Australia was grasping for soft power long before the term ‘soft power’ was invented. Here’s an official example from 32 years ago: Countries still achieve their international objectives by threat, bribe or persuasion. Australia has …
Tag Archive for: "foreign affairs"
The annual release of hitherto secret cabinet papers now takes us back to the last great Oz outbreak of Francophobia—rage and fear about the French in the South Pacific. The 1994 and 1995 cabinet records …
Simultaneous serendipity struck when the new magazine Australian Foreign Affairs and its US inspiration Foreign Affairs dropped into my mailbox on the same day. The wattle-yellow cover of the newborn publication made a fine Oz …
Australia is poised to be elected to the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) when the General Assembly meets on 16 October. Until recently, Australia, Spain and France were locked in a tight contest for …
China is a relative new player down south. It joined the Antarctic Treaty in 1983 and the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources in 2007. A recent ASPI Special Report, China’s expanding …