The Australian media has played a key role in debates over Australia's East Timor policy since the mid-1970s. - Introduced by the ABC's multi-awarding-winning reporter Chris Masters, this is the first book to analyse the interaction of newspapers, broadcasters, politicians, diplomats and the public during this turbulent period. - It provides a vivid insight into the key role of the media in this controversial issue. - Australia's foreign affairs policymakers decided to adopt a 'pragmatic' rather than 'principled' approach to East Timor - That policy unravelled over the subsequent quarter century, under constant pressure from public opinion, the media, and international disapproval. - In the long run, argues Rodney Tiffen, Australia's stance was neither pragmatic nor principled.

Political Journalism explores practices of political journalism, ranging from American 'civic journalism' to the press corps covering the European Union in Brussels, from Bangkok newsrooms to French and Italian scandal hunters. Challenging both the 'mediamalaise' thesis and the notion of the journalist as the faithful servant of democracy, it explores political journalism in the making and maps the opportunities and threats encountered by political journalism in the contemporary sphere.

This book is an honest attempt towards a serious project to present an objective analysis of U.S. foreign policy for India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. These three nations have played very important and very significant role in forming U.S. foreign policy. The book has in detail narrated how US failed as a super power. How CIA created the monster of Talibans, how it financed Bin laden, how CIA encouraged drug trafficking and looked in other direction when Pakistan and nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan was engaged into manufacturing of nuclear device with the financial support from Saudi Arabia, Iran and other Muslim nations and very active technical support from North Korea. Book has extensively quoted congressional hearings and other publication to focus how Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q.Khan and his KRL facility was turned into a Wal -Mart of nuclear weapons which has put the entire world on the brink of nuclear disaster.

* Explains developments in recent peacekeeping operations and politico-military environments * Bridges the gap between peace and conflict scholarship * Highlights new aspects of war studies Following over a decade of substantial and extensive American military involvement, peace operations have passed from a position of strategic irrelevance to one of strategic importance. War and Intervention provides a snapshot of the contemporary environment of peace operations, in terms of both war and intervention. It also answers two broad questions: 1) What are key characteristics of armed competitors in the current environment of peace operations, particularly in terms of their structure and organization, financing, access to military resources, and the tactical tools and methods applied by these movements? And 2) What are key recent developments in the dimensions and methods of intervention, particularly regarding the use of force, the adaptation of global militaries to peace operations and the emerging political, legal and economic components of intervention? War and Intervention allows readers from a range of domains--military, academic, humanitarian, political, and diplomatic--to understand the priorities and methods of different actors in today’s peace operations.

The Australian Study of Politics provides the first comprehensive reference book on the history of the study of politics in Australia, whether described as political studies or political science. It focuses on Australia and on developments since WWII, also exploring the historical roots of each major subfield.

This book explains the exceptional nature of the East Timor intervention of 1999, and deals with the background to the trusteeship role of the UN in building the new polity. All of these developments had an important impact on regional order, not least testing the ASEAN norm of 'non-interference'. Australian complicity in the Indonesian occupation of East Timor was a major factor in the persistence of Indonesian rule in the territory which was maintained for twenty-five years despite international censure and which required an unremitting campaign against the independence movement. This work reviews the reasons for that history of complicity, and explains the extraordinary change of policy that led ultimately to the occupation of the territory by the Australian-led INTERFET coalition.

In a new historical interpretation of the relationship between Australia and East Timor, Susan Connelly draws on the mimetic theory of René Girard to show how the East Timorese people were scapegoated by Australian foreign policy during the 20th century. Charting key developments in East Timor's history and applying three aspects of Girard's framework – the scapegoat, texts of persecution and conversion – Connelly reveals Australia's mimetic dependence on Indonesia and other nations for security. She argues that Australia's complicity in the Indonesian invasion and occupation of East Timor perpetuated the sacrifice of the Timorese people as victims, thus calling into question the traditional Australian values of egalitarianism and fairness. Connelly also examines the embryonic conversion process apparent in levels of recognition of the innocent victim and of the Australian role in East Timor's suffering, as well as the consequent effects on Australian self-perception. Emphasising Girardian considerations of fear, suffering, forgiveness and conversion, this book offers a fresh perspective on Australian and Timorese relations that in turn sheds light on the origins and operations of human violence.

This book reviews the long guerilla struggle of the 'Organisasi Papua Merdeka' (OPM) for a Free Papua, and traces the rise of a non-violent independence movement alongside it, the Papua Council, following the fall from power of Indonesia’s military dictator, General Suharto, in 1998.

te Velde examines Commonwealth identity through the lens of its membership criteria, its recent enlargement and its constant reincarnation. Far from being an old relic of the past, the Commonwealth is a growing, vibrant modern international organisation and despite its traditional image, Commonwealth membership is shown to be a rather fluid concept that evolves with the times. This book identifies and discusses the different theoretical approaches to analysing the Commonwealth. In so doing it exposes various shortcomings in current thinking about international relations and the Commonwealth. Furthermore, it reveals how a number of turning points in the Commonwealth's history have shaped its membership rules and illustrates how the official Commonwealth still has the potential to expand and develop to best reflect an organisation that represents a third of the world's population. In terms of further growth of the organisation, this book examines the cases of a number of eligible states to assess their likelihood of achieving membership. It also incorporates a handful of non-eligible states that, notwithstanding the new 'rules', are still bent on joining.