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CIAO DATE: 9/00
Middle Powers Once Removed: The Diminished Global Role of Middle Powers and American Grand Strategy
Laura Neack
International Studies Association
Introduction
The title of this panel — "Middle Power Diplomacy in the New International System: New Opportunities and Old Constraints" — informs us that the foreign policy behaviors of middle powers are conditioned by the structure of the international system. No doubt this is true for all but the weakest countries. Although time and again scholars have demonstrated the critical role of domestic variables in the shaping of foreign policy, the international context cannot be ignored.
My initial thought about this paper was to discuss the foreign policies of middle powers in a transitional international system. The basic argument I was to offer went like this: Following the lead of Carsten Holbraad’s discussion of essentially the interest-based foreign policies of middle powers, 1 we might expect that the best choice during this transition would be for middle powers to pursue more narrowly-defined interests. Until the shape of the new system takes hold, the safest and most fiscally-prudent route for the middle powers would be to "go regional," forging ties with regional neighbors and organizations. Given expectations about the international system being structured by competing trade blocs, this regional move would serve the interests of the middle powers. Further, this regional move would amount to "new opportunities" for middle powers, who previously eschewed such a regional focus in favor of global activities and internationalism. Within this new regional orientation, we would expect to see the middle powers playing typical middle power roles as mediators, consensus-builders and go-betweens. But, this shift poses its own set of constraints on middle powers, as significant foreign policy restructuring is not easily undone. Thus, once the middle powers make a regional shift, undoing such a move and refocusing on the global level again may be difficult.
Yet another shift underway in the international system might lock middle powers into this diminished global role, one that derives from the consolidation of the present international system as part of what we may call American Grand Strategy. The international system is not moving towards multipolarity among more or less equal major powers any time soon. In fact, my argument is that what we are witnessing is the consolidation of a unipolar system along the lines of what Josef Joffe has called "globalizing Bismarck." 2 As the United States pursues its "hub and spoke" grand strategy, it determines the roles to be played by the secondary tier of states, and by default, the roles to be played by those cast to lower tiers. Joffe leaves it to others to elucidate the positions of others in this American Grand Strategy, and this is precisely the purpose of this paper.
In essence, my argument is this: The US is consolidating its role as the single superpower — that is, consolidating unipolarity — through the use of a hybrid "hub and spoke" and "offshore balancer" strategy that makes use of key followers for maintaining the "spokes" or regions. Certain countries have been designated by the US for the key follower role (a traditional middle power role), and none of these powers are the traditional middle powers, although one traditional middle power has attempted to elect itself to the role with no success. For the traditional middle powers, this American grand strategy locks them into regional roles, and secondary regional roles at that. In this regard, the "old constraints" are at play, as the foreign policy opportunities and choices of all countries are determined by the central relationship between the major powers.
The remainder of this paper takes the following form: First, I briefly discuss the relationship between middle powers and major powers as discussed in the literature. Then, I describe Joffe’s view of American grand strategy. Next, I briefly describe the modification to this strategy as it appears to be playing out in actual US policy, using the US relationship with Great Britain as an example. Then, in a more extensive case study, I describe the failed attempt by the traditional middle power Australia to elect itself to the key follower post for Asian security.
I close with some reflections on Constructivism in international relations, an appropriate exercise given the essentially self-constructed identities of traditional middle powers. My conclusion is that the Australian case study demonstrates the clear inability of weaker powers to shape the structure and ideas of international politics–rather, weaker powers are more or less shaped by the system. This is especially true in this present international system dominated by a single superpower and its major power followers. Thus the Constructivist view of international relations must be dismissed and realism reasserted.
Middle Powers in International Politics
Although there is some conceptual ambiguity surrounding the term "middle power," middle powers are identified most often by their international behavior–called "middle power diplomacy." Cooper, Higgott, and Nossal have described middle power diplomacy as "(the) tendency to pursue multilateral solutions to international problems, (the) tendency to embrace compromise positions in international disputes, and (the) tendency to embrace notions of ‘good international citizenship’ to guide...diplomacy." 3 Middle powers are states who commit their relative affluence, managerial skills, and international prestige to the preservation of the international order and peace. Middle powers help to maintain the international order through coalition-building, by serving as mediators and "go-betweens," and through international conflict management and resolution activities, such as UN peacekeeping. Middle powers perform these internationalist activities because of an idealistic imperative they associate with being a middle power. The imperative is that the middle powers have a moral responsibility and collective ability to protect the international order from those who would threaten it, including, at times, the great or principal powers. 4 This imperative was particularly profound during the most intense periods of the Cold War. 5
Middle power internationalism also derives from self-interest. One aspect of this is that middle powers wish to protect the international order in which they are relatively affluent and powerful. Thus, middle powers tend to be the states that are most devoted to the preservation of international norms and principles because they benefit so immediately from a routinized international system. 6 Another aspect of middle power self-interest promoted through internationalism is the prestige that was given to middle powers for their international activities. 7 Yet another aspect of the pursuit of self-interest by the middle powers is the way in which middle powers use internationalism in order to distinguish themselves from the superpowers. For instance, internationalism was used by Canada to distinguish itself from the United States 8 and by Sweden to distance itself from Europe. This act of separation is performed primarily through multilateral channels since multilateralism affords middle powers some opportunities for foreign policy initiatives that have the appearance of being independent of the relevant great power, without inciting the suspicion of that great power. For example, Granatstein writes about this dualism in Canadian post-war foreign policy:
Canadian policy in the postwar world would try to maintain a careful balance between cooperation with the United States and independent action. This was especially true at the United Nations. And peacekeeping, while it often served US interests, to be sure, nonetheless had about it a powerful aura of independence and the implicit sense that it served higher interests than simply those of the United States, or even the West. 9
Middle Powers and Major Powers
By the very nature of the word "middle," and by the way in which the middle powers have set themselves up to be the states who collectively can protect the international order when the principal powers will not, the importance of the principal or great powers to the idea of middle power diplomacy is underscored. The relationship between middle powers and great powers has been given the most thorough treatment by Holbraad. 10 Within an international system characterized by Cold War between the principal powers, Holbraad contends that the middle powers will sometimes seek to mediate tensions between the principal powers. Writing about the Nordic middle powers, Tunberger concurs, "With varying emphasis they are geographically doomed to pursue a policy of both deterrence and reassurance vis a vis their great neighbor." 11 The closeness of the middle powers to the principal powers positions the middle powers to urge moderation on the part of the principal powers. However, Holbraad warns, the middle powers are not always capable of urging moderation, nor can they be expected to do so:
Not always willing and only in certain conditions able to help reduce tensions and promote agreement between the camps, middle powers in a cold war alliance are no more than occasionally to be found in the role of mediators. Their real part in relation to the central conflict is as supporters or lieutenants of the alliance leader (emphasis added). 12
The importance of the principal powers to middle powers has also been manifested in the cautious diplomatic advice given by middle powers to small powers. Tunberger writes that the Western states, among them Sweden, gave much "more or less unsolicited advice" to the Baltic states in the mid to late 1980s, "the essence of which (was) to exercise restraint in their relations with the Soviet Union/Russia. Should the Baltic leaders have followed the advice given, they would not have been independent today." 13 Moreover, Tunberger contends that middle power realism will restrain the Nordic middle powers from coming to the aid of the Baltic states should Russia make a move in the future to reclaim them. "In the world of Realpolitik Nordics instinctively avoid the notion of ‘Nordic-Baltic security,’ they prefer ‘Nordic and Baltic security,’ so as to ensure that the respective ‘securities’ are not perceived to be lumped together." 14
The only middle powers that do act independently of the great powers are the non-aligned middle or regional powers, for example, India or Brazil. The non-aligned middle powers use the great power rivalry to make more international opportunities available to themselves. The traditional middle powers, such as Canada, Australia, and the Scandinavian countries, are restricted in the range of behaviors available. These middle powers will resort to multilateralism when there are no other safe foreign policy options available to them. In the absence of a great power rivalry, when the aligned middle powers are no longer needed to play the role of loyal supporters, these states can be expected to forego multilateralism for the more immediate payoffs of bilateralism.
