For the past generation, Australia has played a marginal role in global geopolitics, but this is changing. Australian forces have played a significant role in Afghanistan and will operate in any war on Iraq as well. The Oct. 12 attack in Bali certainly targeted Australian nationals, and the country was specifically mentioned in several al Qaeda communiqués as a target. Most recently, reports about last week’s attacks in Kenya indicated that Australian intelligence had at least some level of warning. None of these events separately, or even together, constitute a massive Australian presence in the global system, but they do constitute a significant trend. The confrontation between al Qaeda and the United States has many theaters of operation, and one of them certainly is the Indian Ocean basin. Australia is a native Indian Ocean power, and it is both affected by events there and capable of influencing events. Therefore, what Australia does and doesn't do matters once again. The evolution of Indonesia is of particular interest to Canberra. The emergence of a militant Islamic regime in Indonesia is neither an absurd possibility nor one to which Australia would be indifferent. On the contrary, Indonesia is one of the driving forces of Canberra's foreign policy, and it has been Indonesia's quiescence since 1965 that has allowed Australia to begin viewing itself as irrelevant to the global strategic system — and vice versa. The sense that such issues were irrelevant to Australia has dominated the past generation. Australia was not always irrelevant to the international system. During World War I, Australian troops fighting under British command played significant roles in several campaigns. The country also was a key player — though an odd one — in World War II. Its army was deployed, to a great extent, as a unit of the British army, playing a critical role in the North African campaign. This left Australia largely undefended when the U.S.-Japanese war broke out. From the U.S. viewpoint, Australia was a critical base of operations for any drive north to Japan. Having sent its forces to North Africa, Australia faced a serious threat of invasion and was seriously contemplating a withdrawal that would cede much of Australia north of Brisbane to Japan. It was the intervention of U.S. troops, and a U.S.-led action in the Coral Sea and New Guinea, that blocked any chance of invasion. In this strange management of forces — with most of its army defending the Suez Canal and reliance on U.S. forces to protect the Australian homeland —we begin to see the roots of the nation's geopolitics and grand strategy. When in danger, Australia seeks a patron or two for protection; when not in danger, the country regards itself as militarily invulnerable. Historically, it has shifted between junior partnership in a wartime coalition to a sense of invulnerability and back again, but it has not fielded forces in such a way that has allowed the country to manage its destiny independently. Australia is a geographical backwater. Neither the Muslims who swept through the Malay Peninsula and Indonesia, nor the Chinese who penetrated the Indian Ocean, ever had any interest in a southward turn into Australia. The western and northern coasts were too unattractive in comparison with other targets to lure invaders, and the southeastern quadrant was too distant and difficult to reach. Until Europeans came, no one but the aboriginal tribes had the interest or the technology to penetrate Australia from the southeast. As British colonists settled in Australia, the only geopolitical issue was the defeat and subjugation of the Aborigines. No external power had the interest or ability to threaten English-occupied Australia. In effect, the geopolitical configuration of Australia remained unchanged: Despite the presence of the British, the country remained an island that was difficult to approach, difficult to occupy and difficult to exploit. For emerging empires, areas to the north were far more attractive than Australia itself. Unlike the Aborigines, however, Australians of European descent began their history as an outpost of empire: They continued to see their relationship with the empire in general — and with Britain in particular — as the foundation of economic and social life. Australia's trade was with the British-dominated Indian Ocean basin and with Britain herself. Were these trade roots to be cut, the economic foundations of Australia would collapse. For example, Australia competed with the United States in primary agricultural and mineral commodities; there was no substitute for Britain. By this logic, Australia's fundamental interests were the continued vibrancy of the British imperial economy and the security of the lines of supply between Australia and the United Kingdom. For the southeastern heartland — Victoria and New South Wales — this meant the defense of three major maritime choke points: Singapore and the Straits of Malacca, the Suez Canal and Gibraltar. It is, therefore, no surprise that Australian troops were found in the Mediterranean during the early days of World War II. In the event of a British-Japanese war, they expected the Royal Navy to defend their sea lanes and the garrison at Singapore to protect the Straits of Malacca while they secured the Suez. Britain's failure at Singapore created a life-and-death crisis for Australia that colors the government's geopolitical thinking to this day. Withdrawing Australian troops from North Africa was a logistical nightmare at that point and would have cost Britain the Suez. Australia's only solution was, in effect, to become a dependency of the United States. U.S. forces occupied Australia, and Australian forces fighting the Japanese were placed under the control of a U.S.-dominated high command. By the end of World War II, Australia was profoundly traumatized. The presumption that Britain could defend it against a determined Asian maritime power had been disproved, but at the same time, Britain remained the critical market for Australian exports and the United States remained an economic competitor. Canberra depended on its relationship with the United States to protect its physical security; it could not depend on the United States for economic interests. This was — and in many ways remains — Australia's fundamental problem: Its strategic dependence on the United States does not align with its economic interests. Nevertheless, the trauma of near-invasion and subjugation by Japan defined Australian thinking in the post-war generation. For this country, the essential danger is the emergence of a major maritime power, based in Asia, that has an interest in seizing Australia. In the post-World War II era, no such powers existed. However, Australia had badly miscalculated Japan's capabilities and interests, and its strategic thinking focused on worst-case scenarios. Of these there were two, one greater, one lesser: 1. The greater threat rested in the Sino-Soviet alliance. While the Soviet Union and China lacked naval power sufficient to challenge Australian security, they had the potential to achieve it. Moreover, there were credible scenarios under which Australia might be a prize for China — especially in a war with the United States. 