Michael Wesley
Biographic Data
| ID | 729410 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Michael Wesley |
| GIVEN NAMES | Michael |
| FAMILY NAME | Wesley |
| SIGNATURE | WESLEY M |
| AFFILIATIONS | UNSW Sydney |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1554-8653 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 67 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Australia in World Affairs 2011–2015: Navigating the New International Disorder
The Australia in World Affairs series commenced in 1950 and provides a continuous, researched scholarly account of Australia's foreign policy. The twelfth volume, Australia in World Affairs 2011–2015: Navigating the New International Disorder, covered a turbulent period both domestically and internationally. Australia had four Prime Ministers in this period alone, there were growing challenges in the Middle East and Europe, as well as on Australi…
The voice of Allan Gyngell in Australian foreign policy
The Challenge of Triangulation: The Impact of China on the Australia‐US Alliance
The rapid deterioration of the Australia‐China bilateral relationship from a warm and positive partnership to cold hostility has been overwhelmingly interpreted as the result of the actions of one or the other of the parties. This article seeks to analyse the recent negative dynamic in Sino‐Australian bilateral ties in a broader context, considering the full history of Sino‐Australian relations, and by drawing into the analysis both countries’ cr…
Trump or Biden: The implications for Asia
Blood and Silk: Power and Conflict in Modern Southeast Asia
Introduction to the Special Issue
The Asia-Pacific region is in the midst of change. The emergence of new and great powers, growing democratisation, new forms of multilateral engagement and new approaches to state building and intervention are some of the major trends shaping this region. This special issue examines four countries in the Asia-Pacific region that help illustrate these trends: Solomon Islands, Myanmar, Indonesia and China. Each is currently undergoing its own major…
Restless Continent: Wealth, Rivalry and Asia's New Geopolitics
Restless Continent: Wealth, Rivalry and Asia's New Geopolitics. By Michael Wesley. Collingwood, Victoria: Black Inc., 2015. Softcover: 210pp. Michael Wesley's Restless Continent is a great read. It is bold in its ambitions, analyzing the future of Asia's international relations and its assumed centrality for global peace and security. It is vast in its coverage, ranging from the founding myth of Melaka to a recent naval stand-off between China an…
Unipolar Anxieties: A ustralia's M elanesia Policy after the Age of Intervention
As a consequence of its membership of a US ‐centred global alliance network, A ustralia's regional obligations in the S outh P acific are as pertinent to R egional A ssistance M ission to S olomon I slands's drawdown as they were to its inception. C anberra's imperatives in the P acific have been stabilization and the exclusion of hostile interests. Three challenges—the rise of C hina, the I slamic S tate insurgency, and the democratic discontinu…
Trade agreements and strategic rivalry in Asia
The Asia Pacific is currently beset by two contradictory trends: growing economic interdependence and deepening strategic rivalry. Amidst these trends, new sets of regional trade agreements are being negotiated, primarily the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). This article argues that these proposals represent a third phase of competitive regionalism in the Asia Pacific, which will be more …
Australia Faces a Changing Asia
Tensions between Australia's strategic alignment and its economic alignment ... heighten Canberra's anxieties about having to choose between security and prosperity in the event of a confrontation between the United States and China
Taking Asia Seriously
Australia has traditionally relied on two diplomatic strategies in its attempts to 'engage' Asia. The first has been to couch engagement diplomacy within broader global trends and developments, such as the response to the Communist threat during the Cold War or the general move towards the 'new regionalism' after the Cold War. The second strategy has been a dogged prudentialism, building on shared (usually commercial) interests. The shortcomings …
Security Politics in the Asia-Pacific: A Regional-Global Nexus?
