Living with leviathan: Australia, Asia and American hegemony

As Australia’s prominent role in the ‘coalition of the willing’ in Iraq demonstrates, the strategy of cultivating close ties with the Leviathan or – in more contemporary parlance – the hegemon, is alive and well. In this essay Mark Beeson asks whether this is an appropriate strategy at the beginning of the twenty-first century, and what implications this may have for Australia’s other relationships, particularly in Asia.