A Study On The Evolution Of Australia’s Interests In The Asia-pacific Region(1991-2007)

The contact between Australia and the Asia-Pacific region has a long history.After the 1990 s,Australia began to fully contact with countries in the Asia-Pacific region.The reason is that Australia gradually found that it has important and rich national interests in the Asia-Pacific region.However,the research on Australia’s national interests in the Asia-Pacific region is limited to the perspective of policies and history,and there is no comprehensive and systematic measurement and analysis of Australia’s perception of its own national interests in the Asia-Pacific region,nor analysis of the reasons for the changes in the perception of national interests.In this study,I read lots of speeches made by successive Australian Prime ministers and Foreign ministers from 1991 to 2007,and then measured and analyzed their perceptions of national interests in this region one by one.Specifically,through reading,this study first determines each part of the speech text involving Australia’s national interest perception in the Asia-Pacific,and then classifies it into one of the three categories of security interest,economic interest and political interest.Finally,the study determines whether each interest perception involves the whole Asia-Pacific or a specific region or country.In this way,this study completed the measurement of Australia’s national interest perception in the Asia-Pacific region during this period and formed a database.By analyzing the database,it can be found that when Australia defined its national interests during the Keating government(1991-1996),the geographical scope of its recognition of interests was mainly in Southeast Asia,the Asia-Pacific and Asia,and it paid attention to the development of economic interests.Howard’s government(1996-2007)began to attach importance to East Asia and Southeast Asia in addition to the Asia-Pacific in its geographical scope of interest perception.In terms of the definition of interest types,economic interests were still emphasized,but security interests and political interests were taken into account.The above analysis shows that the perception of Australia’s national interests in this region generally presents a trend of enlargement.In order to further analyze the trend and the reasons behind this interest enlargement,this paper further selected five cases for analysis.Among them,APEC,US-Australia alliance and bilateral relations show that some policy tools originally used to promote national interests will gradually be regarded as the national interests themselves by the Australian government.Moreover,the analysis of two cases of bilateral relations during this period,namely Australia-Indonesia and Australia-East Timor,shows that Australia’s perception of its national interests has expanded in terms of both content and importance.The reasons behind the amplification of interests in these cases can be attributed to the growth of national power,domestic political factors and changes in the international environment.The enlargement of the perception of national interest is an important cause of the conflict.The analysis of the enlargement of the perception of national interest of Australia is helpful for us to understand this mechanism.