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Vargo, S. L.and R.F. Lusch. 2004. ‘Evolving to aNew Dominant Logic for Marketing.’ Journal ofMarketing 68(1):1–17.

Vargo, S.L. and R.F. Lusch. 2008. ‘Service-dominantLogic: Continuing the Evolution.’ Journal of theAcademy of Marketing Science 36(1):1–10.

Dancing with Warriors: A DiplomaticMemoirPhilip Flood (Australian Scholarly Publishing,North Melbourne, 2011, ISBN9781921875205, 370 pp).

From his induction into External Affairs in1958 to his authorship of the eponymous Re-port in 2004 Philip Flood has been at the centreof foreign policy making. His earliest bureau-cratic task was assisting in the drafting of theAntarctic Treaty; he was involved in Australia’searliest dealings with the OECD (briefing astony faced John McEwen in 1968 on the ad-vantages of membership, eliciting the response‘over my dead body’) and he worked as chiefadviser to John Howard who as Minister forSpecial Trade Negotiations under MalcolmFraser was charged with grappling with theEEC. Later, as head successively of AusAID, ofthe Office of National Assessments and then ofthe Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade heaccumulated a unique trifecta of leadership ex-perience. This memoir might be expected thento contain the distilled wisdom and insights ofa distinguished member of the foreign policyelite but in this expectation it is somewhat dis-appointing. For the most part it is more a recordof places visited and public figures served;criticisms offered of Australian policies or pol-icy practitioners are generally inconsequentialand new insights on policies are few. It containshowever a few surprising errors and omissionsand concludes with a somewhat alarming codathat identifies major problems in Australia’scurrent predicament regarding which there arefew forewarnings in the main text.

Flood rarely records adverse judgements onany of the many public figures with whom hehas worked. His favourite expression for hispolitical masters – the ‘warriors’ of the title –is that they had ‘no illusions’. An exceptionis his assessment of William McMahon as

‘not an inspiring Foreign Minister’, whoseperformance was dependent upon ‘Depart-mental officers. . . constantly rectifying theMinister’s mistakes and picking up after him,even to the point of rewriting Hansard proofs’(68). In concluding his remarks on McMahon,Flood quotes without further comment PaulHasluck’s famously waspish assessment of hisdiminutive rival. The careful reader can detecthowever, in a few oblique statements, implicitcriticisms of important figures. In a contextwhich seems not to call for the remark, Floodnotes that Keating ‘never revealed publicly thecontent of intelligence assessments and neversought to bolster a policy position publicly bysaying that it was supported by intelligence’which suggests he found Howard’s use of thesetactics objectionable (243).

Readers will be particularly interested in hisaccount of his role as Ambassador to Indonesiaat a vital turning-point (1989–93). Floodrecords his personal perspective on the dra-matic visit of Foreign Minister Gareth Evans toJakarta immediately following the Santa Cruzmassacre in East Timor. But Flood shows noevidence of considering that this tragic eventhad any relationship with previous Australianpolicies. Whatever Whitlam’s contribution tothe issue (a topic ignored in the book) Evans,in initialling the 1989 agreement with ForeignMinister Ali Alatas regarding the maritimeand undersea resources of the Timor Gap area,thereby acknowledged Indonesian title to EastTimor – at a time when the United Nations heldPortugal to be the rightful administrating powerin a territory still awaiting self-determination.The Indonesian occupation, moreover, wasin violation of two un-rescinded resolutions(384/1975 and 389/1976) of the UN Secu-rity Council. Such unqualified support ofIndonesian policy, in the teeth of the inter-national legal position regarding East Timor,undoubtedly helped encourage the Indonesianleadership in their intention to adopt a freehand in the territory (and even resulted inAustralia being arraigned before the Interna-tional Court of Justice). These policies werepursued at a time when Evans was active in thepromotion of the notion of ‘good internationalcitizenship’ especially through commitment to

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the United Nations as a template for Australia’sinternational engagement; though Flood, in awork innocent of irony, does not advert to thisposture.

