November 9, 2005
Australia's security is founded upon certain foundations about its place in the world. The notion of the 'Tyranny of Distance'--whether understood as distance from its 'Great and Powerful Friends' or used to describe the vastness of the continent--has been interpreted by successive policymakers since Federation as a cause of fear and insecurity and as making Australia vulnerable to threat and danger Australia has sought to mitigate this dilemma of its insecurity by projecting force abroad.
This notion of a vast and indefensible land so distant from its Anglo-American allies has, at least in part, been the foundation of Forward Defence policies that have seen Australians fight overseas in well over a dozen wars. The argument is that distant overseas conflicts pose direct threats to Australia which are best thwarted by attachment to a powerful ally reflects not so much the search for security as the fear instilled by insecurity, a sense of imminent threat, and a belief in constant danger.
What does this fear of violent death by foreign (Asian) enemy lead to? Katrina Lee Koo has a suggestion---- Statism.
She says that:
From wars in foreign lands to programs of border protection, Australian foreign policy is literally littered with references, narratives and policies about the state's preoccupation with its own security ... While it may be imprudent to generalise about the history of Australian security, the privileged relationship between security and the state is one that has endured under Liberal and Labor Governments alike. As the monopoliser of 'legitimate knowledge' about national security it is often the state that defines what the political is, where it is located, and what it might or should be .... Australia's state-based security project has infused into Australian society an acceptance of the practices of violence, both structural and physical, as an acceptable means of achieving security. In each of the major foreign policy challenges facing Australia since the inception of this 'War on Terror' (the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the treatment of Hicks and Habib, the addressing of regional terrorism and the more aggressive refugee policies) we see in both the discourse of security and the development of security policy an acceptance of the violence committed against the Other as a 'necessary evil.'
It is a good suggestion.
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I disagree with that. We end up in expeditionary forces because of our "great and powerful friends" (GAPF) doctrine of foreign policy, the expeditions arent the driver, they are the follow on. The GAPF is about defence and economic security, and to an extent cultural security. I think scrymarch has called Australian political history one valiant attempt to deny geographic reality. Billy Hughes pursued the GAPF as he thought Australia was only secure with the Royal Navy, and Fortress Australia (an outpost of empire in a hostile Asia) required the British Empire to remain secure. Hughes also wanted to leverage the RN to create a bastion of the empire in the pacific with Australia at the centre. So at Versaille he used Australia diplomatic weight to further British interests (not Australian interests) and tried to get Britain to adopt Australia's concerns. Dopey. Super-powers play power politics, we are playing a subset of international liberalism, which is we get rail-roaded so often.