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The settler security reflex: Kate Clayton, Katherine Newman, ‘Settler Colonial Strategic Culture: Australia, AUKUS, and the Anglosphere’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, 2023

12Sep23

Abstract: Australia’s history as a settler colony within the British Empire fundamentally shapes its sense
of security within the Indo-Pacific region. Australia has consistently looked outside of its region for
security and sought partners on the explicit basis of political, cultural, and ethnic similarity. What
role does Australia’s history play in shaping its foreign policy? We argue that these choices in
foreign policy are inextricable from Australia’s history as a settler colony on the farthest reaches of
the British Empire. The AUKUS Agreement (AUKUS) is an example of how Australia operates to
preserve racial hegemony in the face of non-white threat — real or perceived. This research utilises
critical discourse analysis to interrogate elite-level discourse around AUKUS to ascertain the
dominant narratives that inform its creation, the issues it seeks to address in Australian security
policy, how it is structured by historical narratives of security, and how it functions to structure
those narratives going forward. This article seeks to participate in the growing push to decolonise
International Relations by illuminating the way Australia is ontologically and epistemologically
invested in the preservation of racial hegemony.


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