The concluding chapter sums up the existential crisis of the peripheral-patronage state and reasserts its methodological and practical importance, particularly in analyses that presume to derive intention from action and see this as evidence of internalization of, even consent to, norms of human rights and good governance. It then explores the possibility of significant international change, especially from the rise of states whose domestic authority skews more towards patronage than Weberian bureaucracy, and who style themselves as respecters of aid-recipient governments’ sovereignty rather than imposing rights-based conditionalities. China's potentially transformative role receives most attention. Ultimately, because allegedly rising powers may want different rules but are unlikely to advance a rule-free global order, peripheral-patronage states’ need to strategize is unlikely to undergo radical change. This is suggestive of a functionally differentiated hierarchy of states, albeit one whose proper functioning hinges on pretending that hierarchy does not exist.

From 2016 to 2020 Australia put in place new legislation to counter perceived threats to Australia’s security, including the National Security (Espionage and Foreign Interference) Act 2018 (Cth) (‘Foreign Interference Act’), Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme Act 2018 (Cth) (‘FITS’) and Australia’s Foreign Relations (State and Territory Arrangements) Act 2020 (Cth) (‘Foreign Relations Act’). These domestic laws, which are enforced by the police and other security agencies, were presented as a response to foreign interference in Australian politics and democracy, especially by the People’s Republic of China. During the same period, Australia’s relationship with China deteriorated markedly, including a freeze on high-level contacts and trade retaliation. This chapter focuses on the impact of these new domestic laws on Australia’s international relations and assesses whether they were a significant factor in the worsening of Australia–China relations during this period.

Values and gender are an increasingly established part of Australian foreign policy. This chapter explores their role in Australia’s engagement in the world from 2016 to 2020. We argue that gender equality continued to serve as a tangible expression of Australian identity and values in foreign policy, informing Australia’s key international alliances and relationships. First, we analyse the construction and expression of national identity through the values Australia projected in its foreign policy and international relations, and how these values evolved. Next, we focus on who represented Australia and how Australia was represented in foreign policy through its diplomacy, security and development relationships. We also analyse how Australia distinguished itself from other states, which we illustrate with reference to the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. Third, we critically examine the soft power aspect of Australian foreign policy, and how values and gender equality principles were used to enhance Australia’s reputation.

Between 2016 and 2020 Australia’s foreign and strategic policy became more tightly focused on South-East Asia and the Pacific, which it identified as its ‘immediate region’. This reflected the government’s concern about the strategic consequences of emerging great-power competition, and particularly the assumption that China’s presence in these subregions equated to greater influence. While this assumption influenced Australia’s strategic and foreign policy choices, it was largely untested. Australia responded by increasing its engagement in both subregions to solidify its relationships, bolster its influence, and reassure its regional partners of its continued commitment. But Australia had different geostrategic perceptions and interests than South-East Asia and the Pacific. Its failure to acknowledge the agency of these neighbours sometimes led to counterproductive strategic and foreign policy decisions.

The period from 2016 to 2020 was dominated by the rivalry between China and the United States, and by Australia’s relative position amid this rivalry. At the same time, a debate about how to combat climate change and its role in foreign affairs took place in the backdrop to this great-power rivalry. In this chapter we examine the interaction of political and public commentary around these three issues – the United States, China and climate change – with the insights available from polling data. We also examine how opinion on these issues fed into ongoing and longstanding debates. Our results suggest that there was both continuity and change in public opinion on international affairs between 2016 and 2020. Trust in the two great powers declined significantly. At the same time, support for Australia’s military alliance with the US remained strong. In terms of threat perceptions, concerns around climate change remained high, reflecting a lack of policy certainty and a failure to act decisively at the federal level. Accompanying this steady trend of high concern around climate-based security risks was a sharp increase in the perception of China as a potential threat to Australian security interests.

