The 1990s has seen an acceleration of globalisation as the prior Cold War nations opened their economies and the democratic dividend started to be felt in Europe and parts of Asia. The increasing capital, labor and communication flows of globalisation make many aspects of the old industrial order uncertain - one of these being the authority of the nation-state.

Allen Gyngell and Micheal Wesley describe globalisation as having the attributes:

• economic interdependence
• transnational communications
• homogenisation of differences
• collapse of chronological time and geographic space (ie world is getting smaller)
• transnational social and political movements
• local action for global causes
• transfer of allegiance away from the state

One of the other interesting ones was the "emergence of a global risk culture where people regard the greatest threats that face them as ones that overwhelm the state's response." However the argument for globalisation is that individuals are creating social, cultural, economic and political networks outside of the geographic space and political confines of the nation-state.

Under such a situation ethnic-nationalism becomes an antiquated political technology. Other pressures are placed on nationalism as an informative political technology through the mobility and cosmopolitan nature of the modern workforce. Citizenship as defined under nationalism becomes a discriminative and isolating technology that effectively denies suffrage to individuals who are fully immersed socially, culturally, economically and politically in a nation for work reasons.

As Gyngell and Wesley note, it is unclear how globalisation will affect the nation-state as a form of social and political organisation, but it is obvious already that changes will occur.

In terms of collective decision making, a liberal democratic nation-state remains the best form of organisation. Though some of the technologies the state used in the 19thC to sustain, define and legitimise its authority - such as ethnicism, nationalism, protectionism and isolationism - will have to go. Apart from being socially and morally repugnant to many, they are inefficient technologies in a world where the dominant form of competition between states is economic.

Central to this is that globalisation is eroding both the state's control over the individual in a global polity as well as the state's capability to give individual's singular and collective identity. There will be those that continue to crave a collective identity anchored in the state's authority, however, as the Australia diaspora is showing, economic competition is dominating as Australians head overseas in search of higher remuneration.

This process will only increase as labour is unfettered in the same manner that capital has been. Nation-states currently have an isolationist approach to immigration and migration. Due to the desire for economic advantage Australia has already seen its immigration policies changed from an ethnic one in the 1960s to one that is more merit based.

As it is one quarter of the Australian work force is foreign born, while nearly one million Australians are overseas working in other nations. To put the diaspora in perspective it is nearly ten-percent of the current Australian workforce.

The Great and Powerful Friends [GAPF] doctrine has guided Australian foreign policy for nearly a century. Other than a short spate of international liberalism during Doc Evatt's time, when the United Nations was established, the GAPF has been dominant.

The Engagement doctrine rose in the 1990s under Paul Keating and Gareth Evans. I consider this a disruptive technology or policy because it is heavily aimed at harnessing globalisation for Australian advantage.

Central to the Engagement doctrine is the philosophy that security comes from complete engagement with a political entity. GAPF policy tends to be bilateral and not go beyond the relations that states historically have communicated with. For instance diplomatic, military and high level economic talks where the states negotiate economic terms.

Under Engagement the political entities communicate politically, culturally, socially and economically. Engagement goes beyond the arms of state intersecting and places all aspects of national life as a communicative tunnel toward national advantage.

There are several things that comes from this. One is that security is not possible unless there is political, social, cultural and economic familiarity between political entities. Additionally it is not necessarily nation-states having the monopoly on being a political entity that is recognised by the Australian nation-state. This is important in the global polity and transnational nature of globalisation.

Secondly there is an inherent belief in Australian culture, society and economic achievement that it will give something positive to the world through Engagement, while, at the same time being strong enough to positively absorb outside influences such that Australia is culturally, socially, economically and politically advantaged.

Thirdly it recasts Australian power, strength and influence as being beyond, and not limited to, the machinations and institutions of the nation-state. For instance the Lowey Institute's report on the Australian Diaspora contained the recognition that the diaspora advanced Australian interests in unusual and unexpected ways.

Engagement recasts Australian political influence as being beyond the geographic space and political confines of Australia (or its great and powerful friend) defining it instead as limited only by the reach of modern communications and immigration. For this reason Engagement is a superior foreign policy doctrine for the reality and opportunities of globalisation.

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Great and Powerful Friends doctrine, International liberalism and the Engagement doctrine.

