(c)The Australian National University

2014 The Japan Foundation Award

Emeritus Professor, Australian National University

Peter Drysdale

[Australia]

Japan Foundation Awards Anniversary Message

The Japan Foundation was a formative part of my professional career. In the 1970s, after the establishment of its first office in Australia (the Foundation’s office in Australia was later relocated to Sydney), the Foundation was the vehicle for delivering Japanese business, alongside Japanese government support that matched Australian government and business support for the establishment of the Australia-Japan Research Centre at The Australian National University. That was a mission that absorbed all my energies for the next two decades.

Over the past 45 years the Centre has been a source of inspiration in the cooperation that has developed not only in the bilateral relationship between the two countries but also in both countries’ diplomacy in the Asia Pacific region, notably through their work together in the establishment of APEC and their foundational participation in the East Asian arrangements centred on ASEAN.

This story is emblematic of the Foundation’s catalytic role in investment in all aspects of the relationship between Australia and Japan. It is a story at the centre of the transformation of the prosperity of the whole East Asian region as, from Japan through Northeast Asia to Southeast Asia, China and now India, countries in the region embraced openness and signed on the rules of an open global economic order.

For someone who grew up in the darkest days of the Pacific War and dreamed, then, of amity between our peoples and all peoples in our region, the model of the conduct of affairs between Australia and Japan over the past 50 years is a dream that’s largely come true.

Yet today the basis of amity and cooperation among the peoples of our region — and of their prosperity and security — is under threat. The growth of Asia’s economic power and the potential that it has brought for the projection of political and military power has thrust the region onto centre stage of changing great-power global politics. And Asia’s progress is being deeply shaken the by challenges to the global geopolitical order.

In this new geopolitically fractured world, international cooperation to navigate these challenges is no easy call. The United States, the world’s biggest power, has lost its appetite for full multilateral cooperation and is at odds strategically with China, the world’s second largest power. Strategic competition between the United States and China ultimately limits both countries’ capacity to contribute constructively to global recovery and define a sustainable future for the world.

May the next 50 years see the Japan Foundation play a role as significant as it has in the past 50 years in nourishing the understanding and cooperation between our peoples that is essential to traversing the difficult path ahead.

Peter Drysdale
Emeritus Professor of Economics
Crawford School of Public Policy
College of Asia and the Pacific
The Australian National University

(Original text in English)

The Japan Foundation Awards (2014): Profile