically revealed the fallacies that underpinned this assumption. This study examines why a largely successful tradition of Australian foreign and defence policy, which emphasized direct intervention to help stabilize Southeast Asia, was abandoned in the 1970s and 1980s n favour of an ultimately failed attempt to redefine Australia as an Asian country. The consequences of that failure is that instead of being at the forefront of the Pacific Century, Australia now finds itself on the front line of the New World Disorder.

AB - In September 199 Australia took over the leading role in the United Nations Intervention Force in East Timor. The event crystallized the reversal of a foreign policy orthodoxy that for the best part of 25 years had regarded Austraila's role as one of inexorable integration into an economically dynamic Asia. Yet the fracturing of political stability in the region following the Asian financial crisis of 1997/8 graphically revealed the fallacies that underpinned this assumption. This study examines why a largely successful tradition of Australian foreign and defence policy, which emphasized direct intervention to help stabilize Southeast Asia, was abandoned in the 1970s and 1980s n favour of an ultimately failed attempt to redefine Australia as an Asian country. The consequences of that failure is that instead of being at the forefront of the Pacific Century, Australia now finds itself on the front line of the New World Disorder.

M3 - Book

SN - 1862031061

BT - Reinventing Realism

PB - Royal Institute of International Affairs

CY - Lonodon

ER -