globalisation, regionalisation and the history of ... · peoples and the history of international...

PROVISIONAL

4th General Assembly

Oslo, 11-12 August, 2000

Scientific Sessions

Globalisation, Regionalisation

and the History of International Relations

The Formation of the Images of the Peoplesand the History of International Relations

2000

Globalisation, Regionalisation

and the History of International Relations

The scientific sessions on Globalisation, Regionalisation and the History

of International Relations and on The Formation of the Images of the

Peoples and the History of International Relations were decided and

shaped by the Bureau and by the Secretariat of the Commission in 1999-

2000.

The preparation of the scientific sessions is by a committee co-ordinated by BrunelloVigezzi and with the contribute of:

Joan BeaumontMaria BenzoniAlfredo CanaveroWolfgang DpkeAdam FergusonRobert FrankChihiro Hosoya

Lawrence KaplanJukka NevakiviSilvia PizzettiMario RapoportGiovanni SciroccoPompiliu Teodor

The editorial staff is composed by

Barbara Baldi, Laura Brazzo

and Lucio Valent

International Committee of Historical Sciences (C.I.S.H.)

COMMISSION OF HISTORY OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONSCOMMISSION DHISTOIRE DES RELATIONS INTERNATIONALES

COMMISSIONE DI STORIA DELLE RELAZIONI INTERNAZIONALI

Summary

Preliminary Note .............................................................................................................................................. 8

Some Information about the Commission of History of International Relations........................................ 9

Session Aims Introductory Remarks.......................................................................................................... 12

Papers.............................................................................................................................................................. 13

in authors alphabetical order .................................................................................................... 13Rubn Aguirre Gustavo Gatti........................................................................................................................ 14

The End of the Century and the End of Employment. East-West: A Reality ............................................ 14

Bruno Amoroso ............................................................................................................................................... 16

Globalisation and Regionalisation................................................................................................................. 16

Thomas Angerer ............................................................................................................................................. 17

Austria's Foreign Policy since 1918: between Regionalization and Globalization..................................... 17

Joan Beaumont ............................................................................................................................................... 18

Australia between Globalisation and Regionalisation: the Historical Experience .................................... 18

David Bidussa................................................................................................................................................. 28

All-Reaching Answers to Globalization. Religious Radicalism as "Tradition's Figure" and "SocialMobilization". The Late 20th Century Jewish Case..................................................................................... 28

Norma Breda dos Santos................................................................................................................................ 36

OMC: rgles multilatrales stables et non-discriminatoires? Perspectives pour la libralisation dusecteur agricole ............................................................................................................................................... 36

Alfredo Canavero ............................................................................................................................................ 37

Is a More Globalized Church Bound To Be Less Universal? The 20th Century Internationalization ofthe Roman Curia. ........................................................................................................................................... 37

Andrea Ciampani............................................................................................................................................ 43

Social Actors in History of International Relations: European Trade Unions from Internationalism toGlobal Society. ................................................................................................................................................ 43

Charles Cogan................................................................................................................................................. 53

NATO, UE after the Cold War....................................................................................................................... 53

Alessandro Colombo ....................................................................................................................................... 67

Globalisation and the Crisis of International Society. Martin Wight and Carl Schmitts Reflections onthe Cultural and Institutional Dimensions of International Relations...................................................... 67

Wolfgang Dpcke ............................................................................................................................................ 83

About the Mystery and Misery of Regional Integration in Africa............................................................... 83

Charles F. Doran .......................................................................................................................................... 106

Globalization, Regionalization and the Cost of Secession ......................................................................... 106

Yale H. Ferguson .......................................................................................................................................... 128

Globalisation, Regionalisation and the History of International Relations

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Globalization, Regionalization, and Other Conceptions of Political Space: Past, Present, and Future . 128

Valdo Ferretti................................................................................................................................................ 137

The Globalization Process from South to East Asia and Japan's Adhesion to the Colombo Plan in 1954137

Omar Horacio Gejo Ana Mara Liberali...................................................................................................... 144

Globalization Versus Regionalization ......................................................................................................... 144

Agostino Giovagnoli...................................................................................................................................... 145

Between Decolonization and Globalization: The Catholic Church and the 20th Century Missions....... 145

Augusto Graziani.......................................................................................................................................... 147

The Italian Economy in the International Context: the International Setting........................................ 147

Kumiko Haba................................................................................................................................................ 155

Globalism and Regionalism in East-Central Europe: Nationality Problem and Regional Cooperationunder the EU and NATO Enlargement ...................................................................................................... 155

Joe Hajdu ...................................................................................................................................................... 163

The Presence of Global Capital in Australia and the Debate over National Identity ............................. 163

Kalervo Hovi ................................................................................................................................................. 172

Globalization and Regionalization in the Baltic States and Finland in the 1920s and 1930s. ............. 172

Graciela Iuorno Alcira Trincheri ................................................................................................................. 175

The Globalization and Latent Conflicts at the End of the Century. The Ethnic-Religious Nationalism inKosovo and Kashmir .................................................................................................................................... 175

Robert S. Jordan ........................................................................................................................................... 177

The Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) and the Politics of European Command ............. 177

Hartmut Kaelble........................................................................................................................................... 184

Globalization and European Society ........................................................................................................... 184

Lawrence Kaplan.......................................................................................................................................... 185

Globalization, Regionalization and the Military. The Evolution of NATO as a Military Organization . 185

Sean Kay ....................................................................................................................................................... 193

Security Regionalization In The New Europe. International Institutions And Balkan Crises .............. 193

David Lowe ................................................................................................................................................... 200

Three World Wars: Australia and the Global Implications of Twentieth Century Wars ........................ 200

Surjit Mansingh............................................................................................................................................ 208

India and China in Comparative Perspective: Between Regionalism and Globalization........................ 208

Andrs Musacchio......................................................................................................................................... 223

The Concept of Globalisation ....................................................................................................................... 223

Jukka Nevakivi............................................................................................................................................. 225

Globalization, Regionalization and the History of International Relations: the Case of Scandinavia andFinland .......................................................................................................................................................... 225

Jens Petter Nielsen ...................................................................................................................................... 231

The Historical Construction of the Barents Euro-Arctic Region............................................................... 231

Jrgen Osterhammel.................................................................................................................................... 232

Globalising and Regionalising Forces Affecting the Dependent World (19th and 20th Centuries)........ 232


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Nikolaj Petersen ........................................................................................................................................... 233

Denmark and Norden in the Post-War Period. Between Sub-Regionalism, Regionalism and Globalism.233

Guy Poitras ................................................................................................................................................... 235

Inventing North America. The Evolution of Regionalism in a Globalized Political Economy ................ 235

Daniela Preda ............................................................................................................................................... 243

Globalization and Regionalization: An Historical Approach ..................................................................... 243

Ron Pruessen ................................................................................................................................................ 245

Growing the System: The Evolution of Global Management Efforts, 1950-1975: A Report on theEvolution of a Collaborative Research Project ........................................................................................... 245

Vasile Puskas................................................................................................................................................ 260

Post-1989 Central Europe. National Interests, European Integration and Globalisation...................... 260

Francesca Rigotti .......................................................................................................................................... 261

The New Leviathan: Globalisation and the Language of Apocalypse...................................................... 261

Adriano Roccucci........................................................................................................................................... 269

Russian Orthodox Church and Globalization............................................................................................. 269

Valters Scerbinskis....................................................................................................................................... 270

Latvia in the Process of Globalization and Regionalism During 1990s ................................................... 270

Giovanni Scirocco.......................................................................................................................................... 271

Ongoing Discussion: Globalization And Time-Turning ............................................................................. 271

Motoko Shuto ................................................................................................................................................ 288

