Blog Archives
NEW ZEALAND AND ITS EXERNAL RELATIONS (A BRIEF)
Devania Anesya/ 070810535
| In the early days of the New Zealand colony it was accepted readily enough that the British Government should continue to be responsible for external trade and foreign relations. In 1869 and 1870 colonial irritation with British policy over Maori affairs and the conduct of the Maori Wars led to mutters of independence, separation, and even of neutrality in a war caused by British policy. Imperial concessions in 1870, however, were a sign of increasing British sympathy for its colonial connections, and marked the beginning of a period during which New Zealand loyalty to the “motherland” was unquestioned. In the expansive 1870s New Zealand leaders began to look with interest on the Pacific Islands to the north. |
Economic growth in New Zealand has been underpinned by exports, especially of food and fibre products. While more than 80 percent of NZ exports are accounted for by firms in the manufacturing sector, nearly two-thirds of the exports are based on food, fibre and forestry products[1].
Talk about market in NZ, because shoppers who spend more on groceries each week are also more loyal to their main store, it is logical for supermarkets to attempt to increase store loyalty. However, despite these attempts, the proportion of high loyalty customers in New Zealand supermarkets is virtually the same, once market share is taken into account.
New Zealand supports efforts to strengthen the rule of law at the international level, including through an effective network of multilateral legal instruments to combat terrorism. It is therefore appropriate that we move now to become party to International Convention, which builds upon a group of first-generation international anti‑terrorism instruments which New Zealand has already ratified. Those were more situation-specific multilateral treaties (eg. hostage-taking, hijacking) whereas this Terrorist Financing Convention is a second-generation treaty that deals principally with the forms of terrorism covered by these earlier treaties and targets the financing of terrorist acts covered by them[2].
Geographically, New Zealand is isolated from the rest of the world. This is why then much of New Zealand’s foreign policy is focused on the Pacific region, particularly Polynesia and Melanesia. Just like Australia, New Zealand gazed Pacific region as their strategic importance-territory. Pacific region has strategic sea route for New Zealand and the islands located in this region are protective shield for their defense.[3] This is why then since New Zealand became one of British colony; New Zealand is ambitious to take control in Pacific region. Since then, New Zealand plays an active role in Pacific affairs; though New Zealand policies towards the islands have evolved markedly from the colonial period to the present.
In 1971, New Zealand joined the other independent and self-governing states of the South Pacific to establish the South Pacific Forum (now known as the Pacific Islands Forum), which meets annually at the “heads of government” level. Through SPF, New Zealand played a key role in setting up a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the region. Looking at the history, the states in the Pacific region became concerned with nuclear weapon issues following the nuclear detonations over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when the region became a testing ground for such weapons. The Pacific Island countries, besides being concerned with nuclear testing in their region and its vicinity, were also worried about the dumping of nuclear wastes at sea, fearing radioactive contamination of the marine environment. The SPF took up the issue in 1975 in response to a proposal by New Zealand calling for the setting up of a nuclear-weapon-free zone (NWFZ) in the region.[4]
Meanwhile, New Zealand’s role in the Pacific Islands’ trade has been that of a supplier of agricultural products, essential foods, and, more recently, manufactured consumer goods. In turn, the Pacific Islands have supplied New Zealand with tropical fruits, sugar, and copra.
One of agreement made by New Zealand and Pacific Island countries is Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations or PACER for short. PACER is basically an agreement between Australia, New Zealand and 14 Pacific Island countries.[5] It was endorsed at the meeting of the Pacific Islands Forum in Nauru in 2001. PACER provides an initial trade agreement between Pacific Island countries and promised to initiate negotiations for free trade agreement with Australia and New Zealand by 2011.
In April 2008 New Zealand and China signed the New Zealand–China Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in Beijing. The two countries have also concluded an Environment Cooperation Agreement (ECA) and a Memorandum of Understanding on Labour Cooperation (MOU). Subject to ratification, the agreements are expected to enter into force by 1 October 2008.
