Gyngell and Wesley's
Making Australian Foreign Policy
winged its way to my door yesterday. The book looks at the components, actors and resources that go into making modern Australian foreign policy.
From the preface:
Foreign policy is a subject worth taking seriously. If it is conceived and implemented effectively, foreign policy delivers to a country benefits as tangible and significant as those produced by good economic policy. If it is done badly, the consequences are frequently serious and can eventually be calamitous.
I agree. IMO foreign policy is one of the areas where Australia, as a nation-state, has under-performed due to the reliance on lazy doctrines. In this area nation-states are like individuals and need to be positioned in such a manner that success, while not inevitable, is achieved with a much lower input of energy. Foreign policy is the means to make prosperity, stability and influence a downhill run for the nation and its people.
Surprisingly few citizen commentators dabble in foreign policy - most preferring to stick with the immediacy of the news cycle. I am not sure why, but possibly because foreign policy is unromantic, lacks immediacy, and it difficult to determine inputs and outputs without the resources that the government ministers and civil service has.
The authors define foreign policy as:
Put simply, foreign policy is that dimension of public policy that deals with the outside world. Its job, in the words of John Lewis Gaddis, is to create "an international environment conducive to the nation's interest". It is not the same as foreign relations, which is the outcome of the foreign policy process: the objective relationship at any given time between sovereign states. And it is different from diplomacy, which is the tool used to implement the policy: means to an end.
I will be returning to the book frequently as I read through it.
More Reading on Foreign policy
Most Popular on South Sea Republic
The articles that have been viewed the most:
Most Popular Restaurants in Phoenix
Phoenix Eats Out is the restaurant review site for
Phoenix,
Scottsdale and
Old Town Scottsdale which lists the modernist and contemporary restaurants, taverns and bars in the greater Phoenix area.
This is the list of the most popular restaurants pages from phoenixeatsout.com that have been viewed the most;
My personal favourite restaurants in Phoenix are
AZ88,
Postinos,
Bomberos with
Grazie,
Humble Pie,
Orange Table,
The Vig,
Fez and others coming close behind. View the complete list with the photo-journalistic style images on
phoenixeatsout.com
Most Popular Hikes in Arizona
Arizona is an outdoor state and has lots of hiking in the city and around the state. Phoenix is unusual for most cities in having several large mountains in the center of the city with great hiking. Anyone who comes to Phoenix has to do the
Echo Canyon trail on Camelback and the
Summit Hike on Squaw Peak or Piesta Peak. The views of the city, suburbs and surrounding mountains are wonderful from Camelback and Piesta Peak.
For more experienced hikers there is the McDowell Mountains in North Scottsdale that has several difficult and strenuous hikes in
Tom's Thumb and
Bell Pass. Alternatively, you can hike the highest mountain in Arizona. At 12,600 feet
Humphrey's Peak is a long and difficult hike.
Alternate Australian Constitutions
Between 2004 and 2009 this site,
southsearepublic.org, was a constitutional blog based on scoop which focused on Australian and global constitutional issues.
One of the strongest aspects of it was the development of constitutions by those involved in the blog. These constitutions are the outcome:
The constitutions were built using principles from Montesquieu's separation of powers, the enlightnment's universal political rights and the ancient Athenian technology of sortition and choice by lot.
Archives For South Sea Republic
South Sea Republic started in 2004 as an Australian constitutional blog in 2004 based on scoop software. It was an immigrative outgrowth of Kuro5hin. The archives for each year since then;
The articles are ordered by views.
Who Is Cam Riley
I am an Australian living in the United States as a permanent resident.
I am a software developer by trade and mostly work in Java and jump between middleware and front end.
I originally worked in the New York area of the United States in telecommunications before moving to Washington DC and
working in a mix of telecommunications, energy and ITS. I started my own software company before heading out to
Arizona and working with Shutterfly. Since then I have joined a startup in the Phoenix area and am thoroughly enjoying myself.
I do a lot of photography which I post on this website, but also on flickr. I have a photo-journalistic website which lists
the modernist and contemporary restaurants in phoenix. I have a site on the
Australian Flying Corps [AFC] which has been around since the 1990s and which I unfortunately
lost the .org URL to during a life event; however, it is under the
www.australianflyingcorps.com URL now.
The AFC website has gone through several iterations since the 90s and the two most recent are
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2004-2002) and
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2002-1999) which are good places to start.
Websites Worth Reading
Websites of friends, colleagues and of interest;
