Foreign relations of Australia
Foreign relations of Australia are influenced by its position as a leading trading nation and as a significant donor of humanitarian aid. Australia's foreign policy is guided by a commitment to multilateralism and regionalism, as well as to build strong bilateral relations with its allies. Key concerns include free trade, terrorism, refugees, economic cooperation with Asia and stability in the Indo-Pacific. Australia is active in the United Nations and the Commonwealth of Nations. Given its history of starting and supporting important regional and global initiatives, it has been described as a regional middle power par excellence.
It maintains significant ties with ASEAN and has become steadfastly allied with New Zealand, through long-standing ties dating back to the 1800s. The country also has a longstanding alliance with the United States of America. Over recent decades Australia has sought to strengthen its relationship with Asian countries, with this becoming the focus of the country's network of diplomatic missions. In 2021, Australia signed a significant security partnership with the United Kingdom and the United States of America aimed at upholding security in the Indo-Pacific region.
History
Post-Federation period
The Department of External Affairs was one of the inaugural departments created upon the federation of the Australian colonies in 1901, but largely remained an appendage of the Prime Minister's Department. Outside of the prime minister, the role of Australian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom remained the most significant conduit for Australian foreign relations, with its significance emphasised by the fact that the first three appointees were former prime ministers. It has been suggested that, for Australia's early governments, foreign policy meant "relations with London on matters of imperial foreign policy on which Australia might have an interest".Australia's first prime minister Edmund Barton was in favour of a uniform foreign policy for the British Empire, suggesting Australia could have no "foreign policy of its own" but expected that the British government would defer to the Australian perspective for "regional" imperial policy. Barton's successor Alfred Deakin also repeatedly lobbied the British government for greater consultation on imperial foreign policy and suggested the establishment of an imperial department of state to coordinate policy, as part of his broader support for an Imperial Federation. Deakin took some of the first steps towards diplomatic independence by dealing directly with the Japanese consul-general, for which he was reminded by the Colonial Office that it "expected Australia to conduct any dealings with a foreign power through London". He also dealt directly with the U.S. consul in Sydney to engineer the visit of the Great White Fleet in 1908. His actions "set a precedent for unilateralism" in foreign policy that was followed by his immediate successors as prime minister, although with a continued reliance on the British diplomatic service and policy-making apparatus and no efforts to develop Australian equivalents.
World War I and 1920s
World War I brought about an increase in direct Australian engagement with governments outside the British Empire, prompted by strategic concerns including the fate of German territories in the Pacific captured by Australian troops during the war. Prime Minister Billy Hughes visited the United States in 1918 and "in a series of meetings and speeches, called on the US to cooperate with Australia in ensuring postwar security in the Far East". At the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, Hughes led an Australian section within the British Empire delegation and co-signed the Treaty of Versailles on behalf of Australia, as with other British dominions. Hughes lobbied powerfully for Australian interests at the conference, including the granting of League of Nations mandates over the former German New Guinea and Nauru and opposition to Japan's Racial Equality Proposal to protect the White Australia policy.The 1920s marked "the genesis of a distinct Australian foreign policy", largely in response to changing power dynamics and the decline in British influence in the Pacific following the Washington Naval Conference of 1922 influence. Australia continued to rely on "the UK and its imperial machinery for diplomatic representation and economic and material security". Following the 1923 Imperial Conference, attempts to formulate a uniform imperial foreign policy were largely abandoned in favour of a system of dominion ratification of British decisions. Governmental interest in foreign policy declined during the Great Depression as the Scullin government concentrated on internal economic matters. In 1929, internationalist Frederic Eggleston complained to a Senate committee that "no parliament which is responsible for its own foreign policy has less discussion on foreign affairs than does the Australian Parliament".
While yet to exchange formal diplomatic representatives, Australia made a number of "quasi-diplomatic" appointments in the post-war period, who functioned as official representatives of the Australian government but held no diplomatic rank. These included appointment of Henry Braddon to the United States in 1918 with the title of "commissioner" and the appointment of Clive Voss as "commercial agent" in France in 1919. In 1921, Australia appointed its first official representative in Asia, with the appointment of Edward S. Little as trade commissioner to China, based in Shanghai. Senator Thomas Bakhap undertook a trade mission to China in 1922 at the instigation of Hughes, and in the same year Egbert Sheaf was appointed as a trade commissioner to "the East", based in Singapore. The initial trade commissioner service was partially funded by state governments and ultimately failed due to a lack of support from Prime Minister Stanley Bruce and state premiers.