Sovereignty, Regionalism and Globalization in Southeast Asian Politics................................................ 288

Nina D. Smirnova......................................................................................................................................... 289

Regionalization and Regional Integration. Balkan Tie.............................................................................. 289

Manju Subhash............................................................................................................................................. 292

Regionalism In India .................................................................................................................................... 292

Hugues Tertrais............................................................................................................................................ 304

Entre mondialisation et rgionalisation: les relations entre lEurope et lAsie du Sud-Est depuis laseconde guerre mondiale.............................................................................................................................. 304

Luciano Tosi .................................................................................................................................................. 310

Between Wars and International Cooperation Processes. A Possible Reading of the History ofInternational Relations in the 20th Century.............................................................................................. 310

Lucio Valent .................................................................................................................................................. 313

United Kingdom and the Global Foreign Policy in the '50s and '60s........................................................ 313

Nuno Valrio Ana Bela Nunes..................................................................................................................... 328

From Global Mediterranean to the Mediterranean in a Global World..................................................... 328

Elizabetta Vezzosi......................................................................................................................................... 339

The Feminist Movement between Globalization and Regionalization ..................................................... 339

Tullo Vigevani............................................................................................................................................... 344

Long Cycles of the International Society And Their Contemporary Consequences ................................ 344

Hirotaka Watanabe ...................................................................................................................................... 369


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Japanese-Asian Relations and Euro-Asian Relations. Regionalism and Globalization in Asia in the firsthalf of the 20th Century ................................................................................................................................ 369

Maria Weber ................................................................................................................................................. 376

Globalization and the Asian Economic Crisis............................................................................................. 376

Jean-Paul Willaime ...................................................................................................................................... 384

Protestantisme et globalisation ................................................................................................................... 384

Pablo M. Wehbe ............................................................................................................................................ 393

Democracy/Capitalism, Debate Theme. Notion of the State Today ......................................................... 393

Globalisation, Regionalisation and the History of International Relations Areas and Topics ............... 394

Globalisation, Regionalisation and The Historyof International Relations in Latin America....... 398Mario Rapoport............................................................................................................................................. 399

LAmerique Latine entre Globalisation et Regionalisation. Perspectives Historique et TendenciesRecentes. Rapport General ......................................................................................................................... 399

Norberto Aguirre .......................................................................................................................................... 400

The Relationship between Argentine and Western Europe. A Special Case: Relationaship with Spain(1990-1999).................................................................................................................................................... 400

Clodoaldo Bueno ........................................................................................................................................... 401

The Brazilian Foreign Policy and the Beginning of the United States Hegemony in the Hemisphere(1906-12)........................................................................................................................................................ 401

Jorge Hugo Carrizo....................................................................................................................................... 410

Argentine Nation in the World System According to Frondizis Developmentalist Vision (1955-1958) 410

Fernando De Zan Ariel Gutirrez Francisco Del Canto Viterale Eduardo Capello ................................. 411

MERCOSUR: presente, pasado y futuro..................................................................................................... 411

Lucia Ferreira ............................................................................................................................................... 412

Latin America: a Zone of Interest for European Union?............................................................................ 412

Edmundo Heredia......................................................................................................................................... 419

Terre (sol) et Territoire: Deux conceptions de lespace dans les rapports Amricains Latinsinternationaux .............................................................................................................................................. 419

Lidia Knecher Mario Rapoport .................................................................................................................... 420

Argentine-French Relations at the Time of the European Common Markets Establishment: theFrondizi-De Gaulle Talks............................................................................................................................. 420

Mara de Monserrat Llair Raimundo Siepe .............................................................................................. 421

The Crossroad of the American Foreign Policy in the Process of Argentine Integration and LatinAmerica 1958 - 1962 ..................................................................................................................................... 421

Eduardo Madrid............................................................................................................................................ 423

Argentine, Brzil et lIntgration Regionale .............................................................................................. 423

Maria Haydee Martin................................................................................................................................... 425

The Integration of Latin America Economic Spaces in the International System through a Century: theMercosur between the Continentalization and the Globalization? ........................................................... 425


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Mercedes Muro de Nadal ............................................................................................................................. 428

World Overview of the Milk Producing Countries at the End of the Millenium and the Effects onMercosur........................................................................................................................................................ 428

Delia del Pilar Otero..................................................................................................................................... 445

International and Interregional Relations in the Area of Misiones or Palmas........................................ 445

Alicia Radisic ................................................................................................................................................ 446

Diplomatic and Commercial Relations between Argentina and Iran from 1940 to 1950....................... 446

Mario Rapoport Ruben Laufer..................................................................................................................... 447

The United States vis-a-vis Argentina and Brazil: the Military Coups of the 1960s .............................. 447

Ricardo Romero............................................................................................................................................. 449

The Latin American Student Movements, from Their Formation until the Age of the TechnologicalCapital. A Compared Analysis of the FUA, the UNE and the FEUU. .................................................... 449

Ofelia Beatriz Scher ..................................................................................................................................... 453

Las relaciones entre Amrica Latina y Canad en un nuevo marco regional (1950-1995) ..................... 453

Beatriz R. Solveira........................................................................................................................................ 454

LAsie et lAfrique dans la politique extrieure argentine, 1853-1999...................................................... 454

Mara Susana Tabieres ................................................................................................................................ 455

The Relationhip Between European Union and Mercosur ........................................................................ 455

Emilce Tirre .................................................................................................................................................. 456

The International Insertion of Argentina: the Relationship with the USA and Europe and the RegionalIntegration. ................................................................................................................................................... 456


8

Preliminary Note

Last year, the Bureau of the Commission on History of International Relations (look p. 9) singled outGlobalization, Regionalization and the History of International Relations as the subject of the Oslo firstscientific session by a broad majority

The paper, which had been enclosed to the invitation for all the members to participate to the session,has outlined viable purposes for the meeting (look p. 12): it has suggested to relate the analysis ofglobalization's and regionalization's different sides - with their relationships - to the reassessment of ahistorical course that might be quite far-reaching in the past.

Different members of the Bureau and the Secretariat have cooperated by developing first paper'ssuggestions, by proposing subjects of study, by keeping in touch suitably with members and otherinterested scholars who have been invited on the way to take part to the initiative.

Plenty of replies have been received, as can be seen from this collection of abstracts, which we aredelivering to foster the following stages of our work.

Drawing on the attitude and rules of the Commission, the basic purpose of the session goes on to be thatBureau's and Secretariat's members, associates and joining scholars could ponder and confront eachother on so relevant subjects. This sheds light also on the difference of proposals and on the overallcharacter the research has taken so far.

We also propose at the end a sorting-out by areas and topics that is only tentative: it is not to stick tothe letter. Some papers in different areas deal a lot with subjects pertaining to the second part. On thecontrary, some papers on topics take into remarkable consideration areas' subjects.

Nonetheless, two-part division, plus a special session on Latin America, goes on to be useful: a first,sketchy overview is permitted, which may be conducive to the discussion and the reassessment we willhave at Oslo.


9

Some Information about theCommission of History of International Relations

The Commission of History of International Relations was established in Milan in October 1981 on theinitiative of a group of scholars from various countries. In the same year the International Committee ofHistorical Sciences (I.C.H.S.) recognised it as an "internal" body devoted to foster and enhance thewidest scientific collaboration among historians of 'international life', understood in its widest meaning.

The Commission, which is open to all the interested historians on an "individual membership" basis,according to its Statute has "the purpose... to develop the studies on the history of internationalrelations, by several means:

a) organising periodical meetings among its members;

b) aiding the spread of scientific information concerning this domain of history;

c) publishing scientific documents useful for historical research in this field;

d) any other activity which may appear to be useful to widen the works of the Commission.

