The history of Australian foreign policy can be divided into three phases, a British phase which covered the period from the first settlement to the early years of the Commonwealth, an American one which has run by and large from the end of World War II to the present, and a Japanese which covered the period from approximately 1905 to 1941. Each of these phases is defined by the great power which dominated and conditioned Australian security in its respective period. The Japanese phase, however, is fundamentally different from the British and American. Whereas in the latter cases Great Britain and the United States gained their importance for Australia's relation with the world from the certain shield they afforded against foreign intervention and invasion, in the former Japan became the central factor in Australia's foreign policy because of the threat that she posed to the national interest and national survival.
For the greater part of the period 1905-1941, especially in the decades leading up to World Wars I and II and during the first years of both wars, Japan was the pre-eminent power in the Western Pacific, a power moreover seemingly bent on an expansionist course. At the same time Britain, preoccupied with the German threat in Europe and in the North Sea, was uable to provide an effective counterweight and the United States, holding firmly to its Western Hemispheric tradition, was unwilling to place a buffer between Japan and its ambitions in the region. These are the key elements which make up the framework of the “Australian Crisis”. In these circumstances national leaders came to see that Australia might be left to fend for itself against a southward movement by Japan, or against what the popular press, some literary publicists and not a few politicians called “The Yellow Peril”.
On the basis of this analysis successive Australian governments, without respect to party or person, adopted a defence and diplomatic posture which was aimed at meeting the threat from the north. Thus Australia, with different emphases at different times, sought to persuade Britain and the British Empire-Commonwealth to re-establish its naval strength in the Pacific, to find ways of placating Japan in areas such as Manchuria which were of no direct concern to the Dominion, and to create, as the last line of its defence, a military naval and air force which could deter aggression. These policies were, despite some superficial evidence to the contrary, based primarily on interest not sentiment, on reason not racism. Though identifying strongly with the British cultural inheritance, Australian governments refused to accept the European-centred analysis of international affairs which underpinned British advice on policy matters and which would have had Australian directing all its resources towards helping Britain in Europe. It was this clash of geo-political perspective which brought Australia step by step to break with the idea of imperial unity in international relations, to set up its own foreign office, to demand independent representation at international conferences and finally in 1940-1941 to establish its own legations in the capitals of the major Pacific powers. Similarly, though the imagery and language of “The Yellow Peril” was widespread in the debate over Japan and “The Australian Crisis”, nevertheless Australian policy-makers' views were shaped predominantly by realpolitik considerations, by strategic calculations based on observable patterns of power relationships and national behaviour. While sceptical of the Anglo-Japanese alliance because they could not see that it was held together by a mutual exchange of interests, they set aside racists criticisms and endorsed it as a marginal restraint on Japan. Furthermore in their Pacific pact proposals which were aimed at containing Japan, they were happy to include China and other Asian nations who were their potential enemy's
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