Australia’s history is replete with missed opportunities for asserting sovereign independence, for peacefully relating to our region, for sustainable development and for conciliation between settlers and Indigenous peoples.
The Left appears to have very little to say about AUKUS, even though it amounts to the most comprehensive imposition of hegemonic whiteness currently on offer.
In supporting the Coalition government’s decision on AUKUS, the Albanese government has made the most significant departure from the party’s defence and foreign policy tradition in the last forty years.
Progressive politics has become increasingly accommodating of state power in the last two decades, reversing positions that have historically underpinned left-liberal politics.
The United States will still be a civilisation in decline, except for the massive power of its capacity for surveillance, war and social terror, which may hold it together before e unum pluribus.
AUKUS is an investment in US shipyards rather than the Australian economy. We are not buying submarines so much as subsidising the US Navy’s submarine budget.
The dilemma for Australian First Nations people is that they are getting a foothold on sovereign claims within the nation, at the same time as the sovereignty that was to be divided is being given away as a whole package.
To survive in this region Australia has to change its spots profoundly. It needs a form of cultural re-generation, in significant combination with its First Peoples, to justify its presence outside of the strategies of colonial power.
