Belinda Helmke

Australia's Gulf War Commitment 1990-91: In the pursuit of national interests? Belinda Helmke

Seminar paper from the year 2002 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Region: Other States, grade: 1, Macquarie University, language: English, abstract: When the Australian Labor government announced the deployment of a naval contingent to the Persian Gulf on the 10th August 1990, Prime Minister Bob Hawke described the commitment as being "proportionate to the interests we have at stake" . What Hawke refers to in his statement is the importance of national interests in the formulation of foreign policy and a country's reaction to world events such as Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. This paper will analyse to which extent the Prime Minister's claim to have acted in and proportionate to the national interest is true. In order to be in a position to answer this question, one has to agree on a definition of the term "national interest".