Asia is experiencing major changes in its security relations. This book brings together respected experts to assess both the theoretical and empirical dimensions of the Asian security debate. Building on the latest research on Asia's regional security politics, it focuses on the 'regional-global nexus' as a way to understand the dynamics of Asian security politics and its intersection with global security. Contributors to the volume offer diverse…
The Rich Tradition of Australian Realism
Australian International Relations (IR) developed as a discipline at the same time as its emergence in the rest of the Anglophone world. A deep reading of Australian writing on international relations since the 1920s reveals a distinctive tradition of IR scholarship, shaped very much by this country's international circumstances and the pragmatic culture of political inquiry that pervaded its universities and diplomatic institutions. Three charac…
The strategic effects of preferential trade agreements
Most analysts agree that the recent proliferation of Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) is largely the result of exasperation with multilateral trade liberalisation through the World Trade Organisation and a defensive response to the large-scale adoption of PTAs by major economies. The spread of PTAs, however, suggests that there are motivations other than economic that are inspiring these trade deals. It is becoming increasingly obvious that t…
The State of the Art on the Art of State Building
From Sierra Leone to Solomon Islands, developed powers have undertaken a range of state-building interventions in the early years of this century. Two influences appear to shape the emerging state of the art on state building: conceptions about the nature of the state in the developed world; and the postcolonial sensitivities and practicalities that attend the project of intervention. After examining the imperatives driving interventions in fragi…
Jealous suitors: Sino-Japanese competitive regionalism and the future of East Asia
This book examines the often troubled relationship between Japan and China from a broad interdisciplinary perspective. Utilising the expertise of Chinese, Japanese and regional specialists working in a variety of fields, this original work approaches the contemporary sources of tensions between these two Asian giants from several levels of analysis. In particular the domestic–state interface in both countries and the important role of historical …
It's time to scrap the NPT
Due to persisting demand-side factors and crumbling supply-side controls, the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) will probably be unable to prevent a likely proliferation rate of one or two additional nuclear weapons states per decade into the foreseeable future. Beyond being ineffective, I argue that the NPT will make this proliferation much more dangerous. The NPT is a major cause of opaque proliferation, which is both highly destabilising …
Toward a Realist Ethics of Intervention
Since the September 11 attacks, a new security agenda has swept aside much of the old sensitivity and apathy about intervening in “failing” states. The war on terror has redefined “governance” from concentrating on issues of economic viability and popular rights to a focus on the capacity of states to generate sufficient “order” to deter or capture the agents of the new transnational security threats: terrorists, smugglers, money launderers, the …
Making Australian Foreign Policy
In a tense and dangerous international environment, this book looks at the important question of how Australia deals with the outside world. It describes the role of the government departments and intelligence organisations that support the government‚s policy-making, and the thinking of the people who make it, in more detail than ever before. It discusses the processes, institutions, actors and calculations involved in foreign policy making in A…
Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the challenges of globalisation
This article critically examines the argument that the forces of globalisation will see the end of the foreign ministry in the context ofAustralia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). It suggests that globalisation is affecting the subject matter of foreign policy-making through four processes: diffusion, enmeshment, contradiction, and transformation. It then looks at three prominent challenges these processes have made to the work o…
Perspectives on Australian foreign policy, 2001
Human Security in the Western Pacific: The Asian Economic Crisis and Beyond 1
Australia's International Relations and the (IR)relevance of Theory
(2001). Australia's International Relations and the (IR)relevance of Theory. Australian Journal of International Affairs: Vol. 55, No. 3, pp. 453-467
Apec's Mid-Life Crisis? The Rise and Fall of Early Voluntary Sectoral Liberalization
This article examines the progress of the Early Voluntary Sectoral Liberalization (EVSL) initiative within APEC, tracing serious tensions that have emerged within the regional regime. First, EVSL developed as a possible answer to the uncertainty in APEC over whether it exists as an end in itself or as a means to other ends. Second, EVSL demonstrated clearly the problems that can occur in APEC's deductive "pledge-then-deliver" approach to negotiat…
Nationalism and Globalization in Australia
Wild Colonial Ploys? Currents of Thought in Australian Foreign Policy