The main values for New Zealand in entering into the FTA and associated instruments are:
- Increased access for New Zealand trade and investment, which will contribute to growth, jobs and higher living standards
- The framework the FTA establishes for resolving trade and investment issues that may arise in the future
- The framework established by the MOU and the ECA for discussing and cooperating on labour and environment issues
- The support the treaties give to New Zealand’s objective of broadening and deepening relations in Asia and with China in particular
- The support the FTA gives to New Zealand’s wider trade policy interests in strengthening economic integration in the Asia-Pacific and multilaterally
- The FTA’s assistance in raising the commercial profile for New Zealand companies in China.[6]
The FTA is expected to have an overall positive effect on the New Zealand economy, with gains to GDP, trade and welfare. The FTA is expected to deliver economic benefits through the removal of tariffs and the reduction of other impediments to bilateral trade and investment between New Zealand and China over time.
References:
Hamid, Zulkifli. 1996. Sistem Politik Pasifik Selatan. Jakarta: PT Dunia Pustaka Jaya
White Paper Our Future with Asia, 2007, available on the MFAT website (www.mfat.govt.nz ) [accessed 27 Desember 2010]
Iyer, Kris. 2010. The Determinants of Firm-Level Export Intensity in New Zealand Agriculture and Forestry [online] available at http://www.eap-journal.com.au/archive/v40_i1_05-iyer.pdf [accessed 27 Desember 2010]
http://www.mfat.govt.nz/Treaties-and-International-Law/03-Treaty-making-process/National-Interest-Analyses/0-Supression-of-Financing-Terrorism.php [accessed 27 Desember 2010]
http://www.forumsec.org.fj/resources/uploads/attachments/documents/PACER.pdf ,[accessed on 25 December 2010]
[1] Kris Iyer. 2010. The Determinants of Firm-Level Export Intensity in New Zealand Agriculture and Forestry [online] available at http://www.eap-journal.com.au/archive/v40_i1_05-iyer.pdf [accessed 27 Desember 2010]
[2]Anon. 2010. International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism [online] available at http://www.mfat.govt.nz/Treaties-and-International-Law/03-Treaty-making-process/National-Interest-Analyses/0-Supression-of-Financing-Terrorism.php [accessed 27 Desember 2010]
[3] Zulkifli Hamid. 1996. Sistem Politik Pasifik Selatan. Jakarta: PT Dunia Pustaka Jaya
[4] Zulkifli Hamid. 1996. Sistem Politik Pasifik Selatan. Jakarta: PT Dunia Pustaka Jaya
[5] Anon, Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER), [online] http://www.forumsec.org.fj/resources/uploads/attachments/documents/PACER.pdf ,accessed on 25 December 2010
[6] As outlined in the 2007 White Paper Our Future with Asia, the Government supports regional integration in Asia and sees it as a big opportunity for New Zealand’s economic transformation and for linking New Zealand’s growth to the growth of Asian economies. Our Future with Asia is available on the MFAT website (www.mfat.govt.nz).
AUSTRALIAN EXTERNAL RELATIONS: SPECIAL RELATIONS WITH THE UNITED STATES
Devania Anesya/ 070810535
| Australia has a strategic location and geography since the mid-1980s. Its location isolated from world trouble spots and the fact that it is an island continent are said to provide certain strategic and tactical advantages which is contributed to its defensibility. The Labour government’s 1987 defense White Paper noted that Australia… naturally protected by vast ocean surrounds and the inhospitable tracts of our own country to the north and north-west… combine to provide with natural defences against conventional attack (Beazley, 1987). |
The 1994 defence White Paper again warned that at some time in the future armed force could be used against us and (so)… we need to be prepared to meet it (White Paper, 1994). This is in spite of the fact that white Australia has never seriously been threatened has said we are unlikely to be for at least the foreseeable future. Such continuing, obsessive, and arguably, irrational fear of military attack has its root in white Australia’s own history and experiences.