1930s: appeasement and rearmament
The appointment of the Lyons government in 1932 marked a renewed interest in foreign policy, complemented by the establishment of foreign policy departments at universities and non-governmental advisory bodies like the Australian Institute of International Affairs. Prime Minister Joseph Lyons took a keen interest in foreign relations and exerted significant influence over the government's foreign policy. He authorised three "Pacific initiatives" as a sign of greater Australian interest in the Asia-Pacific. The first was the Australian Eastern Mission of 1934, led by deputy prime minister John Latham, which visited seven Asian countries and has been identified as a milestone in the early development of Australian foreign policy. The second initiative was the appointment in 1935 of Australian representatives in China, the Dutch East Indies, Japan, and United States – albeit below the rank of ambassador – where previously Australia's interests had been represented solely by British officials. The third was Lyons's "Pacific Pact" proposal, which envisioned a non-aggression pact between the major powers in the Pacific. Although he championed the pact at the 1937 Imperial Conference, discussions failed to progress. In Bird's opinion, "the Lyons years should thus be seen as a part of the evolution of Australian external policy from dependency towards autonomy it is perhaps the continuation and acceleration of the process of transition for which Lyons as Prime Minister ought to be best remembered".World War II
The first accredited diplomat sent to a foreign country was Richard Casey, appointed as the first Minister to the United States in January 1940. This was followed shortly after by the arrival of the first Australian high commissioner to Canada, and by appointments of Ministers to Japan in 1940 and China in 1941. With the entry of Japan into the war in December 1941 and the failure of British forces at Singapore, there was a genuine fear of an imminent Japanese invasion. The only solution was to come under American protection. Ever since that time, United States has been the most important security ally. The close security relationship with the United States was formalized in 1951 by the Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty which remains the cornerstone of Australian security arrangements.In parallel with the evolution of the British Empire to the Commonwealth of Nations, Australia progressively took responsibility for fully managing its foreign relations with other states. Australia concluded an agreement in 1944 with New Zealand dealing with the security, welfare, and advancement of the people of the dependent territories of the Pacific. Australia was one of the founders of the United Nations and the South Pacific Commission, and in 1950, it proposed the Colombo Plan to assist developing countries in Asia. After the war, Australia played a role in the Far Eastern Commission in Japan and supported Indonesian independence during that country's revolt against the Dutch.
Cold War
As the Cold War deepened, Australia aligned itself fully with the Western Powers. In addition to contributing to UN forces in the Korean War – it was the first country to announce it would do so after the United States – Australia sent troops to assist in putting down the communist revolt in Malaya in 1948–60 and later to combat the Indonesian-supported invasion of Sarawak in 1963–65. Australia sent troops to repel communism and assist South Vietnamese and American forces in the Vietnam War, in a move that stirred up antiwar activism at home. Australia has been active in the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, and in the Australia – New Zealand – United Kingdom agreement and the Five Power Defence Arrangement—successive arrangements with Britain and New Zealand to ensure the security of Singapore and Malaysia.Contemporary issues
After the end of the Cold War, Australia remained an important contributor to UN peacekeeping missions and to other multilateral security missions, often in alliance with the United States. Notably, it joined coalition forces in the Persian Gulf War in 1991, the War in Afghanistan, the Iraq War of 2003–2011 and the War in Iraq. In 1999 Australian peace keeping forces intervened in East Timor following its referendum to secede from Indonesia. In 2006 Australia sent a contingent of Australian troops to the state to assist in the 2006 East Timor crisis. Australia has also most recently led security assistance, peacekeeping and policing missions elsewhere in its neighbourhood, including in the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea and Tonga.In the late 20th Century and early 21st Century, a new element in Australia's foreign relations was the growing relationship with the People's Republic of China. After the establishment of diplomatic relations in December 1972, Sino-Australian relations grew rapidly, to a point where China became Australia's main trading partner and extensive official and people-to-people links were well established. In the first 15 years of the 21st Century, Australia maintained privileged relations with both the United States and China. Since 2017, Sino-Australian relations have deteriorated dramatically, as a result of Australian criticism of policies and actions taken under General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xi Jinping. This has strongly influenced recent Australian bilateral and multi-lateral engagements such as the Pacific Step-Up with Pacific Island states, the development of comprehensive strategic partnerships with a number of regional states, and the pursuit of alliances directed at countering Chinese predominance in the Indo-Pacific region. Since 2017, existing security arrangements have been augmented by a revived Quadrilateral Security Dialogue involving India, Japan and United States, the 2021 AUKUS security partnership with the United States and United Kingdom and the 2022 Australia-Japan Reciprocal Access Agreement, which provides for closer Australian-Japanese cooperation on defence and humanitarian operations.