Keyword

AUKUS’ Genesis

Australia is a creation of the British Empire and continues an imperial role as a US protectorate state. The genesis of the Australian nation-state began with the invasion of a continent by the British and their economic and political role in the creation of the earth’s first global empire. As a remote and safe penitentiary, Australia provided protection for the British Isles reigning power, transporting political prisoners and convicts to settlements and prisons. It relieved population pressure on the British Isles, saving the kingdom from civil war. The continent was occupied by the British military and colonial settlers, fighting Aboriginal nations resistance, destroying their culture and colonising the land for white settlers and capital from Britain (Reynolds 2013, 2021). British occupation expanded the core for a White Australia Policy, creating a white Anglo nation until the 1970s.

Cecil Rhodes proclaimed in 1895 that: ‘the Empire is a “bread and butter” question’ (Chamberlain 1984:148). Cecil Rhodes was a British capitalist, an imperialist and a racist, becoming a prominent oligarch in his lifetime. Rhodes became convinced that imperialism would save the UK from a bloody civil war after attending angry and wild meetings of unemployed in London’s East End. His solution to the social problem was simple: ‘In order to save the 40,000,000 inhabitants of the United Kingdom from a bloody civil war, we colonial statesmen must acquire new lands to settle the surplus population, to provide new markets for the goods produced in the factories and mines’ (ibid.). Rhodes, backed by the British army, ‘dis-possessed millions of Africans of their land and created an apartheid state that endured for 90 years’ (Chigudu 2021). In India, the British ‘crown jewel’, which became a source of great wealth for Britain, less than 100,000 British ruled over 315 million people, most living in dire poverty.

Quincy Adams, the US ambassador in London in 1817, reported that: ‘The Universal feeling of Europe in witnessing the gigantic growth of our population and power is that we shall, if united, become a very dangerous member of the society of nations’ (Kagan 2006: 3). Two hundred years earlier, British puritans invaded and settled lands of indigenous Americans in what is today New England, and went on to expand their conquest, massacring Indian tribes, claiming the higher purpose of an unfolding Anglo-Saxon destiny. American historian Robert Kagan explains that ‘the first American exceptionalism was really an English exceptionalism, the first American mission an Anglo-Saxon Protestant, imperial mission’ (ibid.: 12). The expansion of white settlers gained traction with the development of cotton plantation and the growth of the slave trade from Africa. Eventually, British colonists’ power created a secessionist movement, fighting a war of independence headed by General Washington, former senior Colonial aide to British General Edward Braddock, ending British rule in 1783.

Territorial expansion gained strength with the declaration of independence and the creation of a congress of representatives empowered by the new country’s 1783 first constitution. War became central to the expansion of the newly founded white nation with the systematic invasion of Indian and Mexican nations’ territory. In 1803, President Jefferson doubled the size of the nation, purchasing the Louisiana Territory from the French crown. Victimisation and violence became norms in the continental expansion of the US, including the violence of slavery and the killing of indigenous American Indians by white settlers. In California, thousands of indigenous peoples were killed by government agents and citizens as part of the Gold Rush between 1848 and 1855, and ‘Hundreds to thousands were additionally starved or worked to death’ (Madley 2016: 11). Acts of ‘enslavement, kidnapping, rape, child separation and displacement were widespread. These acts were encouraged, tolerated, and carried out by state authorities and militias’ (Adhikari 2022: 72–115).

At the time of the US Civil War (1861–1865), killing some 750,000 soldiers, the population had reached more than 31 million. Following an era of reconstruction, US’ territorial expansion continued, forcing most Indian tribes onto reservations. **During the gilded age of the ‘robber barons’, US emerging economic power was dominated by 400 oligarchs eager for the US to expand overseas and dominate the trade of the world (Zinn 1999/2015; Stone and Kuznick 2014: 3–4). US policy makers were persuaded that domestic stability in the US depended ‘on access to overseas markets, investment opportunities, and raw materials’ (Layne 2007: 32). Economic expansion became the prerequisite to maintain social cohesion and avoid domestic unrest and civil war, leading to the war against Spain and the invasion and occupation of Cuba (1898), the Philippines (1899–1902), Puerto Rico and Guam. At the same time, the US commenced the occupation of 66 islands in the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea under the Guano Islands Act of 1856.

The US ‘liberation’ of the Philippines’ archipelago from Spain killed an estimated two hundred thousand Filipinos (Bacevich 2021: 15). During the war against US occupation, ‘Filipinos fighting for their freedom as a republic were subjected to torture, including waterboarding’ (Stone & Kuznick 2014: 6). In search for markets and profit, US capitalists and military power turned towards China and Central America. In the military campaign that followed, US Marine Corps General Smedley Butler played an important role, becoming one of America’s most famous military heroes. As a Lieutenant, he was in the invading force, taking Beijing in 1900. Later, he participated in military operations to secure US business interests in Cuba, Honduras, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Panama, Guatemala and Mexico. He wrote that he was ‘a high-class muscleman for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism’ (Stone and Kuznick 2014: 10; Butler (1935/2003).

Australia, Britain and the US came closer together in World War One against Germany’s rise to economic and military power, defeating its imperial ambition. They would benefit from winning the war, gaining new spheres of influence in the world, expanding their economic and military power against Russia and the rise of communism as a revolutionary force and power against capitalism. At the end of World War One, the US was the new dominant world power, becoming a creditor nation owed some $3.8 billion by its allies. At the time of the Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920), there were crippling labour strikes in the US and major race riots in Chicago and other cities, including Washington DC, where federal troops were restoring order. The US denied recognition of Soviet Russia, rejecting the Versailles Treaty (1919) and membership to the League of Nations, ending President Wilson’s dream that World War One was ‘a war to end all wars’ (Wheatcroft 2017).

The 1919 Paris Peace Conference failed to resolve growing inequality and uneven development in the world order. The peace conference refused the demand to be heard by Ho Chi Minh as well as Japan’s demand for the inclusion of the Racial Equality Proposal in the Peace Treaties. It created revolutionary movements demanding liberation from colonial oppression. It refused to recognise Soviet Russia, initiating military operations in support of a civil war to destroy it. The Paris Peace Accords were punitive on the German population, contributing to Germany’s eventual economic collapse and the rise of Hitler. The League of Nations, the first global effort to address the problems of war and peace, failed to bring peace to the world. The absence of the US was a major symptom that world war would never end unless there were major changes in US domestic politics and foreign policy. It marked the beginning in the rise to power of the financial sector, and the role of Wall Street bankers and the making of global corporate power. Inscribed in the Treaty of Versailles signed on 28 June 1919 were the making for the mass killings of World War Two (1939–1945) and the Pacific War (1941–1945).

World War Two marked the end of the British Empire. By then, the UK was fighting wars of independence throughout the world, facing internal bankruptcy from the cost of World War Two. At the end of the war, the US was a world power and a dominant player in Australia, having occupied the continent during the war to protect it from invasion, launching the Pacific War against Japan (1941–1945). The global war had consolidated an Anglo-American alliance, closely linking the three countries in their ongoing struggle to master the world. Their leaders were inspired by Halford Mackinder’s imperial ideology of Western global domination. Mackinder, one of the founders of geopolitics and geostrategy, was an advocate of British imperialism and an influential geographer in the field of imperial expansion. He was concerned with the implications of unequal economic growth and unchecked territorial and economic expansion. He argued that the ‘the great wars of history … are the outcome, direct or indirect of the unequal growth of nations’ (Mackinder 1942/1962: xviii). Geopolitical reality was such, he explained, ‘as to lend itself to the growth of empires, and in the end of a single World-Empire’ (ibid.: xix).

