Issues in Australian Foreign Policy January to June 2022

The trajectory of Australia's foreign policy during the 2010s was set remarkably early in the decade. Over a period of just five months, beginning in April 2010, then-Prime Minister Kevin Rudd abandoned his Emissions Trading Scheme, Rudd's Labour colleagues subsequently dumped him as leader in favour of Julia Gillard, and Hugh White's essay Power Shift: Australia's Future between Washington and Beijing was published.1 These events decisively framed three enduring and unresolved national questions that defined the past decade of Australian foreign policy: how should we respond to climate change?; are our political leaders still capable of delivering large-scale reform in the national interest?; and how do we navigate a world in which our key security partner and our key economic partner are not the same?

Issues in Australian Foreign Policy July to December 2007 The final six months of 2007 were eventful ones in both Australian domestic politics and foreign policy. Inevitably in an election year foreign policy became intertwined with the contest for political power in Canberra. While some observers have since asserted that foreign policy and “international” issues played no role in the election campaign, the following review of Australian foreign policy will demonstrate that foreign policy issues played a significant role in both the pre-election and election campaign jockeying for position between the incumbent Liberal-National government of Prime Minister John Howard and the Australian Labor Party (ALP) opposition under Kevin Rudd. Over the July to December 2007 period six foreign policy issues dominated both government and Opposition attention and had significant resonance for the domestic political contest: (1) terrorism; (2) Iraq; (3) Afghanistan; (4) instability in the South Pacific; (5) climate change and environmental issues; and (6) the future of the US alliance and great power politics in the Asia-Pacific. These issues largely fall within two broad trends of the contemporary strategic landscape that confronts Australia: the increased importance of non-state, sub-state and trans-national threats for Australian security and the reality of a changing distribution of power in the Asia-Pacific.

The article analyzes the peculiarities of the organization of the unified European defense system, as part of the national security system of the EU countries. The process of changes in the security architecture of the European Union and issues of foreign policy and defense after the end of the Cold War is considered. The steps taken towards the development of the EU's common foreign and security policy after the Maastricht Treaty, according to which the institute of the Common Foreign and Security Policy was called to strengthen the security of the EU, are specified. The main directions of the defense policy of the European Union defined by the Treaty of Amsterdam are characterized. Changes in the mechanism of cooperation in the field of national security of the EU outlined by the Nice Treaty were noted. The study states that the Russian Federation's full-scale war in Ukraine forced EU countries to change their national security policies and strengthen their own defense capabilities after a long process of disarmament. It is indicated that after the start of the war in Ukraine, the issue of collective defense and security of European countries became dominant in the activities of NATO, which is the guarantor of the territorial defense of the EU. The features of the new EU defense strategy «Strategic Compass», which logically continued the Global Strategy of the European Union in 2016, are characterized. The author notes that in the "Strategic Compass" the Russian Federation is recognized as an aggressor against a neighboring state and poses a threat to European security. A conclusion was made about the potential of EU and NATO priorities and security strategy and the awareness of the urgent need to organize a flexible system of security cooperation for a quick and effective response to the threat of an attack on EU countries. It is noted that under the influence of the war in Ukraine, a strategic shift in the EU's position from «soft» to military force is occurring. It was noted that the EU's foreign policy for decades provided for interaction with other countries on the basis of international law and economic norms, but now there is a need to strengthen the military component of the foreign and security policy, which is characterized by a shift in favor of forceful methods of influence.