The Institutions active in this field of studies may get membership in the Commission, but withoutvoting rights. They may propose individuals for membership.

The Commission is co-ordinated by a Bureau, and assisted by a Secretariat which has its seat in Milan,as stated by statute, at the Centre for the Studies on Public Opinion and Foreign Policy.

In August 1997 the Commission was accepted as "associate" body of the ICHS with right to vote inGeneral Assembly of that world organisation.

Since 1981 Commission has approved and supported the programmes of many International Congressthat have been later enacted with the cooperation of Universities and Institutions from countries allover the world.

From 1981 up to 1999 congresses have taken place in Perugia,Tbingen, Helsinki, Bochum,Cluj,Moscow, Brasilia, Rome, Buenos Aires, and Tokio and they have been devoted to:

! The History and Methodology of International Relations (Perugia-Spoleto-Trevi, Italy, 20-23September 1989) organized with the University of Perugia

! Minor Powers/Majors Powers in the History of International Relations (Tbingen, Germany, 11-13April 1991) organized with the Eberhard-Karls-Universitt

! The History of Neutrality (Helsinki, Finland, 9-12 September 1992) organized with the FinnishHistorical Society and the University of Helsinki

! East-West Relations: Confrontation and Dtente 1945-1989 (Bochum, Germany, 22-25 September1993) organized with the University of Bochum

! The History of International Relations in East and Central Europe: Study Traditions and ResearchPerspectives (Cluj-Napoca, Romania, 20-24 October 1993) organized with the Institute of Central-European History, Faculty of History and Philosophy, Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca.

! World War I and the XX Century (Moscow, Russia, 24-26 May, 1994) organized with the RussianAssociation of the WWI History and the Institute of Universal History of the Russian Academy ofSciences

! State and Nation in the History of International Relations of American Countries (Brasilia, Brazil,31 August -2 September 1994) with

! The Historical Archives of the Great International Organisations: Conditions, Problems andPerspectives. International Seminar of Studies (Rome, Italy, September 27-28, 1996), organized withConsiglio Internazionale degli Archivi (ICA) and Conferenza Internazionale della Tavola Rotondadegli Archivi (CITRA) Direzione generale degli archivi di Stato (General Management of theItalian State Archives), Giunta centrale per gli studi storici(Italian Central Council for the


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Historical Studies), Istituto Nazionale di Storia Moderna e Contemporanea (National Institutefor the Modern and Contemporary History).

! The Origins of the World Wars of the XX Century. Comparative Analysis (Moscow, Russia, 15-16October 1996) organized with the National Committee of Russian Historians, the Institute of WorldHistory of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Association of the First World War Historians andthe Association of the Second World War.

! The Lessons of Yalta (Cluj-Napoca, Romania, May, 1997) organized with the Institute of Central-European History, Faculty of History and Philosophy, Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca.

! Integration Processes and Regional Blocs in the History of International Economic, Politico-strategicand Cultural Relations (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 10-12 September 1997) organized with theArgentine Association of the History of International Relations and the Universities of Buenos Airesand Cordoba.

! Political Interactions between Asia and Europe in the Twentieth Century (Tokyo, Japan, 10-12September 1998) organized with the University of Tsukuba and the Tokyo University of ForeignStudies)

! Archives and History of International Organizations (Rome, Italy, 29-31 October 1998) organizedwith Giunta Centrale per gli Studi Storici, Ufficio Centrale per i Beni Archivistici and ConsiglioInternazionale degli Archivi (ICA)

The Commission on the occasion of the International Congresses of Historical Sciences, promossidallICHS (Stuttgart (1985), Madrid (1990), Montreal (1995)) ha tenuto its General Assemblies chehanno comportato lorganizzazione di specifiche sessioni scientifiche dedicate a:

! Whats History of International Relations? (Stuttgart, Germany, 29-30 August 1985, 16thInternational Congress of Historical Sciences)

! Permanent Diplomacy in the XX Century (Stuttgart,)

! Great and Small Powers in Modern and Contemporary Ages (Stuttgart)

! Les archives des organisations internationales. Le point de vue de lhistorien et du chercheur(Madrid, Spain, 30-31 August 1990, 17th International Congress of Historical Sciences)

! International Relations in the Pacific Area from the 18th Century to the Present. Colonisation,Decolonisation and Cultural Encounters (Montreal, Canada, 1-2 September 1995, 18thInternational Congress of Historical Sciences)

! Multiculturalism and History of International Relations from 18th Century up to the Present(Montreal, Canada )

In order to foster the widest spreading of information and to favour a closer relationship with itsmembers, the Secretariat of the Commission publishes a Newsletter, 10 issues of which have come outby now.

All the information on the Commission its activities, issued publications and join-in procedure can beobtained by getting on to:

Commission of History of International Relations

Via Festa del Perdono 7 20122 Milano Italy

Tel. 0039-0258304553

Fax.0039-0258306808

E-Mail: [email protected]

Web Site: http://users.unimi.it/~polestra/centro

*****
mailto:[email protected]


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The General Assembly of the CHIR, hold in Montreal (Canada) in September 1995, has elected asmembers of its Bureau for the years 1995-2000:

Joan BEAUMONT (Deakin University, Victoria, AUSTRALIA),Amado L. CERVO (Universidade de Brasilia, BRAZIL),Alexandr CHOUBARIAN (Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, RUSSIA),Michael L. DOCKRILL (Kings College, University of London, UNITED KINGDOM),Manuel ESPADAS BURGOS (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, Madrid, SPAIN),Robert FRANK (Universit de Paris-Sorbonne, FRANCE),Chihiro HOSOYA (International University of Japan, Tokio, JAPAN),Lawrence S. KAPLAN (Kent State University, Ohio, USA),Jukka NEVAKIVI (University of Helsinki, FINLAND),Jrgen OSTERHAMMEL (FernUniversitt Hagen, GERMANY),Mario D. RAPOPORT (Universidad de Buenos Aires, ARGENTINA),Pierre SAVARD ! (University of Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA),Pompiliu TEODOR (University of Cluj-Napoca, RUMANIA),Brunello VIGEZZI (University of Milan, ITALY)

For the same five-year period the Bureau appointed Brunello VIGEZZI as President, ManuelESPADAS BURGOS as Secretary General, Robert FRANK as Secretary Treasurer, and AmadoLuiz CERVO and Pompiliu TEODOR as Vice-Presidents.

A Secretariat - co-ordinated by Alfredo CANAVERO and Silvia PIZZETTI - assists the Commission inits activities.

The General Assembly of the CHIR in Montreal has nominated Donald C. WATT (London School ofEconomics) and Ren GIRAULT ! (Universit de Paris-Sorbonne) as Honorary Presidents of theCommission.

*****

The next General Assembly of our Commission will be held in Oslo on Friday 11th and Saturday 12thAugust 2000 within the framework of the International Congress of Historical Sciences with thefollowing agenda:

Friday Morning, August 11, 2000

! Presentation of a report about activities carried out;

! Presentation of the balance sheet (1996-2000)

! General presentation of the two scientific sessions about:

Globalisation, Regionalisation and the History of International Relations (Call for papersin English and French, Enclosure 3)

The Formation of the Images of Peoples from the 18th Century to the Present Day and theHistory of International Relations (Call for papers in English and French, Enclosure 4)

Friday Afternoon, August 11- Saturday Morning, August 12, 2000

! Separate sessions on the two scientific themes. Discussion of the papers presented

Saturday Afternoon, August 12, 2000

! Presentation of the results of the scientific sessions

! Discussion of the programme 2000-2005;

! Social fee;

! Voting of possible changes in the Articles of the Statute;

! Election of a new Bureau according to the Statute


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Session Aims Introductory Remarks

It is a very widespread notion that in recent times the world has been going through an ever moremarked process of globalisation. At the same time, it has been observed, there is a parallel - more orless marked movement towards regionalisation: regions in this context are to be seen either asinternal divisions within existing states, or as larger areas than present states, extended on a more orless continental scale.

