| Abstract
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This dissertation starts from the observation that Malaysian Foreign Policy in the Mahathir era underwent significant shifts in terms of its direction, nature, substance, style and rhetoric. The policy shifted from traditional to modern, assertive and pragmatic and its focus was redirected from defense and security to commerce and development. The thesis argues that MFP in the Mahathir era is best understood by focusing upon the interaction between three significant elements: Mahathir's idiosyncrasy, pertinent domestic issues, and relevant external factors. The thesis constructs Mahathir's idiosyncrasy through an intellectual biography of his personality, leadership style, political ideology and brand of nationalism. The domestic element focuses on the need for ethnic integration, regime maintenance and national development. The external variable encompasses global and regional events during the Mahathir era as well as the behavior of Singapore, China and Japan towards Malaysia. The thesis examines MFP across seven major and sixteen component policy initiatives, namely: (1) Buy British Last (BBL 1 & 2), (2) Anti-Commonwealth, (3) Look East, (4) Third World Spokesmanship (The Antarctica Policy, Apartheid, the Global Environment, South-South Cooperation and a New World Order), (5) Regional Engagement, (6) Islamic Posturing (Palestine, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Iran-Iraq war, Gulf Wars of 1991 and 2003, Bosnia and the US War on Terror) and (7) Commercial and Developmental Diplomacy (FDI attraction and Reverse Investments). All the above initiatives validate the view that the Mahathir era MFP underwent significant shifts. Except for Regional Engagement, all seven major initiatives studied were unique to the Mahathir era. Of the sixteen component initiatives, all except two—Apartheid and the Liberation of Palestine—were exclusive to the Mahathir era. The thesis establishes that Mahathir's idiosyncrasy had a deep impact on all aspects of MFP, but that profound domestic factors (particularly the country's communal society, the patronage based regime and its desire for development) as well as salient external forces namely globalization, unipolarity, Japanese regional designs, Singapore's defense posture and China's complex behavior—offering itself both as a threat and opportunity—interacted to give MFP the unique shape, substance and rhetoric that it came to acquire.
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