Going global: a future for Australian International Relations

ABSTRACT

Australian International Relations (IR) has grown dramatically in recent years, but more importantly, it has internationalised and diversified. Australian scholars areleading voices in many of the field’s central debates, addressing a multiplicity of questions, empirical and theoretical. Globally, however, the field of IR is at a crossroad. It is challenged to acknowledge its Eurocentric origins and biases, grasp the long shadow that empire casts over the international system, and shed its intellectual blinkers by drawing on non-Western ideas, practices, and historical experiences. This demands more of Australian scholars than continued international engagement: it poses far reaching questions about the field we are engaging, who we will be in this field, and the direction our contributions will nudge IR. This article explores the challenges and opportunities that ‘going global’ present. Crucially, it requires an ontological reorientation in how we conceive international relations as a domain of politics and demands a shift in normative reasoning, emphasising the ethics of recognition and hierarchy. Making these moves offers exciting opportunities for the revitalisation of the study of Australian foreign policy, enabling us to rethink the ‘foreign’ in such policy, the evolution of the ‘rules-based international order’, and the nature of ‘region’.

KEYWORDS:

• Australian foreign policy
• global IR
• empire
• race
• international order

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christian Reus-Smit

Christian Reus-Smit is Professor and Chair in International Relations at the University of Queensland and a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. His books include International Relations: A Very Short Introduction (2020), On Cultural Diversity (2018), Individual Rights and Making of the International System (2013), American Power and World Order (2004), and The Moral Purpose of the State (1999).