Australia's Antarctic agenda

Australia has had a long connection with, and significant national interests in, the Southern Ocean and Antarctica. The Australian Antarctic Territory comprises 42 per cent of Antarctica's landmass. Australia is not only a claimant state and original signatory to the Antarctic Treaty but has played a significant role in the development of what is termed the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS). This article aims to provide an overview of Australia's key policy interests and government policy goals towards Antarctica, including its commitment to the ATS. In examining key policy objectives we note that despite continuity and development of these objectives, significant changes and challenges have arisen in the period 1984–2006. It is these challenges that will help frame Australia's Antarctic agenda over the next 20 years and beyond.     

The geopolitics of Antarctic governance: sovereignty and strategic denial in Australia's Antarctic policy

The governance of Antarctica has re-emerged as a geopolitical issue in the past decade due to the increased presence of China, India and Russia; the continent's importance in understanding global climate change; and its economic potential as a source of marine, genetic and mineral resources. This article examines the challenges for the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) in this context and the consequences for Australia's foreign policy in its dual role as both a territorial claimant and supporter of ATS norms of cooperative science and environmental protection. The central argument is that Antarctic ‘bifocalism’ is under pressure as increased commercial activity and problematic jurisdictional interfaces with other regimes create difficult regulatory challenges for the ATS and encourage assertions of sovereignty that cannot be resolved within the existing regime. Consequently, the author argues that it is vitally important for Australia to preserve the legitimacy of the ATS through a policy framework of ‘strategic denial’ that aims to prevent all states from acquiring sovereignty over Antarctic territory. Australia should therefore reject recent proposals to securitise Antarctic policy or pursue World Heritage listing because they involve assertions of sovereignty that risk fracturing the ATS and thus compromise Australia's enduring interest in keeping Antarctica as ‘a continent of international cooperation and peace’.     

The Great Game in Antarctica: Britain and the 1959 Antarctic Treaty

This article is concerned with Britain's political and territorial interests in the Antarctic in the first half of the twentieth century, culminating in the signing of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty. Using in part the diaries of a Foreign Office advisor, Dr Brian Roberts, attention is given as to how successive British governments and their officials sustained a presence in the remote polar continent. Rival claimants in the form of Argentina and Chile made the task all the more difficult. Mapping and surveying were essential in maintaining British sovereignty even if the end results were at times disappointing. The article concludes by suggesting that the Antarctic Treaty, while important in promoting international scientific collaboration, did not manage to resolve the political and territorial disputes surrounding the Antarctic. Arguably, the 1982 Falklands War and its aftermath provided a vivid reminder that Britain's most southerly possessions still remain deeply contested.     

中日南极事业中的"蜜月合作"

《南极条约》包含了对中国等广大发展中国家不公平的条款。由于历史原因,我国没有能够参加利益关系重大的南极活动。80年代,因为国际政治气候的变化,中日两国接近,在南极考察方面进行了很好的协作。日本政府和社会对我国的南极事业给予了积极支持,中日度过了一段两国关系史上少有的“蜜月时期”。     

The Scottish national Antarctic expedition (1902–04) and the founding of Base Orcadas

The history of the establishment of the scientific research station on Laurie Island, South Orkney Islands, is recounted. Its founding by the Scottish National Antarctic (Scotia) Expedition (1902–04) and the subsequent operation by Argentina resulted in it becoming the first all‐year‐round permanently‐staffed research facility in Antarctica. The networks of government and non‐government personnel involved in the rivalry between British and Scottish interests and aspirations and the transfer of the Laurie Island facility from the Scottish expedition to Argentine government control are investigated. The narrative is set against the background of the centennial celebrations of that transfer.     