To assert that middle power diplomacy has been linked to great power interests is not to imply that the middle powers have lacked the ability to choose their own foreign policy initiatives, nor does it imply that middle power interests have been totally ignored in favor of major power interests. As Cooper, Higgott and Nossal suggest in their explanation of Canadian and Australian involvement in the Persian Gulf War of 1991, the middle powers have been more than the unwitting pawns of the great powers; instead, the middle powers have been full and active followers. 15 "Followership," to Cooper, Higgott and Nossal, is a conscious act wherein the follower acknowledges the coincidence of interests between itself and the leader, agrees that the leader can and does protect those interests, and willingly follows the leader.
Followers are willing partners to a cause being promoted by a group of states that has a single leader. This follower or supporter role can be read in another way as well. States could be following the leader in order to benefit from the fruits of the leader’s activities. Schweller calls such behavior "bandwagoning for profit." 16 Schweller presents cases that demonstrate that bandwagoning out of fear is less obvious in history than is bandwagoning out of expectations about and ambitions regarding the future. Read in this way, middle power followership or bandwagoning is a foreign policy activity based in national interest.
Cooper, Higgott and Nossal’s notion of followership is critical to the present argument, but with a twist. In the present system, the single superpower appears to be designating which states are the key followers, and discouraging self-election as occurred, to a limited extent, in the past. This may be an essential change in middle power diplomacy; major power acknowledgment and encouragement of middle power diplomacy permitted such behavior, major power denial of middle power diplomacy can, in turn, prohibit such behavior.
American Grand Strategy
A number of analysts have offered sophisticated assessments of what the shape of the international system may be in time, and what the United States should or should not do to maintain its pre-eminence in such a world. 17 Josef Joffe entered this discussion in an intriguing manner in 1995 with "‘Bismarck’ or ‘Britain’? Toward an American Grand Strategy after Bipolarity." 18 In this analysis, Joffe proposed that the US employ a strategy that entailed "globalizing Bismarck," drawing upon the lessons of German strategy and a present international climate that easily supports such a strategy:
The fitting metaphor is that of hub and spokes. The hub was Germany, and the spokes were Bismarck’s alliances that radiated outward into Europe. The twin purpose of the cartwright was to draw Austria, Russia, et al., into the German orbit and to make sure that their association with the hub were (sic) more important to them than their ties to one another. That way they would look to the center rather than to each other, bandwagoning with, rather than balancing against, the leading powers. Now look to the end of the twentieth century. What Bismarck had to work out laboriously in the face of so many incompatibilities is already in place for the United States. 19
What Joffe was suggesting — or even predicting — in 1995, seems to him a fait accompli by 1997. Writing in Foreign Affairs, Joffe describes "How American Does It" 20 — that is, how America defies history and intuition and remains at the top of a unipolar system that is consolidating and solidifying rather than giving way to multipolarity. Joffe’s explanation is that the US is different and the times are different. "America is different," he tells us. "It irks and domineers, but it does not conquer. It tries to call the shots and bend the rules, but it does not go to war for land and glory." 21 Following the argument of Joseph Nye, Joffe credits American "soft power" for holding this system together.
Today there is a much bigger payoff in getting others to want what you want, and that has to do with the attraction of one’s ideas, with agenda-setting, with ideology and institutions, and with holding out big prizes for cooperation, such as the vastness and sophistication of one’s market.
Soft power is cultural and economic power, and very different from its military kin. The United States has the most sophisticated, not the largest, military establishment in the world. But it is definitely in a class of its own in the soft-power game. On that table, China, Russia, Japan and even Western Europe cannot hope to match the pile of chips the United States holds. People are risking death on the high seas to get into the United States, not China.
This type of power — a culture that radiates outward and a market that draws inward — rests on pull, not on push; on acceptance, not on conquest. Worse, this kind of power cannot be aggregated, nor can it be balanced. 22
Further, Joffe asserts, the international circumstances do not even encourage the other potential challengers to attempt to balance the power of the United States. "While Nos. 2, 3, 4, and 5 surely resent America’s clout, they have also found it useful to have a player like the United States in the game." 23 The system and the institutions that maintain it — all products of a post-World War II American strategy — now serve US and the interests of the other powerful states so well that it suits the other major powers to issue but lip-service to alternative multipolar systems. And so, considering the American Grand Strategy for global stability, Joffe suggests that,
The appropriate metaphor is that of hub and spoke. The hub is Washington, and the spokes are Western Europe, Japan, China, Russia, and the Middle East. For all their antagonism toward the United States, their association with the hub is more important to them than are their ties to one another. 24
The strategy for maintaining stability within the spokes, and even in places that Joffe leaves off the wheel itself — such as Africa — involves a strategy of off-shore balancing with the support and assistance of a designated key follower. This is where my argument leaves Joffe’s analysis and even the traditional middle powers behind.
