Introduction

Summary

Physical security, economic well-being and preservation of the political culture remain the first three foreign policy priorities of any sophisticated national government, and opportunities to make sweeping changes to policy in the pursuit of those interests are relatively rare, especially for a minor power.Nevertheless, within a rapidly changing external environment, policy priorities can shift and the quality of a nation’s diplomacy in defending those policies can rise and fall with the passage of Cabinets, foreign ministers and ambassadors. This volume traces changes and continuity in Australian external relations through the 1980s. Some of its authors also attempt evaluations of Australian policy and diplomacy through those years, though success and failure in the arena of current or very recent external policies is not easily measurable – except on such stark and dramatic occasions as a country’s subjugation by a foreign invader or the crippling of a national economy by pressure of external events.