Introduction Historically, health has occupied the lower echelons of national priorities. Over the past decade, however, national policy-makers have increasingly recognized the deleterious impacts that health crises may have on national interests. As a result, particular health issues occasionally have been elevated within national agendas, especially if they have implications for foreign policy and/or they are perceived as threats to national security. Identifying a health issue as a foreign policy or security issue, or both, may lead to higher prioritization and more attention from top policy-makers, in turn, bringing greater political support and more funding. (1) While health professionals may welcome the higher profile and greater resources given to their issues, characterizing a health issue as a national priority (and particularly as a security issue) may change the understanding of a health threat, put relatively greater emphasis on the views of those outside the health community and potentially alter the approach to solving the problem. Consequently, care should be taken in deciding which health issues should be given priority on par with national security issues and included explicitly in national foreign policy. We support the assertion that [w]hile it is clear that health issues often intersect with security issues, not all health challenges represent security concerns. (2) Health issues that do not pose security threats should not be contextualized as such, since doing so may detract from overarching public health and foreign policy objectives. At the same time, however, we believe that efforts to address all types of health issues through foreign policy contribute to overall improvements in diplomatic relations, which may enhance the security of countries. Health in foreign policy Many health challenges, particularly infectious diseases, are widely recognized as global concerns that do not respect borders. As a result, countries often include in their foreign policies strategies on diseases that have the potential to threaten domestic interests. Public health challenges that are not concomitant security threats should be given consideration as foreign policy priorities on their own merits, without forcing them to be viewed through the prism of national security. One example of a health issue that is addressed through foreign policy but is not a security issue is poliomyelitis. The eradication of polio requires sustained financial commitments and coordinated international efforts. Such coordination has resulted from countries negotiating high-level political commitments under the auspices of the Group of Eight (G8) and other organizations that are not typically seen as health institutions. Despite polio's role as a major cause of disability (and consequent loss of productivity), donor commitment to the Polio Eradication Initiative is not rooted in a concern for its economic or security impact, but in the belief that eradication would be a major victory for public health and would achieve a global good. The impetus for the international effort against polio is not national security concerns but an altruistic desire to ameliorate human morbidity and mortality. Thus, it can be argued that polio eradication is a foreign policy issue for countries, but not a national security issue. Although characterizing a health issue as a foreign policy issue may provide greater visibility and greater funding, there is also a likelihood that programmes associated with such health priorities may be subject to enhanced political scrutiny. Additionally, identifying a particular health issue as a national (or international) priority inherently alters its importance relative to other public health issues. Since resources are generally limited and new funding is difficult to obtain, there is a great risk that the prioritized disease will draw resources away from other health programmes. …

On 1 January 2013, Australia took up its seat on the UN Security Council (UNSC), having been elected to a two-year position as a non-permanent member of the council in 2012. By the end of June, the driver of Australia’s tilt at the UN Security Council seat — Kevin Rudd — had returned to the Lodge as Prime Minister. It was a spectacular comeback from the former leader, whose unpopularity within his own party had seemed to scupper any chances he had of returning to the role.1 The political turmoil associated with the Labor leadership was itself part of the broader federal election circus that defined the first half of 2013. Ultimately, this period was all about the election. In January, Prime Minister Julia Gillard had taken the unprecedented step of announcing a date for the federal election some eight months in advance, triggering what some described as the “world’s longest election campaign”.2 The dominance of electoral considerations in the first half of 2013 had important implications for Australian foreign policy. Confirming previous analysis that suggested Australians do not tend to vote on foreign policy issues,3 the first half of 2013 saw considerations of Australia’s place in the world and engagement with it feature even less prominently in Australian political debate than usual, despite Australia’s position on the UNSC and something of a breakthrough in relations with China. And those international issues that did feature in public debate (in particular asylum and climate change) were ultimately viewed and approached through the lens of domestic political considerations. These tendencies were crystallized with the 2013 budget, which included a delay in reaching ambitious aid targets and a stagnating budget for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade despite increasing diplomatic activity and growing criticisms of inadequate funding. Two key themes were particularly evident in Australian foreign policy in the first half of 2013, and feature prominently in this review: the (growing) gap between ambition and resourcing of Australia’s global engagement; and the growing tendency for Australian engagement with transnational issues to be defined by domestic political considerations, potentially at the expense of key regional relationships. This review begins with Australia taking up its seat in the UNSC, and notes Gillard’s diplomatic breakthrough in China before exploring the politics of funding for Australia’s foreign and defence policy machinery and the dominance of domestic politics in Australian political and foreign policy debates.

While climate change is now a mainstream issue within environmental discourse, its resolution remains hotly contested at the international, national and state levels. As the climate change issue has evolved from being constructed as environmentalist and/or extremist hype into a scientifically grounded claim, the Australian government has been forced to engage with the issue. Indeed, in 2007, the Australian Federal election was touted as the world’s first climate change election (Rootes 2008). This chapter is a review of Australia’s foreign policy agenda in relation to climate change over the past 15 years. Through the use of discourse approaches, the research for this chapter aimed to further understand climate change as a foreign policy problem, and sought to examine how far climate change has become a central issue not only in domestic environmental discourse, but also in political strategy and foreign policy. The research reveals the significant role discourses played in the establishment and implementation of climate change agendas within Australian foreign policy. Discourse was thus used to progress domestic agendas, and consolidate the most important aspect of Australia’s foreign policy, namely its relationship with the United States. This chapter adds to the aim of this book to illuminate case study examplesof how foreign policy can be understood in relation to the issue of climate change. The chapter highlights the overlap between domestic and foreign policy agendas in Australia and how the one has influenced the other. This case study also shows how international environmental protection agendas are driven partly by the discourses that frame them, and created at local and national scales. In this case, analysis shows that discourse about climate change has largely determined how the Australian government chose, at various points, to join international efforts to address it, and indeed other environmental problems. Thus, insights have been obtained into how the actors and institutions within Australia helped forge the progress of international initiatives such as Kyoto.This chapter is a historical discourse analysis of a wide range of news media and other texts relating to Australia’s foreign and climate change policy. Themedia releases. Analysis of the election campaign (October 14-November 24 2007) is also informed by a review of media articles that discuss climate change policy by utilizing Factiva and Media Monitors. An initial search was undertaken of all Australian papers during the period June 2006December 2007 for references to climate change. This initial search yielded over 10,000 citations. A more refined search using the terms “climate change,” “climate policy,” “Kyoto Protocol,” “carbon emissions” and “carbon trading” yielded 125 articles, and it is these texts that were subject to in depth discourse analysis. A discourse analytical approach was also employed to synthesize the information collected. The discourse analysis was conducted according to the steps identified byYanow (2004: 4): (1) the identification of the artifacts (language, objects, acts) that are carriers of meaning in a specific policy analysis; (2) the identification of communities of meaning relevant to the policy issues, i.e. who is producing texts, and what kind of policy communities are involved; (3) the identification of the relevant discourses, with the aim of exploring the relationship between discourse and social reality through examining how texts draw on different discourses; and (4) the identification of points of conflict and how they reflect different interpretations by different communities. MacDonnell (1986) defines discourse as follows:

