The search for an integrated policy: challenges to Australian national interest in the Asia-Pacific, 1921–57

This dissertation examines the development of a distinct Australian foreign policy over the years 1921–57. The period under study was one of immense upheaval for Australia as the nation navigated economic crises, the threat of aggressive Japanese expansion and the sifting power distributions underway in the Asia-Pacific region as the world transitioned from British leadership to that of United States of America. Successive Australian governments carefully observed these global and regional forces, searching for a policy in response. This dissertation argues that the policy that developed was an integrated one—that is, one that sought to balance Australia’s particular geopolitical circumstances with great powers relations and, in assessing the value of these relationships, ensure that the nation’s trade, defence and diplomatic interests were served. This dissertation identifies a marked continuity in how Australia’s political elite approached foreign policy over the years 1921–57. In the midst of the economic and strategic uncertainty of the interwar years, policymakers determined the need to reorient policymaking to Australia’s immediate region and acknowledged that neither the policies of Britain nor the US completely served the national interest. The government accordingly sought to intervene in the policies of the great powers to ensure the national interest was safeguarded. This thesis traces how this geopolitically informed, interventionist approach to foreign policy went on to inform policymaking throughout the 1940s and 1950s. In doing so, this thesis identifies a comprehensive and explicitly pragmatic approach in Australia’s foreign policy tradition that has not been previously acknowledged.