Australia has always been a frightened country (Renouf, 1979 and Pons, 1994) by the constant fear of attack or conquest by external and predominantly Asian countries. Australia beliefs that she cannot defend herself against these perceived threats, that’s why she led Australia’s policy makers to look to great and powerful friend for reassurance and protection. As a consequence, Australia has become a dependent ally (Bell, 1988), borrowing from and ever supportive of the policies and practices of its principal benefactors, and ready to dispatch military forces overseas in support of their imperial objectives (Andrews, 1979; Millar, 1991; and Watt, 1968).
The notion of keeping Australia safe created by maintaining its surrounding region as an Anglo-Australian and later United States-Australian preserve was not restricted to colonial times. It is important to remember that when United States dominance was arguably most legitimate, constructive, and benign in the first couple of decades after the Second World War, it was widely perceived to have assumed a hegemonic position that transcended national interest to provide international public good (Kindleberger, 1973).
Since the Second World War, relations with United States have assumed an increasingly prominent position in the construction of economic and security policies in Australia. Sentiment toward the United States has generally been positive. However, self declared ‘war on terrorism’ of United States and Australia’s participation in a conflict with Iraq in particular, has subjected the relationship to widespread scrutiny and criticism. The Australian Labor Party (ALP) has moved to qualify its support, some senior Labor figures have launched fairly splenetic attack on American foreign policy and the Howard government’ support of it (Price, Lewis, and Kerin, 2003).
Even before 11 September 2001 and the subsequent reordering of American foreign policy, the Howard government’s expectations about what the bilateral relationship with the United States could deliver looked likely to prove a triumph of hope over experience: a glance at the recent historical record suggested that the benefits likely to accrue to Australia were likely to be the modest at best. But if we examine closer, more exclusive relationship with the United States may have a significant and generally negative impact on Australia’s long term place in the region, its economic position, its political independence, and even domestic security.
In economic relations with United States, Australia is one of a select band of countries that actually runs a trade deficit with the United States. While American markets have played a pivotal role in underpinning the export-led development of much of region and more sustaining a faltering global economy through seemingly insatiable consumer-led demand, Australia has not been a major beneficiary of either of these developments. There is a range of visible and invisible trade barriers that discriminate against Australian-based producers (Beeson, 2003).
Australia-New Zealand-US alliance, ANZUS was plainly a gesture loaded symbolic than strategic significance, as Australia could add nothing material to America’s overwhelming and increasing military dominance (Brooks and Wohlforth, 2002) but it was a gesture that continued an Australian tradition with a respected heritage. Difficult to say anything sensible about the intelligence benefits but with the sort of threat Australians obviously did face in Bali, this sort of information was either inadequate or not acted upon (Walker, 2002). Indeed, White (2002, 254) argues that it is Australia that is out of step with contemporary strategic realities and that far from being an irresponsible free-rider. We can se that the Howard government’s enthusiastic support for the United States generally and for the ‘war on terror’.
Clearly, Australia has a limited capacity to influence American foreign policy. The United States’ present determination to use its overweening power to pursue more narrowly defined and supported objectives means that policy makers in allied countries like Australia need to balance what are debatable short-term domestic pay-offs against the long-term stability of the International system (Beeson, 2003). But in both of the most important elements of its bilateral relationship, economics and security, Asutralia is clearly disadvantaged by America’s willingness to exploit its overwhelming political, economic, and strategic leverage.
