Malcolm Fraser’s Asia Delusion

Malcolm Fraser's book Dangerous Allies (Fraser with Roberts Citation2014) has rightly been taken to task, even by broadly sympathetic readers, for the way it caricatures US foreign policy (White Citation2014). It leaves the absurd impression that almost everything Washington does in the world today is a wilfully dangerous extension of the neoconservative crusade of a decade ago. The book has at least one other equally unsettling flaw: the way it misreads or misrepresents contemporary Asia. The author privileges his own version of China's strategic priorities and sensitivities far above the interests and perspectives of other Asian countries. This lack of balance, combined with a false depiction of the USA, greatly weakens the credibility of the book's core conclusions about revisiting and perhaps ending the security alliance between the USA and Australia.