ARENA//IPCS: Bombs Bursting In Our Air: AUKUS, Australia and the course set

How should we respond to make a difference?

Triumphantly endorsed by Labor, the AUKUS treaty and our $300+ billion commitment to its submarines, will lace us into US imperial strategies and wars of overreach and encircling competitor nations, and commit us to an economy, military posture and life-world more fully integrated than ever before into the Anglosphere scientific-industrial-military complex. The total integration with US command, the central role to be played by nuclear technologies, the new vulnerability to attack of US bases on Australian soil and surrounding communities, the shaping of northern Australia as US garrison and the reorientation of economy and culture across the nation towards warfighting will shape who we are and relations between us. But what response can we make from a radical and critical perspective? Should we maintain a purely anti-militarist stand, or argue for an independent national defence? Why is progressivism and the labour movement so indifferent or acquiescent to this epochal shift in our condition? What does it tell us about AUKUS, the world, Australia, and how should we respond to make a difference?

For more information on Arena@ipcs events contact Alison Caddick: alicaddick@hotmail.com

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