Reluctant collaborators: Argentina and Chile in Antarctica during the International Geophysical Year, 1957–58

This paper suggests that Argentine and Chilean participation with the Antarctic section of the International Geophysical Year (IGY) of 1957–58 can be characterized as ‘reluctant collaboration.’ It then reflects on the implications of the nature of South American involvement for the history of the Antarctic section of the IGY, especially as it led to the negotiation of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty. During the initial planning stages of the IGY, both Argentina and Chile worried that proposals for widespread scientific research in the Antarctic continent would interfere with their contested claims to political sovereignty in the region. Yet despite their initial skepticism, Argentina and Chile found themselves swept along by the current of international scientific co-operation of the IGY, which persisted into the Antarctic Treaty negotiations of 1959. Within the limited options available, Chile and Argentina were able to negotiate an outcome that was not altogether unfavorable to their political interests. At the same time, their collaboration helped to legitimize both the IGY and the subsequent Antarctic Treaty.     

The uncertain merger of values and interests in UK foreign policy

How should ethics and values relate to the British national interest? The idea that ethical commitments to distant non‐citizens should occupy a position within British foreign policy was a controversial element of Labour's foreign policy during the early part of their 1997–2010 tenure. Rather than undermining traditional national interest concerns, one of the defining themes within Labour's foreign policy was that values and national interests were becoming increasingly merged in a globalized world. The post‐2010 coalition government has made distinct efforts to differentiate themselves from their predecessors, crafting a more pragmatic and national interest‐based foreign policy approach. Despite this, significant continuities with Labour's ‘ethical dimension’ are evident and many associated policies and practices have survived the transition. Moreover, the suggestion that British values and interests are interrelated and mutually reinforcing has been re‐asserted, with renewed vigour, by coalition policy‐makers. The article traces the ways in which values and interests have become increasingly merged in the language of recent British foreign policy and examines the implications for our understanding of the UK's national interest. It argues that the idea of an almost symbiotic relationship between values and interests is fundamentally unhelpful and makes the case for greater disaggregation of the two. Although a zero–sum game need not exist between core national interests and ethical obligations abroad, the suggestion that they are mutually reinforcing obscures the tensions that frequently arise between these different realms of obligation. Using the examples of failed state stabilization and UK arms trade regulation, the article demonstrates how uncritical acceptance of the values–interests merger risks producing unstable policy formulations.     

Complexity,strategy and the national interest

British strategy‐making has been subject to a sustained critique in recent years, from parliamentarians, retired members of the armed forces and scholars of strategic studies. This article examines the nature of this critique and the evolving character of strategic practice in Britain. It argues that the criticisms of British strategymaking are often misplaced, for two main reasons. First, many base their critique on a reductionist notion of unitary ‘national interest’ that fails to capture systemic patterns of complexity and contestation in the wider security environment and in Britain. Second, they underestimate or ignore the extent to which the UK strategic community is itself innovating in response to these themes, particularly since the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review. This is not to argue that considerable challenges do not remain for strategy‐making in Britain. Most notably, these include: how to translate strategic innovation in departments and elsewhere into a coherent national strategic agenda; how to do this while maintaining institutional coordination and a shared sense of strategic purpose across government (and beyond); how to sustain and consolidate institutional expertise and experience in a rapidly changing civil service and at a time of continuing public austerity; and how to articulate and legitimate security policy decisions among a general public that is both disengaged from elite strategic discourse and sceptical of the efficacy of military force. Even so, the article concludes by arguing that it is possible to see the outline of an emergent and distinctive theory of action in contemporary British strategic practice, characterized by principles of adaptivity, anticipation, self‐organisation and nascent cross‐governmentalism.     

British national interest in the Gulf: rediscovering a role?

The British government is in the process of re‐energizing its relations with the Gulf states. A new Gulf strategy involving a range of activities including more frequent elite bilateral visits and proposals sometimes touted as Britain's military ‘return to east of Suez’ are two key elements of the overarching strategy. Such polices are designed to fall in line with British national interest as identified by the government‐authored 2010 National Security Strategy (NSS), which emphasizes the importance of security, trade, and promoting and expanding British values and influence as perennial British raisons d'etat. In the short term, the Gulf initiatives reflect and compliment these core interests, partly based on Britain's historical role in the region, but mostly thanks to modern day trade interdependencies and mutually beneficial security‐based cooperation. However, there is yet to emerge a coherent understanding of Britain's longer‐term national interest in the region. Instead, government‐led, party‐political priorities, at the expense of thorough apolitical analysis of long‐term interests, appear to be unduly influential on the origins of both the Gulf proposals and the NSS conclusions themselves. Without a clear strategic, neutral grounding, both the Gulf prioritization and the NSS itself are weakened and their longevity undermined.     