References:
Beeson, Mark. 2003. Australia’s Relationship with the United States: The Case for Greater Independence. Queensland: Australian Journal of Political Science, University of Queensland
Cheeseman, Graeme. –. Australia: the White Experience of fear and Dependence. –
AUSTRALIAN EXTERNAL RELATIONS: RELATIONS WITH INDONESIA, CHINA, AND ITS POSITION IN ASIA
Devania Anesya/ 070810535
| Australia has always been a frightened country (Renouf, 1979 and Pons, 1994) by the constant fear of attack or conquest by external and predominantly Asian countries. Australia beliefs that she cannot defend herself against these perceived threats, that’s why she led Australia’s policy makers to look to great and powerful friend for reassurance and protection. As a consequence, Australia has become a dependent ally (Bell, 1988), borrowing from and ever supportive of the policies and practices of its principal benefactors, and ready to dispatch military forces overseas in support of their imperial objectives (Andrews, 1979; Millar, 1991; and Watt, 1968). The notion of keeping Australia safe created by maintaining its surrounding region as an Anglo-Australian and later United States-Australian. |
Racial and ethnocentric concerns have informed most of the perceived threats to Australia’s security: initially invasion by ‘yellow hordes’, followed by the fear of communist ‘reds’, and then following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Arab, and Muslim terrorist and religious fanatics. As Jan Pettman has argued, these external fears have been fostered by a process of racialization which predisposes many Australians to associate threat with difference’ and continues to inform dominant assumptions of alliance/ affiliation/ allegiance with the west, and defines our regions against us (Pettman, 1992). Pettman further argues that Australia’s continued fear of invasion may also stem from a sense of guilt that white settlers come with superior military power and seize the land by force, claiming that its occupants were not really using the land productively, might not the more populous and pressured of Asia likewise (Pettman, 1992).
Australia Relations with Indonesia
Australian governments have developed a defense strategy predicated on a threat from and a need for stability in the north, giving observers the impression that Indonesia is a major concern that has loomed large in Australia’s strategic vision (rather than vice versa) (Smith, 2008).
In the past, officials in Australia have worked hard to build a special relationship with Indonesia, which included generous Australian aid, and—in Canberra’s view—tacit support for Indonesia’s acquisition of East Timor. Indonesia has also valued its relationship with Australia. Indonesia even gave Australia a sweetheart deal in divvying up the oil in the Timor Gap, most likely in exchange for Australia’s acquiescence to Indonesia’s controversial absorption of East Timor.
However, because of Australia’s role in the independence of East Timor, Indonesia ended a defense agreement with Australia and relations grew sour (Smith, 2008). In fact, Indonesian leaders have cited Australia as the primary threat to its cohesion, particularly in relation to the troubled province of Papua. Indonesia blamed Australia for the territory’s secession from the Republic. Today, Indonesians believe that Australia is the primary threat to national cohesion.
After September 11 and, especially, the October 12, 2002 Bali bombings that killed eighty-eight Australians, Indonesia figured prominently in Australian security. Australia believes conditions there may pose a threat to its citizens and Australian assets overseas. Australian officials have worked hard to revitalize the relationship. At the functional level there is substantial cooperation. Australia has maintained its aid program and has assisted the Indonesian police in their Bali blast investigations. Restoration of military-tomilitary ties is in the works. Yet Australia has struggled to establish high-level visits. Both Indonesian presidents Wahid and Megawati have cancelled planned trips to Australia, most likely because of nationalist pressures emanating from the Indonesian Parliament and the general public.
In the wake of difficulties to the bilateral relations, both Canberra and Jakarta are trying to restore elements of past cooperation. For example, in the aftermath of the Bali blast, Australian police were instrumental in assisting their Indonesian counterparts in dismantling the culpable Jemaah Islamiyah cells.
For the United States, Australia’s links with Indonesia have always been useful because they helped shore up Indonesia’s security and stability. However, today in the wake of East Timor and Bali, Canberra-Jakarta links are shaken, and the United States needs to be realistic about the limitations of the Australia-Indonesia relationship. Furthermore, Australia’s close alliance with the United States has proven to be a millstone in normalizing Australia- Indonesia relations; many Indonesians see the Untied States as having negative designs on their country for which Australia is a willing partner.
Australia Relations with China
Australia’s first diplomatic mission in China opened in 1941, but closed again only eight years later after the Communist victory over the Nationalist Kuomintang and the subsequent establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. Cold War fears of Communism characterised Australia’s relations with China over the next two decades, with Australia refusing to recognise either the Communist government of the PRC in Peking (Beijing) or the Nationalists in the Republic of China (Taiwan) (http://www.naa.gov.au/about-us/publications/fact-sheets/fs247.aspx ).
