In this updated edition to Fear of Abandonment: Australia in the World since 1942, Alan Gyngell addresses Brexit, Trump, Xi’s ambitions for China, and the geopolitical implications of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Everything Australia wants to achieve as a country depends on its capacity to understand the world outside and to respond effectively to it.
In Fear of Abandonment, expert and insider Allan Gyngell tells the story of how Australia has shaped the world and been shaped by it since it established an independent foreign policy during the dangerous days of 1942. Gyngell argues that the fear of being abandoned – originally by Britain, and later by our most powerful ally, the United States – has been an important driver of how Australia acts in the world.
“Gyngell has an important message for today’s policymakers: he has produced a work that is ‘‘prologue, not prediction’’. Its purpose is not to respond to the latest hypothesis about Australia’s foreign policy but to provide the tools to better understand the context from which the present has emerged.”
Covering everything from the White Australia policy to the South China sea dispute, this is a gripping and authoritative account of the way Australians and their governments have helped create the world we now inhabit in the twenty-first century. In revealing the history of Australian foreign affairs, it lays the foundation for how it should change.
Today Australia confronts a more difficult set of international challenges than any we have faced since 1942 – this new edition brings the story up to date.
Meet Allan in conversation with Katherine Mansted, Senior Fellow in the Practice of National Security at the ANU National Security College.
Tickets: $10 // $41.50 (includes a discounted copy of the book RRP $34.99)
Allan Gyngell is National President of the Australian Institute of International Affairs and an honorary professor at the Australian National University. His long career in Australian international relations included appointments as director-general of the Office of National Assessments and founding executive director of the Lowy Institute. He worked as a diplomat, policy officer and analyst in several government departments and as international adviser to Paul Keating. He is the co-author of Making Australian Foreign Policy and the author of Fear of Abandonment.
Katherine Mansted is a Senior Fellow in the Practice of National Security at the ANU National Security College. She is also the Director of Cyber Intelligence at Australia’s largest independent cyber security services company, CyberCX. Previously, she led the ANU National Security College’s Public Policy team. Katherine regularly briefs government, business and public audiences on national security and technology policy issues, including cyber security, information geopolitics and foreign interference. Her work has been featured in Foreign Affairs, The Strategist, The Australian and on ABC Radio National, and she has testified before parliamentary committees including the Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security.