This chapter describes the re-emergence of great-power competition between the United States and China, discusses how it reshaped the external environment and strategic space for Australia’s foreign policy, and examines how Canberra responded to it between 2016 and 2020.

Until the tragic events of 4 June 1989 in Beijing, the 1980s saw a substantial broadening and strengthening of Sino–Australian relations, building on the foundations that had been laid in the previous decade and responding to the economic changes taking place in both countries. It was a good working relationship which enjoyed bipartisan support in Australia. While its emphasis was on commercial and economic interests, it was diverse, multifaceted and broadly-based within a cooperative framework, the result of sustained efforts and single-mindedness on the part of successive Australian governments. These efforts, begun by the Whitlam administration in the 1970s, were made on the ground that building productive links with a developing socialist country like China required official initiatives, professionalism and a whole range of skills. Traditionally Australia relied on largely non-official entities to establish and foster its external relations in the economic, commercial and cultural spheres. In the case of China, it was considered necessary to engage Beijing at the official level and to develop strategies with the expectation that this would facilitate non-official contacts.

Physical security, economic well-being and preservation of the political culture remain the first three foreign policy priorities of any sophisticated national government, and opportunities to make sweeping changes to policy in the pursuit of those interests are relatively rare, especially for a minor power.Nevertheless, within a rapidly changing external environment, policy priorities can shift and the quality of a nation’s diplomacy in defending those policies can rise and fall with the passage of Cabinets, foreign ministers and ambassadors. This volume traces changes and continuity in Australian external relations through the 1980s. Some of its authors also attempt evaluations of Australian policy and diplomacy through those years, though success and failure in the arena of current or very recent external policies is not easily measurable – except on such stark and dramatic occasions as a country’s subjugation by a foreign invader or the crippling of a national economy by pressure of external events.

For a time after the Liberal-National Country Party government headed by Mr Malcolm Fraser took office at the end of 1975, it carried on in large degree the foreign policy of the Whitlam Labor governments which had preceded it. The Fraser government did not admit this but it was implicit from its conduct that it was prepared to build upon the foundation which its predecessors had laid when they had brought foreign policy up to date with conditions in the world. Hence, for example, the Fraser government did not attempt to change the new and good relationship which had been established with China, and in fact the first working visit which Prime Minister Fraser made abroad included China.

Foreign aid is given from a variety of motives, not as a rule rationally ordered by the donor governments. Some is, and some is not, treated as of high importance. Thus each national aid offering is likely to be a diverse collection of disparate items, hardly worthy of the name ’programme’, with its own idiosyncratic character. Australia’s aid in 1971 has the superficial appearance of being motivated to an unusual degree by geography. This geographical pattern is not accidental. Since the second world war, Australian foreign policy has been much concerned with proximity. Australian aid has also been subject to little public cricitisim, either in principle of in detail. The magnitude, achievements and failures of Australian aid are therefore very largely the resultant of the efforts of officials in the various interested departments.

Other chapters in this volume deal with some of the many relationships between Australia and other members of the world community. These international relationships are governed by a vast network of international law which is derived from international agreements and customary international law. International agreements may be either bilateral or multilateral and may have as parties to them international organisations as well as sovereign states. Customary international law as its name indicates is formed by the practice of states and other international legal persons.

No foreign policy is conducted in a void. The words themselves imply a definition of relationship: a foreign policy operates within an international framework which is not itself rigid but subject, from the pressure of change, to constant alteration in form. The period of this volume, 1961–65, was one in which Australia, in response to new challenges, achieved a degree of maturity in both the shaping and the execution of policy. In narrow Australian terms, it opened with events which by 1962 had produced a major diplomatic defeat for Australia in the outcome of the West New Guinea dispute; it was to close with a remarkable Australian diplomatic success in the conduct of relations with Indonesia. The basic objective of policy, the safety of Australia itself, was consolidated and indeed secured for a foreseeable time by the United States relationship. But this was coupled with large uncertainties about the extent and nature of the growing political, military, and economic involvement in South-East Asia, and perhaps Asia generally.

South-East Asia has long been an area of major importance in Australian foreign policy, an importance reflected in Australian interest and involvement in the region. In the period under review this interest and involvement was sustained but there were important adjustments.

This chapter describes the growth of the Department of External Affairs at home and abroad over a thirty-year period since its reorganisation as a separate Department in 1935,examines its functions and considers its role in the formulation and execution of foreign policy. An outline of its history between 1901 and 1935 is also given.

The principal objective of defence policy is national security. National security is, of course, concerned with far more than the state of the armed forces. The level of military power is dependent on a host of complexities including national assessments about the external environment, the scope for conflict with potential adversaries and the help that might be expected from allies.

Australia and Japan in the period 1976 to 1980 found life as ’mature adult partners’ (as went the metaphor of the day) far from sedate. The two governments consulted actively, there was a little innovation and rather more frustration. Many of the policies towards Japan of the new Liberal-National Country Party government under Mr Malcolm Fraser reflected some of the aims of the previous Labor government in managing the impact of Australia’s foreign relations on the domestic economy. But the accent of the Fraser government was deliberately placed on stability, continuity and reliability. On some issues foreign policy choices were not clear, since several underlying problems – mainly of domestic political institutions and constraints in both countries – were close to the surface. In 1980, several of the same problems remained – notably iron ore and coal pricing, and access to the Japanese market for Australian agricultural products – although confidence was buoyant on both sides.

Relations between Australia and Western Europe can now be seen better in analytical than in narrative terms. Few decisive events occur, apart from periodic complaints from Australian Ministers about the trading practices of the European Community. Yet the connections between the two areas are of greater importance than the formal connection with the Community, because of the long-standing social links between them.

Short of war, public interest in foreign policy would seem negligible. A national poll taken in October 1980 found that only 3 per cent of those surveyed viewed foreign policy as a major issue. Of course, had the term foreign policy been substituted with overseas debt, Japanese investment, Asian immigration, the greenhouse effect or disarmament, the response may well have been different. On the whole the media, too, has adopted an uneven approach to foreign policy. ABC television and radio and most of the so-called quality newspapers have specialist reporters covering the area. However, tabloid papers, commercial television and commercial radio devote little attention to serious foreign policy analysis. Aside from periods of major international crises, such as the war in the Persian Gulf, even a cursory glance at the Australian media’s daily output shows foreign policy coverage very much lagging behind domestic politics, sport and entertainment.