Issues in Australian Foreign Policy July to December 2017

Abstract

The Turnbull government faced an international environment marked by disruption and volatility that was “unprecedented in both scale and pace”1 during the second half of 2017. The period was launched, quite literally, on 4 July by North Korea testing an Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), the first of eight missile tests — two of which overflew Japanese territory — to occur between July and December 2017. Dramatic in their own right, the tests revealed a stark reality to the rest of the world: North Korea’s missile and nuclear technology was expanding rapidly. It was a reality to captivate global media and public attention. Yet, the absence of a swift, coordinated global response, exacerbated by United States (US) President Trump’s goading Twitter commentary, raised potentially devastating prospect of conflict on the Korean Peninsula for the first time in several decades. For Australia, “joined at the hip”2 to the US, the stakes could not have been higher.