At the time of the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1991, Australia’s role in the Anglo-American alliance was expanding as a critical geostrategic site for US capital and military assets and power. US capital became a major player in the Australian economy and as a partner and sheriff in the US offensive strategy against both Russia and China, and the weaponisation of aerospace. Australia’s involvement in US global strategy of domination gained traction in the invasion and destruction of both Iraq and Afghanistan. The country’s regional geostrategic role expanded, intervening in Papua New Guinea’s war against secessionist Bougainville, the Solomon Islands’ emergency and East Timor’s secessionist war from Indonesia. Australia also became more involved in the US control over Europe when it was appointed a de facto member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to expand the role of NATO in the Asia–Pacific. Under the Albanese government, Australia is now NATO’s southern anchor in the Indo-Pacific region, together with Japan, South Korea and New Zealand, known as the AP4. The Indo-Pacific region is critically important for the Anglo-American alliance, ‘given that developments in that region can directly affect Euro-Atlantic security’ (NATO 2023).

After World War Two, the UK became a critical island for the US strategic nuclear bomber strike force and the collection of intelligence. While a member of the European Union (EU), it played a dominant role in the US policy to expand NATO membership to former members of the Warsaw pact and their inclusion in the European Union (Goldgeier 1995). The rapid enlargement of the European Union ended the realisation of a European federation of states as envisioned in the 1957 Treaty of Rome. Their inclusion in NATO gave rise to Russia’s increasing concerns about its security (EU 1957). On many occasions at the Munich Security Conference (MSC) meetings, President Putin warned the West that Ukraine’s inclusion in NATO would constitute a threat to his country’s security and lead to war (MSC 2007). A final play in the Anglo-American geostrategic alliance came in 2020 when the UK officially seceded from the EU–its nearest and biggest trading partner—on 31 January 2020, freeing the country to push for closer economic and strategic relations with the US and Australia, leading to the emergence of the Australia-UK-US (AUKUS) tripartite military alliance in 2022 to dominate the world.

The doctrinal foundations and geopolitical ideology of Australia’s Anglo-American alliance are firmly embedded in the writings and influence of both Halford Mackinder and US Naval historian Alfred Mahan (Mahan 1901/2003). Mackinder influenced the politics of empire, arguing that the threat to the British Empire would come from a rising power in Eurasia’s ‘heartland’. In 1904, he wrote:

Were the Chinese, for instance, organized by the Japanese, to overthrow the Russian Empire and conquer its territory, they might constitute the yellow peril to the world’s freedom just because they would add an oceanic frontage to the resources of the great continent, an advantage as yet denied to the Russian tenant of the pivot region. (Mackinder 1942/1962: 240).

Mahan’s strategic lessons at the Naval War College taught the importance of Anglo-American sea power and of the need to secure both the US and the UK from hostile powers on the Eurasian continent. Mahan wanted the US to annex the Hawaiian Islands to protect the US mainland from ‘the immense latent force of China’ and the barbaric invasion from central Asia’ (Mahan 1901/2003: 18).

US’ imperial ideology continues to be articulated by these basic ‘realist’ principles for the survival of the US as a global dominant power. It highlights the great fear that without economic expansion based on controlling the world economy, the US economy would shrink, and the country would fall, facing civil war or force policy makers to adopt socialism, a regimented state-planned economy, ‘including government-imposed restrictions on import, exports and capital flows’ (Layne 2007: 33). This mindset put forward by political economist and historian William Appleman Williams concludes that closure of the world to US capital would threaten the survival of American core values and ‘way of life’ (Williams 1962). Fear of closure and the imperatives of survival frame the fundamental principle of US geostrategic imperative and foreign policy to control Eurasia.

Henry Kissinger, a German emigrant and former US Secretary of State, clearly formulated the purpose of US global strategy when he wrote:

Geopolitically, America is an island off the shores of the large landmass of Eurasia, whose resources and population far exceed those of the US. The domination by a single power of either of Eurasia’s two principal spheres – Europe or Asia – remains a good definition of strategic danger for America, Cold War or no Cold War. For such a grouping would have the capacity to outstrip America economically and, in the end, militarily. That danger would have to be resisted even were the dominant power apparently benevolent, for if the intentions ever changed, America would find itself with a grossly diminished capacity for effective resistance and a growing inability to shape events. (Kissinger 1994: 813).

Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Polish emigrant and former National Security Adviser to President Jimmy Carter, was more forthright in his provocative and influential thesis that US foreign policy’s imperative is that no Eurasian power must emerge capable of dominating the Eurasian continent (Brzezinski 1997: xiv). He writes that the grand imperatives of US geostrategy are: ‘to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together’ (ibid.: 40). In other words, the US must employ means to weaken both Russia and China and keep them from coming together. He foresaw Ukraine’s importance as a geopolitical pivot in the capacity to transform Russia and further balkanise its territorial integrity (ibid.: 46). Above all, it was essential for the US to retain control of Western as well as Central Europe.

US Protectorate State

Australians only became aware of the existence of AUKUS, the Australia-UK-US military alliance, in a September 2021 press release by Prime Minister Scott Morrison saying, ‘Today, Australia begins an enhanced trilateral security partnership with the United Kingdom and the United States [as] I joined US President Joe Biden and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson in a joint live address to make the announcement’ (Morrison 2021). He told Australians that they would have to pay hundreds of billions of dollars to purchase several US nuclear submarines to protect Australia’s national interests and ‘promote security and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region’ (ibid.). AUKUS, he claimed, was a historic necessity to protect shared values, and to manage a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines, allowing ‘Australia to play a stronger role in contributing to the stability and prosperity of our region –not just for ourselves, but for our friends, and for our neighbours’ (Morrison 2021).

It was not entirely a new development in Australian politics because citizens have never been directly involved in the making of foreign policy and decisions to go to war; they are told they are at war with another country. AUKUS finalised a long process in the Americanisation of simply Australia since World War Two and the integration of the country in the US imperialist project. It has involved the blending of the economy with US neoliberal economic and political interests embedded in the privatisation of public assets and power, and the primacy of Anglo-American capital in the economy. It was accompanied, since the Hawke Labor government of 1983, with the successful de-unionisation of the working force (Paul 2021a). Economic growth was largely mobilised by a rapid and large intake of migrants with the population moving from 15.4 million in 1983 to 26.5 in 2023. National income grew considerably, fuelled by growing exports of minerals, coal, gas and food, and the provision of educational training and tourism, mainly to markets in East Asia.

A major outcome is the transformation of the state-society relationship, increasing the role and power of the private domestic and foreign corporate sector in the control of the state’s domestic and foreign policy. Greater political power of US economic and military interests in Australia has paralleled the expansion of Australia’s security state and the rise of an authoritarian policy agenda geared to control and manage the population. It has been accompanied by more legal power given to intelligence authorities over the population as well as severe restrictions on what can be said and published. Secrecy in government activities increasingly denies citizens’ sovereign rights to know what their government does in their name, resulting in a serious democratic deficit and decline, and the rise of public distrust of the state and media (ANU 2019; Toohey 2019; Ziffer 2023). This trend has been exacerbated by growing social inequality in the distribution of income and wealth, affecting Australians health and quality of life outcomes.

AUKUS’ Australian geostrategy is to put in place the military institutional framework and assets for warfare as part of the US imperial project for global domination. As such, Australia is bound to undertake a function which is both global and regional in scope. The end purpose is to gain control of the Eurasian continent and regime change both Russia and China. Australia is thus committed to be a core country in the US global strike force activities, undertaking an agreed to and special function in its immediate region, including Southeast Asia and Pacific neighbours. Australia’s role as a US protectorate state requires the deployment of military assets consisting of bases, weaponry and supplies, putting in place the production capacity to construct and operate these facilities, and execute war plans to meet objectives dictated by US military and economic interests, further disempowering Australians of their sovereign rights.