In 1966, under Prime Minister Harold Holt, a diplomatic mission was established in Taipei. Seven years later, when the Whitlam government established diplomatic relations with the PRC, the Taipei embassy closed and an embassy was opened in Peking (http://www.naa.gov.au/about-us/publications/fact-sheets/fs247.aspx ).
Australia’s relationship with China is documented in records created by the Department of Trade, the Prime Minister Department and within the papers of individual prime ministers including Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser (http://www.naa.gov.au/about-us/publications/fact-sheets/fs247.aspx ).
According to her White Paper, Australia perceive china as the new state with rapid growing economy that must be addressed by Australia elites at the most considerable level. Australia cannot neglect China capabilities and how this will open to a new trade agreement that would benefit Australia. Cooperation between China and Australia is enhanced in the mining and energy sectors. he agreements cover projects worth more than $10 billion in total.Seven of the ten agreements relate to resources and energy. This demonstrates the dynamic relations between the two countries in this sector, and the strong complementarity of the two economies (Downer, 2005).
References:
Cheeseman, Graeme. –. Australia: the White Experience of fear and Dependence. –
Smith, Anthony L. 2008. Australia_indonesia Relations: Getting Beyond East Timor. Hawaii: Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies (www.apcss.org )
Fact sheet 247 – Australia’s diplomatic relations with China. National Archives of Australia. [Online] n/a n/a, n/a. [Cited: November 23, 2010.] http://www.naa.gov.au/about-us/publications/fact-sheets/fs247.aspx
AUSTRALIAN EXTERNAL RELATIONS: SPECIAL RELATIONS WITH THE UNITED STATES
Devania Anesya/ 070810535
A ustralia has a strategic location and geography since the mid-1980s. Its location isolated from world trouble spots and the fact that it is an island continent are said to provide certain strategic and tactical advantages which is contributed to its defensibility. The Labour government’s 1987 defense White Paper noted that Australia… naturally protected by vast ocean surrounds and the inhospitable tracts of our own country to the north and north-west… combine to provide with natural defences against conventional attack (Beazley, 1987). The 1994 defence White Paper again warned that at some time in the future armed force could be used against us and (so)… we need to be prepared to meet it (White Paper, 1994). This is in spite of the fact that white Australia has never seriously been threatened has said we are unlikely to be for at least the foreseeable future. Such continuing, obsessive, and arguably, irrational fear of military attack has its root in white Australia’s own history and experiences. Australia has always been a frightened country (Renouf, 1979 and Pons, 1994) by the constant fear of attack or conquest by external and predominantly Asian countries. Australia beliefs that she cannot defend herself against these perceived threats, that’s why she led Australia’s policy makers to look to great and powerful friend for reassurance and protection. As a consequence, Australia has become a dependent ally (Bell, 1988), borrowing from and ever supportive of the policies and practices of its principal benefactors, and ready to dispatch military forces overseas in support of their imperial objectives (Andrews, 1979; Millar, 1991; and Watt, 1968). The notion of keeping Australia safe created by maintaining its surrounding region as an Anglo-Australian and later United States-Australian preserve was not restricted to colonial times. It is important to remember that when United States dominance was arguably most legitimate, constructive, and benign in the first couple of decades after the Second World War, it was widely perceived to have assumed a hegemonic position that transcended national interest to provide international public good (Kindleberger, 1973). Since the Second World War, relations with United States have assumed an increasingly prominent position in the construction of economic and security policies in Australia. Sentiment toward the United States has generally been positive. However, self declared ‘war on terrorism’ of United States and Australia’s participation in a conflict with Iraq in particular, has subjected the relationship to widespread scrutiny and criticism. The Australian Labor Party (ALP) has moved to qualify its support, some senior Labor figures have launched fairly splenetic attack on American foreign policy and the Howard government’ support of it (Price, Lewis, and Kerin, 2003). Even before 11 September 2001 and the subsequent reordering of American foreign policy, the Howard government’s expectations about what the bilateral relationship with the United States could deliver looked likely