ANZUS in Revision


Book Description

Colonel Donnini analyzes the demise of the ANZUS alliance and shifts in Australian and New Zealand defense features. He addresses many questions and issues dealing with changing the political situation and the impact of those changes on defense and security conditions in the South and Southwest Pacific regions.




Niche Wars


Book Description

Australia invoked the ANZUS Alliance following the Al Qaeda attacks in the United States on 11 September 2001. But unlike the calls to arms at the onset of the world wars, Australia decided to make only carefully calibrated force contributions in support of the US-led coalition campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. Why is this so? Niche Wars examines Australia’s experience on military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq from 2001 to 2014. These operations saw over 40 Australian soldiers killed and hundreds wounded. But the toll since has been greater. For Afghanistan and Iraq the costs are hard to measure. Why were these forces deployed? What role did Australia play in shaping the strategy and determining the outcome? How effective were they? Why is so little known about Australia’s involvement in these campaigns? What lessons can be learned from this experience? Niche Wars commences with a scene-setting overview of Australia’s military involvement in the Middle East over more than a century. It then draws on unique insights from many angles, across a spectrum of men and women, ranging from key Australian decision makers, practitioners and observers. The book includes a wide range of perspectives in chapters written by federal government ministers, departmental secretaries, service commanders, task force commanders, sailors, soldiers, airmen and women, international aid workers, diplomats, police, journalists, coalition observers and academics. Niche Wars makes for compelling reading but also stands as a reference work on how and why Australia became entangled in these conflicts that had devastating consequences. If lessons can be learned from history about how Australia uses its military forces, this book is where to find them.




How to Defend Australia


Book Description

A brilliant and important book about Australia’s future Can Australia defend itself in the Asian century? How seriously ought we take the risk of war? Do we want to remain a middle power? What kind of strategy, and what Australian Defence Force, do we need? In this groundbreaking book, Hugh White considers these questions and more. With exceptional clarity and frankness, he makes the case for a reconceived defence of Australia. Along the way he offers intriguing insights into history, technology and the Australian way of war. Hugh White is the country’s most provocative, revelatory and yet realistic commentator on Australia’s strategic and defence orientation. In an age of power politics and armed rivalry in Asia, it is time for fresh thinking. In this controversial and persuasive contribution, White sets new terms for one of the most crucial conversations Australia needs to have. ‘This book, by one of Australia’s leading defence policy thinkers, will be a very important contribution to our national discussion in coming years. Hugh White tackles many challenging issues and opens up the new debate that we need to have as Australia plots its course through a changing international environment.’—Robert O’Neill, former Chichele Professor of the history of war, University of Oxford ‘Hugh White is among our most knowledgeable and practised strategists. While I am strongly supportive of the US alliance, How to Defend Australia is a serious work from a serious patriot that requires close reading. It deserves a wide audience.’—Kim Beazley




Dangerous Allies


Book Description

Australia has always been reliant on 'great and powerful friends' for its sense of national security and for direction on its foreign policy—first on the British Empire and now on the United States. Australia has actively pursued a policy of strategic dependence, believing that making a grand bargain with a powerful ally was the best policy to ensure its security and prosperity. Dangerous Allies examines Australia's history of strategic dependence and questions the continuation of this position. It argues that international circumstances, in the world and in the Western Pacific especially, now make such a policy highly questionable. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States has also changed dramatically, making it less relevant to Australia and a less appropriate ally on which Australia should rely. Malcolm Fraser argues that Australia should adopt a much greater degree of independence in foreign policy, and that we should no longer merely follow other nations into wars of no direct interest to Australia or Australia's security. He argues for an end to strategic dependence and for the timely establishment of a truly independent Australia.




