Hard Power and Regional Diplomacy: The Dibb Legacy

To a much greater extent than their US counterparts, Commonwealth governments such as Australia’s have maintained a sharp demarcation between both government agencies and those officials who manage their policies, and the independent strategic analysts in academia or in think tanks who provide independent assessments of government policy performance. There are examples of members of US foreign policy and strategic studies establishments who have excelled in manoeuvring between Washington’s inner sanctums of policy formulation and prestigious independent venues providing policy commentary — Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Madeleine Albright and, more recently, Ashton Carter and Jeffrey Bader all come to mind — but few Australian equivalents. In this context, Paul Dibb is the Australian who has most resembled the American model of a policy practitioner. He has been sufficiently nimble and eclectic to bestride both the hard power world of strategic and defence policy analysis and the delicate and often ambiguous world of diplomatic counsel and has engaged in both pursuits with unquestionable excellence.