Key Followers in a Unipolar System
For stability and security along and beyond Joffe’s spokes, the United States uses a combination of off-shore balancing with the services of a key follower. Off-shore balancing is the strategy of staying removed from regional disputes, allowing such to be managed by regional powers. In Christopher Layne’s variation on this grand strategy, off-shore balancing is designed to promote the narrowly-defined interests of an insular United States. 25 Off-shore balancing, in Layne’s view, should be used to insulate the US from future great power wars and disengage from military commitments in Asia and Europe. 26 Layne’s off-shore balancing involves "bystanding" and "buck-passing," forcing others to balance against rising powers in their own regions. 27 This version of off-shore balancing is not what I am arguing here, for this version does not seek to maintain US hegemony, but to preserve US power against the inevitable rise of capable challengers. 28
The off-shore balancing strategy being argued here is one that is designed to maintain hegemony, but the rather benign hegemony Joffe describes. One aspect of such off-shore balancing is that conflicts cannot be allowed to consume the energies and resources of a region’s major powers, for this would harm the region’s markets and harm the global market that is so important to American Grand Strategy. Thus, the US is not inclined to engage in "buck-passing," as much as encouraging a sense of regional competency in handling regional problems. The US would encourage regions to manage their own conflicts, but not on their own and not without the tangible support of the US. This support would take whatever form would be necessary — from assistance in military intervention to economic aid and training and everything in between. The US would be an off-shore balancer in that it would allow and encourage regional solutions to regional problems, but it would not be a removed, distant balancer concerned only with its own relative power.
To facilitate such off-shore balancing, key followers would be encouraged to take a central role in the management of conflicts. A key follower should be, but does not have to be, a member of the particular region, but it should have an established and legitimate role within that region. Thus, Great Britain is the designated key follower for assisting in security and stability in the Middle East, because its role there is long established and considered more or less legitimate by the major regional actors. The key follower works in tandem with, and sometimes out in front of, the US, promoting international norms and stability, throwing its weight around when necessary to maintain those norms and stability.
Thus far, the need for such a strategy has arisen only in twice in locations that threaten the system the US protects: the Middle East, with the ongoing forceful containment of Iraq, and Europe, with the ongoing volatility in the Balkans. In the former case, the US has relied upon and promoted its "partnership" with Great Britain, and in the latter, with Great Britain and Germany.
Great Britain has been a stand-out as designated follower #1. The role has been most vividly demonstrated in the prominence of the British-American partnership in the ongoing containment of Iraq and in the NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia over Kosovo. For the Americans and the British, the expectation is that this partnership has global dimensions, due in large part because of the British experience around the world and the relative acceptance shown by most other states for such a continuing, but now benign, British presence.
This partnership role suits the present British government quite well. In November 1999, Prime Minister Tony Blair described Britain’s role in the world in this way:
Nearly 40 years ago, Dean Acheson’s barb — that Britain had lost an Empire but not yet found a role — struck home. Successive generations of British politicians tried — unsuccessfully — to find a way back, from Churchill’s three concentric circles to Mrs. Thatcher’s call to repel a European federal state.
However, I believe that search can now end. We have got over our Imperial past — and the withdrawal symptoms. No longer do we want to be taken seriously for just our history, but for what we are and what we will become. We have a new role. Not to look back and try to re-create ourselves as the pre-eminent superpower of 1900, nor to pretend to be the Greeks to the Americans’ Romans. It is to use the strengths of our history to build our future not as a super power but as a pivotal power, as a power that is at the crux of the alliances and international politics which shape the world and its future. Engaged, open, dynamic, a partner and, where possible, a leader in ideas and in influence, that is where Britain must be. 29
When Tony Blair describes where Britain’s pivotal role lies, it is clear that his vision is a unipolar world, structured and maintained by key institutions, and Britain’s position is the pivot from which the spokes branch off from the American hub:
Britain’s potential strengths are clear, in some ways unique. First, our formidable network of international contacts. Our extraordinary close relations with nations in every part of the globe through the Commonwealth. Our membership of the UN Security Council, of NATO and of the G8. The close relationship forged through two world wars and the Cold War with the USA. And our crucial membership of the European Union. We are at the pivot of all these inter-connecting alliances and groupings. 30
The pivot role between the superpower and other states, and between the superpower and international organizations is a classic middle power role that Blair’s Britain takes up gladly. During the Cold War, some analysts included Britain in a list of traditional middle powers, thus this pivot role might not come as a surprise to some observers. What is different about now and then, though, is that in this present system there is no other "middle" or pivotal power that plays this role between the US and all others on the global stage. The other states designated by the US to play "middle" roles, do so on a regional basis only.
This special relationship between the US and Britain is not lost on the rest of the world. Indeed, there is an apparent coordination of efforts and institutions occurring between the Americans and British. One manifestation of such was the US and British decision to close some of their African embassies in the summer of 1999 on the threat of copycat bombings such as those that occurred at the American embassies in 1998 in Kenya and Tanzania. As reported by The Washington Post:
A British Foreign Office spokesman in London declined to specify whether closure of its embassies was prompted by the US decision or by any threat from [Osama] bin Laden. "We do maintain close contacts with the Americans on security matters... but we never comment on any security or intelligence matter,"...
Bin Laden has not issued any explicit public threats against Britain, but a court in London is considering a US request that Britain extradite a former bin Laden aide, Khalid Fawwaz, who was indicted in New York this month in connection with the August [of 1998] bombings. 31
Whether a threat was issued against the British embassies or not, the joint closings indicate a high degree of coordination and perhaps over-identification between the British and Americans.
A European parliament report issued by the justice committee in February 2000 provides another example of such that contains its own threat. According to a report in The New York Times, a global surveillance network named Echelon, "stitched together in the 1970s by the United States Security Agency," dominated by the Americans and British, and maintained by the US, Britain, Canada and New Zealand, "twice helped American companies gain an advantage over Europeans." 32 Both The New York Times report, and a similar one in The Guardian (London), indicated that the French were the most angered by such alleged spying, especially since "The Airbus consortium and Thomson CSF of France were among the reported losers." 33
Canada appears to be sharing the growing unease about the Anglo-American closeness, an unease directly tied by one report to Canadian fears of loss of its global role. The Ottawa Citizen reported in November 1999 that the growing use by the US of the "Quint" group shuts Canada out of key global management decisions. The "Quint" — the foreign ministers of the US, Britain, France, Germany and Italy — began their close consultations during NATO’s campaign against Yugoslavia and continued into the fall’s Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) meetings in Istanbul. 34 The reporter worried that, "Canada is having difficulty takings its place at the table of top world leaders. Many speculate that a major reason is the increasingly dire state of Canada’s military," 35 which is spread too thin among peacekeeping operations while undergoing significant draw-downs.
