Australia's Different Defence Policy

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Commonwealth of Australia, Defence 2000: Our Future Defence Force (Canberra: Department of Defence, 2000), http://www.defence.gov.au/publications/wpaper2000.pdf, para. 2.4. For a fuller exploration of this view, see Hugh White, ‘Why War in Asia Remains Thinkable’, Survival, vol. 50, no. 6, December 2008–January 2009, pp. 85–104. For a fuller exploration of the implications of all this for Australia's defence planning, see Hugh White, Beyond the Defence of Australia: Finding a New Balance in Australia's Defence Policy (Sydney: Lowy Institute for International Policy, 2006), available at http://www.lowyinstitute.org/Publication.asp?pid=521; and A Focused Force: Australia's Defence Priorities in the Asian Century (Sydney: Lowy Institute for International Policy, 2009), available at http://www.lowyinstitute.org/Publication.asp?pid=1013. Another is Stephan Frühling, who has recently edited a fascinating collection of declassified official defence-policy documents from the 1960s and 1970s which provides an essential basis for understanding the evolution of current defence policy. Stephan Frühling (ed.), A History of Australian Defence Policy Since 1945 (Canberra: Department of Defence, 2009). Coral Bell, The End of the Vasco da Gama Era (Sydney: Lowy Institute for International Policy, 2007), available at http://www.lowyinstitute.org/Publication.asp?pid=723. As so pithily described by Hew Strachan, ‘The Strategic Gap in British Defence Policy’, Survival, vol. 51, no. 4, August–September 2009, pp. 49–69. They were explored in a preliminary way in the 2000 White Paper, esp. chs 4 and 6. See also Hugh White, ‘A Wobbly Bridge: Strategic Interests and Objectives in Force 2030’, Security Challenges, vol. 5, no. 2, Winter 2009, pp. 21–9. Additional informationNotes on contributorsHugh WhiteHugh White is Professor of Strategic Studies at the Australian National University and a Visiting Fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy.