| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
World War II marked a watershed for American diplomatic practice as the nation moved away from its traditional ideas of unilateralism toward a foreign policy based on the construction of foreign alliances and relationships. Many of those relationships continue to be a central part of American diplomacy and one of the strongest is the American relationship with Australia. Historical study of the American-Australian alliance traditionally focused on how the alliance came into being because of the economic relationship between the two powers or because of the exigencies of World War II in the Pacific. What emerged from these studies was an overly simplistic understanding of what was dynamic and complex relationship between two states who often found themselves at cross-purposes. This essay points to the presence of a shared sense of racial identity among the general populaces and how this was utilized by policymakers to ameliorate the contentious nature of the alliance during the war. The creation of the American-Australian relationship was often as much driven by ideas of how the world was ordered as it was by the reality of events facing the two states during the war.
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