The Case of the Rejected Key Follower: Australia
We might begin to see Australia’s recent efforts surrounding the East Timor peace enforcement operation as an attempt to not suffer Canada’s fate and remain relevant to the American superpower and to global affairs. Indeed, Australia–under the "Howard Doctrine"–asserted that it was the "deputy" to the US global cop, an assertion which did not take hold and was rejected by the US.
This assertion also was a bit of a repudiation of almost two decades of Australian policy to define Australia as Asian. As Richard Higgott and Kim Nossal explain,
Few countries have as self-consciously sought to "relocate" themselves in international politics — economically, diplomatically, and militarily — as Australia did in the 1980s and 1990s. Between 1983 and 1996, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) governments of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating pursued an undisguised "push into Asia" ... there can be little doubt that the ALP was seeking to "move" Australia from being a European-American-oriented community to being a nation in, and of, the Asia Pacific. 36
Why the focus on Asia? Although the calculation was a complex one having to do with changing security dynamics as the Cold War began to wan, economic considerations drove this reorientation. 37 One feature of the transforming global picture of particular importance to Australia was the growing power of East Asia. To accommodate the changes occurring in the international system, the Liberal and National Party Coalition elected in 1995 declared a new foreign policy framework for Australia:
The Coalition has a vision for Australia in the 21st century as a cooperative, economically competitive and secure nation, fully engaged with the East Asian region, while maintaining and developing important links with countries beyond the region. The implementation of this vision will be driven by enlightened realism: by a commitment to practical measures to advance Australia’s national interests within a framework of liberal values, the rule of law and practical international cooperation. 38
In the outline of Australia’s foreign policy framework under the Liberal and National Coalition Government, "strengthening relations with Indonesia" was listed as the government’s primary "major initiative" in 1996. 39 China also was singled out for a special relationship with Australia because it was "undoubtedly an emerging superpower." 40 Australian goals regarding China have included helping China become more integrated into the region and helping it gain membership in the World Trade Organization. Thus, both Indonesia and China were projected to be rising principal powers to whom Australia sought to attach itself as an important diplomatic partner, in true middle power fashion.
In order to make efforts at forging strong regional ties successful, Australia policy makers by the mid-1990s overtly disconnected issues of Asian bilateral and regional relations from Australia’s global promotion of human rights. In the 1996 foreign policy statement, the policy Australia would pursue was explained as being "practical and realistic":
When we say out foreign policy will be more "practical" and "realistic" we mean avoiding actions and policy initiatives which are based on inflated expectations or an exaggerated perception of our likely influence and which can be seen as meddlesome and with little chance of outcomes favourable to Australia’s interests. 41
Of course, it is easy to argue that this delinking occurred in the mid-1970s when Australia acknowledged the legitimacy — in at least Australian policy makers’ view — of Indonesia’s interests in annexing East Timor. It is on the issue of East Timor, ironically, that Australia now has attempted to shed its newly-acquired Asian skin and reassert itself as "a European, Western civilization with strong links with North America, but ... in Asia," 42 while electing itself to the role of the United States’ peacekeeping "deputy" in the region. 43 The events surrounding the Australian-led multinational peace enforcement action in East Timor provide an interesting case study into how reluctant the United States is to allow any "deputy" to take the initiative in the consolidation of the American Grand Strategy.
Australia, East Timor and a Failed Effort at Self-Appointment
The story about to be told is derived primarily from journalistic accounts of events, policies and disagreements that occurred between the US and Australia, and Australia and its Asian neighbors in the fall 1999. This narrative is intriguing and merits further research, especially via interviews with key individuals in the US Clinton Administration. An examination of media accounts suggests the following: First, the US was less interested in participating in peace enforcement in East Timor for human rights reasons than for providing a training exercise for a reconfigured ANZUS. But, just as the US began to initiate this plan, Australian Prime Minister John Howard publicly disagreed with and repudiated US President Bill Clinton on how the peace enforcement operation would occur, causing the US to back away from the operation and Australia. In response, Howard tried to bring the US back on board by asserting Australia as the key follower to the US in Asia, as announced in the "Howard Doctrine." This doctrine only caused considerable anger among Asian countries. This anger and the earlier repudiation of Clinton by Howard reinforced the US decision to take a very limited role in East Timor and to push for an early hand-over from Australian-led INTERFET to the United Nations peacekeeping force. The net result was that Australia did perform an excellent international service in INTERFET, but it lost both its coveted position as the key partner of the US in the region and its long-nurtured good relations with Asia.
As the time for the UN-sponsored independence referendum in East Timor approached in early September 1999, the rising violence there led New Zealand to call for military support to back the UN East Timor mission. According to The Times (London), New Zealand called for the US, Australia, Japan and members of ASEAN to deploy such a peace-support mission. 44 This call was rejected by the Australians as well as by the UN. The Times (London) quotes an Australian foreign ministry spokesman as saying, "Just for everyone who still has not got the message, Australia has no intention of invading Indonesia." 45 Within a week of this statement, after the September 6 referendum, Australia was leading the call for military intervention in East Timor.
