Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: By studying digitalised archival material from Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade from 1966 and 1969 regarding Australia’s relations with the ‘Territory of Papua New Guinea’ (TPNG, today’s Papua New Guinea), this article shows how Australian governments reasoned when pursuing a ‘spheres of influence’ in the South Pacific. It concludes that matters of defence were central to those advocating a certain degree of control over PNG and that experiences from the world wars informed the perception of the strategic environment by various Australian foreign policymakers (albeit not all). In so doing, it also shows that a ‘foreign policy approach’, rather than an IR, is beneficial in understanding spheres of influence in world politics. Thus, the article contributes to the literature on Australian foreign policy and the literature on spheres of influence in world politics.
Author: Magnus H. Lundström
Institution: Swedish Defence University
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4409664799