Structural changes in the international system are evolving rapidly and in unpredictable ways. The forces of globalisation, nationalism and identity politics have blurred international boundaries and have created the need for closer international understanding and cooperation on security issues in a time of heightened international uncertainty. As the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) intensifies, the resources and infrastructures available for fashioning regional security and facilitating order-building are becoming increasingly finite. It is therefore critical that policy-makers apply established security relationships and infrastructures more creatively and more effectively to face emerging security challenges in the Asia-Pacific and beyond. Australia is responding to these challenges at the local, regional and international levels of operation. These include re-shaping alliances, identifying and implementing policy responses to ‘non-traditional’ security challenges and engaging with human security initiatives.

The Project will have three general and interrelated strands:

• The ways in which the new prominence of transnational threats have affected international alignments and enmities;
• The new and familiar forms of coordination of international responses to traditional and non-traditional security challenges; and
• The initiatives and options Australia should pursue for bridging traditional (state-centric) and non-traditional (asymmetrical) security policy.