Studies on these topics are now legion, provoking an extraordinary variety of interpretations,discussions and controversies which in turn have given rise to ever more new studies.

These studies have emphasised how the process of globalisation involves a range of different spheres:from the economic to the political and social ones, but also including communications and institutionsas well as cultural and religious issues. What is the substance and what are the manifestations ofglobalisation on these different levels? What is the thread that connects these various aspects? Andwhat, in each of the various situations, is the real relationship that holds between globalisation andregionalisation ?

Globalisation and regionalisation, according to comments various scholars made, are phenomenathat form part of an historical process which they shape and enliven in their own turn. What possiblelink is there between, on the one hand, globalisation and regionalisation, and on the other, thehistory of the relations between states and, more broadly, the history of international relations?

While these studies have often emphasised the startling novelty of recent processes of globalisationand regionalisation, they have, however, also increasingly drawn attention to the importance of alonger-term perspective. Only with such a long-term perspective does it seem possible to provide an in-depth explanation of the character and impact of these new changes.

The very terms globalisation and regionalisation need to be examined more closely. Attention needsto be paid to when they are used and when not, to their meaning and to the use of other more or lesssimilar terms. It would be interesting to consider from this point of view, for example, the age of moderndiscoveries and what some people see as the first globalisation and regionalisation of the world;aspects of the industrial revolution; the periods of imperialism and decolonialisation; the two WorldWars; the Cold War; the end of the Cold War and so on.


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Papers

in authors alphabetical order


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Rubn AguirreGustavo Gatti

Instituto de Investigaciones de Historia Econmica y SocialFacultad de Ciencias Econmicas

Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires, Argentina

The End of the Century and the End of Employment.East-West: A Reality

The following report shows the analysis of the labour reality, which affects immediately the actualworld. In order to fulfil this analysis, it is important to have a retrospective view over the 80s and 90s inthe Japanese business world , such as the business evolution and an accompanying problem with it,namely the unemployment. The European reality is explored according to answers that have been givenby the UE to the labour problem and also the undertaking projects as unemployment alternatives.Even, the existence of new technologies and the opening of national economies show the way towards aglobal economy. That is to say, the double phenomenon of Globalization with its direct corollary, thatis the conformation of regional blocks- and the Third Industrial Revolution with the technologicaldevelopments that are connected to telecommunication and computer science- which engender anincreasing unemployment in combination with liberalism.

This interaction impoverishes considerable masses, even in the most successful countries. According towhat has been previously set-out, in the following report consists of three parts as follows:

1. towards a new concept of employment;

2. end of the century and end of employment;

3. graphics and statistics.

The transformation of the old concept of employment is analyzed in the first part. Such concept entailsthe controller principle of human life, which nowadays is being gradually and systematically removedfrom the production process because sophisticated communication and information technologies areprogressively being applied to a wide variety of jobs.

This process is not strange to business and labour re-organization.

This happens because the unemployment and subemployment indexes increase every day in NorthAmerica, Europe and Japan, arising an increasing technologic unemployment, in as much as trans-national corporations have productive methods that are based on the most up to date technologies; thiscausing that million of workers not to be able to contend with the new automation production systems.Multicorrective team work, the employees` tuition in different skills to reduce and simplify production,distribution and administrative processes constitute a reality , according to what has been mentionedbefore.

After having appraised analysing the Taylorist and the Fordist systems as labour processes, able totransform the world, they are slowly falling through, because of the lack of possibilities in order toincrease productivity. Team work in module or isle are appearing all of them as substitutes of assemblychains .

Its obvious that the Japanese pattern is in an all-out spreading and that an information society, whichis almost short of employment is dawning, is third Industrial Revolution the third and last stage of achange in the economic paradigms?

Cybernetics, for instance: robots, computers with advanced software are invading the last availablehuman spheres namely the realm of the mind.

In the second part, the end of the century and its correlation with the end of employment are analysed,either in the case of the East (such as Japan) or the West (such as the European Community ).


15

In the case of Japan , not only the Japanese is business management is studied but also the internaland external pressures too: material satisfaction against spiritual wealth and free time orprotectionism, which damages Japan, against moving the production abroad. There is also a tendency toa change in the organising structure of the Japanese company , that is to say the evolution towards anew Japanese business system. We can say that the Japanese business management will face awkwardproblems, especially in the administration of human resources next century. So, the concept of life-longemployment is typical example: retirement in advance, removing of over employment, subcontracting,subsidiaries, the beginning of compulsory training programmes.

The Japanese demographical transition will be relevant, because at the beginning of the XXI century,Japan will have more old people than today, which will be dangerous for the financial structures of thecountry. It will arise a threat to the national interest that is the creation of wealth, which impliesprivate savings, money to be given to Japanese manufacturers with low rate of interest and also thecosts advantages which are obtained with respect to rivals from abroad.

Nevertheless, there is a countermeasures by an old population, which is the technological progress inthe production growing and the intensification of robot revolution in Japan. According to Paul Kennedy,we can say that the robot revolution increases more where labour costs are high, and where there is astock of workers, that shows a deep demographical deceleration.

To sum up, slaves from abroad assembly plants (with low labour costs) are exceeded by automation athome.

That is why, the unemployment reality of the Japanese labour world turns on re-engineeringprocesses, that remove all kind of jobs in a greater number.

According to what has been explained, there is a model of management, that is known as the just-intime production: Toyotism. Japanese manufacturers have combined new rational productiontechniques, by using sophisticated information systems that are based on new technologies; this meansthe future factory: automation productive substructure plus a fewer number of workers. This factoryhas a relevant stress profile and shorter stints per days.

In the West, especially in the European Community, a comparative opinion is made regarding thelabour problem and the importance of the European model of social welfare, that has been able to keepsocial peace in the last decades. This factor is one of the most important element in the integrationprocess, although there are some pressures to reduce social expenses, which are imposed by the worldrivalry. Such pressures have increased since a time of considerable increase of unemployment and alsoof the oldness rate of population. These factors imply important efforts, especially in the public budgets.

We have also analyzed how does the Community fight against unemployment. After analyzingcommunity plans, the importance of the European Bank of Investments and its credit loans forsubstructure projects, as well as the importance of the European Fund of Investment is apparent. Theseinstitutions gives some help to companies, which ask for credits. The Cohesion Fund is also importantto provide means of transport and environmental projects.

Employment policies are considered for 1998 and 1999, showing four basic elements to take intoaccount: 1) To improve employment, 2) To develop enterprise attitude, 3) To encourage the companyand employees`s acclimatisation and 4) To reinforce same-opportunity policy.

The E.U. has interests in developing some programmes to create new jobs, as well as education policiesare studied in order to provide the same opportunities to men and women.

Graphs and statistics are included in the third part, which are about employment and unemployment inJapan and in the European Community as follows: rate of women and men activity from 15 to 64 yearsold in the U.E., women and men unemployment rate from 15 to 64 years old , women and men part-timejob, full-time job in the U.E. and Japan, the annual growing rate in certain labour categories of somecountries 1981-1996transition to older groups in Japanese population, chart explaining theunemployment rate in the developed countries of the world and a chart indicating the growing rate ofemployment in the areas mentioned above.


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Bruno AmorosoFederico Caff Centre, Roskilde, Denmark

Globalisation and Regionalisation

The superimposition of partial concepts on phenomena to general concepts on general phenomena hasalways been the cause (or effect) of the realitys ideological manipulation. Historians such as FernandBraudel and economists like Karl Marx and Karl Polanyi provide copious study material about thesephenomena with their researches into market, capitalism and development.

