Island off
the Coast of Asia: Instruments of Statecraft in Australian Foreign Policy is an unprecedented 230-year
Australian study that reveals the central role of economic actors in defining
and pursuing the ‘national interest’. Australia’s search for security has
meant much more than protection from military invasion. It includes the security
of economic interests, and the pursuit of a political order that secures them.
This view of security has deep roots in Australia’s geopolitical
tradition. Australia began its existence on the winning side of a
worldwide confrontation between imperial powers and the rest of the world. The
book shows that the ‘organising principle’ of Australian foreign policy is to
stay on the winning side of the global contest. Australia has pursued this
principle in war and peace, using the full arsenal of diplomacy, law,
investment, research, negotiations, military force and espionage. This book
uses many decades of secret files to reveal the inner workings of high-level
policy.
‘This deeply researched
and penetrating study of Australian foreign policy from the earliest days - with
scrupulous use of secret files and close analysis of historical events - demonstrates
convincingly that its essential continuity is rooted in the power and interests
of the private sector, where fundamental economic decisions are made. Those
demands determine the “national interest” and the goal of securing a political
order that responds to them. A very valuable and instructive exercise in
authentic realism, with lessons that generalize broadly.’ - Noam Chomsky, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the
University of Arizona