The country is now undertaking the weaponisation of the continent, carrying out war games and constructing a modern range of weaponry and military installations to wage warfare on behalf of the US. It will eventually include a large array of weapons of mass destruction, including long-range missiles, US nuclear submarines and strategic bombers, and the expanding role of military contractors. Militarisation dominates the growth of northern Australia with the emplacement of airbases and the stationing of US Marine expeditionary forces. Darwin’s militarisation is likely to expand with the location of a US mission planning and operational centre, further locking-in Australia in a war between China and the US (Grigg 2023). The north is also the location of Pine Gap, a vital US-controlled communication facility and an integral part of the US war-fighting machine.

It is part of the newly established Australian Defence Space Command function, integrating Pine Gap in the US space fighting domain in the deployment of offensive and defensive space systems, targeting both Russia and China (Fallon 2022; Paul 2021b). Pine Gap controls a set of geostrategic satellites positioned above the Indian Ocean and Indonesia. It also functions in the US assassination by drone program (Paul 2018: 144–145). Other major sites include operating bases for US nuclear submarines in the southern part of the continent and the North West Cape communications base on Western Australia’s southern coast at Exmouth. As of December 2023, the US government had agreed to transfer four US Virginia-class nuclear submarines to be stationed at HMAS Stirling, near Perth. It will build a low-level radioactive waste management facility and accommodation for more than 700 US personnel (Greene 2023). There are plans to use Australia’s Cocos (Keeling) and Christmas Islands in the Indian Ocean for spy planes and drones’ operations.

Australia’s militarisation is backed by US financial institutions and the military-industrial complex. Under AUKUS, US warrior corporations will further dominate the country’s economy and the militarisation of the continent and society. They are developing artificial intelligence (AI), transforming the country’s growing war machine with autonomous lethal weapons systems, known as ‘killer robots’, capable of targeting independently from human agency. These will swiftly be deployed by elite special forces and mercenary companies. Warrior corporations are transforming all aspects of Australian military and intelligence affairs and warfare against China, Russia and other countries. The country’s military budget’s commitment now exceeds $400 billion. It will largely benefit corporate income and power of corporations in Australia dominated by Anglo-American capital, including BAE Systems, Boeing, Google, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft and Raytheon. Australia’s increasingly costly and damaging war machine must necessarily expand at the expense of the wellbeing, social needs and security of all Australians, widening existing economic and political inequality.

As part of Australia-UK-US (AUKUS) trilateral security pact, the country is moving ahead to formalise an Asian NATO, consolidating the Anglosphere’s global power to maintain US hegemony over East and Southeast Asia and pursue a global strategy to gain control of Eurasia. Australia’s role in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) began in the early 1990s, participating in the dissolution of the former Yugoslav federation. It continued to expand in 2003 when NATO took command of the war in Afghanistan as a member of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. NATO and Australia reinforced their partnership in 2013, signing an Individual Partnership and Cooperation Programme (IPCP). It expanded NATO’s power to countries in the Asia–Pacific region, contracting Australia to construct an Asian NATO: the Pacific Asia Treaty Organization (PATO) with Japan, South Korea and minor allies in Southeast Asia, including the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, while India is being groomed as a potential ally by supplying it with uranium.

In partnership with NATO, Australia acts on behalf of the US, confronting Russia and putting pressure on the Russia–China economic and military alliance, undermining China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to create a continental economic and transport infrastructure. NATO is an essential part of the US war machine of domination and an essential core of AUKUS. It serves to retain control over Western Europe and expand NATO’s war machine eastwards in a strategy to dismantle the Russian Federation and gain control of Eurasia. Australia’s role in AUKUS is to further deploy the capacity of NATO, transforming it into a PATO, anchoring it with Japan, pushing to further engage in securing power with its Pacific and Southeast Asian neighbours. Australia’s protection is provided by the US nuclear umbrella and the expansion of US military power on the Australian continent. It provides Australia with the authority and hubris to influence and shape the affairs of ASEAN, becoming involved in Myanmar, the Philippines, Timor-Leste and elsewhere in the region. Papua New Guinea (PNG), a former Australian colonial possession, is likely to become increasingly involved in Australia’s geopolitical activities and security in the region.

At Singapore’s 2023 Shangri-La security dialogue, organised by the British International Institute for Strategic Studies, Prime Minister Albanese told the assembled leaders, thinkers and decision-makers that Australia as a middle power was committed to the promotion of peace and security in the region. But peace was not a gift, he said: ‘It’s never a given. It’s not the default setting of any part of the world. It has to be built, pursued, defended and upheld. And when nations such as ours choose to promote peace, we are not opting out from the big questions of security and stability’ (Albanese 2023). He added that Australia has collaborated in building a regional architecture critical to the stability of the region, recognising the centrality of ASEAN and the sovereign right of the nation to determine its own destiny.

Australia’s foreign policy, however, was committed to the centrality of Australia’s alliance with the US: ‘Ours has always been a bond of shared values and it remains a partnership of shared strategic interest – a common determination to preserve stability, prosperity and peace’ (ibid.). Albanese signalled that Australia’s AUKUS and participation in the Quad, with Japan and India, has not altered Australia’s support for ASEAN and the East Asia summit. He also assured the assembled leaders and influencers that, ‘Before I stood alongside President Biden and Prime Minister Sunak to announce Australia’s pathway to acquiring conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines, I ensured that my government spoke with every ASEAN and Pacific partner and many other nations’ (ibid).

AUKUS geostrategy is the main subject of Australia’s 2023 Defence Strategic Review (AGD 2023). In plain talk, it declares China as an enemy and that Australia must collaborate closely with the US to ‘defeat’ China’s rise to power and rising influence in the region. China is not considered a ‘democracy’ and therefore cannot be trusted to play by the ‘rules of the international community’. It implies that ‘our freedom’ is threaten if the Chinese are not freed from the Communist Party. China is a direct threat to the national interest of Australia and the West, and the country must be prepared and ready to wage war against China. Australia must become ready for a substantial military engagement outside the continent and conduct military operations in the Southeast Asia-Pacific region. The strategic review calls for building long-range military power, it signifies the possibility of conducting preventive war and covert operations in the region. It continues past policy since the end of the Cold War for Australia’s involvement in the countries of the region, including Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.

Prime Minister Albanese’s Labor administration foreign policy is increasingly framed in a ‘whole-of-nation’ and ‘whole-of-society’ approach. It suggests the primacy of foreign policy over domestic policy and need to manage and discipline the population’s engagement in the economy and the security of the region as part of AUKUS’ role in the US imperial project. Albanese’s Singapore presentation included a commitment by Australia ‘to a whole-of-nation effort’, choosing not ‘the smooth ride, or the passive course’ (ibid.). Discipline has become a key feature of Australia’s domestic engagement in the security of the region on behalf of US military and economic interests. It marked the primacy of AUKUS in Australia’s integration in the US military-industrial-surveillance complex and its expansion to secure control of the region and of its own population.

The US is weaponising global communication, gaining control over transmission networks and devices. The US has gained control over all the major pathways of the world economy that energise trade relations as well as other modes of interaction among people, organisations and states. It allows US authorities to spy on all nation-states and impose economic and other sanctions on individuals, businesses and states. Political scientists Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman show how the US has weaponised the world economy by gaining control of the communications pathways of the world economy, spying on all countries (Farrell and Newman 2023). It explains why the Pacific’s underseas network of fibre optic cables, linking the US to the Eurasian continent and Australia, is targeted as a vital geostrategic region, weaponising AUKUS’ policy to closely manage the island states of the region.