This situation has again taken place in recent times due to the superimposition of the partial concept onthe phenomenon of globalisation to the general concept on the phenomenon of internationalisation andby reducing to it partial phenomenon such as universalisation and regionalisation.

By this method, opposing phenomena such as globalisation and regionalisation are considered equal or,in some cases, the second is considered a lower stage of development than the first.

A recent but equally diverting and mystifying perspective is the one which places real phenomena suchas globalisation, universalisation and regionalisation on the same level with virtual phenomena such asthe Global Village or the Network Society.

This can be overcome by a more careful analysis which starts from the theoretical ground of the meso-region and world-economy, and from the study of the authors and actors that characterise thephenomena of globalisation, universalisation and regional integration. This will be able to restore thecorrect balance between real and virtual in the present knowledge.

It is the opinion of the author that globalisation represents the new form of capitalist accumulation inthe 21st century, which is qualitatively different from all previous stages. Universalisation expressestrends and movements of resistance to such new forms, and regional integration is the politicalalternative to it.

Globalisation leaves aside market economies, dismantles national states and institutions, clonesproduction systems by the rupture of any relation between culture and production systems, and,finally, it de-territorialises the basic existence of the communities.

The construction of process of regional integration rooted in the meso-region dimension appears to bethe best alternative to globalisation and the adequate answer to the new demands oninternationalisation in the 21st century.


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Thomas AngererDepartment of History, University of Vienna, Austria

Austria's Foreign Policy since 1918:between Regionalization and Globalization

In Austrian foreign policy since 1918, regionalization above the state level has been a recurrent, almostconstant phenomenon though adopting different forms. There may be doubts whether the idea of aunion with Germany (Anschluss), predominant in the first period of Austria's existence as a little state,fits well in the concept of regionalization. However, this is certainly true for the concurring ideas ofMitteleuropa, of a Danubian federation, of Paneurope and other forms of more or less regionalizedEuropean co-operation. After its reestablishment at the end of World War II, selected traditional andnew concepts of regionalization played a major role again, including the different forms of "European"co-operation in the OEEC, the Council of Europe, the ECSC and EEC, the failed Great Free Trade Area,the EFTA, and the CSCE.

From their origins, Austrian regionalization tendencies can be analysed as variables of two mainidentity problems: Austria's national and international identities. "Left over" from the HabsburgMonarchy, the new state was not nation. National allegiance went to Germany, supra-nationalallegiance went to the region formerly included in the Empire of Austria and its Hungariancounterpart. Small and weak, the new state didn't accept its international identity either.Regionalization tendencies in Austrian foreign policy took therefore a "post-imperial" mark. While to acertain extent, this "post-imperial" dimension holds on until our days, nation building in little Austriahas been a success since its reestablishment in 1945 and the end of Allied occupation in 1955. Finally,regionalization took on more common functions. Among other things, it has been Austria's answer toglobalization when preparing to join the European Union in the late 1980s.

As a paradox, regionalization by joining the EU brought also about a sort of de-globalization in Austrianforeign policy as from the 1960s on, especially in the Kreisky era, it had largely concentrated on theUnited Nations. This out of deception from "Europe", already then the politically and economically mostrelevant form of regionalization above the state level. Globalization then was a sort of alternative toregionalization.

However, globalization of Austria's foreign policy had had a second reason as well: regionalizationbeneath the state level. In fact, the problem of South Tyrol had a great impact on internal policy andwas one of the driving forces behind Austria's active UN policy on a global scale (including Africa andthe Middle East). As a largely federalized state, Austria's foreign policy had and has to take stronglyinto account the regional interests of its provinces. The early years of the First Republic had sawnexamples of tentative foreign policy emancipation of individual provinces (notably Tyrol and Salzburg)with disintegrating implications for the state. Some seventy years later, when negotiating Austria'sadhesion to the European Union, the federal government had to strike a deal with the provinces whichgave them a further bearing in certain domains of foreign policy.

In recent years, Austria has therefore become another example for the well known process in whichregionalization in both senses of the term, above and beneath the state level is a twin ofglobalization. The history of the decades before, however, shows many particularities due to Austria'slong-lasting difficulties in coming to term with its existence as a separate, little state.


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Joan BeaumontDeakin University of Geelong,Victoria, Australia

Australia between Globalisation and Regionalisation:the Historical Experience

Globalisation and regionalisation or as it is more commonly called in Australia, regionalism arefamiliar expressions. But they are words which have had changing meanings for successive generationsand which are still contested subjects today. It would be possible to devote this whole paper, or a book,to definitions. Suffice to say that globalisation is the logical culmination, at the end of the 20th century,to that centurys advances: in freeing trade and investment; in breaking down distance byrevolutionising the speed of communication; in spreading supra-national values such as universalhuman rights; and in building international and regional institutions to consolidate these achievements(for along with globalisation has gone fragmentation). In some senses, these qualities of globalisationare also conducive to regionalism. Australias historical experience indeed has been that its engagementwith its region and indeed its definition of region has been always been mediated through itsconcern with global issues and forces, be they strategic, political, economic or racial. In many instancesAustralia has found a tension between the regional and global which it has managed with difficulty.

Australia has long been exposed to globalisation, if we can call imperialism a form of this (andimperialism has many of the qualities listed above). Settled as a British colony in 1788, Australiaformed an integral part of the global economic, political and defence system of the British empire untilthe latter half of the 20th century. But obviously this was globalisation of a limited form. Consistentwith the nature of imperialism, the orientation of the Australian colonies was narrowly towards theimperial metropolis, not towards the external world, with whom contacts were mediated by London.Australian values, its educational system and its political institutions were derived from those ofBritain. (Even when, from the 1920s on, the dominant globalising culture of the 20th century, the UnitedStates, began to make its impact felt through film and popular culture, Britain remained emotionallyand culturally home). Until the latter half of the 20th century Australias immigrants also were drawnalmost exclusively from Britain. For many than a century after white settlement there was only anembryonic sense of Australian nationalism. Local loyalties, that is loyalty to ones colony or state beit Victoria, New South Wales or South Australia were strong, but identification beyond the local wasglobal and vertical: from Melbourne, Sydney or Adelaide to London, rather than horizontal, acrosscolonial or regional boundaries.

This imperial orientation meant that, although Australians were long conscious of their need to engagewith the region in which their continent was located, they felt an uneasy and often fearful contradiction.They were a predominantly European people located on the edge of Asia. This tension between theirhistory and their geography formed one of the recurring themes of Australias history of foreignrelations.

The region has meant many things to Australians in the past century. When it first enteredAustralian consciousness in the last quarter of the 19th century, the region was the southwest Pacific,those widely scattered islands from New Guinea to Fiji, which are currently manifesting politicalinstability as ethnically divided micro-states. The Australian colonies interest in this region sprangfrom a mixture of economic opportunism, Christian missionary zeal and strategic concerns. This was aregion of dimensions in which Australia, even with its minute population, could exercise a mini-imperialism itself. There was grandiose talk in the colonies in the 1880s about a Monroe doctrine for thePacific and Australias manifest destiny in the Southwest Pacific.1

1 Roger Thompson, Australian Imperialism in the Pacific (Melbourne University Press, Melbourne,1980), chs 3-7.


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But, for all its regional assertiveness, this mini-imperialism was constructed with the paradigm of thewider British Empire. When Australians thought of external threats in their region, for example, theyfeared imperial powers that were in competition with the Britain France, Germany, Russia and eventhe United States.2 The logic of this mindset was that the only security for Australia rested within aglobal imperial defence network. Australians also saw their role in the region to be, in part, agents ofthe British empire. As Roger Thompson has said.