That Flood’s treatment of the East Timorissue is no oversight is evident from thehistorical sketch he gives of Timor’s history ina separate and later chapter devoted entirely tothe topic. He has the Portuguese on the islandsome 50 years before Antonio D’Abreu was(perhaps) the first European to sight it, but hiscontention that the Indonesian invasion wasa response to a continuing civil conflict thatraised the prospect of ‘communist’ influencein the archipelago (182) is unsupported by theabundant evidence. Greg Shackleton and hismedia colleagues were able to make their wayto the border with Indonesia in October 1975without incident since FRETILIN had by thistime established a viable administration; theretheir lives were taken not by insurgents butby Indonesian forces actively subverting theterritory, a fact of which Flood must surely beaware. In Flood’s account no Australian rolenor Indonesian designs prior to the invasionof December 1975 are mentioned, though it iswell known that the subversion of the territorywas under active consideration in Jakarta asearly as July 1974 and the Australian embassywas very well informed of these plans (evenfacilitating the visit of one of their proponents,Harry Tjan, to Canberra to explain themmore fully). Flood’s dismissive remarks on the‘Indonesia lobby’ charge (though he avoidsthat phrase) are therefore wide of the mark. Inshort the complaint from this perspective thatAustralian leaders were ‘too close to the In-donesian President’ (173) seems entirely borneout by the East Timor record, and this argumentis only strengthened by Flood’s misleading ac-count of its history. To be fair, elsewhere in thebook Flood does concede that Suharto came topower on a sea of blood, involving the deaths of‘between half a million and a million suspectedcommunists and leftists’ (155). However healso describes the Djaelani Commission, os-tensibly convened to expose those responsiblefor Santa Cruz, as ‘a strong rebuke for ABRI’(195) although it only resulted in some trivialsentences for unimportant military figures.

Flood regrets that Suharto did not choose aneffective successor, nominating Try Sutrisnoas the most promising of his associates. Floodseems oblivious to Sutrisno’s record, especiallyhis famous remarks regarding the Santa Cruzmassacre when he was adamant that, as thedemonstrators were the enemy, the army wascorrect in shooting them. Had Sutrisno becomeIndonesia’s leader, bilateral relations wouldhave seen no improvement (as Flood observes)from the position that prevented Suharto everagain coming to Australia after his visit ofApril 1975.

The extent to which diplomacy is Flood’ssecond nature is apparent in his over-lengthydiscussion (extending to 3 chapters) of his HighCommissionership in London. He expressesthe highest praise for the Queen and spendsmuch time on detailing the arrangements forthe federation banquet and service at Westmin-ster in 2000. In a discrete section he then noteshowever the evident problems with the currentconstitutional arrangements. Australia’s headof state is the head of state of another countryand duties to that other country always prevailwhen the head of state is abroad, thus denyingAustralia the advantages of such a figure (for-eign states being well aware that the Governor-General, on his or her travels, is a counterfeit).Yet there is no discussion of Howard’s cleverdeflection of the republican impulse.

In his reflections on his career Flood at lastadopts a critical tone. He bemoans the neglectand decline of Australia’s diplomatic machin-ery, a position which former Foreign MinisterRudd (though not without some irony) himselfarticulated. While the evidence for this propo-sition is plain, in his discussion of his tenureof the position of Secretary Flood makes nocomment on such questions. The reader is leftto wonder whether he fought for such resourcesand influence but failed, whether he was de-nied by an unimaginative and unsympatheticminister, or whether he was slow to appreciatethe full dimensions of the problem. Flood alsoregrets the inadequate numbers of Australianswho have a genuine engagement with Asia.Again one would like to be informed whetherpolicies were pursued in Foreign Affairsand Trade to enlarge this cadre, or whether

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they were successfully stymied or simply notconsidered.

Flood’s career coincided with the goldenage of Australian diplomacy of which hewas a devoted and highly competent servant.Dealing with growing global environmentaland population crises, at a time of decliningAmerican power, Australian diplomacy incoming decades will confront strenuous and

novel challenges. Had Flood provided a morecandid assessment of the shortcomings ofour policy and machinery, he would havecontributed more usefully to preparations tomeet those challenges.

James Cotton

University of New South Wales, ADFA

C© 2012 The AuthorsAustralian Journal of Public Administration C© 2012 National Council of the Institute of Public Administration Australia