IV - Australia and the United States

Summary

As a small middle power in the Pacific, Australia’s major foreign policy problem is the problem of creating a framework of security within the general context of the United Nations and the specific geographical context of South-East Asia or the South-West Pacific. The traditional security afforded by the British navy disappeared after 1939 as effective British power contracted towards Europe and the United States became a major Pacific power. Attempting to pursue an independent policy, Australia has found that the global strength of the United States has set limits within which diplomatic manoeuvring is possible, and consequently that one of the major tasks of Australian diplomacy has been to collaborate with the United States and to influence, perhaps attempt to orientate, American policy in an area that is often of peripheral interest to Washington. London and Paris, Ottawa and Berlin, Moscow, Peking and New Delhi are all points of greater focal importance than Canberra to the United States.