After the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the two were the only countries that gave loans to the IMF emergency packages for Thailand, Indonesia, and South Korea. This shows that both Australia and Japan are part of and committed to Asia-Pacific, but also distinctive in the region for the size, sophistication and robustness of their economies.

Australia's train of interests are far-flung and diverse. The historical origins and cultural roots of most of its people lie in Europe, its primary strategic alliance is with the United States, its primary security focus is on Southeast Asia, and its major trading partners are in Northeast Asia. Where in previous centuries Asian-Pacific propinquity was a curse to be avoided through exclusionary immigration, security and trade policies, since the 1980s it has been an opportunity to be exploited through cooperative enmeshment. Asia and Asians make up around 6% of Australia's population, account for 60% of Australia's trade and provide over 100,000 overseas students. The 1997 White Paper on Foreign Policy asserted unequivocally that "The Asia Pacific is the region of highest foreign and trade policy priority."

Australia's historical and cultural links to Europe and North America enhance its value to Asian countries; propinquity to Asia increases its usefulness to Western countries. Multicultural diversity at home underpins the breadth and depth of these relationships abroad. It gives Australia European and Asian language skills, cross-cultural expertise and international family and social connections. Biocultural diversity also promotes vigor and adaptive capacity in a rapidly changing world.

Australia's involvement with its region is inevitable, irreversible and desirable. But the transition from a narrow Eurocentric outlook to a more balanced and nuanced worldview has been neither uncontroversial nor smooth. Self-evidently, Australians are not Asians in the racial sense: not now and not likely to be even in the distant future. Mutual adjustments and accommodation will be required. It is equally self-evident, however, that Australia is Asian in the geopolitical sense. Its security and prosperity are tied to Asia's, but it can also contribute to Asia's security and prosperity as in the rescue packages of 1997-98 and in East Timor in 1999-2000.

The anchor of the Asia-Pacific security architecture is the U.S.-Japan Mutual Security Treaty which has historical and strategic links to the Australia-U.S. defense relationship. Australia and Japan are natural trans-Pacific friends and allies. The two, among a small number of full-fledged industrial liberal democracies in Asia-Pacific, are the northern and southern anchors of the Western alliance system. Within the alliance, both pursue "good international citizenship" in international peacekeeping, human rights and foreign aid. They are also the joint originators of APEC, Australia encourages a greater Japanese role in the region and they help each other's candidacy at the UN.

Australia is more than just a tourist destination for Japanese, and Japan is more than a mere trading partner for Australia. In the last few years Australia and Japan have reinvigorated and reinterpreted their separate military alliances with the U.S., and have also begun to extend the scope of their own bilateral military relationship. Trilateralizing the military relationship would anchor the U.S. more firmly in the region, formalize their security and trade interests across and up and down the Pacific, and provide ballast to the fledgling ARF as the preeminent security dialogue forum. The congruence on foreign and trade policy interests will be reinforced by still closer defense links over the next decade as Japan gradually assumes progressively greater responsibility for its own security.

Ramesh Thakur is vice rector of the United Nations University. These are his personal views.

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