the distinctive Australian imperialistic interest in Pacific islands was linked to a widerattachment to the great and glorious empire on which the sun never sets Australianimperialism in the Pacific was not a symptom of an Australian nationalism separate from theimperial connection Even one of the most chauvinistic advocates of an Australian empire inthe Pacific, the Age, declared that its achievement was a mission to perform in the name of thegreat English race in these southern seas.3

The framing of Australias regionalism within a global imperialism inevitably created some tensions.Britains global imperatives were not necessarily synonymous with Australias regional concerns. Forexample, in 1884 Britain acquiesced in Germany's taking control of the north-eastern section of Papua,much to the chagrin of the Queensland colonial government which had earlier occupied the territory.4

Two decades later, in keeping with the Anglo-French entente dictated by the European alliance system,Britain formed a condominium with France in the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu).5

But whatever the frustrations with the way in which the global strategic imperatives of empirepredominated at the expense of Australias regionalism, Australians had no doubt where they werealigned in terms of race. As the above quote from the Age illustrates, Australians gloried in the crimsonthread of kinship6 that linked them across the globe to the United Kingdom. The influx of Chineselabourers into the Australian colonies during the gold rushes of the 1850s had generated a violentbacklash, resulting in racially exclusive immigration policies. The subsequent importation of Pacificisland labourers to work on Queensland sugar cane plantations further inflated the fears of racialcontamination and the undercutting of the high wage rates of white Australian labourers. It is notablethat the first piece of legislation passed by the new federal Australian government in 1901 was an actthat enshrined the White Australia Policy. For the next six decades, through administrativeprocedures associated with this act, Australian maintained the racial purity of its immigrant intake.Asians were systematically excluded, a fact which naturally proved to be a source of resentment on thepart of many nations in the Asia-Pacific region and an enduring obstacle in the 20th century, toAustralias engagement with the region.

With the turn of the 20th century, the definition of Australias region shifted and widened to includenot simply the Southwest Pacific but North Asia. (South and Southeast Asia, being largely underEuropean imperial control, were seen as non-threatening until the post-1945 decolonisation.) Theemergence of Japan as a new industrial and military power in the late 19th century inspired a mixedreaction in Australia. Some saw the commercial opportunities of Japan as an export market; but otherswere preoccupied with the potential of a trading relationship with Japan to erode the White AustraliaPolicy. To this was added, in the first decade of the 20th century, a strategic anxiety. In the aftermathof Japans naval victory over Russia in 1905, apocalyptic popular literature in Australia predicted theinvasion of Australia by Japan and the defiling of the racial purity of the Australian nation. Theinvasion-scare literature, so important in fanning popular fears of Germany in late Victoria andEdwardian Britain, took a different but equally strident form in Australia.7

2 K.S. Inglis, The Australian Colonists: An exploration of social history (Melbourne University Press,Melbourne, 1974).

3 Thompson, Australian Imperialism, p.105.

4 ibid., ch. 6.

5 ibid., ch. 10.

6 The phrase was coined by the colonial politician, (Sir) Henry Parkes.

7 David Walker, Anxious Nation: Australia and the Rise of Asia, 1850-1939 (University of QueenslandPress, St Lucia, Queensland, 1999), chs. 6, 8.


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Japans emergence again highlighted for Australians the tension between the global and the regional.The new enemy in the Asian region was in fact the imperial mothers ally. Britain, in an effort toaddress its global naval over-stretch resulting from Anglo-German naval arms race, negotiated theAnglo-Japanese alliance of 1902. Despite considerable Australian misgivings, this was renewed in1911.8

But, with the outbreak of the First World War, it was confirmed that imperial loyalty remained by farthe more dominant identification. Although it can be argued that there were regional interests at stakein the war of 1914-18 that, for example, Australias security would have been adversely affected by aGerman victory in Europe in the crisis of August 1914 Australian unthinkingly responded to theBritish cause. Constitutionally, Britains declaration of war committed Australia to the conflict, butAustralians enthusiasm for the British cause went far beyond tokenism: 20 000 Australian troops hadvolunteered within the first weeks of the war. In the next four years, despite the fact that militaryconscription proved to be a profoundly divisive issue domestically, Australian supplied some 330 000troops for overseas service, from a population of less than 5 million. Of these over 58 000 died.9. A muchquoted poem of May 1915, written by a member of one of Victorias leading private (non-government)schools, is indicative of this emotional identification with Britain:

The bugles of England were blowing oer the sea

As they had called a thousand years, calling now to me;

They woke me from the dreaming in the dawning of the day,

The bugles of England and how could I stay?10.

In a way that superficially seems paradoxical, Australias involvement in the British imperial war effortin 1914-18, in fact, triggered an explosion of national sentiment. The role of Australians in the Gallipolicampaign of 1915, and later on the Western front, generated the Anzac legend, a semimythicalcelebration of the unique qualities of the Australian soldier (or digger) that, even in the early 21stcentury, plays a central role in the Australian national political culture. Yet, the paradox of Australiannationalism is explicable when it is realised that it was a dual nationalism, constructed within thewider imperial loyalty. As one of Australias prime ministers in the years immediately prior to 1914,Alfred Deakin said, Australians saw themselves as independent, Australian Britons. Each element ofthe trilogy was of equal importance. The Australian Army was called the Australian Imperial Force.Simultaneous loyalty to Britain and Australia became the dominant discourse of Australiannationalism in the war and inter-war years though there were dissenting voice, most notably amongAustralias sizeable Irish-Catholic population.

While the war of 1914-18 affirmed Australias identification with the global and imperial, the tension ofthis position with regional concerns remained. One old element of this tension, admittedly, waseliminated. In September 1914 Australia occupied German New Guinea, an occupation which wasconfirmed when it acquired a League of Nations mandate over the territory in 1919. But, to balance thisstrategic gain in the region, Japan remained an ally of Britain. Moreover, Japan used the turmoil inEurope to consolidate its position in China and elsewhere in Asia. The same system of League ofNations mandates that benefited Australia in New Guinea entrenched Japanese presence in theCaroline and Marshall Islands north of the equator. And while Australian clumsy attempts at the ParisPeace conference of 1919 to quarantine its immigration policy from the Japanese, by opposing the racialequality clause in the League charter, were successful, the cost was continued affront to Japanesesensibilities.11.

8 Ian Nish, Australia and the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, 1901-11, Australian Journal of Politics andHistory, XI, 1962, pp. 200-12; Neville Meaney, The Search for Security in the Pacific, 1901-14 (SydneyUniversity Press, Sydney, 1976), pp. 214-17.

9 Joan Beaumont (ed.) Australias War, 1914-18 (Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1995), pp. 1-2.

10 J. D. Burns, For England, originally published in Scotch Collegian (Melbourne), vol. 12, no 1, May1915, p. 43.

11 W.J. Hudson, Billy Hughes in Paris: The Birth of Australian Diplomacy (Nelson in association withthe Australian Institute of International Affairs, Melbourne, 1978), chs. 2, 5.


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The years between the wars were in many ways the locust years for Australias adjustment to thechanges in the global and regional order. The country turned inwards, and under an almost unbrokenperiod of conservative federal rule, the old dependence on imperial Britain continued. In contrast withother British Dominions, such as Canada and Eire, that pushed to gain greater autonomy ininternational affairs, Australia clung to the past. It continued to rely on Britain for the conduct of itsrelations with countries within and outside the British Empire/Commonwealth. Not until 1940 didAustralia establish its first independent diplomatic missions overseas (in Washington, and,significantly, Tokyo).12. Predictably in the inter-war years Asia impacted little on Australianconsciousness, except as a threat, and, in the case of Japan, as a trading partner. The dominantexternal cultural influence, other than Britain, was the United States, or more precisely Hollywood.13.

