Julie, some of your suggestions regarding Australia bolstering its soft power are valuable.

Plainly, we need to do more to create and maintain the good will of students and other foreign residents who reside in Australia, whether briefly or permanently.

Our relationship with any of the big powers (icluding India) is very assymetric, and as a nation, we must live by our wits in their presence. Relying on people's good will and good natures seems sensible to me. Open and transparent programs toward this goal seems a good way to spend taxpayer money at home and abroad.

As can be judged from some comments here, some methods of leveraging soft power, as practiced by the USA, can risk engendering bitterness, cynicism and vengefulness. The US has received just and trenchant criticism, for example, for programs in the middle east and latin America, funded by the National Endowment for Democracy and other US State Dept funding sources.

My experience is that we Australians generally view our dependence on the USA as a mixed blessing, and sometimes worse. I think a well-considered statement of independence, occasionally, would be charitably accepted by the majority of us.

Take for example, our current law to ratify the Convention on Cluster Munitions. We could flatly forbid the storage and transport of these indiscriminate weapons, rather than leaving it up to the defence minister of the day.

That would be consistent with the CCM's text and intent, and would underscore our independence in a very humane way.

Great article Julie, which demonstrates an extremely good understanding of CURRENT international affairs.
There are those that continue to rail against past practise and or international circumstances.
They may as well try to reverse the flow of mighty rivers, or empty all the oceans into a hand dug hole in beach sand?
For all the genuinely constructive rhetoric they add to the CURRENT debate!
Rhrosty.

Perhaps Julie might like to tell us where her position on applied soft power WAS when her former leader, namely the lying rodent, committed Australia to participate in the illegal Shock and Awe invasion of Iraq.

An invasion which created all kinds of unintended blow-back consequences including a surge in global terrorism of all kinds including that perpetrated by the USA on an almost daily basis, and the emergence of Iran as a key/dominant player in the politics of the Middle East.

We are headed for WW3 right now and the West are the chief aggressors.I did not see any evidence of "soft power" in Iraq,Afghanistan,Libya,Vietnam,Croatia or Serbia.

We don't need more war mongering talk.Labor are bad enough.
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