The whole of the nation approach, structuring Australia in the AUKUS military alliance, integrates the weaponisation of Australian trade and other relations with the rest of the world. It follows US geostrategic policy to weaponise economic relations with the rest of the world. It involves a range of sanctions, including export controls and trade embargos, restrictions on foreign direct investment, travel bans. Financial sanctions are also deployed, including the freezing of public and private assets. The University of Sydney’s political economist Jessica Whyte writes about the power of US Presidents to seize the assets of foreign government, including their foreign reserves (Whyte 2022: 16–17). US power to dominate the world economy is weaponised in the US power of extraterritorial jurisdiction in a ploy to punish adversaries and dominate the world economy.

Australia has imposed a range of sanctions against Russia, ‘in response to the Russian threat to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine’ (DFAT 2023a). The imposition of sanctions began in 2014 and were expanded in 2015, 2022 and 2023. They included restrictions on export and import of certain goods and the provision of services, as well as on the assets of designated persons or entities, as well a travel bans on designated individuals (ibid.). Australia trade war against China began in 2018 when Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull banned Chinese telcos Huawei and ZTE from providing 5G technology. Banning China from supplying equipment for the next generation of the Five-Eyes nations is widely viewed as part of a global struggle among great powers for the control of markets and technology. The economic war being waged between the US and China in the growth of global markets and infrastructure is a clash of capitalisms, hiding the rise and struggle of great and nationalistic powers (Paul 2019).

The’whole-of-nation’ approach is being mobilised by Australia’s new international development policy of the AsiaPacific4D think tank (AP4D). It represents a ‘whole-of-government’ agenda to integrate Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands neighbouring states in Australia’s economic growth and geostrategic planning. It constitutes a critical aspect in the implementation of AUKUS purpose to dominate the region on behalf of US national security and economic interests. AP4D is funded by the Australian Council for International Development (ACID), the International Development Contractors Community (IDCC) and Australian National University (ANU). AP4D partners include the Australian Government’s Civil-Military Centre (ACMC) and the Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Canberra. It has developed close relations with right-wing think tanks, including the Australian Security Policy Institute (ASIP), the Lowly Institute and the University of Sydney’s US Studies Centre, as well as with several corporations.

In 2022, the Labor government signalled the increasing role of the state to secure society’s consent and support for AUKUS. The government is taking serious steps to increase equality, improving labour share of the national income and reforming industrial relations, without threatening the core of neoliberal capitalism’s role in economic growth and corporate profitability. It is addressing the corruption that became ingrained in more than 10 years of Liberal coalition government, including the cancellation of PwC government contract for selling government confidential information on taxation to overseas private clients (Chenoweth and Tadros 2023). The imperatives of a ‘whole-of-nation’ implementation of foreign policy and defence geostrategy are being mobilised by a ‘whole-of-government’ to leverage all the elements of the nation’s power to advance AUKUS goals, including the Asia–Pacific Development, Diplomacy and Defence Dialogue (AP4D 2022), the universities and media campaigns by the mainstream press. It reflects the defence strategic review urgent need to leverage ‘all elements of national power’ and ‘that statecraft must be driven and directed by a clear sense of national strategy and coordinated across government through a clear holistic national strategic approach’ (AG 2023: 3, 34).

Australian public universities are an integral part of the system in the country’s relations with the region, particularly in the case of Southeast Asia. The region, including Australia’s Pacific islands neighbours, is central to Australia’s foreign relation. It is viewed as the fastest growing region in the world, driving global economic growth to mid-century and critical to Australia’s prosperity and security. Australia’s policy is to become a major supplier of agricultural commodities, minerals and energy, and expand educational program, attracting more students from the region. Accordingly, universities must be organised to play a bigger role as a major provider for Southeast Asia’s educational and training needs (DFAT 2023b). The ‘whole-of-nation’ policy provides avenues for lucrative contracts for Australian companies and military contractors as well as avenues to establish close contacts and intelligence relations with regional political and economic leaders and influencers.

Geostrategic defence of Australia’s ‘whole-of-nation’ policy implies the securitisation and discipline of the population, increasing the role of the national security state in the surveillance of the population and the neutralisation of dissent. This was dramatically played out in June 2019 when the Australian Federal Police (AFP) raided the Sydney office of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) to execute a warrant to search for evidence that a crime had been committed by the public broadcaster by having in its possession secret documents. Similar warrants were executed in the search of a journalist’s home in Melbourne. Warrants are issued in secret to allow the AFP and other state institutions to raid premises, seize material and arrest individuals. The ABC was accused of having information about the role of Australian special forces in Afghanistan in killing unarmed men and children. News Corp’s journalist Annika Smethurst had published a story on the Australian Signals Directorate’s planned spying operations on all Australians.

The raids illustrated the increasing powers of the state to punish and stop journalists who publish stories about the activities of the state that are in the public’s interest to know (Wroe and Hunter 2019). Public universities have also been subjected to increased surveillance and security legislation to discipline their staff and for contractors to vet them and post-graduate students for activities detrimental to the safety of the country. According to journalist Brian Toohey, ‘the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), aided and abetted by the nation’s universities is attacking core scholarly values that stress the importance of sharing research without government censorship’ (Toohey 2021). Other draconian legislation has been passed to prohibit public manifestation and forms of civil disobedience, targeting environmental movements growing concern about Australia’s environmental degradation and signs of mass extinction. This is particularly important given the increasing concern of the population of the disastrous impact of climate change on their welfare and living conditions.

AUKUS’ geopolitics are seeding grounds for war in the Asia–Pacific. NATO’s eastwards expansion resulted in the Ukraine war. US national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, organiser of the entrapment of Soviet forces in Afghanistan, described Ukraine’s independence as a necessity for US strategy to control the affairs of Eurasia and the decentralisation of Russia, ‘composed of a European Russia, a Siberian Republic, and a Far Eastern Republic, and both may require for the US to organize a confrontation over Ukraine’ (Brzezinski 1997: 202). Australia’s dangerous overt and covert activities in the region will increase the level of provocation and subsequent military clashes. Australia’s treaty obligation in AUKUS-PATO will only fuel the level of tension in the Asia–Pacific, building up to another devastating global war. Australia’s current geopolitical belligerent policy should be reversed to establish an independent and coherent program in collaboration with China and ASEAN, engaging in a progressive program of economic infrastructure and social development of the region.

The advent of AUKUS reflects the consolidation and concentration of power in the Prime Minister’s office. State power has been captured by neoconservative power of corporation and a militarised class of warrior pledged to US national security and financial interests. The deep state is based on the growing power of the military combined with the power of capital, deepening the concentration of power in Australia’s Prime Minister’s Office (Paul 2020: 98). Together with the British Crown, it holds sole power to wage war, conduct secret special overseas military operations by intelligence agents and special forces, and drone assassinations. As Commander-in-Chief of Australia’s military, King Charles III and the Governor General of Australia will continue to hold special reserve and war powers, further denying the sovereign political rights of all Australians.

State Terrorism

Political philosopher Noam Chomsky argues for the need ‘to apply to ourselves the principle of universality: we apply to ourselves the same standards we apply to others, if not more stringent ones’ (Chomsky 2003: 187). This applies to the concept of terror and terrorism. A US Army manual defines terrorism as: ‘the calculated use of violence or threat of violence to attain goals that are political, religious, or ideological in nature … through intimidation, coercion or instilling fear’ (ibid.: 188). The British government says that ‘terrorism is the use, or threat, or action which is violent, damaging or disrupting, and is intended to influence the government or intimidate the public and is for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, or ideological cause’ (ibid.). Chomsky applies the US definition of terrorism in his writing on the war on terror since the Reagan administration came into office in 1981, declaring ‘that a war on terror would be the centre piece of its foreign policy’ (ibid).

