Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the First Edition
- Preface to the Second Edition
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Conceiving Foreign Policy
- 3 The Policy Process
- 4 The Foreign Policy Bureaucracy
- 5 The Executive
- 6 The Overseas Network
- 7 The Australian Intelligence Community
- 8 The Domestic Landscape
- 9 The International Policy Landscape
- 10 Australia's Place in the World
- 11 Australia's Security
- 12 Australia's Prosperity
- 13 Values and Australian Foreign Policy
- 14 Conclusion: The End of Foreign Policy?
- Appendix
- Glossary
- Index
14 - Conclusion: The End of Foreign Policy?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the First Edition
- Preface to the Second Edition
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Conceiving Foreign Policy
- 3 The Policy Process
- 4 The Foreign Policy Bureaucracy
- 5 The Executive
- 6 The Overseas Network
- 7 The Australian Intelligence Community
- 8 The Domestic Landscape
- 9 The International Policy Landscape
- 10 Australia's Place in the World
- 11 Australia's Security
- 12 Australia's Prosperity
- 13 Values and Australian Foreign Policy
- 14 Conclusion: The End of Foreign Policy?
- Appendix
- Glossary
- Index
Summary
On 11 september 2001 the attacks by al-Qaeda terrorists on the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington shook world politics deeply. They signalled an end to the uncertainty of the “post-Cold War” era. By generating within the United States an unexpected and profound sense of vulnerability and a determination to prevent such attacks in future, they led the world's only remaining superpower to adopt a much more assertive unilateralism in its policy approaches. Military action followed in Afghanistan and, outside a UN framework, in Iraq. In parallel, US policy-makers showed a new determination to resist any multilateral constraints on their capacity to act in a number of social as well as political and military areas. These events all struck a dramatic opening chord for early twenty-first century international relations. In our view, however, another, deeper, more reverberating, note was sounding underneath and through this chord. This was the impact in all its various manifestations of globalisation.
The form, origin and destination of globalisation are all contested. Despite disagreement on its form, origins and destination, a majority opinion within the vast and burgeoning literature on the subject suggests that globalisation is a process, or series of processes, that manifested itself most vigorously in the years after 1990, and is advancing, gaining in momentum, broadening in scope. As the terrorist attacks showed, a globalising world is by no means homogeneous, and it is not necessarily more secure.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Making Australian Foreign Policy , pp. 286 - 307Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007