This article proposes a new method of mapping domestic preferences and their effect on Australian foreign policy from the perspective of three distinct ‘currents of thought’s flowing through Australian society and policy makers about Australia and the world. Traditionalism prioritises security relationships with ‘great and powerful friends’s; Seclusionism stresses autarky and minimal international involvement; Internationalism advocates a creativ…
Perspectives on Australian foreign policy, 2001
The State of the Art on the Art of State Building
From Sierra Leone to Solomon Islands, developed powers have undertaken a range of state-building interventions in the early years of this century. Two influences appear to shape the emerging state of the art on state building: conceptions about the nature of the state in the developed world; and the postcolonial sensitivities and practicalities that attend the project of intervention. After examining the imperatives driving interventions in fragi…
The politics of exclusion: Australia, Turkey and definitions of regionalism
The regions of the world that coalesce into blocs are rarely self‐defining or obvious. This article argues that the definitions of regional bloc membership ‐ be they economic interdependence, geographic contiguity or cultural affinity ‐ are used by their advocates to advance definite agendas of national and regional activism, and that the criteria of membership or exclusion are determined by competing political visions for the region. To demonstr…
Trade agreements and strategic rivalry in Asia
The Asia Pacific is currently beset by two contradictory trends: growing economic interdependence and deepening strategic rivalry. Amidst these trends, new sets of regional trade agreements are being negotiated, primarily the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). This article argues that these proposals represent a third phase of competitive regionalism in the Asia Pacific, which will be more …
It's time to scrap the NPT
Due to persisting demand-side factors and crumbling supply-side controls, the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) will probably be unable to prevent a likely proliferation rate of one or two additional nuclear weapons states per decade into the foreseeable future. Beyond being ineffective, I argue that the NPT will make this proliferation much more dangerous. The NPT is a major cause of opaque proliferation, which is both highly destabilising …
The Asian Crisis and the Adequacy of Regional Institutions
The strategic effects of preferential trade agreements
Most analysts agree that the recent proliferation of Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) is largely the result of exasperation with multilateral trade liberalisation through the World Trade Organisation and a defensive response to the large-scale adoption of PTAs by major economies. The spread of PTAs, however, suggests that there are motivations other than economic that are inspiring these trade deals. It is becoming increasingly obvious that t…
Taking Asia Seriously
Australia has traditionally relied on two diplomatic strategies in its attempts to 'engage' Asia. The first has been to couch engagement diplomacy within broader global trends and developments, such as the response to the Communist threat during the Cold War or the general move towards the 'new regionalism' after the Cold War. The second strategy has been a dogged prudentialism, building on shared (usually commercial) interests. The shortcomings …
Toward a Realist Ethics of Intervention
Since the September 11 attacks, a new security agenda has swept aside much of the old sensitivity and apathy about intervening in “failing” states. The war on terror has redefined “governance” from concentrating on issues of economic viability and popular rights to a focus on the capacity of states to generate sufficient “order” to deter or capture the agents of the new transnational security threats: terrorists, smugglers, money launderers, the …
Blood and Silk: Power and Conflict in Modern Southeast Asia
Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the challenges of globalisation
This article critically examines the argument that the forces of globalisation will see the end of the foreign ministry in the context ofAustralia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). It suggests that globalisation is affecting the subject matter of foreign policy-making through four processes: diffusion, enmeshment, contradiction, and transformation. It then looks at three prominent challenges these processes have made to the work o…
Australia's International Relations and the (IR)relevance of Theory
(2001). Australia's International Relations and the (IR)relevance of Theory. Australian Journal of International Affairs: Vol. 55, No. 3, pp. 453-467
Apec's Mid-Life Crisis? The Rise and Fall of Early Voluntary Sectoral Liberalization
This article examines the progress of the Early Voluntary Sectoral Liberalization (EVSL) initiative within APEC, tracing serious tensions that have emerged within the regional regime. First, EVSL developed as a possible answer to the uncertainty in APEC over whether it exists as an end in itself or as a means to other ends. Second, EVSL demonstrated clearly the problems that can occur in APEC's deductive "pledge-then-deliver" approach to negotiat…
The Cambodian Waltz: The Khmer Rouge and United Nations intervention
