ABSTRACT
Australia’s strategic history and the core assumptions behind present Australian foreign and security policy have been defined by the overlaying of two foundation stones of Australian nationhood, one external and one internal. The first is the secular shift of economic and strategic weight to Asia, starting with the rise of modern Japan, with the corresponding challenges of integrating Asia’s rising major powers into the western-defined international order. The beginnings of this rise of modern Asia coincided with the second: the transition in Australia’s sense of itself from a distant British settler colony to an independent nation astride the southern approaches to Asia. Post-war Australian political attempts to define Australia’s independent position have been shaped and energised by Australia’s geographical proximity to East Asia.