to prove a triumph of hope over experience: a glance at the recent historical record suggested that the benefits likely to accrue to Australia were likely to be the modest at best. But if we examine closer, more exclusive relationship with the United States may have a significant and generally negative impact on Australia’s long term place in the region, its economic position, its political independence, and even domestic security. In economic relations with United States, Australia is one of a select band of countries that actually runs a trade deficit with the United States. While American markets have played a pivotal role in underpinning the export-led development of much of region and more sustaining a faltering global economy through seemingly insatiable consumer-led demand, Australia has not been a major beneficiary of either of these developments. There is a range of visible and invisible trade barriers that discriminate against Australian-based producers (Beeson, 2003). Australia-New Zealand-US alliance, ANZUS was plainly a gesture loaded symbolic than strategic significance, as Australia could add nothing material to America’s overwhelming and increasing military dominance (Brooks and Wohlforth, 2002) but it was a gesture that continued an Australian tradition with a respected heritage. Difficult to say anything sensible about the intelligence benefits but with the sort of threat Australians obviously did face in Bali, this sort of information was either inadequate or not acted upon (Walker, 2002). Indeed, White (2002, 254) argues that it is Australia that is out of step with contemporary strategic realities and that far from being an irresponsible free-rider. We can se that the Howard government’s enthusiastic support for the United States generally and for the ‘war on terror’. Clearly, Australia has a limited capacity to influence American foreign policy. The United States’ present determination to use its overweening power to pursue more narrowly defined and supported objectives means that policy makers in allied countries like Australia need to balance what are debatable short-term domestic pay-offs against the long-term stability of the International system (Beeson, 2003). But in both of the most important elements of its bilateral relationship, economics and security, Asutralia is clearly disadvantaged by America’s willingness to exploit its overwhelming political, economic, and strategic leverage.
References:
Beeson, Mark. 2003. Australia’s Relationship with the United States: The Case for Greater Independence. Queensland: Australian Journal of Political Science, University of Queensland Cheeseman, Graeme. –. Australia: the White Experience of fear and Dependence. –
AUSTRALIAN EXTERNAL RELATIONS: RELATIONS WITH INDONESIA, CHINA, AND ITS POSITION IN ASIA
Devania Anesya/ 070810535
| A |
ustralia has always been a frightened country (Renouf, 1979 and Pons, 1994) by the constant fear of attack or conquest by external and predominantly Asian countries. Australia beliefs that she cannot defend herself against these perceived threats, that’s why she led Australia’s policy makers to look to great and powerful friend for reassurance and protection. As a consequence, Australia has become a dependent ally (Bell, 1988), borrowing from and ever supportive of the policies and practices of its principal benefactors, and ready to dispatch military forces overseas in support of their imperial objectives (Andrews, 1979; Millar, 1991; and Watt, 1968). The notion of keeping Australia safe created by maintaining its surrounding region as an Anglo-Australian and later United States-Australian.
Racial and ethnocentric concerns have informed most of the perceived threats to Australia’s security: initially invasion by ‘yellow hordes’, followed by the fear of communist ‘reds’, and then following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Arab, and Muslim terrorist and religious fanatics. As Jan Pettman has argued, these external fears have been fostered by a process of racialization which predisposes many Australians to associate threat with difference’ and continues to inform dominant assumptions of alliance/ affiliation/ allegiance with the west, and defines our regions against us (Pettman, 1992). Pettman further argues that Australia’s continued fear of invasion may also stem from a sense of guilt that white settlers come with superior military power and seize the land by force, claiming that its occupants were not really using the land productively, might not the more populous and pressured of Asia likewise (Pettman, 1992).
Australia Relations with Indonesia
Australian governments have developed a defense strategy predicated on a threat from and a need for stability in the north, giving observers the impression that Indonesia is a major concern that has loomed large in Australia’s strategic vision (rather than vice versa) (Smith, 2008).