The explosion of violence in East Timor coincided with two events in Asia — the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum being held in New Zealand and a joint US-Australian military exercise called "Crocodile 99." At the time the international community was being encouraged by Australia to do something about the violence in East Timor, the American President was in New Zealand and some 6,000 American troops were gathering on the north coast of Australia. 46
But, the APEC meetings and important side discussions occurring there remained the focus of the Clinton administration. As Australia was promoting a peace enforcement mission of possibly 7,000 international troops, the US stayed aloof and would only commit to a possible logistical support role and airdrops of food and emergency supplies. 47 The Indonesian government had indicated some willingness to allow such airdrops. US State Department and Pentagon spokesmen announced that the US would not deploy any combat troops, insisting that Bosnia and Kosovo were not analogous, thus a more forceful US role was not required. 48 According to the ABIX: Australasian Business Intelligence newswire, East Timor was on "what US foreign policy experts have called the C list of risks. C list risks are non-vital humanitarian crises that do not directly affect US interests." 49
What did directly affect US interests were the side discussions at APEC with Japan and South Korea on North Korea’s threatened missile test, negotiations with China on getting it into the World Trade Organization (with the upcoming WTO meeting in Seattle in mind), and a first-time meeting between Clinton and the new Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. 50 The Australians needed to convince the US that East Timor was a direct threat to US interests to get Bill Clinton to come out stronger behind Australia’s plan for intervention. The ABIX: Australasian Business Intelligence report states that Australia convinced the US to "upgrade" East Timor by threatening to alter the US-Australian relationship. 51 Although no other media account supports this explanation, on September 13 Clinton did signal a somewhat more active US involvement in the proposed operation than indicated by the US State Department and Pentagon. Still in New Zealand and responding to Asian calls for US involvement, Clinton stated that, "We might be asked to provide some command and control." 52
US command and control was not exactly what the Australians had in mind. Putting the correct spin on the Clinton statement, a report the next day in ABIX: Australasian Business Intelligence claimed,
The US has changed its position on East Timor from pressuring Indonesia to supporting Australia. US President Bill Clinton was willing to offer substantial logistical support to peacekeeping forces in East Timor, after Australia took the lead on the issue, setting a precedent of the US allowing an ally to take the lead in a regional crisis to stop human rights abuses. 53
Other countries were not as sanguine about an Australian-led, US-supported enforcement mission, especially Indonesia. Indonesia had been actively opposing any UN effort that would include Australia and the US, claiming that "Asian faces" would be "more palatable" to Indonesian (and presumably East Timorese) people. 54 UN Secretary General Kofi Annan attempted to balance the growing Indonesian-Australian rift by declaring the UN would determine the composition of the forces, but he added, "Australia has already made a very substantial commitment and has agreed to take the lead. I hope (the Asians and Indonesians particularly) will consider Australians as Asians." 55 Ultimately, a British-proposed Security Council resolution would be accepted by Indonesia once Australia was no longer named as the leader of the UN-approved operation. 56
By September 15, the American President — now officially on a state visit to New Zealand — suggested a more elaborate US vision for the East Timor operation. The vision involved what was widely seen as a reconstruction of ANZUS — 57 forces would come together from the US, Australia, New Zealand and "other nations," and hold training exercises to prepare for the mission. Indeed, Clinton may have been attempting to either reconstruct ANZUS or use the threat of such to compel Indonesia to restore the peace in East Timor, or perhaps a bit of both. Threatening rapid deployment after training exercises, Clinton reminded Indonesia that it had "a responsibility to prevent" violence in East Timor. 58 Then, Clinton made it clear that this was what the administration would support and nothing else. Clinton put his reputation on the line by stating, "If I have anything to say about it, we will have joint exercises as part of our preparation for East Timor." 59
Although New Zealand officials greeted this proposal with enthusiasm — The Dominion (Wellington) proclaimed that, with this proposal, Clinton had ended his New Zealand visit "on a high note" 60 — and the UN Security Council vote following this statement was unanimous in support of a peace enforcement operation, Australian Prime Minister John Howard acted quickly to discredit the Clinton plan. Despite the fact that Australian and US forces were already engaged in joint exercises, Howard dismissed the plan to hold pre-Timor deployment exercises. Explained Howard, "I do not think that (the Clinton proposal) is going to be feasible... I think if you tried to do that you would be delaying the exercise considerably." 61 This to a plan that Clinton said was "quite important." 62 The next day, in an ominous turn of events for Australia, the US Department of State issued a one paragraph statement on "East Timor — US-Australian Cooperation."
The United States, in conjunction with other members of the international community, has moved rapidly to respond to the unfolding situation in East Timor. The United States and Australian governments have worked closely and cooperatively together to address this issue, both recently and over an extended earlier period. The United States highly values the important contribution the Australian Government has made to the international efforts to achieve a peaceful and lasting resolution in East Timor. We have had full cooperation with the Australian Government on the entire range of issues entailed in these efforts, and any report to the contrary would be misleading and false (emphases added). 63
The following day, an interview was published in the Australian magazine The Bulletin in which Howard attempted to carve out Australia’s new role in the world vis-a-vis American global leadership. The "Howard Defence Doctrine" or the "Howard Doctrine" would entail a change in Australia’s relations with Asia, de-emphasizing previous efforts to establish "special relations" in the region. Instead, Australia would embark upon an activist foreign policy as "deputy" to the "global policeman role of the United States." To facilitate this new role, defense spending would be the first priority of the government. 64 Howard explained the reason behind this policy shift as being one of near-moral imperative, in classic middle power style. Australia "has a particular responsibility to do things above and beyond in this part of the world," 65 and that further that Australia would be a "participant on our own terms" in Asia.
Further, Howard said that Australia’s suitability for this new role in the case of the East Timor crisis was recognized by others as well:
We have been seen by countries, not only in the region but around the world, as being able to do something that probably no other country could do, because of the special characteristics we have, because we occupy that special place — we are a European, Western civilization with strong links with North America, but here we are in Asia. 66
Leading the way in East Timor as deputy to the US set a precedent for Australia’s future role, continued Howard. "Despite the inevitable tensions that are involved (in East Timor) and some of the sensitivities, this has done a lot to cement Australia’s place in the region." 67
Truer words may not have been spoken. The Howard Doctrine was widely condemned throughout Asia as "arrogant and racist." 68 The New Straits Times (Malaysia) equated the message in the Howard Doctrine to the Malaysian myth of "mata mata" coming, a myth of a boogey-man used by parents to control wayward children. 69 Malaysian officials condemned Australia and the US for declaring themselves the proper ones to "discipline" others who do not live up to Western standards. Further, the report noted that Australia had once been a "collaborator" on the annexation of East Timor, but now was playing the "liberator." 70 Finally, the New Straits Times concluded that the countries of ASEAN had always managed their own affairs without the need for Western police.
Although the underlying theme about the West in these statements is not atypical for Malaysians to make, it was picked up by several news services and given great "play time." In one especially descriptive quote, Malaysian Deputy Home Minister Azmi Khalid declared, "We are actually fed-up with their stance — that they are sitting in a white chair and supervising the coloured chairs." 71 Another Malaysian official said that the United States had "made a blunder in appointing Australia to take the lead role for peacekeeping in Asia." 72 Demanding that Australia renounce the Howard Doctrine, Bernama: The Malaysian National News Agency asserted that the Doctrine showed Western intentions to "recolonise the world." 73
Interestingly, the leader of the East Timor independence movement, Xanana Gusmao, is quoted as having expressed the same concern about Australia’s intentions. Long after security was restored in East Timor by the Australian-led INTERFET, Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported that Gusmao was thankful to the Australians, but warned against the appearance of East Timor being an Australian colony. And, when Howard became the first head of state to visit East Timor in November, Gusmao did not meet him but was instead in Jakarta meeting Indonesian officials. 74
In the wake of the Howard Doctrine, as INTERFET deployed, the US limited its role to minimal support, assigning only some 200 troops to the operation. At this point–coming almost ten days after the notorious doctrine was first published–the Australian government made some efforts to recast what Howard had said. In a statement that was not particularly helpful to Australia’s relationship with the US, Australian Ambassador to Thailand William Fisher suggested that,
What Mr. Howard was saying in the case of East Timor, and in the case of areas where Australia can be of particular assistance and relevance, (is that) it is not necessary to wait for the United States.