UK foreign policy is the product of the politics of a multi-nation state. Because of its size, politics and position in the constitutional imagination of UK decision makers, England dominates policy-making. Brexit showed how that domination can cause difficulties and tensions within the UK when a foreign policy issue becomes a domestic issue where English opinion is at odds with other parts of the UK. Despite this, analysis of English views and influence over the UK’s foreign policy remains under-developed. In this article, we outline the mechanisms by which England dominates UK foreign policy and how foreign policy issues can become domestic electoral issues, as happened with Brexit. We examine polling of the views of voters in England and Scotland to identify potential areas of disagreement. We show that while the English and Scottish do not hold profoundly different world views, there are some foreign policy issues that could be mobilised as domestic electoral issues causing division and tensions for the UK.

Boykoff and Mansfield (2008), in a recent paper in this journal, provide a detailedanalysis of the representation of climate change in the UK tabloid newspapers.They conclude that the representation of this issue in these papers ‘diverged fromthe scientific consensus that humans contribute to climate change’. That is,portrayal of climate change in tabloid newspapers contradicts the conclusions ofthe fourth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment (IPCC2007). Is it healthy to have the scientific consensus challenged so frequently? Butshould we worry about systematic misrepresentation of scientific consensus? Webelieve the answer to both of these questions is yes. To present regular updates onclimate change issues in the popular press is important because the changes inbehaviour needed to achieve substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissionsrequire a broad understanding of the basic facts. However, if the majority ofreaders receive misleading information, it will be difficult to achieve the level ofpublic understanding necessary to make such reductions needed to avoiddangerous climate change (Schellnhuber

Climate change is a security problem in as much as the kinds of environmental changes that may result pose risks to peace and development. However, responsibilities for the causes of climate change, vulnerability to its effects, and capacity to solve the problem, are not equally distributed between countries, classes and cultures. There is no uniformity in the geopolitics of climate change, and this impedes solutions.

Military diplomacy has been an important security and foreign policy tool for many centuries. However, in the age of globalization, its importance has grown more rapidly than ever because of the recognition that country’s survival and development also depend on a peaceful and stable national and regional environment. Some of the significant practices in the past reflect that various tools of military diplomacy could be implemented to strengthen country’s overall diplomacy, including bilateral and multi-lateral contacts of military and civilian defence officials of foreign countries; preparing bilateral/multilateral security and defence agreements; exchanging experience with foreign military and civilian defence officials; providing military assistance and support to other countries, such as aid, materials and equipment when there is need and request during the disaster or humanitarian crises. However, these tools of strengthening military diplomacy will not be as effective as expected if there is no effective civil-military relations and synergies between a country’s national security and foreign policy. Moreover, it will require strong expertise and good command of civilian diplomats on security issues and military diplomats on foreign policy issues. To strengthen its military diplomacy to contribute to Nepal’s overall diplomacy and foreign policy, it will require more military attaché in Nepal foreign diplomatic missions of vital security and development interest. Moreover, Nepal should continue building synergies between its national security, foreign and development policies as well as strengthening military diplomacy both at bilateral and regional levels.