What Uncle Sam Wants


Book Description

This pivot sheds light on U.S. foreign policy objectives by examining diplomatic cables produced by the U.S. Embassy and Consulates in Australia, some which have been officially declassified over the past 30 years and others which were made public by the anti-secrecy group, WikiLeaks. Providing an original analysis of the cables, this book provides the context and explanations necessary for readers to understand how the U.S. Embassy’s objectives in Australia and the wider world have evolved since the 1980's. It shows that Australian policymakers work closely with their American counterparts, aligning Australian foreign policy to suit American preferences. It examines a range of U.S. government priorities, from strategic goals, commercial objectives, public diplomacy, financial sanctions against terrorism, and diplomatic actions related to climate change, looking back at key events in the relationship such as sanctions against Iraq, the 2008 Global Financial crisis, intellectual property protection and the rise of China.




Friendly Fire


Book Description

In 1984, the newly elected Labour Government's antinuclear policy collided with a United States foreign policy based on nuclear deterrence. After two years of angry meetings, fraught diplomacy, and free-wheeling press conferences, this outbreak of &“friendly fire&” led to the unraveling of the Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty (ANZUS) military alliance, established in 1951. Based on previously classified government files in New Zealand, Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom as well as interviews with key protagonists and the author's own involvement in events, this account tells the inside story of this dramatic confrontation. This is the definitive account of a key turning point in New Zealand history and a dramatic story of powerful personalities tackling critical questions on the world stage.




The Anzus Treaty Alliance


Book Description

The ANZUS Treaty linked Australia, New Zealand and the United States and gained more significance beyond its original purpose of regional defence. Nuclear weapons gave it the character of a deterrent alliance. The author analyses the Treaty's text, historical background and purposes.




Australia's Defence


Book Description

Almost half a century ago, the Australian National University's TB Millar penned a seminal book on Australian defence policy in the lead up to the Vietnam War. Today, Australia's defence forces are returning from long conflicts overseas, while the rise of China and the economic integration in the Indo-Pacific presents a complex mix of challenges and opportunities. Drawing inspiration from Millar's original volume, Australia's Defence: Towards a New Era? brings together leading experts to examine the domestic and international context of Australia's defence policy, Australian strategy and the size and state of our armed forces. As the country heads towards a new era, this book provides an in-depth overview and key insights into the past, present and future of Australia's defence.




Our Exceptional Friend


Book Description

In Our Exceptional Friend, Emma Shortis draws on history, current affairs and questions of morality to mount a compelling and unique case as to why Australia's relationship with the United States needs a serious overhaul. Australians are told that we have two choices in this world: the United States, or China. Faced with that choice, Australian governments of all persuasions have always sided with America – even if that means siding with a President like Donald J. Trump. While the election of Joe Biden has led many of us to hope that we might be heading for a calmer, more compassionate world, and a reset of Australia and America’s ‘special relationship,’ going back to ‘normal’ is not only a bad idea – it's a dangerous and immoral one. Our Exceptional Friend challenges the old assumption that we have no option other than to submit to one global power at the expense of another, and asks Australians to really examine why it is that we welcome American dominance. In this, our 70th year of the Australia–US alliance, historian Emma Shortis argues it's time to take a fresh and unflinching look at our special relationship, and examine whose interests it really serves. We don’t have to make a binary choice between subservience to an increasingly broken democracy and abandoning the alliance. There are other options. How can we make it better for us, and make the world a better place for it?




Unholy Fury


Book Description

In the early 1970s, two titans of Australian and American politics, Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and President Richard Nixon, clashed over the end of the Vietnam war and the shape of a new Asia. A relationship that had endured the heights of the Cold War veered dangerously off course and seemed headed for destruction. Never before—or since—has the alliance sunk to such depths. Drawing on sensational new evidence from once top-secret American and Australian records, this book portrays the bitter clash between these two leaders and their competing visions of the world. As the Nixon White House went increasingly on the defensive in early 1973, reeling from the lethal drip of the Watergate revelations, the first Labor prime minister in twenty-three years looked to redefine ANZUS and Australia's global stance. It was a heady brew, and not one the Americans were used to. The result was a fractured alliance, and an American president enraged, seemingly hell bent on tearing apart the fabric of a treaty that had become the first principle of Australian foreign policy.