Australia As Us Client State

This book explores Australia's role as a US client state and the subsequent consequences for Australian democracy. Examining whether neoliberal and neoconservative interests have hijacked democracy in Australia, Paul questions whether further de-democratisation will advance US economic and military interests.

Japan is the world's No. 2 economy, greater in GDP than Britain and France together and almost double that of China. It is also the most durable, generous, and unquestioning ally of the US, attaching priority to its Washington ties over all else. In Client State, Gavan McCormack examines the current transformation of Japan, designed to meet the demands from Washington that Japan become the "Great Britain of the Far East." Exploring postwar Japan's relationship with America, he contends that US pressure has been steadily applied to bring Japan in line with neoliberal principles. The Bush administration's insistence on Japan's thorough subordination has reached new levels, and is an agenda heavily in the American, rather than the Japanese, national interest. It includes comprehensive institutional reform, a thorough revamp of the security and defense relationship with the US, and-alarmingly-vigorous pursuit of Japan's acquisition of nuclear weapons.

This book argues that Australia is vital to the US imperial project for global hegemony in the struggle among great powers, and why Australia’s deep dependency on the US is incompatible with democracy and the security of the country. The Australian continent is increasingly a contestable geopolitical asset for the US grand strategy and for China’s economic and political expansionism. The election of Donald Trump to the US presidency is symptomatic of the US hegemonic crisis. The US is Australia’s dangerous ally and the US crisis is a call for Australia to regain sovereignty and sever its military alliance with the US. Political realism provides a critical paradigm to analyse the interactions between capitalism, imperialism and militarism as they undermine Australian democracy and shift governmentality towards new forms of authoritarianism.

Recognizing that climate politics has been an increasingly contentious and heated topic in Australia over the past two decades, this book examines Australian capitalism as a driver of climate change and the nexus between the corporations and Coalition and Australian Labor parties. As a highly developed country, Australia is punching above its weight in terms of contributing to greenhouse gas emissions despite rising temperatures, droughts, water shortages and raging bushfires, storm surges and flooding, and the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef. Drawing upon both archival and ethnographic research, Hans Baer examines Australian climate politics at the margins, namely the Greens, the labour union, the environmental NGOs, and the grass-roots climate movement. Adopting a climate justice perspective which calls for "system change, not climate change" as opposed to the conventional approach of seeking to mitigate emissions through market mechanisms and techno-fixes, particularly renewable energy sources, this book posits system-challenging transitional steps to shift Australia toward an eco-socialist vision in keeping with a burgeoning global socio-ecological revolution. Accessibly written and including an interview with renowned comedian and climate activist Rod Quantock OAM, this book is essential reading for academics, students and general readers with an interest in climate change and climate activism.

In his critical study of Australian imperialism, Erik Paul analyses the making, character and contours of the geopolitical state from the time of the British invasion and colonisation to the present, expanding the country’s continental political and economic power. War is the crucible for its hegemonic power, nationalism, and politics. The book exposes and dissects capitalist imperialism to control and manage a growing population and to impose the grand strategy of a US client state. The geopolitics in the partitioning of the earth and the exploitation of people and the biosphere continue to create major conflict, inequality, and human suffering. Australia plays an important role in the intensification of the struggle among major powers and in the outcome of an expanding global ecological and hegemonic crisis. But the existing Australian state of exception constitutes a major obstacle to a reconciliation with China and to a peaceful regional and world order.

Australia and the United States have found themselves fighting common enemies on the battlefields of the world for over half a century. Australian ground forces have repeatedly stood shoulder-to-shoulder with American troops in conflicts from Korea and Vietnam to Afghanistan - and now in the 2003 Iraq war. This study looks closely at the key factors which, for over fifty years, have shaped, interpreted and applied the aims and aspirations of this mutual defence agreement to the real world of shifting threats, changing strategic balances and the democratic uncertainties of domestic politics. A departure from the current literature, the ANZUS alliance, now updated to take account of the new post 11 September 2001 realities, is presented as an accessible and concise survey of this often neglected but increasingly important trans-Pacific link between the American giant and its durable Australian ally. Suitable as supplementary reading at the 3rd year undergraduate and postgraduate levels of courses studying international relations generally, but also useful for those engaged with elements of global and regional security, and strategic defence analysis.

This volume aims to ‘bring the state back into terrorism studies’ and fill the notable gap that currently exists in our understanding of the ways in which states employ terrorism as a political strategy of internal governance or foreign policy. Within this broader context, the volume has a number of specific aims. First, it aims to make the argument that state terrorism is a valid and analytically useful concept which can do much to illuminate our understanding of state repression and governance, and illustrate the varieties of actors, modalities, aims, forms, and outcomes of this form of contemporary political violence. Secondly, by discussing a rich and diverse set of empirical case studies of contemporary state terrorism this volume explores and tests theoretical notions, generates new questions and provides a resource for further research. Thirdly, it contributes to a critical-normative approach to the study of terrorism more broadly and challenges dominant approaches and perspectives which assume that states, particularly Western states, are primarily victims and not perpetrators of terrorism. Given the scarceness of current and past research on state terrorism, this volume will make a genuine contribution to the wider field, particularly in terms of ongoing efforts to generate more critical approaches to the study of political terrorism. This book will be of much interest to students of critical terrorism studies, critical security studies, terrorism and political violence and political theory in general. Richard Jackson is Reader in International Politics at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. He is the founding editor of the Routledge journal, Critical Studies on Terrorism and the convenor of the BISA Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group (CSTWG). Eamon Murphy is Professor of History and International Relations at Curtin University of Technology in Western Australia. Scott Poynting is Professor in Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University.