Australian Politics and Policy - Senior, 2019a

Foreign and defence policy
remained even after the shocks of the GFC. Australia particularly championed the
CPTPP, pushing hard to revive negotiations after the US withdrawal from the TPP.
This story of Australia’s international economic engagement reflects its position
as a middle power. Canberra has attempted to ensure the comparative advantage
of its resources, services and agricultural goods in the international marketplace,
but has also reflected its geographic position by negotiating key bilateral and
multilateral agreements centred in the Asia-Pacific rim. This has been especially
important as the resources boom is a story closely intertwined with China’s rise. In
the context of growing regional rivalries and US rejection of the free trade agenda
under President Trump, strategic security begins to come to the fore just as much
as economic security. China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and the abandonment of the
TPP by the USA will continue to concern Australian policy makers worried about
challenges to the orthodoxy of the international rules-based order.
Defence strategy
Australia’s defence strategy has undergone several iterations since Federation, but
its strategic interests have remained largely in the Indo-Pacific arc as, historically,
threats to the Australian continent have emerged from South-East Asia. 26 While the
area of interest has remained consistent across time, the nature of the threat, the
balance of power among great nations, and Australia’s own capability to respond
have not remained the same, leading to different strategies being adopted since the
Second World War: the expeditionary school of ‘forward defence’ until 1972; and
the ‘continental defence’ of Australia school until 9/11.
TheSecondWorldWardemonstratedthattheBritishwerenolongerthepreeminent
power in Asia. But the war also crushed Japan and saw China consumed by
civil war. This left Australia in the peculiar situation of continuing its alliances with
powerful allies, but also capable of projecting power with these allies into South-
East Asia to resist communism. 27 This ‘forward defence’ policy led to Australian
military commitments to Korea and Vietnam with the US, and to Malaya and
Borneo with the British. Australia was able to defend the continent far from its
northern approaches due to the relative weakness of the states in South-East Asia
and the relative strength and commitment of Australia’s allies in the region.
The forward defence era ended when the fear of the spread of communism in
the region reduced, the relative power of South-East Asian nation-states increased,
and Australia’s allies reduced their commitment to the region in the 1960s. 28
Australian policy makers worked through the implications in the 1976 Defence
White Paper, the 1986 ‘Dibb Report’ and the 1987 Defence White Paper. 29 Dibb
26 Lockyer 2017, 193.
27 Lockyer 2017, 161
28 Fruhling 2009, 44; Lockyer 2017.
29 Dibb 2007.
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