The ‘rhinofication’ of South African security

The rhino‐poaching crisis in South Africa raises questions about whether it should be tackled through judicial processes or by the application of hard‐power methods. The poaching of wildlife has traditionally been met with a harsh response to send a clear message of punitive deterrence. While the reaction of the South African authorities has been no different, the contemporary threat posed by poaching intersects with, and is complicated by, wider concerns such as border security and immigration. In many respects, this has led to what can be termed the ‘rhinofication’ of South African security. South Africa has a long political tradition that relies on force rather than dialogue, negotiation and reform. Yet, the hard‐power response to protect the rhino and other large fauna, though necessary at one level, often runs up against the economic frustrations and temptations of a large, predominantly black, under‐class, which for generations has been excluded from wildlife management and conservation by white ‘exceptionalism’. Poachers are thus transformed through their counter‐cultural actions into what Eric Hobsbawm termed ‘social bandits’. While this social chasm lies at the heart of the ‘rhino wars’, it is clear that in practical terms the lack of a political/poaching settlement in the form of a racially inclusive conservation strategy almost certainly guarantees their continuation.     

Australia and the South Pacific nuclear free zone treaty: a reinterpretation

A number of analysts have identified the 1986 South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone (SPNFZ) Treaty as one of Australia's major achievements in the area of arms control diplomacy. This article challenges the orthodox view in the secondary literature that Australia's pursuit of a SPNFZ Treaty was motivated exclusively by a desire to protect the nuclear dimension of its alliance relationship with the United States from more ‘radical’ proposals in the region. Drawing on previously unreleased documents made available to the author by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade under the Commonwealth's Freedom of Information Act, this article argues that the Hawke government's pursuit of a nuclear‐free zone in the South Pacific was motivated primarily by what it perceived as an opportunity to promote Australia's image as an activist middle power committed to bolstering the coherence of the global non‐proliferation regime.     

Does a multi‐tier NATO matter? The Atlantic alliance and the process of strategic change

This year NATO will celebrate its 60th anniversary. So far the world's most powerful military alliance has been a remarkable success story. However, as the first decade of the new century draws to a close there appears to be a widening strategic rift among the allies. ‘Two‐tier NATO’ is by now an established piece of shorthand in international strategic debate to indicate an ‘alliance à la carte’ divided into two or more factions of member states with divergent interests. Evidently, the alliance increasingly struggles to reach consensus on a whole range of strategic issues. So is NATO on a path to disintegration and, ultimately, to failure? This article argues that the organization has developed from a fixed ‘two‐tier’ into a rather fluid ‘multi‐tier’ alliance. On many issues the alliance is in fact divided into several different camps that are pushing in different directions. Thus, allies can be grouped into one of three tiers: a ‘reformist’, a ‘status‐quo’ and a ‘reversal’‐oriented one. While the evolution of such a multi‐tier alliance will not inevitably result in NATO's demise unmanaged, this manifestation of camps will continuously disrupt the organization's strategic agility. The article finds that if NATO is to maintain strategic vitality, it needs to develop new institutional mechanisms and establish a consensus on its strategic posture in the changing international order and to make ‘variable geometry’ work.     

