Nation, region and context: studies in peace and war in honour of Professor T.B. Millar

Abstract

This volume of essays is focused round the subjects on which the late Tom Millar, the founder of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, promoted Australian research. The first half of the book focuses on immediate Australian and regional issues. Desmond Ball has written an authoritative account of Australia's strategy for security engagement in Asia, Paul Dibb on the evolution and future of Australian defence policy, Coral Bell on the Australian involvement in strategic enquiry since 1945, Michael Leifer on the extension of ASEAN's model of regional security, J.L. Richardson on real dangers in the Asia-Pacific region, and Alan Burnett on the Anzac connection. The second half of the book deals with the international and intellectual context within which Australia must live, and governments must act. Robert O'Neill contributes a masterly essay on a world without superpowers, Carsten Holbraad on peace and war in conservative internationalist thought, John Weltman on American internationalist traditions, John Groom on the evolution of the British Commonwealth, and Phillip Greville on the treatment of prisoners of war. The essays are thus a valuable up-to-date guide to current strategic preoccupations in Australia, as well as to the way policy has been influenced and formulated in the past.