ABSTRACT
The phrase ‘new security’ has been around long enough to acquire what Royal Watchers would call ‘a history’. The advent of the ‘war on terrorism’ and its neo-traditional security agenda has encouraged some appreciation in both capitals of the need to turn around previously flagging commitments to at least some of orphaned issues. The Japanese-Australian diplomatic excursions into the field of new security are best understood as extensions from the parallel responses that both countries made to a new feature in the economic complexion of the country with which they both enjoyed different renderings of a ‘special relationship’. Coupled with a marked improvement in the ‘social atmospherics’ along the ‘old security’ front, it is arguable that the unbalanced, economics-only, pattern of bilateral relations between Australia and Japan is finally waning. So the potential for the normalization of Japanese-Australian strategic relations under the effects of the new dispensation appears high.
