Friends, allies or collaborators: environmental policy in the US-Australian relationship

Abstract

This article analyses the role of environmental policy in the alliance between Australia and the United States. It examines whether the alliance relationship has had an impact on the two countries' international environmental policies and whether environmental concerns have helped to define the alliance in any way. It focuses primarily on the years since the end of the Cold War, the period in which global environmental issues have become much more central to the agenda of international politics. This is also the period in which environmental concerns have become much more central to debates about the nature of global peace and security and the means by which it should be achieved. Environmental concerns might, therefore, be expected to have become more relevant to an alliance relationship which still has security concerns at its core. There is little evidence to suggest that this is so.