Overview

For generations, Australians have believed that someone else would keep them safe. Behind the white picket fence - protected by powerful allies, distant from conflict, confident that history was on their side - the nation avoided confronting uncomfortable questions about geography, power, and independence. That era is ending. As global power shifts toward Asia and strategic competition intensifies, Australia finds itself bound ever more tightly to decisions made elsewhere- while insisting it remains fully sovereign. The gap between reassurance and reality is widening. In Beyond the White Picket Fence, Raymond Lea traces how Australia's strategic thinking became shaped by habit rather than choice, how alliance loyalty turned into automatic alignment, and why questioning these patterns now provokes such anxiety. Through analysis of defence policy, regional politics, and the psychology of national identity, the book asks whether Australia is still making its own strategic decisions- or merely performing them. This is a book about courage: the courage to face geographic reality, to question inherited assumptions, and to decide deliberately rather than drift. At stake is nothing less than how Australia understands itself- and whether it can step beyond comfort to build genuine sovereignty in a changing world.

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A long-time resident of Australia, Raymond Lea is a keen observer of the nation's politics and foreign relations. He believes that amid shifting geopolitical tectonic plates, Australia must respond with a clear-eyed perspective-determining its own future and exercising agency that reflects its identity as a sovereign nation.

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