Approaching the 1989–93 Cambodian peace process from the Khmer Rouge point of view, this article explores how the group's nature, history and ideology conditioned its unco‐operative response and tactics towards United Nations intervention. It observes that the Khmer Rouge, once it realized it could not manipulate the structures of the peace process to the benefit of its own aspirations, adopted a two‐track policy. It remained outside the peace pr…
Blue Berets or blindfolds? Peacekeeping and the hostage Effect
The hostage effect is a little‐understood aspect of peacekeeping that uses peacekeepers’ inherent vulnerability to harm at the hands of the belligerents as a method of influencing those belligerents. Noting that peacekeepers are increasingly being harmed in civil war operations, this article explores the sources and operation of the hostage effect. It tests the operation of those factors found to attend a hostage effect against three case studies…
The Cambodian Waltz: The Khmer Rouge and United Nations intervention
Approaching the 1989–93 Cambodian peace process from the Khmer Rouge point of view, this article explores how the group's nature, history and ideology conditioned its unco‐operative response and tactics towards United Nations intervention. It observes that the Khmer Rouge, once it realized it could not manipulate the structures of the peace process to the benefit of its own aspirations, adopted a two‐track policy. It remained outside the peace pr…
The politics of exclusion: Australia, Turkey and definitions of regionalism
The regions of the world that coalesce into blocs are rarely self‐defining or obvious. This article argues that the definitions of regional bloc membership ‐ be they economic interdependence, geographic contiguity or cultural affinity ‐ are used by their advocates to advance definite agendas of national and regional activism, and that the criteria of membership or exclusion are determined by competing political visions for the region. To demonstr…
The Asian Crisis and the Adequacy of Regional Institutions
The weight of scholarly and official opinion on what measures will best promote an East Asian recovery from the financial crisis advocates reform either at the national or the global level. Those who find the major causes of the crisis in weaknesses in individual East Asian economies stress that recovery will only follow structural reforms at the national level. Those who blame the crisis mostly on uncontrolled global financial flows and the avar…
The Asian Crisis and the Adequacy of Regional Institutions
Nationalism and Globalization in Australia
Wild Colonial Ploys? Currents of Thought in Australian Foreign Policy
This article proposes a new method of mapping domestic preferences and their effect on Australian foreign policy from the perspective of three distinct ‘currents of thought’s flowing through Australian society and policy makers about Australia and the world. Traditionalism prioritises security relationships with ‘great and powerful friends’s; Seclusionism stresses autarky and minimal international involvement; Internationalism advocates a creativ…
Human Security in the Western Pacific: The Asian Economic Crisis and Beyond 1
Australia's International Relations and the (IR)relevance of Theory
(2001). Australia's International Relations and the (IR)relevance of Theory. Australian Journal of International Affairs: Vol. 55, No. 3, pp. 453-467
Apec's Mid-Life Crisis? The Rise and Fall of Early Voluntary Sectoral Liberalization
This article examines the progress of the Early Voluntary Sectoral Liberalization (EVSL) initiative within APEC, tracing serious tensions that have emerged within the regional regime. First, EVSL developed as a possible answer to the uncertainty in APEC over whether it exists as an end in itself or as a means to other ends. Second, EVSL demonstrated clearly the problems that can occur in APEC's deductive "pledge-then-deliver" approach to negotiat…
Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the challenges of globalisation
This article critically examines the argument that the forces of globalisation will see the end of the foreign ministry in the context ofAustralia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). It suggests that globalisation is affecting the subject matter of foreign policy-making through four processes: diffusion, enmeshment, contradiction, and transformation. It then looks at three prominent challenges these processes have made to the work o…
Perspectives on Australian foreign policy, 2001
Making Australian Foreign Policy
In a tense and dangerous international environment, this book looks at the important question of how Australia deals with the outside world. It describes the role of the government departments and intelligence organisations that support the government‚s policy-making, and the thinking of the people who make it, in more detail than ever before. It discusses the processes, institutions, actors and calculations involved in foreign policy making in A…
It's time to scrap the NPT
Due to persisting demand-side factors and crumbling supply-side controls, the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) will probably be unable to prevent a likely proliferation rate of one or two additional nuclear weapons states per decade into the foreseeable future. Beyond being ineffective, I argue that the NPT will make this proliferation much more dangerous. The NPT is a major cause of opaque proliferation, which is both highly destabilising …
Toward a Realist Ethics of Intervention
