Opposing AUKUS At ANU

NICK REICH

The announcement of the AUKUS security pact last spring was a hawkish move driven by the Australian government. The AUKUS pact is a joint security agreement between Australia, the UK and the US to facilitate sharing of military technology and more joint exercises to combat the rise of China. It represents an escalation in Australia’s long and bloody history of imperialist aggression in the IndoPacific region. It will herald more advanced and destructive weapons such as nuclear submarines and hypersonic missiles entering the Australian arsenal, as well as an increased presence of larger and better-equipped armies from the UK and the US on Australian soil.

The pact has led to the establishment of a nuclear science academic program at ANU, thus there is a particular onus on ANU students and staff to build an opposition to AUKUS and our government’s imperialism more generally. This has begun to happen within the student union (ANUSA) and the staff union (NTEU), with motions in opposition to AUKUS having been passed on both bodies in the face of minority right-wing oppositions. This is an important precedent. The campaign against AUKUS and imperialism should take up the following political positions.

Australia is imperialist Some on the left argue that US imperialism is the key force for evil in the world and Australia ought to establish a more independent foreign policy to avoid following America into their destructive adventures.

This argument ignores Australia’s imperialism and overlooks the fact that the Australian government’s contributions to America’s abominable wars in the past have been decided from a fiercely independent perspective. The Australian political establishment has been trying to draw the US into our region for decades, to use US military might to defend Australian economic and geopolitical interests. That’s why Australia was the most enthusiastic adherent of America’s entry into the Vietnam War, and later the Gulf Wars and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. are colonial mindsets shared by white Australians or even all ‘settlers’, including non-white migrants. In reality, what drives Australia’s wars, invasions and diplomatic bullying are the interests of Australian capital in securing the best possible environment for them to compete on the world market.

History shows that it is workers, including white workers in Australia, who bear the brunt of a major war, most directly by being sent to fight and die for the interests of capital. For those not sent to the front, workers are squeezed by wartime inflation and other hardships. Even well short of a major war, we foot the bill for increased military spending through slashes to social spending and increased taxes. The dismantling of Australian imperialism at the expense of capital is in the interests of all workers and the oppressed.

Now, with AUKUS alongside other pacts like Five Eyes and the Quad, Australia has succeeded in drawing US military might into defending the status quo of a ‘stable, secure, prosperous and uncoerced Indo-Pacific.’

The term ‘uncoerced’ is ironic here, given Australia’s defence of this status quo is a history of violence and robbery. The Australian military has a history of putting down civil unrest in countries such as the Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste and Tonga to maintain the stability of pliant regimes that they can extort through ongoing military presence (i.e., occupation) and/ or international ‘aid’ flows. Through those means, the Australian Government has maintained geopolitical hegemony in the region and has rolled out the red carpet for companies like Rio Tinto, Woodside Petroleum and BHP Billiton to extract all the natural wealth of these island nations and leave their populations desperately poor. Prosperity for the Indo-Pacific under Australian influence has only meant prosperity for a minority of capitalists and profiteers. Stability and security have meant crushing resistance when it threatens the governments loyal to Australian interests. But imperialism goes deeper than just securing profits for resource companies. The direct costs of occupation or intervention often outstrip the money made by these companies. The Australian state uses its coercive power to protect a ‘status quo’ geopolitical order where they and their allies set the rules. The capitalist class is to blame Workers and students in Australia derive absolutely no material benefits from the profits of these capitalists, that wealth gets whisked up to the top. The notion of a national interest shared by all Australians is an ideology promoted from the top of society to argue that we all benefit from the Australian state’s military spending and standover tactics with our ‘Pacific family.’ It has also been implicitly accepted by sections of the left who argue that what drives Australian foreign policy

Neither Washington nor Beijing Imperialism is not just about strong nations exploiting weaker nations as Australia does in the Pacific, it is also a contest between major powers. The overarching logic of world imperialism today is the rivalry between the US and China. The US is seeking to defend the ‘rulesbased’ international order that they have constructed around American-led financial and diplomatic institutions since the end of World War 2. To call To call this system ‘rules- this system ‘rules-based,’ as America and its allies do, is to mask the power based,’ as America and relations behind who establishes those its allies do, is to mask rules and who benefits from them. The US the power relations behind who establishes those rules and who makes the rules and punishes with brute violence anyone who tries to challenge its dominance. benefits from them. As an oppressive state capitalist regime, China’s rise has been commensurate with an escalation of some of the worst oppressions in the world; such as the wholesale repression of Uighur Muslims in the Xinjiang regions or the crushing of the democracy movement in Hong Kong. Beijing has its sights squarely set on an invasion of Taiwan in the medium-term future. China’s growing imperial influence in the face of America’s relative decline does not bring with it less oppression, more democracy or increased rights for national minorities. But just as in Australia and the US, workers in China have no interest in the imperialism and expansion of the Chinese state. They derive no material gain from China’s bloated military spending, the nationalist ideology justifying heightened repression, or the prospect of a world war. The position of activists and the left in all factions ought not to be reduced to choosing the ‘lesser evil’ in a contest between exploiters and oppressors. In opposing the imperialism of our own country, we must stand in solidarity with the working classes and oppressed of China, or any other imperialist country, opposing theirs. Workers in all countries have an interest in opposing imperialism and war, whilst capitalists in every country have an interest in escalation and violence.