Chomsky’s designated the US as the ‘world’s biggest terrorist’ and the greatest threat to world peace (Kumar 2015). The US, he says, is not interested in reducing the threat of nuclear war. It has orchestrated the worst terrorist campaign in the world, assassinating people designated as enemies by drones and terrorising entire population as in Yemen. In the aftermath of 9/11, the US was involved in a global campaign of rendition, arresting and torturing suspects in many countries, including Egypt, Morocco, Poland and Thailand. Most of Europe, he says, collaborated with the US in the arrest and detention of suspects. US demonisation of political leaders, including Vladimir Putin, is standard Orwellian fanaticism. US policy to expand NATO, argues Chomsky in 2015, was meant to provoke war with Russia, knowing that Russia would react in the same way the US reacted when Russia emplaced nuclear weapons in Cuba in 1962. The US, he says, is committed to low-intensity warfare which is by definition a form of terrorism, ‘the coercive means aimed at the civilian populations in an effort to achieve political, religious, or other aims’ (Chomsky 2001).

It raises the issue of the role of Australia’s state terrorism in foreign policy in tune with the US’ counterrevolutionary global campaign against communism in the Cold War and the imposition of a neoliberal world order in the post-cold war era. It could begin with the US government involvement in Indonesia’s military coup against Sukarno in 1965, killing a million innocent civilians, in its effort to eliminate the largest community party outside China and the Soviet Union (Bevins 2020). Australia was complicit in General Suharto’s overthrow of the Sukarno regime and the mass killings of civilians that followed. The Hague International People's Tribunal on the 1965 Crimes Against Humanity found that: ‘The United States of America, the United Kingdom and Australia were all complicit to different degrees in the commission of these crimes against humanity’ (Yosephine 2016). It involved the direct role of the Australian embassy in Jakarta in collaboration with the US in backing Suharto’s military in the destruction of the communist party in Indonesia (Kim 2002:80).

Robert Menzies, Australia’s Anglophile Prime Minister, lied to Parliament when he shipped an infantry battalion to South Vietnam, saying that the insurgency in southern Vietnam ‘must be seen as part of a thrust by Communist China between the Indian and Pacific Oceans’ (Lockhart 2011: 25). He also lied when he told Parliament that, ‘the Australian Government is now in receipt of a request from the Government of South Vietnam for further military assistance’ (Sexton 1981: 187–120). The US war in Vietnam resulted in ‘the destruction of 2.2 million hectares of forest and farmland’ (Osborne 1992: 218). Aerial spraying with Agent Orange and other herbicides and defoliants covered some 10% of the country area and 50% of its forest and mangrove areas, and between 2.1 million and 4.8 million people were directly affected (Gendreau 2006; Stellman et al. 2003). By Vietnamese estimate, during the American period of the war, ‘3 million civilians were killed outright, 300,000 people were missing, 4.4 million wounded, and 2 million were harmed by toxic chemicals’, and the land was ravaged ‘by bombs, Rome Plows, and chemical weapons’ (Herman 2010: 10). Hans Morgenthau, a founder of the discipline of International Relations, said the war was ‘a murderous crime and that those responsible for it should face war crimes trials’ (Burchill 2005). Former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser regretted the war, and Vietnam veteran General Peter Cosgrove declared in 2002, when he was chief of the Australian Defence Force, that Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War was a mistake (Metherell 2002).

The Australian government participation in the invasion and occupation of both Iraq and Afghanistan in 2002 and 2003 constitute wilful acts of state terrorism. Andrew Wilkie, Member of Parliament and former infantry officer posted at Australia’s Office of National Assessments, said that the Iraq war was based on a lie and that former Prime Minister Howard should be tried at the International Criminal Court for conspiracy to mass murder (Jabour 2014). He maintains that:

The circumstances in Iraq today are a direct result of the anarchy and the security vacuum that was created, that has been created in this country as a result of 11.5 years of war, a war that was started in part by the Australian government and John Howard in particular. If we had not gone to war 11.5 years ago, and destroyed that country and created this security vacuum, then the circumstances would not exist for Islamic State to have emerged and to grow strong and to conquer the land that it does. So yes, they are responsible. (ibid).

State terrorism was also perpetuated in Australia’s involvement in Afghanistan as part of President George W. Bush ‘war on terror’. Journalist Brian Toohey has written extensively on the role of Australian special forces in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere in the world, and of the killing of civilians and children by commando forces, raising the concern about the ‘desensitisation’ of some members who also kill unarmed men and children (Toohey 2019). He writes of the death of innocent civilians ‘caused by an institutional shift in culture that contributed to the decay of moral and ethical values towards armed conflict’ (ibid.: 289). Photos have been published in recent years of Australian soldiers in Afghanistan displaying a Nazi swastika flag, and on other missions a confederate flag, the emblem and rallying flag of US white supremacists (Willacy and Blucher 2020). Paul Brereton, an Australian senior judge, reported of crimes against humanity by Commandos and Special Air Service Regiment (SAS) soldiers in the execution of unarmed prisoners and defenceless Afghans.

Blowback operations are responses to state terrorism. The term blowback, writes political scientist Chalmers Johnson, was used by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to refer to ‘the unintended consequences of policies that were kept secret from the American people’ (Johnson 2000: 8). The 1988 bombing of PAA flight 101, for example, ‘was retaliation for a 1986 Reagan administration aerial raid on Libya that killed President Muammar Khadafi’s stepdaughter’ (ibid.). The September 2001 attacks on the US, commonly known as 9/1, were another blowback operation for the US clandestine operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, secretly arming Afghan freedom fighters ‘to wage a proxy war against the Soviet Union, which involved the recruitment and training of militants from all over the Islamic world’ (Johnson 2010: 14). Australian journalist and peace activist John Pilger blamed the 2002 Bali bombing on American and Australian terrorism carried out in Indonesia for the past 40 years (Pilger 2002). What is missing in the crimes of state terrorism by Australia, the US and the West generally is the absence of justice. The Nuremberg and Tokyo war trials at the end of the World War Two hanged German and Japanese leaders for crimes against humanity. If these laws had been applied to Anglo-American and Australian leaders, according to Noam Chomsky, ‘they would have been hanged’ (Chomsky 1990). The world cannot achieve peace until the West applies to itself and their leaders the same standards they apply to others. There cannot be peace without justice.

Australia is increasingly engaged in military and intelligence operations in the region, involving military and state security assets. Australia’s state terrorism is built in the current warfare planning against China, Russia and Iran as part AUKUS’ strategy of global domination. Australia’s total engagement with US geostrategy runs the risk of being further deeply engaged in overt and covert military operations designed to provoke a response from affected states, including China. These could result in blowbacks against Australia, including terrorist attacks in Australia as well the more intense theatres of war in the region, including in the Philippines and the South China Sea. While seemingly in support of democracy and freedom, Australia’s geostrategy is directed by US national economic and security interests to secure the control of regional nation-states and their inclusion in a Western-based security and economic alliance. Its purpose is to assure the creation and existence of collaborating political regimes. As a result, Australia’s geostrategy is geared to support the region’s counterrevolutionary movements and governments in a war to control the Eurasian continent and to regime change China, balkanising its territorial integrity.

It explains Australia’s supportive relations with right-wing political regimes in the region, including Brunei, the Philippines, Thailand and Singapore, and keenness to manage the affairs of the Association of Southeast Asian States (ASEAN). It is exemplified in the case of the Philippines where Australia’s political and military engagement has significantly increased in recent times because it is viewed as a pivot state in PATO’s war against China. Australia expanded its military engagement in the Philippines during Prime Minister Turnbull administration. He initiated Operation Augury in 2017 as one of Australia’s most intensive uses of force in the region, sending special forces to the southern Philippines against Islamic and separatist movements, backing the neo-fascist government of Philippines’ government of Rodrigo Duterte. Australian intelligence, air cover and special troops intervened in the Philippines’ southern Mindanao during the battle for the control of the city of Marawi against Islamic separatist insurgents, killing more than 1000 people (Fonbuena 2018; Jennett 2018).