In the classic Marxist model of empire, the Australian inter-war economy was geared to providing rawmaterials to satisfy British industrial needs. Australia remained integrated into the British sterlingbloc and in the 1930s, in the grip of the Depression, embraced policies of imperial preference, whichactually damaged its growing trade with Japan and the United States.14

In the strategic realm, meanwhile, Australia continued its faith in British imperial defence. In view ofits own unwillingness, or inability, to fund significant defence spending in the Depression years,Australia saw in the global power of Britain its only means of countering any regional threat. As theJapanese menace grew from 1932 on, the British naval base at Singapore became the keystone ofAustralian regional defence. So intent were they on ensuring that the British strategic presence in Asiaremained credible, that Australian governments emerged as strong advocates of appeasement inEurope. They proactively encouraged Britain to seek a diplomatic rapprochment with Nazi Germany in1937-38.15

Few if any, in Australia, were prepared to read the signs of Britain's global overcommitment that wasmanifest to British military planners themselves from 1935 on. Hence, when European war again brokeout in 1939, Australia responded in a way strongly reminiscent of 1914: an almost automaticdeclaration of war on the side of Britain (even though the constitutional position now gave Australia theoption of refraining from commitment); an early promise of military, naval and air support for animperial global strategy; and in early 1940, a dispatch of Australian troops (the 2nd Australian ImperialForce) to the Middle East, that hub of British global communications.

But there was a difference from 1914. In 1939 it was feared, even by the deeply Anglophile RobertMenzies, that the global commitment might jeopardise, rather than guarantee, regional security. Themenace posed by Japan was a source of profound unease to the Australian government; and thecommitment of Australian forces to the conflict outside the region was only undertaken when Londongave assurances (as it proved, of little value) that Japan would not pursue a more expansionist policy.Australian strategic policy was in fact bankrupt, because if the insurance policy of imperial defence wasto prove void, Australia had no regional security alternative to fall back on.16

In the event, of course, Britain proved unable to meet its global commitments after the fall of Franceand the entry of Italy and Japan into the war in 1940-41. In the aftermath of the catastrophe inMalaya, Singapore and Southeast Asia in early 1942, it was clear that the Australian assumption that aglobal security network was the most effective means of ensuring regional security was questionable atbest.

12 W.J. Hudson and M.P. Sharp, Australian Independence: Colony to Reluctant Kingdom (MelbourneUniversity Press, Melbourne, 1988); P.G. Edwards, Prime Ministers and Diplomats: The Making ofAustralian Foreign Policy 1901-1949 (Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1983), pp. 116 ff.

13 Philip Bell and Roger Bell, Implicated: The United States in Australia (Oxford University Press,Melbourne, 1993), ch. 2.

14 Walker, Anxious Nation, pp. 209, 225; H. Burton, The Trade Diversion episode of the Thirties,Australian Outlook, vi, 1952, pp. 85-89.

15 E.M. Andrews, Isolationism and Appeasement in Australia (ANU Press, Canberra, 1970).

16 See Joan Beaumont, Australias War, 1939-44 (Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1996), pp.1-7.


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But, deliverance from the Japanese came through the agency of another global power, the UnitedStates. Australian defence policy immediately after the Second World War therefore continued to seeglobal and regional security as inextricably linked. For a short period in the early 1950s the Australiangovernment of Menzies, fearing a new global conflict, this time in the context of the emerging Cold War,was tempted to commit Australian troops, at Britains suggestion, to the Middle East, (for what wouldhave been the third time in the century). But by the mid 1950s, the focus of Australian planners hadturned, this time permanently, to their region.17

Again the meaning of the region had shifted. Japan remained detested, given the fact that some 8000Australians had died in Japanese prisoner-of-war and internee camps during the Second World Warand that the threat of invasion in 1942 had been real, but its demilitarisation had neutralised it as amilitary threat. But the forces of decolonisation unleashed by the war of 1941-45 created a new and, forAustralia, often threatening challenge in the Southeast Asian region.

The Australian response to this challenge was multifaceted. Four decades later it was fashionable inAustralian Labor circles to claim that Australia only discovered Asia in the 1980s and 1990s underprime ministers Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, but in fact in the 1940s and 1950s, the reorientation tothe realities of change in the region was substantial. Under the Labor foreign minister Dr H.V. Evattand his conservative successor R.G. Casey (the latter of whom saw Asia a more than a stopover en routeto London), new elements emerged in the Australian regionalism. Evatt supported independence forIndonesia in the last 1940s and relations with Indonesia have remained a priority of Australianforeign policy ever since. In 1950 Australia played a leading role in the inception of the Colombo Planfor Cooperative Economic Development in South and South East Asia.18 This was in some ways a self-conscious attempt at Australian image-building at home and in Asia, where it was promoted as acorrective to the negative images generated White Australia Policy. But Australian contributions toAsia under the Colombo Plan included capital aid, commodity aid, and technical assistance. The latter,which provided Asian countries with the services of experts, and offered Asians training and educationopportunities in Australia, exposed the insular Australian population to students who countered theprofoundly negative stereotypes of Asia.

The 1950s also saw the beginning of what proved over the next four decades to be a transformation ofAustralian trade patterns away from Britain and Europe to Asia. Just prior to the Second World Warexports to the UK accounted for 55 per cent of total Australian exports. Even in 1950, as Britainstruggled to recover from the economic impoverishment of the Second World War, the figure was 39 percent. But during 1946-55 Japans share of Australian exports rose to 5.2 per cent, a trend whichcontinued as that countrys share of exports rose to 13.7 percent for 1956-65 and to 26.1 per cent for1966-75.19. Despite the wartime legacy of distrust, Japan replaced the UK as Australias principalexport market in 1967. This was possible because Australian foreign policy still maintained a clear, ifartificial, distinction between political and economic international policies. This distinction also allowedAustralia to maintain trade in wheat with Communist China, even while that country was demonisedas the aggressive and destabilising force in regional politics.

Yet, for all the changes, the old attitudes towards the region reasserted themselves in security policy.Increasingly in the late 1950s and 1960s defence issues came to dominate Australian regionalengagement, to the point that one commentator has called the years 1945-72 as the period of Fear ofAsia.20. The battlefield was Southeast Asia, particularly Malaya and Vietnam, where Australian troopswere deployed from 1950 and 1962 respectively. But in Australian imagination the threat was global.

17 David Lowe, Menzies and the Great World Struggle: Australias Cold War, 1948-1954 (University ofNew South Wales Press, Sydney, 1999).

18 David Lowe, The Colombo Plan in David Lowe (ed.), Australia and the End of Empires (DeakinUniversity Press, Geelong, Victoria, 1996), pp. 105-18.

19 Mark McGillivray, Australias Economic Ties with Asia in Mark McGillivray and Gary Smith (eds),Australia and Asia (Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1997) p. 57. In 1950, 52 per cent of totalAustralian imports came from the UK.

20 Gary Smith, Australias Political Relationships with Asia in McGillivray and Smith, Australia andAsia, p. 101.


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Working, as they historically had, within a framework which viewed regional developments through aglobal lens, Australians attributed conflict in the decolonising countries of Southeast Asia not tonationalism but to an international crusade of infiltration and conquest by communism, orchestrated byChina. Even after the Sino-Soviet split made notion of monolithic communism anachronistic, theconflict in Southeast Asia was constructed as a manifestation of Cold War global politics.