The United States does not have to lead every operation around the world. There will be occasions when the United States will not need to lead a particular operation. 75
Such a statement tends to ignore the fact that, according to the Australians, East Timor had been on the American foreign policy "C list," and only through Australian urging did the US decide to take part in the military operation. Indeed, Fisher’s statement suggests that Australia was helping the US avoid being responsible for managing all the world’s crises — even when, it turns out, the US does not choose to feel responsible about a particular crisis. This statement further reinforced the damage done when Howard publicly repudiated Clinton’s proposal to engage in pre-deployment military exercises.
John Howard, himself, went before the Australian Parliament to assert that he had been misquoted. Howard asserted that "deputy" was not a word he used, and that "(s)uch words can mean different things to different people." 76 BERNAMA further reported that Australian opposition leader Kim Beazley confronted Howard that, if The Bulletin interview was not accurate, Howard should have retracted it immediately, rather than let it damage Australian-Asian relations. 77 Sounding a more condemning note in response to Howard’s retraction, Malaysian opposition leader Lim Kit Siang was quoted by Agence France Presse as saying that even the retraction indicated that Australia "has not yet developed the mindset to be accepted as an Asian nation." 78
The next day, Howard said the use of the word "doctrine" had not even been his. Suggesting that Australia was required to take an activist stand on East Timor, Howard told coalition parliamentarians that, "It’s not been a leadership role tinged with any sense of triumphalism — but rather a leadership role... born of the responsibility we carry in the region to work with our friends and neighbours." 79 The same Australian Associated Press report has Howard denying that "Thailand scaled back its East Timor troop commitment from 1,500 to 1,100 soldiers because of concerns about the Howard Doctrine." 80
Yet, it is important to note that none of the retractions really retracted the essence of the doctrine — or policy — at all. This was not lost on observers in Australia or in the region. And, despite the fact that the Australian-led INTERFET apparently was successful in restoring security to East Timor, media in other countries such as New Zealand were sounding the call to put distance between their countries and Australia, 81 while the American profile in INTERFET was kept low.
The NATO-led peace enforcement mission in Kosovo continues until the present day. The Australia-led INTERFET already has turned over its mandate to a UN peacekeeping operation. Did the lack of greater US involvement lead to an early departure for INTERFET? Was the minimalist American presence due to US unhappiness with Howard’s repudiation of the Clinton proposal? Would a US-led ANZUS-like operation have stayed in place until East Timor’s government was fully functional and able to maintain security and rebuild the country? These questions await answers derived from greater research and, perhaps, the revelations that occur in time on issues of policy. But, at a press conference held in Washington, DC on November 3, 1999, at the conclusion of the US-Australian Ministerial Meeting, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had an intriguing exchange with an Australian reporter:
QUESTION: Madame Secretary, Craig McMurtry, ABC Australia. I’d like to ask you, what is the US position on leadership of the UN peacekeeping mission that’s to replace the multinational force in East Timor, specifically on whether Australia should lead it?SECRETARY ALBRIGHT: Well, let me first say that as Secretary Cohen said, we are filled with admiration for the way that Australia has led the multinational force and very grateful for the work that has been done. It is obviously up to the Secretary General to decide who should lead it and I think that I would like to simply say that we do believe that Australia has done a magnificent job and hope that they will be able to fulfill their responsibilities along with the rest of us as we move into the next phase. 82
The East Timor crisis was sandwiched between the APEC meeting in New Zealand and the WTO meeting to be held in Seattle at the end of the year. Both of these meetings and their associated side discussions had far more significance for the US than did the eruption of violence in or the right to self determination of East Timor. The Howard Government found a way to make the US take interest in East Timor, but the interest the US started to show did not fit the Howard vision. Instead, US President Clinton appeared to be considering using the crisis to test a moribund military alliance. If used as an effective threat or deployed as an effective peace enforcement mission, the restored ANZUS might be a vehicle for maintaining the "spoke" of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, keeping the US in charge, but allowing it to focus on the more critical security issues further north — North Korea, China, and even Russia.
Instead, Howard rejected the Clinton proposal, succeeding in courting and jilting the US in the course of a few days. With the pro-US Thai government cutting back on its commitment, and the more vocal Malaysian government parading its anti-Westernism, any country standing too close to Australia stood to lose status in the region. With such a "deputy," the US backed away from East Timor, maintaining a symbolic presence only. The East Timor crisis was downgraded and the US made it clear that it would not be a public supporter of an Australian leadership role as the peace enforcement operation was turned over in double-time to the UN.
Australia’s mistake was a simple one in some respects. The Howard Government read the international system correctly, yet incorrectly. US global leadership and dominance would be maintained through the use of key followers, but no country was to designate such a role for itself and then show such autonomy.
Conclusions on Middle Powers in a Consolidating Unipolar System, Constructivism and IR
Can middle power behavior — whether now or in the Cold War era — be better explained by a Constructivist argument than the essentially realist, major-power dominated explanation offered here? Higgott and Nossal have attempted to explain Australia’s efforts to "relocate" itself in Asia through such a lens. 83 They argue that,
Australian policy, especially in its Asian regional guise, constitutes an exercise in the inducement of change by active intellectual and ideational intervention, a significant departure from the usual historical reading of Australia’s regional relations as a realist exercise... 84
Both the thinking of Australian elites about Australia in Asia, and "the growing levels of interaction at the regional level may be capable of changing the nature of (Australian) interest." 85 Higgott and Nossal point to the mutually constitutive nature of state identity, foreign policy, and the international environment that is a dominant feature of Constructivism. Paraphrasing the famous dictum by Alexander Wendt, Higgott and Nossal assert, "the very process of engagement with the international system, as a conscious policy choice, can have transformative effects: anarchy is not merely what states make of it, but also what they make it through their actions." 86 Thus, they point to Australia’s redefinition of its location and identity and its many important contributions to the shaping of regional fora.