The ‘arc of instability’ and Australia's strategic policy

The proposition that Australia faces an ‘arc of instability’ to its north has been an important feature of the Australian strategic debate in the early twenty-first century. Prompted by worries in the late 1990s over Indonesia's future and East Timor's uncertain path to independence, the ‘arc’ metaphor also encapsulated growing Australian concerns about the political cohesiveness of Melanesian polities, including Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands. While tending to overlook the divergent experiences of countries within its expanding boundaries, the ‘arc’ fed from Australia's historical requirement for a secure archipelagic screen. As such it has became an important weapon in the debate over whether the locus of Australia's strategic priorities should be increasingly global in the ‘war on terror’ period or remain closer to home in the immediate region. The ‘arc of instability’ metaphor was consequently adopted by leading Australian Labor Party politicians to argue that the Howard Coalition government was neglecting South Pacific security challenges. It became less prominent following the Howard government's greater activism in the South Pacific, signalled by Australia's leadership of the East Timor intervention in 2003. But its prominence returned in 2006 with the unrest in both Honiara and Dili. In overall terms, the ‘arc of instability’ discussion has helped direct Australian strategic and political attention to the immediate neighbourhood. But it has not provided specific policy guidance on what should be done to address the instabilities it includes.     

British Muslims,multiculturalism and UK foreign policy: ‘integration’ and ‘cohesion’ in and beyond the state

After the 7 July and 21 July 2005 attacks on London the government‐sponsored effort to ‘prevent extremism together’ has repeatedly acknowledged the central role of anger at UK foreign policy in the radicalization of some British Muslims. This acknowledgement has been incorporated into a ‘comprehensive framework for action’ centring upon the need for increased ‘integration’ and an effort, critically, to re‐work British multiculturalism as a means to combat terrorism. Examining the history of multiculturalism in Britain and the tradition of living and acting ‘together’ that it suggests, however, raises a set of questions about the society into which integration is supposed to occur, what integration might involve and its real efficacy for combating terrorists. In addressing these issues, this article suggests that the debate over contemporary multiculturalism should be situated within a much wider social and political crisis over the meaning of ‘community’ in the UK, to which questions of global order and foreign policy are central. Comparing the ‘ethical’ basis of Al‐Qaeda's attacks with Tony Blair's invocation of ‘values’ as the foundation for military intervention reveals that both seek to realize models of community through violence and a shared process of ‘radicalization’ which in both cases precedes 9/11 and which might be traced back to the Gulf War of 1991. The article concludes that debate over the future of multiculturalism in the UK is being conducted alongside and is implicated within a second, violent global conflict over community: one which is central to, but essentially unarticulated within the domestic context.     

The British Parliamentary Labour Party and the Government of Ireland Act 1920

Immediately after the First World War the British Labour Party was forced to reconsider its relationship with an increasingly militant Irish nationalism. This reassessment occurred at the same time as it was becoming a major political and electoral force in post‐war Britain. The political imperative from the party's perspective was to portray itself as a responsible, moderate and patriotic alternative governing party. Thus it was fearful of the potential negative impact of too close an association with, and perceived sympathy for, extreme Irish nationalism. This explains the party's often bewildering changes in policy on Ireland at various party conferences in 1919 and 1920, ranging from support for home rule to federalism throughout the United Kingdom to ‘dominion home rule’ as part of a wider evolving British Commonwealth to adopting outright ‘ self‐determination’ for a completely independent Ireland outside both United Kingdom and empire. On one aspect of its Irish policy, however, the party was adamant and united – its opposition to the partition of Ireland, which was the fundamental principle of Lloyd George's Government of Ireland Bill of 1920 which established Northern Ireland. Curiously, that aspect of Labour's Irish policy was never discussed in the party at large. All the running was made by the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) in the house of commons in 1920. The PLP's outright opposition to the bill acted as balm throughout the wider party, binding together the confusing, and often contradictory, positions promulgated on the long‐term constitutional future of Ireland and its relationship with Britain.     

Scholarship and the ship of state: rethinking the Anglo‐American strategic decline analogy

This article uses the centenary of the First World War as an opportunity to re‐examine a major element of the existing literature on the war—the strategic implications of supposed British decline—as well as analogies to the contemporary United States based upon that interpretation of history. It argues that the standard declinist interpretation of British strategy rests to a surprising degree upon the work of the naval historian Arthur Marder, and that Marder's archival research and conceptual framework were weaker than is generally realized. It suggests that more recent work appearing since Marder is stronger and renders the declinist strategic interpretation difficult to maintain. It concludes by considering the implications of this new work for analogies between the United States today and First World War‐era Britain, and for the use of history in contemporary policy debates.     

