2022 Year in Review

With the victory of the Australian Labor Party in the 2022
Australian Federal Election, No Enemies No Friends may have
become one of the most useful books to get a sense for the
direction of Australia’s foreign policy in the next three
years. Author Allan Behm maintained a 30-year career in
the APS. During that time he was the Chief of Staff for the
minister for climate change in the Rudd-Gillard government
and from 2017 to 2019 he was the Senior Adviser to the
Shadow Foreign Minister, Penny Wong.
The book is structured in two parts, beginning with an unflinching examination
of Australia’s present foreign policy, then moving to an exploration of how future
policymakers may seek to improve Canberra’s place in the future. Wong was a
clear influence on the concluding chapters of No Enemies No Friends and it stands
to reason that Behm will have influenced the Foreign Minister’s outlook.
Behm’s analysis is wide reaching, highlighting the peaks and valleys of
Canberra’s engagement with its allies, neighbours and rivals. At its best,
Australia’s foreign policy focuses on activism and engagement with the
international community. At its worst, it is sluggish, disinterested, and too readily
relies on the status quo.
No Enemies No Friends is a part of the growing foreign policy literature that is
demanding Australia to find a more independent foreign policy to grapple with
the challenges of the present. In Behm’s words “Australia is not aggressive
enough to have enemies, nor attractive enough to have friends. But it does not
have to be that way.” To cure an increasingly middling international presence, No
Enemies No Friends calls for imaginative, well funded and multidisciplinary foreign
policy to grapple with the many vicious problems that face the world today.
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