Labor Prime Minister Albanese went to the Philippines in 2022 to support newly elected President Ferdinand Marcos’ anti-China policy and the Philippines’ maritime claims, upgrading their relationship to a strategic partnership. It was a commitment for the Australian navy to play an important role in the defence of the Philippines, securing its contested territorial and maritime domain (Hurst 2023). Australia defends the maritime claims of the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam against China’s maritime and military expansion in the South China Sea, deploying naval units to support the US naval operations, provoking China’s response in kind (Paul 2018: 86–91). Under President Marcos’ rule, the Philippines is likely to further advance a right-wing authoritarian regime, deepening the country’s embedment in US’ geostrategy against China (Bello 2022). The deployment of Australian naval units in the South China Sea in support of the Philippines’ political regime could become more assertive, provoking the escalation of a violent military engagement between Australia and China.

Climate change’s existential threat to humanity raises the issue of state violence structured in the unequal relations and uneven development of nation-states. State terrorism is built in the wealth and power of affluent countries in relations with poorer ones, or most nation-states in the existing world system. It is structured in the per capita income and consumption of material resources and greenhouse gas emissions of Western countries. There exists a vast inequality in the energy use and greenhouse gas emissions between rich and poor countries (Richtie 2022). Wealth and carbon inequality in the world is rapidly increasing. Research by Oxfam and the Stockholm Environment Institute shows that ‘the richest 1% of the population produced as much carbon pollution in one year as the 5 billion people who make up the poorest two-thirds’ (Watts 2023). The IEA reports that in 2021,

the average North American emitted 11 times more energy-related CO2 than the average African. Yet variations across income groups are even more significant. The top 1% of emitters globally each had carbon footprints of over 50 tonnes of CO2 in 2021, more than 1000 times greater than those of the bottom 1% of emitters. (Cozzi, L. et al. 2023).

In short, planet earth constitutes the whole and rightful ‘homeland’ and commons to all humans. Their ‘natural’ right derives from their existence and evolutionary history embedded in their common genetic inheritance and the contribution of past generations in constructing the world that we know and live in today. State terrorism is built on the continuation of warfare among humans structured in their segregation into nation-states, where the powerful and rich Western nations have attained control of the world order, fighting for global domination, threatening humans with nuclear war.

State terrorism is inherent in the denial of environmental or climate security and justice to most of the world’s population. It is constructed in Western militarism and war, prioritising their national security to the exclusion of all else (Monbiot 2022; NIC 2021; Townsend and Harris 2004). It is embedded in the US military objective of total dominance of space and aerospace. Australia’s militarisation under the new geopolitical regime of AUKUS is weaponising the climate crisis, advancing US political and economic interests, further denying social justice to most of the world’s population, including in the neighbouring nations in the Pacific and Southeast Asia. AUKUS is likely to intensify a global struggle for power, further deteriorating international relations. It will magnify Australia’s repressive security state, further weakening democracy and the peaceful resolution of existing internal and external struggle for power.

Global social and climate justice requires a shift in mindset and policy orientation (Buxton 2021; Chomsky 2020). It demands an urgent and comprehensive programme of emissions reduction by the richest and most polluting countries and a Green New Deal. The West, including Australia, must put in place the rapid decarbonisation of their economies and a major redistribution of wealth, transferring all the resources necessary to secure the wellbeing and viability of the poorest nations. Australia has a critical role to play in stabilising the existing power struggle between China and the US. It can only do so as an independent and sovereign country, requiring the revocation of the AUKUS military alliance and the regionalisation of a plan to secure the common good of the population together with the peaceful resolution of the conflict with China.

Weaponising Climate Change

The US foreign policy establishment’s decision to militarise the country’s response to climate change has critical implications for Australia’s future viability as a nation-state. The establishment’s conclusion was that global warming would destabilise the earth’s existing economic and political system and present a real threat to the viability of the US, warning of the potential of ‘climate wars’ (Crawford 2022). In response, the US prepared for this eventuality and for the US military-industrial complex to secure the continuity of the US republic and population’s capacity to dominate the rest of the world. It meant that US overseas bases to protect the North American continent were no longer a sufficient shield to protect Americans and the state from climate change. In the militarisation of climate change and the perpetuation of a policy of engaging its enemies, the US geostrategy has moved to annex the Australian continent, securing a more permanent territorial base for the survival of the US. It became a reality for Australians when Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced in September 2021 that Australia, the UK and the US had formed AUKUS—a new security partnership, requiring Australia to spend more than $300bn for the acquisition of US nuclear submarines.

The Australian Senate recognises that climate change now threatens the future of Australia (AG 2018). An existential threat was defined as ‘one that threatens the premature extinction of Earth-originating intelligent life or the permanent and drastic destruction of its potential for desirable future development’ (ibid.: 10). Climate change is a current and existential national security risk to Australia, the Senate inquiry told Parliament. It threatens Australians’ health, businesses and the economy, one that ‘could inflame regional conflicts over food, water and land, and even imperil life on Earth’ (Doherty 2018). It confirms that: ‘The Asia–Pacific was the region “most vulnerable” to the security and humanitarian impacts of climate change, and that Australia faced an “existential threat”’ (AG 2018; Doherty 2018).

The Senate committee inquiry heard that climate change is acting as a ‘threat multiplier’ by compounding existing threats in the region. Departmental representatives agreed climate change is exacerbating existing threats to human security, ‘including geopolitical, socioeconomic, water, energy, food and health challenges that diminish resilience and increase the likelihood of conflict’ (AG 2018: 18). Australia’s security will be severely affected by the impact of climate change on the region. It is likely to: ‘impede economic development, drive additional displacement of people and, if left unchecked, add to global stresses on the supply of food and water. Many countries in Australia's immediate region, especially small island states and those with large delta cities, will be increasingly affected’ (ibid: 7).

Australia’s region is already experiencing severe damage from rising sea levels, extreme weather and volcanic eruptions. These events are likely to accelerate and uproot millions of people, creating waves of environmental refugees seeking asylum in Australia and other countries. The United Nations University Institute for Environment and Security (UNU-EHS) World Risk Index lists countries facing natural and human disaster and the displacement of large numbers of people, including Solomon Islands, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia and Bangladesh (UN 2015). According to a final draft report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), ‘hundreds of millions of people will be affected by coastal flooding and land loss as global temperatures rise, ice caps melt, and sea levels rise’ (McKie 2014). Rise in day and night temperature will further lower yields of major crop such as rice, wheat and maize.

While the real threat of climate is becoming more clearly defined and measured, a 2023 report by the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries argues that the world has left it too late to address climate change incrementally (Trust et al. 2023). There exists the growing threat of tipping points thresholds, which once crossed, trigger irreversible changes, causing further warming. It says that: ‘Exceeding 1.5 °C global warming could trigger multiple climate tipping points. Tipping points are particularly important as, if triggered, we may find the climate moves into a different state that we no longer have the ability to control’ (ibid.:1 2). Climate science suggests that there is a level of global warming ‘that will cause significant loss of GDP’ (ibid: 17). The report argues that the financial and business sector is unprepared for the coming changes to the climate and the risk of a hot-house world. There are significant weaknesses in their approach to the role of the insurance and pension markets, underplaying the threat to the banking sector. Their study points out the reality of scientists’ prediction of the significant reduction of human habitability from global warming. Some scientists predict warming of 0.3 °C per decade or around 1 °C every 30 years, implying warming greater than 2 °C by 2050 and 3 °C by 2080, well within the life expectancy of younger Australians alive today. It would translate in the likely destruction of 50% of the global GDP between 2070 and 2090 (ibid: 26). Many parts of the world will become inhabitable.

