Making Australian
Foreign Policy

Second Edition

In a tense and dangerous international environment, this book looks at the important question of how Australia deals with the outside world. It describes the role of the government departments and intelligence organisations that support the government’s policy-making, and the thinking of the people who make it, in more detail than ever before. The book discusses the processes, institutions, actors and calculations involved in foreign policy making in Australia, and how these have changed under the impact of globalisation.

   Fully revised and updated, this new edition includes four new chapters that explore how Australia’s security, prosperity and values have influenced the direction of its foreign policy, both historically and in the present day. It features case studies of five recent Australian foreign policy initiatives: the Cambodia Peace Settlement, the development of APEC Leaders’ Meetings, the response to the Bali bombings, Australia’s regional assistance deployment to the Solomon Islands and the negotiation of the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement. It concludes by speculating on the challenges ahead for Australian foreign policy making.

   This is essential reading for all those who are interested in Australian foreign policy, and for politics students in international relations and foreign policy courses.

Allan Gyngell has had a long career in making, advising on and implementing foreign policy. He headed the International Division of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, and has been posted to many countries since joining the Department of Foreign Affairs in 1969. He was foreign policy adviser to former Prime Minister Paul Keating from 1993 until 1996. He is Executive Director of the Lowy Institute for International Policy.

Michael Wesley is Professor of International Relations and Director of the Griffith Asia Institute at Griffith University. From 2003 to 2004 he was Assistant Director-General for Transnational Issues at the Office of National Assessments. He has researched and published widely on Australian foreign policy, Asia-Pacific politics and international security, and is the editor of the Australian Journal of International Affairs.

Praise for the first edition:

‘A book that should be read by all Australians interested in international relations.’ Geoffrey Barker, The Australian Financial Review

Making Australian
Foreign Policy

Second Edition

Allan Gyngell

Lowy Institute for International Policy

Michael Wesley

Griffith University

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

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Cambridge University Press
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Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521700313

© Allan Gyngell and Michael Wesley 2007

First published 2003
Reprinted 2005
Second edition 2007

Printed in Australia by Ligare

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

National Library of Australia Cataloguing in Publication data
Gyngell, Allan.
Making Australian foreign policy.
2nd ed.
Includes index.
ISBN 9780521700313 (pbk.).
1. Australia – Foreign relations administration. I. Wesley, Michael, 1968--. II. Title. 327.94

ISBN 978-0-521-70031-3

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Contents

Preface to the First Edition

THIS BOOK BEGAN its life over a late-night beer in a hotel in Taiwan in 1997. We two authors – one a political scientist with a background in international relations theory, the other a former diplomat and policy-maker – discovered that we were each interested from our different perspectives in the same questions. Why do international relations theorists and foreign policy practitioners see the process of making foreign policy in such different ways? Why has so little of the writing about foreign policy in Australia successfully reconciled the theoretical approaches to the subject with the actual, erratic, contingent way in which foreign policy making takes place?

    In contrast with other areas of public policy – microeconomic or social policy, for example – the gap between foreign policy academics and practitioners is large. They speak different languages. Empirical to their bootstraps, foreign policy practitioners tend to regard theory as an artificial template imposed on an uncertain world. For their part, international relations theorists consider practitioners dangerously limited by their failure to understand, or to have regard for, the broader patterns shaping international events. We consider some of the reasons for this gap in Chapter 1. One important objective of this book is to clear away some of the dust and to help practitioners and theorists see each other more clearly.

    Foreign policy is a subject worth taking seriously. If it is conceived and implemented effectively, foreign policy delivers to a country benefits as tangible and significant as those produced by good economic policy. If it is done badly, the consequences are frequently serious and can eventually be calamitous. So both authors believe that understanding how foreign policy is made in Australia, how the key institutions operate, and how the structures and mechanisms are changing are matters of more than simply academic interest.

    We are not concerned in this book with the important public-policy question of what particular foreign policy Australia should pursue. We hope, however, that by investigating the modalities of foreign policy making in Australia we can help frame and give more precision to that vital debate.

    For the most part, Michael Wesley conceived and wrote the first drafts of the chapters on theory and the internal and external environment. Allan Gyngell did the same for the chapters on the institutions of foreign policy making and the case studies. We then argued about, edited and rewrote the text until we were each comfortable with the result. The work was completed in early 2003.

    We have many people, inside government and outside, to thank for help in writing the book and shaping our ideas. Their contributions – some on the record, some off – will be apparent from the text, although the responsibility for the content is entirely ours.