Australias military response to this challenge was also constructed within the global paradigm. In 1951Australia had pursued and won a strategic alliance with the United States, ANZUS. This alliance,which significantly excluded Britain, became the keystone of Australian security policy for theremainder of the century. It was enhanced some four years later by the avowedly anti-communist SouthEast Asian Treaty Organisation (SEATO). In the subsequent decade Australian policy was focussed onensuring that the United States retained a strong military presence in the Asian region. The convictionthat only global US power, comparable to that which Britain had offered prior to its withdrawal east ofSuez in the 1960s, could underpin Australias regional security led to Australias commitment to theVietnam War.21. While showing the flag alongside the US, Australia also sheltered under the USnuclear umbrella, permitting bases that were essential to US satellite and tracking systems to beestablished in the remote regions of central and northern Australia.22. The 1960s also saw a growingUS investment in the Australian economy, which met the now common reaction to economicglobalisation: that is, a somewhat hysterical concern about the loss of economic sovereignty.

Defeat in Vietnam of course wrought massive changes in the US attitude towards the region. Facedwith the Guam doctrine and US humiliation in Southeast Asia, Australia was forced to rethink itsdefence policies, to some degree outside the traditional parameters of great power alliances. Greaterself-reliance became the leitmotif of Australian defence policy, although intelligence and equipmentlinks with the United States remained strong and the US alliance continued to provide the context fordefence planning.23. But within the broader foreign policy framework the notion of threat became farless dominant. In 1972, with the coming to power of a Labor government the real politik conception ofglobal politics that had dominated Australian thinking over a 23-year period of conservative rule wasreplaced with a more liberal internationalist analysis of the international order. The new primeminister, Gough Whitlam moved quickly to recognise communist China, and in a foreign policystatement made only days after coming to office set a new tone by declaring that:

The general direction of my thinking is towards a more independent Australian stance ininternational affairs, an Australia which will be less militarily oriented and not open tosuggestions of racism, an Australia which will enjoy a growing standing as a distinctive,tolerant, co-operative and well-regarded nation, not only in Asian and Pacific region but in theworld at large.24.

But for the new tone in Whitlams foreign policy, which quickly became mainstream and bipartisan,25.

at the level of Australian federal politics, the return to power of the conservatives in late 1975 saw areversion to the threat mentality of the past. The second Cold War of the late 1970s and early 1980swas anticipated by the Fraser governments concern about the growing presence of the Soviet navy inthe Indian Ocean. Global bipolarity again dominated Australian regional thinking. In a remarkable,but fortunately abortive, initiative of 1976, Fraser even suggested to the Chinese government that it

21 The best study of Australias Southeast Asian security policy in the official history by Peter Edwards,with Greg Pemberton, Crises and Commitments: The Politics and Diplomacy of Australias Involvementin Southeast Asian Conflicts, 1948-1965 (Allen & Unwin in association with the Australian WarMemorial, Sydney, 1962).

22 Desmond Ball, A Suitable Piece of Real Estate: American installations in Australia (Hale &Iremonger, Sydney, 1980).

23 Robert ONeill, Defence Policy, in W.J. Hudson (ed.), Australia in World Affairs 1971-1975 (GeorgeAllen & Unwin, Sydney, 1980) pp.11-36.

24 Press Conference, 5 December 1972, Australian Foreign Affairs Record, 1972, p. 619.

25 For much of the second half of the 20th century Australia had only two major political party groupingsat the federal level, the Australia Labor Party and a coalition of the Liberal and National parties.


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might align with Australia and the United States against the Soviet Union.26. It was not until glasnostand the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s, that Australian regional security thinking was freedfrom the bipolar paradigm.

In many ways the reconceptualisation of regional security that occurred at the end of the Cold War hadlagged behind other developments that were already drawing Australia into the Asia Pacific region in amuch more complex way. As already mentioned, Australias engagement with Asia had beenconstrained for much of its history by its racially exclusive immigration policies. The significantincrease in immigration in the immediate post-1945 period had done little to alter this, since thecatchment area from which suitable immigrants were drawn extended only as far as the southernMediterranean. (It is symptomatic of the degree to which perceptions of regional threat governed eventhis process that the catchcry for immigration policy immediately after the Second World War waspopulate or perish.) However, from the 1960s the White Australia Policy progressively began to bedismantled, with the administrative regulations that had restricted Asian immigration being repealedin 1966. The impact on the ethnic mix of Australian population remained comparatively limited untilthe flow of Vietnamese boat people in the 1970s led Australia to open its door to significant numbers ofAsian refugees. Australia purportedly took one of the highest rates of Vietnamese refugees per head ofpopulation. How much this reflected a growing openness to a cultural globalisation and how much itrepresented a national bad conscience about the outcome of the Vietnam war is of course debatable.But the changing immigration patterns had and will continue to have a major impact on theethnic mix of the Australian population. The proportion of immigrants from Asian countries rose fromabout 5 per cent in the early 1970s to 25 per cent in the early 1980s to 50 per cent in the early 1990s.(The proportion from Britain declined from 40 per cent to 20 per cent to 12 percent over the sameperiods). By 1990 the Asian-born population in Australia had grown to about 4 per cent of totalpopulation still not huge but a significant shift from the past and one that will continue with family-reunion immigrant intakes.27. The familial links that for so long tied Australian culturally andemotionally to the British Empire are now being replicated in Asia. Simultaneously Asia has become farmore accessible in the last two decades as a tourist destination for an increasingly mobile Australianpopulation.

Even more significant than the cultural shifts that followed changing immigration patterns in the 1980sand 1990s has been the transformation of Australias economic alignment. By the 1995 the oncedominant role of the UK in Australian trade had shrunk to the marginal 3.8 per cent of Australianexports.28. The gap was filled not only by Japan, but by the emerging tigers of North Asia SouthKorea, and the three Chinas: China itself, Taiwan and Hong Kong.29. In the 1980s Australia confronteda new region, a Northeast Asia that was wider than Japan and which was in the economic ascendant.In a major report, commissioned by the Australian government, in 1989 it was recognised that NorthEast Asia was on the path to becoming the dominant region in the world economy.30. Australia had nochoice to link its own economy into this dynamic region and win a greater share of Asian expandingmarkets.

Over the past fifteen years Australia has moved consistently and often painfully to meet this economicchallenge. In order to become regionally competitive Australia has restructured its economy along the

26 For a critical insiders account see Alan Renouf, The Frightened Country (Macmillan, Melbourne,1979), pp.478-79.

27Michele Langfield, Bridging the Cultural Divide: Movements of People Between Australia and Asiain McGillivray and Smith, Australia and Asia, pp. 33-34.

28 McGillivray, Australias Economic Ties, p. 58.

29 By the mid 1990s Northeast Asia had achieved clear prominence in Australian exports: Japanaccounting for some 24 per cent; South Korea, Taiwan and China and Hong Kong, 20 per cent (up from10 per cent in 1975-85). Exports to Southeast Asia were also rising steadily, though the crisis of themid 1990s brought some check to this.

30 Ross Garnaut, Australia and the North East Asian Ascendancy: A Report to the Prime Minister andthe Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Australian Government Printing Service, Canberra, 1989).


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now familiar pattern of financial deregulation, the floating of the currency, the removal of protection forlocal industry through the dismantling of tariff walls, microeconomic reform and so.

Of course these changes have not been simply regional in impetus. They are a response to the forces ofglobalisation which have necessitated economies throughout the globe to confront the need for tradeliberalisation. But for Australia, this experience of globalisation has been mediated through theregional economic sphere. For example, for years Australia has been concerned about the emergence ofregional trading blocs, such the European Union, and NAFTA, which might and in the case of theEU, have left Australia on the margins. But with the conclusion of the long-drawn out UruguayRound, Australias energies turned to creating forums for trade liberalisation in the Asia Pacific region.Australia was one of the driving forces behind the creation of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation in1989. Later it initiated Heads of State and Government meetings in APEC to give its agenda broaderpolitical context. As Gary Smith has said:

The Asia of the late 1990s had been transformed in the Australian official imagination from thesource of threat and danger to th

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