Simon Sharpe, a Senior Fellow at the World Resources Institute, argues that the world needs to decarbonise the global economy five times faster than presently (Sharpe 2023). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2023 report warns that the world is failing to respond strongly enough to the growing climate crisis. Sharpe argues that the world needs to decline emissions intensity by around 8% per year, or five times faster than today to reach net-zero emissions by mid-century. Cleaner alternatives to fossil fuels must be adopted at a faster rate, including electric vehicles. He maintains that many scientists, politicians and economists and their think tanks are hampering needed change to further reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, the financial sector is not sufficiently involved in seriously tackling climate change and continues business-as-usual policy.

Nevertheless, as in the case of Australia, the banking sector is beginning to seriously consider the implications of the country global warming on the function and viability of the banking sector in Australia. The Reserve Bank of Australia has warned that Australian banks could face an unprecedented wave of threats, including a rush of withdrawals in the coming decade (Hannam 2023). The risks in the next decade will surface with a different complexion, driven by social media and mobilised by digital transfers. The bank also warned that overseas conflict is likely to fray domestic support and spread domestic stress and fear, reducing local support for international cooperation. However, Australia’s role in AUKUS is likely to dictate national planning to decarbonise the economy. It will increasingly define the transition in the context of the power of US corporate capital and investment in Australia.

When elected in May 2022, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 43% by 2030. Chris Bowen, the new Minister for Climate and Energy, introduced a bill in Parliament in July to commit the government to reduce Australia’s net greenhouse gas emissions to 43% below 2005 levels by 2030 and to zero by 2050. He declared that Australia had ‘the resources, the capability and the know-how to become a clean energy superpower’ (Foley and Massola 2022). In September 2022, with the support of the Greens, the newly elected Labor government enacted to reduce Australia’s net greenhouse gas emissions to 43% below 2005 levels by 2030 and zero by 2050, providing annual climate change statements (PA 2022). By the end of 2023, however, the Albanese Labor government had already approved many gas and coal projects, further putting at risk reaching planned and legislated goals.

AUKUS is likely to further influence the powerful fossil fuels domestic and foreign lobby on the country’s governance, continuing the power it displayed in previous governments. Anti-environmentalism in Australia gained traction in the 1980s, influenced by the climate deniers in both the UK and the US embedded in a powerful political movement to convert Australia to the doctrine of economic rationalism. At the time, climate science and concern about the impact of greenhouse gases on growth and the wellbeing of people was firmly established in the public mind. Macquarie University climatologists Ann Henderson-Sellers and Russell Blong wrote that ‘the awareness of the greenhouse issue is probably greater amongst the general public in Australia than in any other country in the world’ (Henderson-Sellers and Blong 1989: 155). Growing public and political concern led the Hawke Labor federal government to establish in October 1990 ‘an interim emission reduction target for the nation to lower greenhouse gas emissions 20 percent below 1988 levels by 2005’ (Taylor 2014: xii).

Neoconservative forces were eventually able to turn public opinion around, using tactics furthered by the tobacco industry and gain the ascendancy in their war against environmentalists. The campaign was successfully carried out by right-wing think tanks, the Murdoch media, mining and other corporate groups, and scientists largely funded by the coal and oil industry in Australia and offshore. Lobby groups, such as the Minerals Council of Australia and the Business Council of Australia, played a significant role in the media war and power play in support of the country’s major polluters (Cahill 2004; Hamilton 2014; Pearse 2007; Taylor 2014). More important was the capture of Canberra’s bureaucracy and power. Sociologist Michael Pusey’s 1991 study of Canberra’s bureaucracy showed how far the ideology of economic rationalism had converted the senior ranks of the federal bureaucracy and economists to influence their political masters (Pusey 1991). The ascendancy of neoconservative power led to the 1996 election of the John Howard government, to further the privatisation of public assets and power and advance business welfare policy based on the Industry Commission’s modelling of economic rationalism.

During his ten-year hold on office, Prime Minister John Howard (1996–2007) pursued the politics of fear, declaring war on Iraq and environmentalism. He lauded the benefits of the mining boom, witnessing record production in earnings and exports of iron ore and coal. Another Prime Minister, Tony Abbott (2013–2015), said that the climate crisis was ‘absolute crap’ (Sheperd 2023). The politics of growth, free markets and unending material consumption have continued uninterrupted in more recent times. Australian climate change denial policy can be sourced to powerful US lobbies. Many Australian parliamentarians in the coalition government have been groomed by US climate denier think tanks such as the Heartland Institute, and the mass media controlled by the Murdoch empire, including the Wall Street Journal and Fox News (Readfearn 2016). The US elected an outright climate denier in 2016 to be their president. Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org, writes that ‘America is sadly joining Australia as two rogue developed nations openly thrashing global climate efforts’ (McKibben 2017). Both political leaders chose to use their power in pursuit of a dangerous ideological agenda against the scientific evidence and the Paris climate agreement, and without a mandate from their electorate or the world at large, to threaten the survival of humans on earth.

Under AUKUS, Australian governance will come under greater US ideological influence shaped by ‘American exceptionalism’ and the belief in a manifest destiny to save the world from evil. The reality hides an excessive hubris embedded in the power and force of the military-industrial-surveillance complex. It is coupled in a crusading and missionary Christian protestant tradition, hiding in the myth of The Secret Destiny of America (1944). Manly Hall’s book inspired President Ronald Reagan’s 1989 farewell speech to the nation when the spoke of the US as the ‘shining city’ blessed by God (Hall 2008; Wikipedia 2022). More recently, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo proclaimed that America ‘will overcome any challenge from Communist China and to the terrorist regime in Teheran’ because ‘we are that shining city on a hill’ (Wikipedia 2022). AUKUS risks creating this sense of destiny and kinship with America, forging a crusader racist mentality with the right to conquer the world in the name of liberty, while hiding the reality of the making of a Leviathan state on the road to barbarity and World War Three.

Australia’s secretive military pact with the US and UK (AUKUS) is an offensive Anglosphere war megamachine shield from global warming growing human and political upheavals, expanding inequity in global governance. Climate change constitutes an existential threat to humanity and a peaceful world order. US’ satellite states are uniting, strategising to secure their borders and economies from both internal and external threats. AUKUS embodies the geopolitics of an armed lifeboat against the rest of the world, expanding their sovereign and private wealth against all others. A garrison mindset is being constructed to protect national homelands from growing waves of climate and war refugees. AUKUS consolidates the power of the Anglosphere, securing US global hegemony. It frames the reality of racial prejudice of the new global order in the age of the Anthropocene.

AUKUS’ power is to execute a strategy of global domination directed specifically at controlling the Eurasian continent. Australian national security’s panopticon state undermines democracy, militarising the continent for more wars. US’ Australian garrison is rapidly expanding. Northern Australia is the major staging area for military operations in the Asia–Pacific. Australian domestic and foreign policy is increasingly dominated by the geopolitics of the Anglosphere to dominate the world and contain China, Russia and other countries. The Anglosphere’s eastern NATO expansion aims to regime change and balkanise their territorial integrity. US’ militarisation of the Australian state and continent is expanding with the deployment of missiles and nuclear-armed bombers in the north, and nuclear-armed submarines based in Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia. It will further bloat Australia’s military and surveillance budget and power. AUKUS will deepen Australian social inequality and fuel Sinophobia.

US war planning integrates Australian continental assets to survive in the Age of the Anthropocene. The emplacement of US war assets, including nuclear submarines, bombers and missiles, is critical to the survival of the US. The US also requires Australia’s continental location to weaponise space and gain control of the earth and where Pine Gap’s communication-surveillance station in the Northern Territory is critical to its global strategy of ‘full-spectrum dominance’. It was defined in 2001 by the US Department of Defense as: ‘The cumulative effect of dominance in the air, land, maritime, and space domains and information environment, which includes cyberspace, that permits the conduct of joint operations without effective opposition or prohibitive interference’ (US 2023). It requires US control of the Australian state to successfully pursue a global strategy to contain China and other threats to the survival of the US’ nation-state, maintaining North America’s continental territorial integrity.

