Australia

Abstract

Australia is a country which failed to take the lead in cooperative security. It is fair to say that in the 1980s and early 1990s Canberra was one of the pioneers in the ideational development of security cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region. In contrast to the cases of China and the United States, Australia was among the keenest proponents of multilateral security efforts. Yet the leader of security cooperation in this region has been ASEAN. What policymakers in Canberra had in mind in the very early 1990s was a multilateral institution modelled on the Conference/Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE/OSCE). Many elements of their cooperative security policy were derived from European activities, and were at odds with the informal and gradual approach preferred by ASEAN. Australia’s proposal at the ASEAN Post-Ministerial Conference (PMC) in July 1990 demonstrated its preference. The Foreign Minister, Gareth Evans (1990), proposed the so-called Conference on Security and Co-operation in ‘Asia’ (CSC‘A’), as a framework for addressing security issues. This kind of idea did not materialize; instead, the Canberra government has followed the initiative taken by ASEAN for regional cooperation based on voluntary dialogue.