Allan Gyngell and Michael Wesley write in Making Australian Foreign Policy:

Changes in foreign policy direction are rare but important. The most significant postwar changes in the focus of Australian foreign policy came with the election in 1972 of the Whitlam Government, which introduced a more independent and internationalist foreign policy with a clearer focus on Asia, and the 1996 election of the Howard Government, which abandoned the post-Whitlam bipartisan consensus to focus foreign policy more openly on the national interest and link it more directly to the domestic political agenda.

I have argued in the past that there are three doctrines which inform Australia foreign policy. They are the Great and Powerful Friends doctrine [GAPF], International Liberalism and the Engagement doctrine.

The GAPF gets its name from a comment by Robert Menzies but it was initially used by Billy Hughes at Versailles. This is where Australia subordinates its defence and foreign policy to the 'great and powerful friend' in return for security and economic benefits - that is the theory anyway. This means that the Australian foreign policy and defence policies are not in the Australian national interest, but in the 'great and powerful friends' interest. When Curtin made his statement that we 'look to America' in 1942, he was swapping Britain for the US. It has been that way ever since.

The GAPF is pretty much the dominant philosophy, other than short periods during Gareth Evans' and Doc Evatt's time as foreign ministers, it has been the central framework for Australian foreign relations.

International liberalism pops up constantly from back in the days of Immanuel Kant with his cosmopolitan liberalism to Woodrow Wilson's League of Nations, and after World War II a short period where it was hoped establishing a confederacy in the United Nations would provide a non-violent means for nation-states to communicate openly. The Cold War effectively snookered this initiative as foreign relations dropped into a binary state between the West and the Soviets. Doc Evatt took the doctrine very seriously to the point where his bluntness of communication was shocking to diplomats of other countries. International liberalism has been persistent. Even today Prime Ministers and Foreign Ministers have to work inside the UN framework, a good example being East Timor.

The Engagement doctrine is rather new, though aspects of it have existed in the past, such as components of Percy Spender's Columbo Plan and Gough Whitlam's worldview: though Paul Keating and Gareth Evans took it to a new level. The Engagement doctrine is basically the belief that security is not possible unless there is engagement between nations in all areas of national life; from diplomacy, military, economy, society, culture, etc etc. Cultural isolationists tend to find it offensive but Engagement is predicated on Australian strength at all levels - not just governmental or diplomatic.

These three doctrines are never practiced in isolation, nor can the adoption of one exclude the others. As I mentioned every Prime Minister and Foreign Minister has had to deal with the UN, transnational organisations and treaties - so international liberalism still has a place. Same with Engagement, people are so mobile these days that the positive influence of non-governmental character on stability and security cannot be ignored.

Because of the highly different doctrines which Australian governments have used to inform foreign policy there are effects that lead through the Australian system that go beyond foreign affairs itself. For instance the recent debate between GAPF and Engagement proponents brought divergent approaches to military structure and economic policy.

Engagement military policy tends to be what Paul Dibbs calls 'regionalists' where the main focus is projecting into the Air-Sea Gap - the Northwest shelf, Timor Sea and Coral Sea. GAPF policy is 'expeditionist' in comparison and seeks to ensure that Australian military procurement is compatible with the great and powerful friend's military. Additionally the ADF is not necessarily structured to defend the Air-Sea Gap, rather, it is for short and long term expeditions as a minor part of the great and powerful friends forces. To confuse it further, international liberalists tend to prefer expeditionist multi-national force deployment: al-la UN.

Central to the GAPF doctrine is that a subservient foreign policy brings economic benefits. The political narrative over the Au-US Free Trade Agreement [FTA] was an example of this where it was claimed that the Australian support of the Iraq war led to the FTA. In reality bilateral FTAs are the current fashion with the waning power of the international liberalist World Trade Organisation [WTO] and several nations received FTAs with the US despite opposing the Iraq war or giving moral support only: such as Costa Rica, Singapore and Chile.

So which one of the doctrines is best? I consider the Engagement doctrine a disruptive technology that is the best able to seek national advantage under globalisation. I also believe that the GAPF unnecessarily places Australia in disadvantage on the world stage and inherently cannot live up to its promise of economic and security benefits. Most of the GAPFs assumptions and benefits are persistent political myths from the early 20thC.

That said, the reality is all three doctrines have merit at different times: a strong relationship with the US is a prerequisite in this day and age, as is the transnational structures of international liberalism: and the interdependence of globalisation which engagement seeks to exploit. However, in my opinion governments have hidden behind the myths of the GAPF for far too long - we need more Engagement and less GAPF.