Living with Giants: Finding Australia’s place in a more complex world

Launch OF AUSTRALIAN STRATEGIC POLICY INSTITUTE’S (ASPI’S) STRATEGY REPORT ON THE FUTURE OF AUSTRALIAN FOREIGN POLICY 

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute has today released its latest report examining the future of Australian foreign policy and the implications for our foreign policy makers.

The report is by Dr Coral Bell, currently a Visiting Fellow in the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University, and titled “Living with Giants: Finding Australia’s place in a more complex world”. 

The report looks at the prospective context of Australian foreign policy making over the next 20 years, with a particular attention to the impact of demographic change and population growth.

“Dr Bell makes a case that Australia’s regional and global commitments may be not only compatible but complementary. Her two central concepts, the emergence of a regional security community and the global concert of powers, are seen as future diplomatic patterns, both likely to emerge from the pressures of change during the next few decades.” ASPI Director, Peter Abigail says.

The prospect of a ‘global concert of powers’ may seem more remote in the present unipolar world of the US paramountcy, but the paper argues that the unstoppable and accelerating process of the redistribution of power has brought the end of that world much closer.

“In other words, the international context within which Canberra must make its policies is transforming itself into a society of giants.” Dr Bell states.

Of the nineteen polities projected to have populations over 100 million in 2020, Dr Bell says that ten of them are in Australia’s region of direct interest and primary strategic concern. 

The paper looks at likely diplomatic friction points and makes several recommendations to aid Canberra policy makers.