On one superficial level this argument seems intuitive — states are affected by and affect their international environment. It is not difficult to make this argument for all but the states with the fewest international ties, that is, ties to the global economy and to the global political hierarchy. So, on this one rather superficial level, the Constructivist argument must be acknowledged for its ability to restate with serendipity a slightly older argument offered by Maria Papadakis and Harvey Starr:
The state is an entity in an environment, and the environment may be divided into different levels with different sets of variables characterizing each level. The environment defines the context within which a state may act, but how the state actually acts or deals with its environment depends upon a number of factors: the set of opportunities that the characteristics of the sub-environments "objectively" provide the state, how the state perceives its environment, its willingness to take a particular course of action, and so on. 87
But, given the critical role of ideas to the Constructivist argument — ideas both within the state that are shaped by the international structures and ideas within the international structures that are shaped by the state — what happens to this argument when key actors within the international environment are not just resistant to but dismissive of a particular state’s efforts to shape the environment and its place in it? In response to the reconstructed, semi-retracted "Howard Doctrine" — a doctrine which comes admittedly after the period under review by Higgott and Nossal — the Malaysian opposition leader Lim Kit Siang reportedly said that the "burial" of the Howard Doctrine by the Asian response to it should be a lesson to the Australian government "that is has not yet developed the mindset to be accepted as an Asian nation." Twenty years of active, concerted efforts on the parts of Australian foreign policy elites, coupled with real and significant Australian contributions to the maintenance of regional fora, and a real and significant contribution to security in East Timor, have done nothing to alter the view of Malaysian elite, and perhaps no others as well. Australia’s power to shape its environment and the very critical ideas that define it have been unsuccessful. More importantly, Australia’s efforts to reconstruct its role in the world was dismissed by the dominant global shaper and mover, the United States.
It might be more appropriate to argue that Constructivism is an interesting account of how major powers shape the international system and are also shaped by it. Major powers construct international organizations to facilitate their interests, and then do agree to limit their own foreign policy behaviors in conformity to the rules established in the IOs. Although East Timor was not considered a direct threat to US interests and the US had more pressing concerns in the broader Asian region, once the UN Security Council approved the peace enforcement mission, the US did make a token contribution. But, weaker powers are shaped by exogenous forces much more than they shape the outside world, its ideas and structures. Anarchy is what major powers make of it, and what major powers make it. The story for weaker powers remains embedded in a realist framework.
We need only to think back to efforts by middle powers to establish a middle power category within both the League of Nations and the United Nations to see the limits on efforts by weaker states to shape international structures. The "middle" category was established within the League, but some "middle" states so resisted the imposition of the term and its related identity that they left the forum altogether. Within the UN system, middle powers were never able to take their self-defined identity and have it legitimized by codification in the UN Charter. That is, the middle powers of the time, affluent states who did make significant contributions to the winning of the second world war who offered this affluence to the new UN system but on their own terms , were denied the ability to shape the single most important political body of the international system. The dominant states had already constructed a vision of the new system which was translated into a UN controlled by the military and political power of the Big Five of the Security Council. Everyone else had to accommodate their own actions, their own roles, their own ideas to this reality.
The argument can be made that the other designated followers discussed in brief here, Great Britain and Germany, possess sufficient power to be considered among the major powers, the ones who can both shape and be shaped by the international system, whether anarchic or otherwise. The convergence of interests and ideas among elites in Britain, Germany and the United States assist the consolidation of this unipolar, "hub and spoke" international system. This convergence both reinforces the internal identity and power structures within these states as well as reinforces the international power structure. Again, Constructivism tells us how the major powers exist in the world, but very little about those who have less sway internationally. When Constructivism is thus exposed as the explanation of the processes whereby dominant states maintain the world, it becomes Realism.
Note 1: Carsten Holbraad, Middle Powers in International Politics (New York: St. Martin's, 1984). Back.
Note 2: Josef Joffe, "How America Does It," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 76, No. 5 (1997), pp. 13-27; Josef Joffe, "‘Bismarck’ or ‘Britain’?" International Security, Vol. 19, No. 4 (1995), pp. 94-117. Back.
Note 3: Andrew F. Cooper, Richard A. Higgott, & Kim Richard Nossal, Relocating Middle Powers: Australia and Canada in a Changing World Order (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1993), p. 19. Back.
Note 4: See John W. Holmes, The Shaping of Peace: Canada and the Search for World Order, 1943-1957 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982); Michael K. Hawes, Principal Power, Middle Power, or Satellite? Competing Perspectives in the Study of Canadian Foreign Policy (Toronto: York Research Programme in Strategic Studies, 1984); Bernard Wood, The Middle Powers and the General Interest (Ottawa, Ont.: The North-South Institute, 1988). Back.
Note 5: See, for example, Johan Tunberger, "Baltic Security: One Swedish Perspective," paper presented at the joint annual meeting of the International Studies Association/South and the International Security Studies Section of the ISA (October 15-17, 1993), Maxwell Air Force Base, Montgomery, Alabama. Back.
Note 6: Margaret P. Karns, & Karen A. Mingst, "International Organizations and Foreign Policy: Influence and Instrumentality," in Charles F. Hermann, Charles W. Kegley, Jr., & James N. Rosenau, eds, New Directions in the Study of Foreign Policy (Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1987). Back.
Note 7: Wood op. cit., p. 22. Back.
Note 8: See J.L. Granatstein, J.L., "Peacekeeping: Did Canada Make a Difference? And What Difference did Peacekeeping Make to Canada?" in John English & Norman Hillmer, eds., Making a Difference: Canada's Foreign Policy in a Changing World Order (Toronto: Lester Publishing Ltd., 1992). Back.
Note 9: Ibid., pp. 224-225. Back.
Note 10: Holbraad, op. cit. Back.
Note 11: Tunberger, op. cit., p. 1. Back.
Note 12: Holbraad, op. cit., p. 125. Back.
Note 13: Tunberger, op. cit., p. 2. Back.
Note 15: Andrew F. Cooper, Richard A. Higgott & Kim Richard Nossal, "Bound to Follow: Leadership and Followership in the Gulf Conflict," Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 36, No. 3 (1991), pp. 391-410. Back.
Note 16: Randall L. Schweller, "Bandwagoning for Profit," International Security, Vol. 19, No. 1 (1994), pp. 72-107. Back.
Note 17: Samuel P. Huntington, "Why International Primacy Matters," International Security, Vol. 17, No. 4 (1993), pp. 68-83; Christopher Layne, "The Unipolar Illusion," International Security, Vol. 17, No. 4 (1993), pp. 5-51; Barry R. Posen and Andrew L. Ross, "Competing Vision for US Grand Strategy," International Security, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Winter 1996/1997), pp. 5-53. Back.
Note 18: Joffe, "‘Bismarck’ or ‘Britain’?" op. cit. Back.
Note 20: Josef Joffe, "How America Does It," op. cit. Back.
Note 25: Layne, op. cit. Back.
Note 29: Speech by the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, Guildhall, London, Monday 22 November 1999. Accessed January 28, 2000. Back.
Note 31: James Rupert, "US and Britain Close 10 Embassies in Africa," The Washington Post (June 26, 1999), p. A13. Back.
