Weigold, Auriol

Abstract
Australia’s stop–start relationship with India, a key state often on the periphery of the Australian political vision, reflects the inconsistency of its interest in the Indian Ocean and its region, although crucial to its seaborne trade. Failures to engage substantially with India following the Second World War were based in Australian foreign policy focused on its Western rather than its regional interests as well as Cold War imperatives. Initially relying on British and United States presence in the Indian Ocean to guarantee transit, and the non-aligned or neutralist position of India and other Indian Ocean littoral states to explain early engagement mainly at a trade, aid and commerce level, Australia came face to face in the 1960s with realist politics: Britain’s withdrawal from its bases east of Suez and the Indian Ocean’s place in Great Power Cold War calculations. The 1960s recognition that, beyond bilateral trade as a driver of stability, some independent Australian thinking on Indian Ocean policy was desirable led, in 1976, to a move away from ‘forward defence’ and, in 1987, to the announcement of a Two Ocean policy. Other White Papers followed, and the intervening and subsequent years saw the baton of policy discussion picked up by scholars and strategists, in the main West Australians or others located there, adding depth to iterations of ‘Look West’ policies. While the present paper explores the broad sweep of federal policy from the late 1960s to the early 2000s, coincidently often given prominence by West Australian politicians, its focus is also on the consistent efforts made in Australia’s Indian Ocean-bordered state to promote and sustain interest in the Indian Ocean Region. The Indian Ocean Newsletter, later The Indian Ocean Review, published from 1980–2000 are a comprehensive and interesting record of Western Australian scholars’ and strategists’ contributions on the ‘engagement’ side of the ledger.
Read the article here (subscription required).