The US is a dangerous nation and ally, compromising Australian democracy and independence as a nation-state. US national security in the age of the Anthropocene is based on the securitisation of the North American continent, waging war to acquire and maintain preeminent power over rivals outside its sovereign territory. US strategic manifest destiny is the doctrine driving the militarisation of the Australian continent, shielding the US homeland and the political power of the dominant elite. Continental Australia is a pawn and critical asset in US war plan to militarise space and dominate the earth. US policy to dominate space continues with the addition of a Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability (DARC), contributing to the Space Domain Awareness (SDA) program (Webb 2023). US Space Force continues to upgrade its ground telescopes surveillance, including a site in Western Australia (ibid).

The US military is preparing to fight in space, including orbital skirmishes, developing anti-satellite technologies to counter threats from Russia and China (Semple 2023). Michael Green, former George W. Bush foreign policy adviser and University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre chief executive, predicts the US will become more dependent on Australia for its military operations and intelligence (Curran 2022). The AUKUS agreement, Green confirmed, ‘means that Canberra is going to need the US industrial and technology base in an “entirely new way”. In return, the US will rely on Australia as a physical base for its Indo-Pacific defence strategy’ (ibid.). These matters will eventually become part of the AUKUS legal treaty framework, expanding US power over the Australian state. Malcolm Fraser, Prime Minister of Australia from 1975 to 1983, argued that Australia has lost its independence when it allowed itself to become increasingly enmeshed in the US military and intelligence megamachine, giving full support for whatever it does and wants (Fraser 2014a, 2014b). Fraser wanted Australia to be subservient to no one and advocated, ‘nothing less than the end of Australia’s military alliance with the US’ and warned: ‘cut US military ties or risk war with China’ (ibid).

Australia’s October 2023 referendum to give a Voice to the country’s First Nations was defeated. Sixty per cent voted NO. Eminent historian Henry Reynolds concluded that, ‘Australia remains chained to its heritage of White Australia’ (Reynolds 2023). Rejection of the attempt to recognise Aboriginal people in the country’s constitution is a serious blow to reconciliation, and ending systemic discrimination in economic and health outcomes. Hostility against Aboriginal Nations continues past years of warfare and killing of First Nations people (Reynolds 2013). Hostility against them was particularly vitriolic among white Australians in north Australia, suggesting that the war to dispossess them had not ended. Northern Australia has become a critical region in Australian politics. The northern half of Australia with a population of less than two million constitutes the country’s major source of wealth in trade revenues from the exploitation of mineral, oil and gas deposits and the production of food. It made the political and personal fortunes of well-known white settler families. Reynolds’ truth-telling remind the reader that their money, power and status were rewards for ‘their roles in the destruction of Aboriginal society over vast areas of the continent’ (Reynolds 2021: 221). The truths about them, however, ‘are rarely celebrated, commemorated or even discussed’ (ibid).

Northern Australia is now a critical region in Australia’s engagement in the US imperial project of world domination. As part of AUKUS, the country is militarising northern Australia, hosting US forces and advanced weaponry in a geostrategy to confront China and gain full control of the Eurasian continent. AUKUS will enable US corporations and capital markets further access to the mineral and energy wealth of northern Australia. Under AUKUS, Australians will become firmly engaged in joint development to advance capabilities between the three countries. It is designed towards the interoperability among them in electronic warfare, command control, advancing their technological capabilities in defence, security and export control. These will further northern Australia critical role in AUKUS’ construction of a Leviathan state to dominate the world.

The militarisation of northern Australia by AUKUS is likely to confront the fact that ‘vast areas of the north are now controlled by the traditional owners and that includes both land and the sea’ (Reynolds 2023). The Constitutional Convention at Uluru in May 2007, the largest consensus of First Nations peoples on a proposal for substantive recognition in Australian history, declared that the sovereignty over their land has never been ceded or extinguished and co-exist with the sovereignty of the Crown (Uluru 2007). First Nations’ land, says Reynolds, ‘is also occupied more completely now that at any time since the British invasion’ (ibid.). First Nations people have control of most of the northern coastline, including many strategic offshore islands. They also have closer relationships with people north of Australia than in the south and are likely to strongly object to the militarisation of their homeland and the existential threat of a nuclear war. They are also likely to invoke the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People to protect and advance their political and human rights.

Militarism’s rise in Australia exposes the failure of the left, further engrossing Australia’s vassalage to US national economic and political interests. The Albanese Labor government is pushing ahead with former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s forward defence policy against China, imposing a massive arms build-up on society (Toohey 2009). Albanese’s governance is failing to reverse this situation, expanding the influence of the US with the support of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) endorsement of AUKUS war pact at their 2023 Brisbane Labor Federal Conference. The government has refused to defend whistleblowers, including David McBride, who faces prosecution for revealing war crimes committed by the Australian military in Afghanistan (Knaus 2022). The government has failed to release the national security report on the consequences of climate change. Retired air Vice-Marshall John Blackburn warned, ‘how can we expect our decision-makers to act in the nation’s best interests when the government is deliberately keeping us in the dark?’ (Knott 2023). The failure of the left is compounded by the regime of secrecy, governing the state’s relation with society. The outcome is an uninformed and apathetic public deliberately kept in the dark about the greatest threat in the nation’s history, their own security, because it compromises the viability of Australia as a nation-state.

The left revolutionary failure in Australia is largely due to a combination of factors, including the continuing power of the religious right-wing and the belligerent nationalism advanced by both mainstream political parties in their campaign to manufacture consent of the electorate (Costar et al. 2005). It demonstrates the controlling power of the right-wing private media to further advance the national economic and military interests of the US. The combination of a stringent nationalism and a Christian worldview of the manifest destiny of the US in saving the world from evil continues to assert itself, reinforcing the belief in the second coming of Christ in Israel’s Armageddon. The important political role played by right-wing Christianity in Australia was demonstrated in the 2023 October referendum when the country overwhelmingly voted against the First Nations rights. Historian Henry Reynolds also wrote: ‘the defeat of the Voice referendum is what appears to be a successful counter-revolution in Australia steered by the right-wing think-tanks and the Murdoch press’ (Reynolds 2023).

Australian democracy awaits a constitutional transformation, acknowledging that national territorial sovereignty exists solely in the people of Australia, the citizens of the country and their progeny. It can only exist in a democratic republic framed in the rights and obligations of citizenship, in the form of citizens’ nationalism. Many obstacles exist on this path, including the considerable power of the monarchist and white power movement. It requires the emergence of a new coalition between the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and the Greens. In the past, their coalition has exposed a powerful right-wing faction within the ALP. Many obstacles continue to bar traction towards a republican socialist future, including the increasing leverage of US military presence and power in Australia itself. Australians are now more concerned about their livelihood as the continent heats up, damaging the economy and increasing a deep fear for their lives and future, causing unforeseen political outcomes, wherein the traditional left–right axis and polarisation in politics no longer operate.

Australia’s revolutionary movement could gain the ascendancy from dramatic changes in US politics. It could happen in the event of a military coup with the support of the corporate sector in response to the deterioration of the country’s social cohesion and increasing internal violence. Another is a descent into another civil war scripted in a dystopian future of the Handmaid’s Tale and other prognoses (Atwood 1985; Brooks 2023; Hedges 2018; Sharlet 2023). AUKUS itself announces the making of a Leviathan state, remaking the world order on the road to barbarism and World War Three. A positive alternative would have the US voting to abandon a national foreign policy of being above the law and unwilling to enter negotiation with China, Russia and other countries. The US could then move to reform the international system to constrain force and violence, advancing the common good of the world’s population, bringing peace and real security to the world.