    Among those we would like to thank specifically are the Australian Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, and his predecessor, Gareth Evans. Dr Ashton Calvert, the Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, was generous in giving us access to the department and in agreeing to distribute the questionnaire on how DFAT policy officers think about their jobs. In two different positions – as head of Corporate Services and later as Deputy Secretary – Alan Thomas was of great assistance. So, too, in Australia and overseas, were John Dauth, Ian Kemish, Dennis Richardson, Richard Smith, Allan Taylor, Michael Thawley and Hugh White. Michael Costello, Michael Keating and Stuart Harris gave us the benefit of their extensive experience in government and outside it. Over five years while we were working on this book, a number of other people patiently gave us their views on their involvement with the foreign policy process, in structured interviews and informal conversations: we thank Ron Bonighton, Bill Bowtell, Laurie Brereton, Paul Comfort, Wendy Craik, Jane Drake-Brockman, Peter Drysdale, Geoff Forrester, Glenda Gauci, Genta Hawkins Holmes, Bill Hayden, Joanna Hewitt, Cavan Hogue, Mitch Hooke, Lyle Howard, Greg Hunt, Jeremy Jones, Miles Jordana, Paul Kelly, Miles Kupa, Michael L’Estrange, Geoff Miller, Kevin Rudd, Nick Warner, Mack Williams and Kyle Wilson.

    For their generosity in reading and commenting on parts of the manuscript, or for providing helpful suggestions on literature and approaches, we thank Chris Black, Glyn Davis, Stephen FitzGerald, Kath Gelber, Geoff Levey and Marc Williams. Michael Wesley tested much of the theoretical framework of this book over the course of a number of seminars held at the Asia–Australia Institute, the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), and at the Australian Institute of International Affairs – our thanks to all of the participants in those contexts who responded with useful comments to the papers presented. The theoretical framework was also tested as the course material for the subject “Diplomacy and Foreign Policy Analysis”, a second-year unit in the School of Politics and International Relations at UNSW: many thanks to the students in that subject who participated in lively tutorial discussions and asked often-demanding questions at the lectures.

    Shah Eshan Habib translated the results of the DFAT survey into meaningful statistics with the patience and humour of one accustomed to dealing with the mathematically challenged. The staff of the ASIO, DFAT and UNSW libraries provided wonderful professional help.

    Thanks in particular are due to Paul Keating for his longstanding support and the opportunities he opened up, and to David Kwon for his support.

    We are grateful to all the staff members of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade who took the time to complete the questionnaire on which some of our conclusions are based.

    Cambridge University Press, especially Kim Armitage, Amanda Pinches and David Barrett, were a pleasure for the authors to deal with.

    Above all, for all their forbearance, support and patience, we thank Catherine Gyngell and Sheridan Hume.

Preface to the Second Edition

FOUR YEARS SEPARATE the submission of the manuscript for this second edition from the submission of the first edition manuscript. The period since early 2003 has arguably been one of even greater controversy involving Australian foreign policy than the period between 1997 and 2003 when we were writing the first edition. The invasion of Iraq, controversies over terrorism and pre-emptive strikes, the Australian Wheat Board scandal, the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement, the Boxing Day tsunami, and the incarcerations of Schapelle Corby and David Hicks have brought Australia’s foreign relations firmly into the centre of national debate and discussion. Partly due to these pressures, the structures and processes of Australian foreign policy making have evolved.

The four years since early 2003 have also changed this book’s authors. Having teamed up as a former foreign policy professional and an international relations academic, the former professional has moved into the world of policy think tanks and academic debate, while the academic entered the Australian intelligence community before returning to academia. Our experiences in these different contexts have led us to believe that while there is certainly interest in dialogue between the two worlds of foreign policy – the official and the academic – the gap between them remains regrettably large.

    We have been delighted by how broadly the book has been reviewed, read and cited. We were motivated to write a second edition for reasons beyond simply the need to update facts and figures. Many of those who read the first edition commented to us that they thought the book needed more on the substance of Australian foreign policy, rather than our concentration on the processes and structures involved in making that foreign policy. Consequently, this edition contains four new chapters on the substance of Australian foreign policy: on Australia’s role in the world, on Australia’s security, on Australia’s prosperity, and on the role of values in Australian foreign policy. It also contains two new case studies: on the development of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI), and on the negotiation of the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement. We hope that these additions will go some way to addressing what some readers thought were omissions in the original.

    Both of us reviewed and revised the existing chapters and case studies. Allan Gyngell wrote the first drafts of the two new case studies, and Michael Wesley wrote the first drafts of the four new chapters. As in the first edition, we then discussed, debated and edited the text of each old and new chapter or case study until we were both happy with the final product.

    In addition to those we thanked in the first edition, we would like to thank Ivan Cook, Malcolm Cook, Stephen Deady, Michael Fullilove, Brendon Hammer, David Irvine, John Kunkel, John McCarthy, Steve MacFarlane, Murray McLean, Annmaree O’Keeffe, Don Russell, Heather Smith, David Stuart, Mark Thirlwell, Peter Varghese and Pat Weller. In thinking about and marshalling arguments for the four new chapters, Michael Wesley benefited greatly from teaching the Master’s seminar “Australian Foreign Policy in Asia” at Griffith University in 2004 and 2006; many thanks to the students involved in those classes.

    It was Kim Armitage at Cambridge University Press who got us moving on preparing this second edition, and Susan Hanley was so patient with our repeated failure to meet submission deadlines. Kate Indigo and Lian Flick provided wonderful support with the manuscript.

    And above all, for their support and patience with husbands who spent significant amounts of time over the 2006 Christmas break huddled over computers, we thank Catherine Gyngell and Sheridan Hume.