In the past, officials in Australia have worked hard to build a special relationship with Indonesia, which included generous Australian aid, and—in Canberra’s view—tacit support for Indonesia’s acquisition of East Timor. Indonesia has also valued its relationship with Australia. Indonesia even gave Australia a sweetheart deal in divvying up the oil in the Timor Gap, most likely in exchange for Australia’s acquiescence to Indonesia’s controversial absorption of East Timor.
However, because of Australia’s role in the independence of East Timor, Indonesia ended a defense agreement with Australia and relations grew sour (Smith, 2008). In fact, Indonesian leaders have cited Australia as the primary threat to its cohesion, particularly in relation to the troubled province of Papua. Indonesia blamed Australia for the territory’s secession from the Republic. Today, Indonesians believe that Australia is the primary threat to national cohesion.
After September 11 and, especially, the October 12, 2002 Bali bombings that killed eighty-eight Australians, Indonesia figured prominently in Australian security. Australia believes conditions there may pose a threat to its citizens and Australian assets overseas. Australian officials have worked hard to revitalize the relationship. At the functional level there is substantial cooperation. Australia has maintained its aid program and has assisted the Indonesian police in their Bali blast investigations. Restoration of military-tomilitary ties is in the works. Yet Australia has struggled to establish high-level visits. Both Indonesian presidents Wahid and Megawati have cancelled planned trips to Australia, most likely because of nationalist pressures emanating from the Indonesian Parliament and the general public.
In the wake of difficulties to the bilateral relations, both Canberra and Jakarta are trying to restore elements of past cooperation. For example, in the aftermath of the Bali blast, Australian police were instrumental in assisting their Indonesian counterparts in dismantling the culpable Jemaah Islamiyah cells.
For the United States, Australia’s links with Indonesia have always been useful because they helped shore up Indonesia’s security and stability. However, today in the wake of East Timor and Bali, Canberra-Jakarta links are shaken, and the United States needs to be realistic about the limitations of the Australia-Indonesia relationship. Furthermore, Australia’s close alliance with the United States has proven to be a millstone in normalizing Australia- Indonesia relations; many Indonesians see the Untied States as having negative designs on their country for which Australia is a willing partner.
Australia Relations with China
Australia’s first diplomatic mission in China opened in 1941, but closed again only eight years later after the Communist victory over the Nationalist Kuomintang and the subsequent establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. Cold War fears of Communism characterised Australia’s relations with China over the next two decades, with Australia refusing to recognise either the Communist government of the PRC in Peking (Beijing) or the Nationalists in the Republic of China (Taiwan) (http://www.naa.gov.au/about-us/publications/fact-sheets/fs247.aspx ).
In 1966, under Prime Minister Harold Holt, a diplomatic mission was established in Taipei. Seven years later, when the Whitlam government established diplomatic relations with the PRC, the Taipei embassy closed and an embassy was opened in Peking (http://www.naa.gov.au/about-us/publications/fact-sheets/fs247.aspx ).
Australia’s relationship with China is documented in records created by the Department of Trade, the Prime Minister Department and within the papers of individual prime ministers including Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser (http://www.naa.gov.au/about-us/publications/fact-sheets/fs247.aspx ).
According to her White Paper, Australia perceive china as the new state with rapid growing economy that must be addressed by Australia elites at the most considerable level. Australia cannot neglect China capabilities and how this will open to a new trade agreement that would benefit Australia. Cooperation between China and Australia is enhanced in the mining and energy sectors. he agreements cover projects worth more than $10 billion in total.Seven of the ten agreements relate to resources and energy. This demonstrates the dynamic relations between the two countries in this sector, and the strong complementarity of the two economies (Downer, 2005).
References:
Cheeseman, Graeme. –. Australia: the White Experience of fear and Dependence. –
Smith, Anthony L. 2008. Australia_indonesia Relations: Getting Beyond East Timor. Hawaii: Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies (www.apcss.org )
Fact sheet 247 – Australia’s diplomatic relations with China. National Archives of Australia. [Online] n/a n/a, n/a. [Cited: November 23, 2010.] http://www.naa.gov.au/about-us/publications/fact-sheets/fs247.aspx
