Word: globalization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...murder." And he knows how to combat bureaucratic timidity with the power of grand gestures. Two of his first actions after taking office were making a landmark apology to Aborigines who were essentially stolen as children from their families, and putting Australia's signature on the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, which Howard, like his pal George W. Bush, had declined to do. (See pictures of the deadly wildfires in Australia...
...bloc would build on the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) birthed and nurtured by his Labor predecessors Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. In 2008, Rudd's proposal sounded like a pipe dream. Today, he argues, the need for such a grouping is all the more important because the global financial crisis underlines how individual countries, even supremely powerful ones, cannot rely on go-it-alone approaches. "I am acutely conscious of what happens when you simply allow things to drift to unrestrained nationalism," Rudd told TIME. "[I want to] avoid long-term strategic drift, avoid the possibility of America drifting...
...Raised on a dairy farm in rural Queensland, Rudd might seem an unlikely global citizen. But as a child avoiding work in the cowshed, he would retire to the farthest reaches of the farm with a book on Asian archaeology. Rudd majored in Asian studies in college. Diplomatic postings in Sweden and China followed, and his internationalism captured a changing national mood. For the better part of two centuries, Australia's self-perception was that of a chunk of the West that unaccountably found itself floating in the South Pacific. Today, China is Australia's largest trading partner, with Japan...
...fair warning. As any man who wants to enjoy the favors of both a wife and a lover will tell you, it will not be a snap for Australia to stay on good terms with both China and the U.S. The global economy may have joined those two nations at the hip, but it is easy to see how they could be at odds on a host of other issues. Indeed, even as Rudd talks about the inevitable dawn of an Asia-Pacific century with China at its helm, he is careful not to describe...
...flight back east from Perth, Rudd glances at the necktie that he has cast aside before landing in Melbourne, where he will deliver another slew of speeches. He rubs his eyes, then launches into a defense of international activism. "You can sit around quietly on the global diplomatic circuit and get nowhere," he says, "or you can ball up a few ideas, some of which have some prospects." It's not a bad blueprint for any nation navigating a place in this globalized world. Makes you wonder whether Australia couldn't export that having-a-go spirit along with...