Between 2016 and 2020 Australia’s foreign and strategic policy became more tightly focused on South-East Asia and the Pacific, which it identified as its ‘immediate region’. This reflected the government’s concern about the strategic consequences of emerging great-power competition, and particularly the assumption that China’s presence in these subregions equated to greater influence. While this assumption influenced Australia’s strategic and foreign policy choices, it was largely untested. Australia responded by increasing its engagement in both subregions to solidify its relationships, bolster its influence, and reassure its regional partners of its continued commitment. But Australia had different geostrategic perceptions and interests than South-East Asia and the Pacific. Its failure to acknowledge the agency of these neighbours sometimes led to counterproductive strategic and foreign policy decisions.

At the start of 2006, two schools of thought contended over the future of Australia’s defence and strategic policy. On one side stood those who believed that Australia’s principal strategic risks and challenges over the following decades would come from instability on the margins of the international order – from weak and failing states, and from non-state actors, especially terrorists. On the other side stood those who believed that bigger and more important strategic concerns arose from the possibility that the core of the international order would be disrupted by the stresses flowing from changing economic relativities. This was especially true in Asia, as China and other Asian states’ economies grew.