International Studies

Power Shift: Australia’s Future between Washington and Beijing (Quarterly Essay 39) by Hugh White

by Alison Broinowski •

October 2010, no. 325

Black Inc., $19.95 pb, 103 pp

International Studies

Power Shift: Australia’s Future between Washington and Beijing (Quarterly Essay 39) by Hugh White

by Alison Broinowski •

October 2010, no. 325

The Japanese people should admonish each other every morning before breakfast not to let their guard down in foreign relations, and only afterwards proceed to eat.

Fukuzawa Yukichi, An Outline of a Theory of Civilization

Not for forty years have Australians had real arguments with their governments about international relations. Many marched in 2003 against the Iraq invasion, but were ignored. Now, if the national obesity rate is any guide, Australians spend more time eating, partying and sleeping than having the earnest pre-breakfast discussions about foreign relations that Fukuzawa recommended.

Alison Broinowski

Alison Broinowski has lived, worked, and frequently travelled in Japan. She was Australia’s cultural attaché in Tokyo in the mid-1980s and has recently contributed a chapter, with Rachel Miller, on the history of the Australian Embassy, to a book on Australia–Japan relations edited at Deakin University. She is President of Australians for War Powers Reform.