2. The lesser threat was Indonesia. The Sukarno government had adopted a strategy of confrontation, the primary target of which lay to the east, as far as New Guinea. Indonesia lacked a serious navy, but again, with foreign help, it could rapidly develop the capability and threaten northwestern Australia. Given these threats — none of which were frivolous at the time — Australia maintained a relationship of strategic dependence with the United States. This relationship shifted during the 1960s and 1970s, due to three events: 1. The fall of the Sukarno government, which ended the expansionist ideology of Indonesia. 2. The collapse of the Sino-Soviet alliance, which meant that both were obsessed with developing ground forces and neither had the interest or resources to build maritime power projection capabilities in the Pacific. 3. The entente between the United States and China, which dissipated any residual fears that Australia might have had concerning Chinese intentions. The participation of Australian troops in Vietnam during the 1960s was seen both as down-payment on U.S. defense of Australia and containment of a genuine threat. By the 1970s, these threats had dissipated and Australia, in many ways, had reverted to its familiar geopolitical backwater status. From the moment the U.S.-Chinese entente took hold, Canberra's primary concern — that an Asian maritime power might overwhelm the continent — faded completely. This left the country to focus on maintaining and expanding trade. With the physical security of trade no longer an issue, economic issues — maximizing exports and growing the Australian economy — took the spotlight. At this time, Australia faced two issues. The first was demographic: an endemic shortage of labor. The nation remained under-populated, having depended in the past on immigration from Britain and Ireland. During the post-war period, this dependence was extended to immigration from other European states. However, the government's strategic thinking was dominated by fear of migration from Asia, backed by a major expansionary Asian power. The second issue was which trade relationships Canberra would emphasize. Obviously, any country wants to maintain a variety of relationships, but at the same time, from Australia's point of view, a fundamental shift appeared to be taking place in economic geography. Asia had become the engine of the international economic system and appeared to be the emerging, preponderant force in international economic life. Thus, Canberra adopted a policy of alignment with Asia. Immigration policy aligned neatly with economic policy; politico-military issues appeared to be secondary. The flow of Asian immigrants did not represent the first wave of an Asian invasion, but a facilitator of commerce. Asia posed no security threats. Therefore, Australia's strategy was built around its own geographic marginality and the absence of an Asian security threat. Canberra reduced defense spending while maintaining a general alignment with the United States. The center of gravity of Australian policy was focused on intensifying relations with an Asia that was undergoing dynamic growth. Australia wanted in. Events of 1997 dealt the first blow to this policy. Asia ceased to be as dynamic as it once was, making Canberra's singular focus on Asia unsustainable. Second, the archipelago to the northwest — Indonesia — began to destabilize under the pressure of economic failure. However, none of these presented an immediate danger. The greatest threat posed by Indonesia was uncontrolled immigration of unforeseen magnitude, but even that was not an immediate threat. Australia was uneasy, but not ready for redefinition. The Sept. 11 attacks in the United States indirectly transformed Australian strategic policy. As al Qaeda's influence spread into Indonesia, Canberra suddenly could see a distant, unsatisfactory evolution: An Indonesia led by a militant Islamic government could mobilize the country's resources in a way that neither Sukarno nor Suharto could. At the very least, the theoretical wave of immigration became a practical possibility. The distant thought of a military threat from Indonesia, particularly backed by other major Islamic partners, ceased to be a fantasy and became merely far-fetched. Yet the far-fetched, played out over a decade, hardly appeared preposterous. Until al Qaeda, Australia could see itself as irrelevant to the global strategic balance. After al Qaeda, Australians could begin to envision a world in which their nearest, enormously populous neighbor — Indonesia — began to evolve in potentially threatening directions. Canberra therefore had to develop two strategies: 1. Align with the United States against al Qaeda in order to prevent an Islamic evolution in Indonesia. Australian officials understood that the global defeat of al Qaeda was the foundation of their own Indonesia policy. 2. Take steps to manipulate Indonesia's internal dynamics so that, in the short run, this evolution could be controlled and a major refugee problem could be prevented. The decline of Asia as the world's most dynamic region, coupled with the rise of al Qaeda, has re-oriented Australia to politico-military issues that were of little consequence for most of the last generation. This has meant an intensified relationship with the United States. Australia now is re-emphasizing defense policy and investments in the military — focusing particularly on special operations troops (which are badly needed by the United States and therefore represent a good bargaining chip), covert forces for operations in Indonesia and naval forces tasked with screening out Indonesian refugees. The government also has re-emphasized its economic relations with the United States. Australia clearly expects, and doubtless ultimately will receive, concessions on tariffs for its exports to the United States. Australia obviously will continue to participate actively in Asia and Europe, but so long as Indonesia is unpredictable, the United States will be its main focus. This opens up obvious opportunities for U.S. companies seeking to intensify or launch operations in Australia. Australia has not yet achieved any degree of self-sufficiency in its strategic policy — even managing Indonesia is beyond its capabilities. Nor has Canberra fully aligned its strategic policy with its trade policy. This means that fundamental tensions render Australia's policymaking unpredictable and unstable. The country's geography, demography and economy make an elegant foreign policy difficult to obtain, so its main trends always will contain contradictory eddies. Nevertheless, the main trend appears to have shifted.