Global multipolarity,European security and implications for UK grand strategy: back to the future,once again

The international system is returning to multipolarity—a situation of multiple Great Powers—drawing the post‐Cold War ‘unipolar moment’ of comprehensive US political, economic and military dominance to an end. The rise of new Great Powers, namely the ‘BRICs’—Brazil, Russia, India, and most importantly, China—and the return of multipolarity at the global level in turn carries security implications for western Europe. While peaceful political relations within the European Union have attained a remarkable level of strategic, institutional and normative embeddedness, there are five factors associated with a return of Great Power competition in the wider world that may negatively impact on the western European strategic environment: the resurgence of an increasingly belligerent Russia; the erosion of the US military commitment to Europe; the risk of international military crises with the potential to embroil European states; the elevated incentive for states to acquire nuclear weapons; and the vulnerability of economically vital European sea lines and supply chains. These five factors must, in turn, be reflected in European states’ strategic behaviour. In particular, for the United Kingdom—one of western Europe's two principal military powers, and its only insular (offshore) power—the return of Great Power competition at the global level suggests that a return to offshore balancing would be a more appropriate choice than an ongoing commitment to direct military interventions of the kind that have characterized post‐2001 British strategy.     

Eliding the Esoteric: R. J. Campbell and Early Twentieth Century Protestant Discourse in Britain

R. J. Campbell was arguably the most renowned British religious figure of his generation, a prominent promoter of reform as a leader of non‐conforming Protestantism in Britain at the turn of the twentieth century. He is generally regarded as a promulgator of pre‐war optimism, a universalist who courted personal fame and who sparked an intra‐Protestant sectarian crisis when he initiated a new reformist movement, the “New Theology.” Most of the analysis, including Campbell's suspect retrospective memoir, treat this religious ferment as rooted in Protestant/Christian perturbation. This perspective does not allow for a wider consideration of the vibrant religious milieu of enquiry then in vogue which brought Campbell into contact with a variety of esoteric ideas and philosophies and their interlocutors. Absent this focus, important figures participating in that religious colloquy are marginalised. My article seeks to fill out the commonly accepted version of events. Material not previously examined is interrogated towards illuminating Campbell's wider interests. It postulates that Campbell was one of a number of contributors to a broad discussion on religious ideas and their relationship to Christianity, one of a number of figures shaped by, as much as shaping, the contemporary discursive environment.     

‘Mother's Blood,Father's Land’: Native Title and Comparative Land Tenure Modelling for Claims in ‘Settled’ Australia

Anthropologists working in the field of Australian native title are required to piece together the early laws and customs of claimant groups and assess the degree to which these have continued since the assumption of British sovereignty. The former task is often difficult in south‐eastern Australia because of a lack of good quality early records. I suggest here that there are general principles of Aboriginal land tenure that can be recovered from elsewhere in Aboriginal Australia, where the ethnography is of a better standard, and these can be used as a guide for working with the patchier materials characteristic of the south‐east. The principles mainly cohere around the organic relationship between patrilineal descent and complementary filiation, and are shown to be relevant to the modelling of contemporary south‐eastern tenure, where people speak of ‘bloodlines’ identified with ancestral lands.     

Brown Britain: post‐colonial politics and grand strategy

How do we approach the subject of British grand strategy today? This article seeks a new approach to this question. It argues that there is a gap of grand strategic significance between actually‐existing Britain and the Britain its political elites tend to imagine. The colonial and imperial histories that helped constitute and still shape the contemporary United Kingdom have fallen through this gap. One consequence is a grand strategic vision limited to a choice of partner in decline—Europe or the US. Overlooked are the power political potentialities of post‐colonial generations situated in multiple sites at home and abroad. In search of this potential, we lay the conceptual basis for a strategic project in which the British ‘island subject’ is replaced by a globally networked community of fate: ‘Brown Britain’. This entails reimagining the referent object of British strategy through diaspora economies, diverse histories and pluralized systems of agency. What might such a post‐colonial strategy entail for British policy? We offer initial thoughts and reflect on the often occluded social and political theoretic content of strategic thought.