Since the September 11 attacks, a new security agenda has swept aside much of the old sensitivity and apathy about intervening in “failing” states. The war on terror has redefined “governance” from concentrating on issues of economic viability and popular rights to a focus on the capacity of states to generate sufficient “order” to deter or capture the agents of the new transnational security threats: terrorists, smugglers, money launderers, the …
Jealous suitors: Sino-Japanese competitive regionalism and the future of East Asia
This book examines the often troubled relationship between Japan and China from a broad interdisciplinary perspective. Utilising the expertise of Chinese, Japanese and regional specialists working in a variety of fields, this original work approaches the contemporary sources of tensions between these two Asian giants from several levels of analysis. In particular the domestic–state interface in both countries and the important role of historical …
The strategic effects of preferential trade agreements
Most analysts agree that the recent proliferation of Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) is largely the result of exasperation with multilateral trade liberalisation through the World Trade Organisation and a defensive response to the large-scale adoption of PTAs by major economies. The spread of PTAs, however, suggests that there are motivations other than economic that are inspiring these trade deals. It is becoming increasingly obvious that t…
The State of the Art on the Art of State Building
From Sierra Leone to Solomon Islands, developed powers have undertaken a range of state-building interventions in the early years of this century. Two influences appear to shape the emerging state of the art on state building: conceptions about the nature of the state in the developed world; and the postcolonial sensitivities and practicalities that attend the project of intervention. After examining the imperatives driving interventions in fragi…
Security Politics in the Asia-Pacific: A Regional-Global Nexus?
Asia is experiencing major changes in its security relations. This book brings together respected experts to assess both the theoretical and empirical dimensions of the Asian security debate. Building on the latest research on Asia's regional security politics, it focuses on the 'regional-global nexus' as a way to understand the dynamics of Asian security politics and its intersection with global security. Contributors to the volume offer diverse…
The Rich Tradition of Australian Realism
Australian International Relations (IR) developed as a discipline at the same time as its emergence in the rest of the Anglophone world. A deep reading of Australian writing on international relations since the 1920s reveals a distinctive tradition of IR scholarship, shaped very much by this country's international circumstances and the pragmatic culture of political inquiry that pervaded its universities and diplomatic institutions. Three charac…
Australia Faces a Changing Asia
Tensions between Australia's strategic alignment and its economic alignment ... heighten Canberra's anxieties about having to choose between security and prosperity in the event of a confrontation between the United States and China
Taking Asia Seriously
Australia has traditionally relied on two diplomatic strategies in its attempts to 'engage' Asia. The first has been to couch engagement diplomacy within broader global trends and developments, such as the response to the Communist threat during the Cold War or the general move towards the 'new regionalism' after the Cold War. The second strategy has been a dogged prudentialism, building on shared (usually commercial) interests. The shortcomings …
Unipolar Anxieties: A ustralia's M elanesia Policy after the Age of Intervention
As a consequence of its membership of a US ‐centred global alliance network, A ustralia's regional obligations in the S outh P acific are as pertinent to R egional A ssistance M ission to S olomon I slands's drawdown as they were to its inception. C anberra's imperatives in the P acific have been stabilization and the exclusion of hostile interests. Three challenges—the rise of C hina, the I slamic S tate insurgency, and the democratic discontinu…
Trade agreements and strategic rivalry in Asia
The Asia Pacific is currently beset by two contradictory trends: growing economic interdependence and deepening strategic rivalry. Amidst these trends, new sets of regional trade agreements are being negotiated, primarily the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). This article argues that these proposals represent a third phase of competitive regionalism in the Asia Pacific, which will be more …
Introduction to the Special Issue
The Asia-Pacific region is in the midst of change. The emergence of new and great powers, growing democratisation, new forms of multilateral engagement and new approaches to state building and intervention are some of the major trends shaping this region. This special issue examines four countries in the Asia-Pacific region that help illustrate these trends: Solomon Islands, Myanmar, Indonesia and China. Each is currently undergoing its own major…
Political science (29 works) · Law (24 works) · Politics (21 works) · Political economy (17 works) · Economics (16 works) · Island Studies and Pacific Affairs (15 works) · Law (15 works) · Sociology (15 works) · International Development and Aid (10 works) · Geography (9 works)