Middle power and alliance diplomacy in Australia’s foreign policy

All fundamental security issues in Australian foreign policy are viewed through the prism of Australia’s alliance with the United States of America. This was formed in 1951 with the signing of the Security Treaty between Australia, New Zealand and the United States of America (ANZUS). And while the relationship is subject to periodic scrutiny, this is mostly for celebratory affirmation rather than deep questioning, for who could deny the allure of ‘great and powerful friends’? Such was the case during the tenure of John Howard, Australia’s second-longest serving prime minister (1996-2007). Howard was once caricatured as a ‘small thrifty shopkeeper’ by a political opponent - a gibe that spoke to Howard’s ‘small picture’ approach to government and his conservative temperament. It is fitting then that during the Howard years an accounting exercise on the alliance was conducted and published in the parliamentary report Upside, Downside: ANZUS after Fifty Years (Brown and Rayner 2001). That report eschewed sentimentality and presented a transactional balance sheet of the alliance - a ‘what do we get’ approach. The report’s opening epigraph, from Lord Palmerston (1848), set the tone: ‘We have no eternal allies and no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow’.