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1 Australia and Asia-Pacific security after September 11: an introduction
- ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
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1 Australia and Asia-Pacific security after September 11: an introduction David W. Lovell The aim of this collection is to examine the long-term security issues and challenges in the Asia-Pacific region, with particular reference to Australia and its regional role. The Asia-Pacific is large and diverse, and has only recently begun to acquire a sense of itself as a distinct region, committed to a security dialogue. Since the end of the Cold War a positive regional role for Australia has become as imperative as it is difficult. This book is designed chiefly for those involved in the policy-making process. It therefore tries to avoid scholarly jargon as much as possible, but it tries also to be clear and precise in what it says. At least two major assumptions were made in putting together the brief for this work: first, that Australia can have, and should have, an important role in the region (though it may not be decisive); second, that the core strategic realities are for the foreseeable future bound up with the dispositions of China, Japan and the United States. How Australia might rise to the challenge of a constructive regional role in light of the realities of power, and in light of its long and dismal record of relative uninterest in the region, is a matter that exercises politicians, foreignpolicy professionals and academics alike. It calls for intelligence and sensitivity, for a modulated approach to Australia’s key alliance relationship with the United States, and for a clearer definition of the goal of regional engagement. In the sometimes volatile arena of world politics—and especially when the powerful demand that others make a choice between ‘us’ or ‘them’—intelligence and sensitivity are put to the severest test. There is little doubt that the Asia-Pacific region is of enormous importance to Australia, in that it encompasses the bulk of Australia’s trade, is a source of diverse cultural influences, and is inextricably bound up with Australia’s security. But in engaging with the region, there is a pervasive sense among commentators 2 Asia-Pacific Security that Australia has handled the challenges, on the whole, rather poorly. Australia is a rich country that looks both miserly and cruel in its treatment of refugee claimants, and has acted with little sensitivity in relations with South Pacific states, even passing on its refugee problems to some of them. It appears too eager to go to US assistance in the ‘war on terror’, and has blundered in some of its public pronouncements on pre-emptive strikes against possible terrorist threats against Australia. And its relations with its closest neighbour remain damaged after East Timor’s independence, at a time when Indonesia could do with some support in its democratization process. Whatever the rights and wrongs of each of these points, Australia appears remote from regional feelings, and is regarded as a fair-weather friend to regional states. In their various ways, the contributors to this book have addressed the realities and particular challenges confronting the region and Australia. This introduction will outline some of the main themes examined in the book, but it will also discuss the security implications of the current ‘war on terror’, and how they relate to the long-term strategic realities in the region. The ‘war on terror’, important though it may be, threatens to obscure the long list of security concerns that remain pressing and contentious. And this new ‘war’, by appearing to be a war on Islam, threatens to widen the gulf between Australia and its neighbours. Now is the time for calm thinking about long-term interests, and intelligent diplomacy in their service. The changing security agenda Even before the end of the Cold War there was a growing awareness that traditional understandings of security—as chiefly a matter of secure national boundaries, defended by military force—were inadequate to describe the range of threats to states and peoples. Non-traditional threats to security encompass a range of matters, from ethnic and religious conflict, people-, drug- and arms-smuggling, through terrorism, environmental degradation, deforestation and water scarcity, to transnational crime and natural disasters (Chalk 2000). They cross borders with impunity; they cannot be solved by individual states, nor by the employment of armed forces alone. Non-traditional threats to security have the potential to destabilize states and whole regions (Dupont 2001). Maintaining security is no longer simply about defending the state from armed invasion by other states. Such a broadened...