Will regional powers in the Asia-Pacific have to choose between China and the United States? In Independent Ally, Shannon Tow challenges this prevailing view. She explores how one key regional power, Australia, has repeatedly developed a strong relationship with a rising power while simultaneously preserving its alliance with a dominant global power. Far from being a 'dependent ally' that simply follows the policies of its great and powerful friends, Australia has consistently developed and pursued an independent foreign policy toward those great powers that have played an important role in shaping its destiny. It has proactively negotiated the terms of its relationships with those powers in ways that have been mutually complementary and that have supported its strategic interests in regional order. The extent to which Australia can do so in future relates directly to the findings and lessons this study provides. Drawing on newly released archival material and interviews with prominent former policymakers, this book examines how six different Australian Prime Ministers successfully navigated these great power relationships over the last century.

An environmental journalist reveals how some California military bases are leading the charge in the fight against climate change. In California, the US military has begun to redefine how our national security operations relate to the destabilizing effects of climate change. Several bases have taken on a largely unrecognized yet crucial role in renewable-energy innovation and in preserving cultural and natural treasures. These facilities are going beyond environmental stewardship to align national defense with energy security and the protection of endangered species. In Unlikely Ally, environmental journalist Marilyn Berlin Snell takes readers through these bases to examine what twenty-first-century sustainable-energy infrastructure looks like; whether combat readiness and species protection can successfully coexist; how cutting-edge technology and water-conservation practices could transform life in a resource-constrained world; and how the Department of Defense's scientific research into the metabolic secrets of the endangered desert tortoise could speed human travel to Mars.

Examines military cooperation between the US and its allies, demonstrating that demands cannot always be met by democratic allies due to domestic political constraints, and that concerns over military assets can further limit governments' ability to commit resources. Analyzes responses to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq by the UK, Canada, and Australia.

On 14 January 1963, General de Gaulle (described by the Foreign Office as an 'almost impossible ally') brutally vetoed Britain's first bid to join the Common Market. It was a blow that delayed Britain's entry for a decade and hastened the end of Harold Macmillan's political career. Peter Mangold writes in arresting detail about the fascinating personal duel that shaped high politics and Anglo-French diplomacy. He portrays two of the most complex and skilful leaders of the post-war era, old friends from their association in Algiers during World War II: de Gaulle the dour, lofty moralist obsessed with high notions of France; and Macmillan, the canny, ambitious fixer, always the pragmatist seeking to get things done. As Resident Minister, Allied Forces Headquarters in Algiers in 1943, Macmillan had done much to help de Gaulle, and protect him from Churchill's and Roosevelt's hostility. They next met in 1958, as leaders of their two countries, when Britain and France faced many similar problems ranging from decolonization and their determination to retain national Great Power status to relations with the impetuous Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev. But while both seemed anxious to retain their old wartime connection, they were now rivals with very different views of the world. Divided by the Atlantic as much as the Channel, the two leaders disagreed fundamentally over America. De Gaulle sought the leadership of a Europe independent of the United States; the pro-American Macmillan talked of Britain as a 'bridge' between the two sides of the Atlantic. When Macmillan finally sought EEC membership, de Gaulle played on the old alliance to keep the British Prime Minister off guard. Ultimately, Macmillan was outwitted, out-manoeuvred and even, perhaps, outclassed by the General. "The Almost Impossible Ally" is a fascinating story of a friendship turned sour, and of a compelling new episode in the turbulent relations between Britain and France.