Sep 26, 2026 · 52 min · 12 segments
Recording of the Ecosocialism 2026 session on Breaking AUKUS: Australian Imperialism in the Asia Pacific This session featured: Abigail Boyd (Greens MP in the NSW Legislative Council), Aunty Sue…
Sam WainwrightGuest
Abigail BoydGuest
Sue Coleman-HaseldineGuestShow HostHostShow HostHost
So we are in the midst of the world's greatest remilitarisation since the Second World War, driven by the imperatives of the flailing US Empire.
So how should we imagine Australia's role in the world? Australia is not just a settler colonial state.
For much of the 20th century, it was also a direct colonial power in the Pacific.
And today, while Australia does not directly govern formally colonised nations like Papua New Guinea, or Nauru, it still dominates the South Pacific, in large part thanks to the geopolitical order established by the US.
As Clinton Fernandes describes the situation, Australia is a sub-imperial power that has transferred its subordination from its one-time colonial ruler, the United Kingdom, to its new imperial master, the United States of America, and it now acts to preserve the military and economic interests of its master state.
This is neatly encapsulated in the Aukus War Pact, bringing together Australia's historic and current imperial masters into one supposedly unified projection of Western imperial influence, brought together, we are told, to defend a rules-based international order, but which we know is just a euphemism for a US-led imperial system.
Australia was thrust into this AUKUS deal with no public debate, squeezed by the US and the UK to sign up to eight nuclear-powered submarines, high-tech weapons development and sharing, and the subsequent invasion of US personnel and weaponry in the event of our interoperability in a contrived future conflict with China.
A conflict not in our interest, and which elucidates precisely how this rules-based international order really works.
So Fernandez... writes that AUKUS is, quote, the military intelligence and cyber equivalent of Australia's trade and investment agreements with the US and UK.
Taken as a whole, the agreements uphold the rules-based international order as it actually operates.
The rights of private investors take precedence over the sovereignty of most states." Nuclear attack submarines are built for long-range operations near China's coast, not for defending this continent.
When we consider that alongside US submarine rotations out of HMAS Stirling, Australia's contribution to American warfighting through Pine Gap, B-52 facilities at Tyndall and Marines permanently stationed at Darwin, it's easy to see Australia as a forward-staging base for American military aggression.
Through AUKUS, Australia acts as a mechanism for US force projection into the Pacific to rattle the sabre against China.
Through it, Australia becomes the first non-nuclear weapon state to use the Non-Proliferation Treaty's naval propulsion loophole with weapons-grade uranium.
How does that sit with our obligations and the expectations of our regional partners who established the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone, which grew out of the Pacific's experience of nuclear testing? As is always the way with imperial powers, it's one rule for thee and another for me.
Australia has always exerted an aggressive and dominating stance over our Pacific neighbors.
Colonial rule in PNG, phosphate extraction in Nauru, black birding, the Timor-Leste bugging affair, and offshore detention on Manus and Nauru.
We call our relationships with other nations our Pacific family, but it's all just rhetoric.
It's never a relationship of equals, laden, as these relationships are, with security vetoes.
So we are in the midst of the world's greatest remilitarisation since the Second World War, driven by the imperatives of the flailing US Empire.
So how should we imagine Australia's role in the world? Australia is not just a settler colonial state.
For much of the 20th century, it was also a direct colonial power in the Pacific.
And today, while Australia does not directly govern formally colonised nations like Papua New Guinea, or Nauru, it still dominates the South Pacific, in large part thanks to the geopolitical order established by the US.
As Clinton Fernandes describes the situation, Australia is a sub-imperial power that has transferred its subordination from its one-time colonial ruler, the United Kingdom, to its new imperial master, the United States of America, and it now acts to preserve the military and economic interests of its master state.
This is neatly encapsulated in the Aukus War Pact, bringing together Australia's historic and current imperial masters into one supposedly unified projection of Western imperial influence, brought together, we are told, to defend a rules-based international order, but which we know is just a euphemism for a US-led imperial system.
Australia was thrust into this AUKUS deal with no public debate, squeezed by the US and the UK to sign up to eight nuclear-powered submarines, high-tech weapons development and sharing, and the subsequent invasion of US personnel and weaponry in the event of our interoperability in a contrived future conflict with China.
A conflict not in our interest, and which elucidates precisely how this rules-based international order really works.
So Fernandez... writes that AUKUS is, quote, the military intelligence and cyber equivalent of Australia's trade and investment agreements with the US and UK.
Taken as a whole, the agreements uphold the rules-based international order as it actually operates.
The rights of private investors take precedence over the sovereignty of most states." Nuclear attack submarines are built for long-range operations near China's coast, not for defending this continent.
When we consider that alongside US submarine rotations out of HMAS Stirling, Australia's contribution to American warfighting through Pine Gap, B-52 facilities at Tyndall and Marines permanently stationed at Darwin, it's easy to see Australia as a forward-staging base for American military aggression.
Through AUKUS, Australia acts as a mechanism for US force projection into the Pacific to rattle the sabre against China.
Through it, Australia becomes the first non-nuclear weapon state to use the Non-Proliferation Treaty's naval propulsion loophole with weapons-grade uranium.
How does that sit with our obligations and the expectations of our regional partners who established the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone, which grew out of the Pacific's experience of nuclear testing? As is always the way with imperial powers, it's one rule for thee and another for me.
Australia has always exerted an aggressive and dominating stance over our Pacific neighbors.
Colonial rule in PNG, phosphate extraction in Nauru, black birding, the Timor-Leste bugging affair, and offshore detention on Manus and Nauru.
We call our relationships with other nations our Pacific family, but it's all just rhetoric.
It's never a relationship of equals, laden, as these relationships are, with security vetoes.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.