Joint U.S. Korea Academic Studies
From the Issue
Joint U.S.-Korea Academic Studies 2015About Joint U.S. Korea Academic Studies
For over twenty years, KEI has sponsored annual major academic symposiums at universities across the country and major academic conferences. Each year, papers are specially commissioned to fit panel topics of current policy relevance to the U.S.-ROK alliance and implications for the Korean peninsula. Following the symposium, KEI edits and publishes those papers in an annual volume entitled “Joint U.S.-Korea Academic Studies.”
Author: Malcolm Cook
Region: Asia
Theme: Foreign Relations, Security
Location: China, Australia, United States of America
Published February 26, 2016
Download PDFSince Kevin Rudd and the Australian Labor Party ended Prime Minister John Howard’s 11 1/2 years in office in late 2007, each new government in Canberra has faced a very similar and rather narrow foreign policy fixation. Australia’s relations with China, and Australian policies or pronouncements that may affect China, have become the main focus of foreign policy commentary both inside and outside the country. Increasingly, Australia’s own defense and foreign policy pronouncements and long-standing and deep relations with the United States and Japan are being reinterpreted through this China lens. This mostly critical commentary has tried to divine new directions in Australian foreign and security policy and reasons why these perceived new directions are harmful to Australia’s relations with China. From their very first baby steps, the Abbott administration and Prime Minister Tony Abbott himself have been subject to this increasingly singular China-centered focus and its set of questionable underlying assumptions.