Georgia under Mikheil Saakashvili provides a two-part illustration in which initial success in concealing its quasi-authoritarian rule from the US’s Millennium Challenge Corporation might have been, but ultimately was not, repurposed into success with its most important audiences: the European Union and NATO. Georgia after the Rose Revolution was just illegible enough for the Americans, given their strong asymmetrically interdependent relationship with the new regime, even though Saakashvili’s government had increased legibility by consolidating corruption into his inner circle’s hands. This was not enough for the EU or NATO, even though each has found reasons to overlook domestic insufficiencies before and, according to some members, the Russian threat prior to the August War of 2008 demanded rather than prevented Georgian accession. Georgia had the same mid-level legibility as it showed the Americans, but it faced a deeply divided audience in the other organizations. With no agreement on what Georgia meant for either organization, an asymmetrically interdependent relationship did not coalesce, and Georgia did not manage to conceal its quasi-authoritarian domestic rule from either one.

This chapter explores Australia’s engagement with South-East Asia during the period under review by focusing on its partnership with Singapore. In the period under review, what former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull termed a ‘natural’ partnership showed signs of becoming an increasingly important conduit for Canberra’s engagement with the region, hitherto an under-realised one. With Australia looking to deepen its ties with South-East Asia and ASEAN more broadly, Canberra’s partnership with Singapore went some way towards realising this goal.

This chapter examines Australia’s perspectives and strategies on the rules-based order between 2016 and 2020. Australian understanding of the rules-based order were built on US supremacy as well as US-led multilateral institutions, but China’s rise posed serious challenges to both the power configuration and the institutional foundation of that order. Australian leaders believed that the United States would enjoy military advantage over China for decades, so Australia adopted a series of balancing strategies to cope with China’s challenges under the Coalition government. This was evident in a higher military budget, stronger security cooperation with the Quad countries, support for ASEAN’s centrality to Asian diplomacy, coordination of an infrastructure coalition in the South Pacific, and a campaign against the CCP’s ‘sharp power’. Australia pursued balancing strategies against China to defend the existing order, despite the attendant risks to its national interests.

An overview of existing approaches to less powerful states’ strategies in international relations shows that no theory explains the behaviour described in the introduction. By most logics, they should evade international attention or, if they do approach larger actors with ulterior motives in mind, they should become socialized to valuing the norms they once invoked with cynicism. On no account should they draw the attention of larger actors whose global missions they not only undermine, but depend on undermining for domestic stability. This chapter introduces two scope conditions that begin to explain this conduct. Domestically, these states rule by patronage, a logic of rule that distributes money, jobs, political voice and physical security as privileges rather than by right. Internationally, they are peripheral, which means that they lack material and agenda-setting power in relation to other countries. As such, when patronage rule brings them into conflict with the global rights-based order, they cannot afford to change the offending practices, but neither can they withdraw or bear punishment. A historical account of political development in several post-colonial regions illustrates why peripherality and patronage, while they do not always overlap, correlate highly.

This chapter examines how the ‘Indo–Pacific’ concept became entrenched as the primary frame of reference for Australian regional security between 2016 and 2020. It first briefly reviews the process by which the ‘Asia–Pacific’ descriptor was jettisoned in favour of the ‘Indo–Pacific’ to capture Australia’s conception of its region and its place therein, and how this affected related policies. The chapter next examines Australia’s efforts to engage the region’s major powers, as well as the sub-regions of Southeast Asia and the South Pacific, to illustrate how the Indo–Pacific framework governed Australia’s approach to regional security. Australia’s enunciation of the Indo–Pacific concept, the chapter shows, facilitated closer relations with the US, Japan and India, but it created frictions with China and gained only limited acceptance in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific.

This chapter is concerned with how the foreign policy process developed during the period 2016–20 and how it interacted with and was shaped by the return of great-power politics. In particular, the chapter examines the foreign policy process through the lens of three main developments: the significant change in Australia’s approach to the People’s Republic of China in the context of growing Sino-American rivalry, the dominance of security in Australian foreign policy, and the adoption of the Indo-Pacific strategic construct. The chapter examines each of these in turn. Its conclusion reflects on what each of these developments tells us about the foreign policy process and in particular the role of key institutions, actors such as think tanks, parliament and the media, as well as individuals have played during this period.