Note 32: Suzanne Daley, "Is US a Global Snoop? No, Europe is Told," The New York Times (February 24, 2000), p. A1. See also, Richard Norton-Taylor and David Gow, "French Anger at US-British Global Spying," The Guardian (London) (February 24, 2000), p. 15. Back.
Note 34: Carrie Buchanan, "World’s New Power Group Doesn’t Include Canada," The Ottawa Citizen (November 25, 1999), p. A1. Back.
Note 36: Richard A. Higgott and Kim Richard Nossal, "The International Politics of Liminality: Relocating Australia in the Asia Pacific," Australian Journal of Political Science, Vol. 32, No. 2 (1997), pp. 169-185. Back.
Note 37: Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australia, "New Australian Government: Foreign Policy," Insight, Vol. 5, No. 3 (1996), electronic version. Back.
Note 42: "Australia’s Howard Unveils New Post-Timor Doctrine on Asia," Agence France Presse (September 22, 1999), electronic version, Lexis/Nexis. Back.
Note 44: James Bone, "UN Rejects Call for Peacekeeping Force in Timor," The Times (London) (September 2, 1999), electronic version, Lexis/Nexis. Back.
Note 46: Robert Burns, "US May Provide Air and Other Support But Not Combat Troops," The Associated Press (September 13, 1999), electronic version, Lexis/Nexis; "US Troops Due in Australia for Military Exercise," Agence France Presse (September 13, 1999), electronic version, Lexis/Nexis. Back.
Note 47: Burns, op. cit. Back.
Note 49: Peter Hartcher, "The ABC of Winning US Support," ABIX: Australasian Business Intelligence (September 13, 1999), p. 8, electronic version, Lexis/Nexis. Back.
Note 50: David E. Sanger, "Clinton Sees US Playing Support Role in East Timor," The New York Times (September 13, 1999), p. A7, electronic version, Lexis/Nexis. Back.
Note 51: Hartcher, op. cit. Back.
Note 52: Sanger, op. cit. Back.
Note 53: Joanne Gray, "US Re-assesses Role and Follows Australia’s Lead," ABIX: Australasian Business Intelligence (September 14, 1999), p. 10, electronic version, Lexis/Nexis. Back.
Note 54: Robert Holloway, "UN Will Determine Make-up of Timor Force, Annan Says," Agence France Presse (September 13, 1999), electronic version, Lexis/Nexis. Back.
Note 56: "UN Forges Details of East Timor Military Mission," The Houston Chronicle (September 15, 1999), p. A20, electronic version, Lexis/Nexis. Back.
Note 57: See, for example, "New Zealand-United States Mending Defence Rift," Deutsche Presse-Agentur (September 15, 1999), electronic version, Lexis/Nexis; Helen Bain, "It’s the Big Thaw, Clinton Wants NZ in Peacekeeping Exercises," The Dominion (Wellington) (September 16, 1999), p. 1, electronic version, Lexis/Nexis; Christopher Dore, "Clinton Suggests Revival of ANZUS," ABIX: Australasian Business Intelligence (September 16, 1999), p. 7, electronic version, Lexis/Nexis. Back.
Note 58: "UN Forges Details," op. cit. Back.
Note 59: Ibid., see also, Bain, op. cit. Back.
Note 61: Tom Raum, "President Proposes Joint Military Exercises to Speed Timor Peacekeeping," The Associated Press (September 15, 1999), electronic version, Lexis/Nexis. Back.
Note 63: US Department of State, Office of the Spokesman, "East Timor — US-Australian Cooperation," (September 16, 1999), state.gov/www/briefings/statements/1999/ps990916a.html, accessed March 7, 2000. Back.
Note 64: Fred Benchley, "The Howard Defence Doctrine," The Bulletin (September 17, 1999) as quoted in various sources over the next several weeks, including an abstract in the ABIX: Australasian Business Intelligence (September 28, 1999), electronic version, Lexis/Nexis. Back.
Note 65: "Australia’s Howard Unveils New Post-Timor Doctrine on Asia," Agence France Presse (September 22, 1999), electronic version, Lexis/Nexis. Back.
Note 68: "Howard Doctrine is Arrogant and Racist, Says Gerakan," FT Asia Intelligence Wire (September 27, 1999), from a story in Bernama: The Malaysian National News Agency, electronic version, Lexis/Nexis. Back.
Note 69: K.P. Waran, "Australia Insensitive to Asia in Wanting to be Mata-Mata," New Straits Times (Malaysia) (September 26, 1999), p. 2, electronic version, Lexis/Nexis. Back.
Note 71: "Malaysia Criticizes Australia’s ‘Howard Doctrine,’" Asia Pulse (September 24, 1999), electronic version, Lexis/Nexis. Back.
Note 73: "Howard Doctrine is Arrogant and Racist," op. cit. Back.
Note 74: "Australia’s Howard Visits East Timor," Deutsche Presse-Agentur (November 28, 1999), electronic version, Lexis/Nexis. Back.
Note 75: Ron Corben, "Asia: Aust Diplomats Clarify Reported ‘Howard Doctrine,’" AAP NEWSFEED (September 27, 1999), electronic version, Lexis/Nexis. Back.
Note 76: "Howard Does a Backflip on ‘Deputy’ Asian Role," BERNAMA: Malaysian National News Agency (September 28, 1999), electronic version, Lexis/Nexis. Back.
Note 78: "Malaysian Opposition, Media Slam Aussie PM’s About-Turn," Agence France Presse (September 28, 1999), electronic version, Lexis/Nexis. Back.
Note 79: Steve Connolly, "No Howard Doctrine Says PM," AAP NEWSFEED (September 28, 1999), electronic version, Lexis/Nexis. Back.
Note 81: "Delusions of Grandeur," Editorial, The Dominion (Wellington) (September 29, 1999), p. 10, electronic version, Lexis/Nexis. Back.
Note 82: Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen, Foreign Minister of Australia Alexander Downer, and Defense Minister of Australia John Moore, "Remarks Following the US-Australian Ministerial Meeting, Washington, DC," (November 3, 1999), Released by the Office of the Spokesman, US Department of State, accessed March 7, 2000. Back.
Note 83: Higgott and Nossal, op. cit. Back.
Note 87: Maria Papadakis and Harvey Starr, "Opportunity, Willingness and Small States: The Relationship between Environment and Foreign Policy," in C.F. Hermann, C.W. Kegley, Jr., and J.N. Rosenau, eds., New Directions in the Study of Foreign Policy (Winchester, MA: Unwin Hyman, 1987). Back.
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