{"id":61292,"date":"2020-12-14T06:00:45","date_gmt":"2020-12-13T19:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=61292"},"modified":"2020-12-14T08:30:11","modified_gmt":"2020-12-13T21:30:11","slug":"fifty-years-of-foreign-affairs-friends-and-foes-in-canberra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/fifty-years-of-foreign-affairs-friends-and-foes-in-canberra\/","title":{"rendered":"Fifty years of Foreign Affairs: friends and foes in Canberra"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

Nobody wants to pay for good foreign policy, but everybody pays for bad foreign policy.<\/p>\n

Join that truth to a reality that rules the public service tribes of Canberra: your foes must also be your friends.<\/p>\n

The friend\u2013foe fact is formed by a fundamental force of politics and bureaucracy. In Canberra, as in any capital, a dollar can be spent only once. The opportunity-cost law means the government\u2014every day in every way\u2014must choose. What do we really want to pay for? Power and policy push and pull the purse.<\/p>\n

While everybody would prefer good foreign policy, they often choose to buy something else. That explains many of the travails of the 50-year journey since November 1970, when External Affairs took on the name<\/a> Foreign Affairs to serve the new Australia that was emerging for a new era.<\/p>\n

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has grown into a great department<\/a> with an anaemia problem<\/a>. The anaemia issues are all about Canberra, as the Lowy Institute noted in its 2011 \u2018diplomatic disrepair\u2019<\/a>\u00a0study:<\/p>\n

DFAT lacks a vocal constituency and has few friends inside Cabinet. DFAT is good at persuading other governments to do things but hopeless at persuading its own government to give it anything like the resources it needs. It needs to employ in Australia some of the skills it uses overseas to knit together coalitions in support of interests.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sympathy, please, for the pressures DFAT faces in creating Canberra constituency coalitions. The structural forces growing and pressing against the department over those 50 years are formidable.<\/p>\n

Tectonic shifts have remade Canberra\u2019s political and bureaucratic mountains, aided by all that has changed in the world beyond Australia:<\/p>\n