ASEAN-Australia Relations: A History of an International Legal Imaginary

Abstract

<p>For the past 50 years Australia has been strengthening its relationship with ASEAN. It was during the Cold War, in 1974, that Australia became ASEAN’s first Western partner. Five decades later, at the 2024 ASEAN-Australia Special Summit, the Australian Prime Minister Albanese announced: “Southeast Asia is where Australia’s future lies” (PM Office, 5 March 2024). While this relationship has advanced the international aspirations of both ASEAN and Australia, it also continues to be mediated by an international law that sustains forms of European colonialism in the Asia Pacific (Anghie, 2005; Pahuja, 2011; Storr, 2020). This paper examines the international legal imaginaries that have underpinned ASEAN-Australia relations, particularly at high-profile diplomatic meetings during the Cold War period. It does this through a cultural-legal re-reading of official photos taken between 1974 and 1984. These photos were released in 2024 as part of an exhibition curated by the Australian Government to celebrate its 50-year partnership with ASEAN. The paper’s analysis of the images shows how both ASEAN and Australia negotiated their own imaginaries about each ‘other’ at key high-level diplomatic meetings, and how this was shaped by an international legal order vulnerable to the Cold War’s geopolitical shifts toward the United States. That, the paper argues, not only influenced how ASEAN and Australia ‘saw’ each other, but also how Australia is now constructing its history of diplomacy with ASEAN.<br></p>