The article deals critically with the doctrine according to which in the process of shaping and implementing foreign policy, the executive branch of the government has many advantages over the legislative and should prevail over it. Foreign policy making in Sweden, United Kingdom, and United States is examined, both on the basis of the results of field research conducted by the author himself and on the findings of other authors. According to the author, the widely made assumption that in all countries foreign policy is almost the exclusive domain of the executive is not correct. In some countries, Parliament plays a relatively important role in this area. The role of the legislature in shaping foreign policy does not substantially depend upon the role a country is playing in world politics or on the content of the policy it pursues. This role depends much more on the character of the political system of that country. The legislature takes a much more active part in foreign policy making in a presidential system than in a parliamentary one. Accordingly, its role is much more important in the United States than in Sweden or the United Kingdom. On the other hand, the legislature is more influential in shaping the future orientation of a country's foreign policy than in current foreign policy making. In the interaction between the executive and legislative branches of government, the legislative process itself is not the focal point. In shaping foreign policy, discussions in the parliamentary committees on foreign affairs and hearings arranged by them are not less but even more important than general debates on the floor of the parliament. Private conversations between MPs and executive officials and contacts between them at various commissions, councils, and delegations have consequences as well. From the adoption of the 1992 Constitution which made Lithuania a semi-presidential republic, its President has formal authority to make the main decisions concerning foreign policy issues. The President's constitutional powers in foreign and domestic policy are unequal: he has little to say on domestic issues but foreign policy is his domain. Yet in practice, foreign policy making has been concentrated recently mainly in the Foreign Ministry and Cabinet chamber. Now both newly elected President Valdas Adamkus and Parliament under the leadership of Vytautas Landsbergis are making attempts to play a much more active role in foreign policy making.

The research focuses on the ratification of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which has become an important global issue in international security. The research aims to analyze the factors that influence countries' decisions to ratify the TPNW, as well as to explore the challenges and concerns that individual countries face regarding this issue. The benefits of the research include a deeper understanding of the political, economic, and security dynamics relating to the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. Results show that complex political and economic interests influence the decision to ratify the TPNW. In Oceania, countries such as Australia and Fiji demonstrated concerns for strategic alliances and regional security. In contrast, smaller countries such as Kiribati and the Marshall Islands prioritized domestic issues and political considerations. In the Americas, the United States rejects TPNWs as contrary to its national security policy, while NATO commitments often bind countries in Europe. In Asia, resistance from nuclear-armed states such as China and India reflects broader geopolitical strategies, while in Africa, many states do not prioritize the issue due to domestic instability. Identified in-depth understanding of how individual states respond to TPNWs in specific contexts. Comparative analysis across regions provides a new perspective in understanding the interaction between foreign policy and non-proliferation issues. The importance of international dialog and a more holistic approach in addressing non-proliferation challenges. Countries' decisions on ratification of the TPNW are highly dependent on their localities and challenges, which include both domestic and foreign policy issues. The TPNW is not only a non-proliferation issue but also reflects the complexity of international relations and national security policies in different parts of the world.

Negotiating failure: understanding the geopolitics of climate change

This Themed Section aims to increase understanding of how the idea of climate change, and the policies and actions that spring from it, travel beyond their origins in natural sciences to meet different political arenas in the developing world. It takes a discursive approach whereby climate change is not just a set of physical processes but also a series of messages, narratives and policy prescriptions. The articles are mostly case study-based and focus on sub-Saharan Africa and Small Island Developing States (SIDS). They are organised around three interlinked themes. The first theme concerns the processes of rapid technicalisation and professionalisation of the climate change ‘industry’, which have sustantially narrowed the boundaries of what can be viewed as a legitimate social response to the problem of global warming. The second theme deals with the ideological effects of the climate change industry, which is ‘depoliticisation’, in this case the deflection of attention away from underlying political conditions of vulnerability and exploitation towards the nature of the physical hazard itself. The third theme concerns the institutional effects of an insufficiently socialised idea of climate change, which is the maintenance of existing relations of power or their reconfiguration in favour of the already powerful. Overall, the articles suggest that greater scrutiny of the discursive and political dimensions of mitigation and adaptation activities is required. In particular, greater attention should be directed towards the policy consequences that governments and donors construct as a result of their framing and rendition of climate change issues.

“Bipartisanship in congressional voting” uses an original data set of important votes in the US Congress from 1991 to 2020 to identify patterns in political alignments on domestic and foreign policy issues. The analysis shows that bipartisanship is more common on foreign policy than on domestic policy, and that polarization is increasing more slowly on international than on domestic issues. The data also reveal that strong polarization is rare on foreign policy, while intra-party division, agreement between Congress and the president, and disagreement between the branches of government each occurs regularly. The voting patterns further indicate that international economic issues involve strong bipartisanship less often and involve intra-party division more often than international security issues. These findings set the stage for the remainder of the book, which investigates factors that contribute to polarization or different forms of bipartisanship on foreign policy issues.