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'Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainity and agitation distinquish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones ... All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.' Marx

Protecting Australia « Previous | |Next »
November 9, 2005

Australia's security is founded upon certain foundations about its place in the world. The notion of the 'Tyranny of Distance'--whether understood as distance from its 'Great and Powerful Friends' or used to describe the vastness of the continent--has been interpreted by successive policymakers since Federation as a cause of fear and insecurity and as making Australia vulnerable to threat and danger Australia has sought to mitigate this dilemma of its insecurity by projecting force abroad.

This notion of a vast and indefensible land so distant from its Anglo-American allies has, at least in part, been the foundation of Forward Defence policies that have seen Australians fight overseas in well over a dozen wars. The argument is that distant overseas conflicts pose direct threats to Australia which are best thwarted by attachment to a powerful ally reflects not so much the search for security as the fear instilled by insecurity, a sense of imminent threat, and a belief in constant danger.

What does this fear of violent death by foreign (Asian) enemy lead to? Katrina Lee Koo has a suggestion---- Statism.

She says that:

From wars in foreign lands to programs of border protection, Australian foreign policy is literally littered with references, narratives and policies about the state's preoccupation with its own security ... While it may be imprudent to generalise about the history of Australian security, the privileged relationship between security and the state is one that has endured under Liberal and Labor Governments alike. As the monopoliser of 'legitimate knowledge' about national security it is often the state that defines what the political is, where it is located, and what it might or should be .... Australia's state-based security project has infused into Australian society an acceptance of the practices of violence, both structural and physical, as an acceptable means of achieving security. In each of the major foreign policy challenges facing Australia since the inception of this 'War on Terror' (the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the treatment of Hicks and Habib, the addressing of regional terrorism and the more aggressive refugee policies) we see in both the discourse of security and the development of security policy an acceptance of the violence committed against the Other as a 'necessary evil.'

It is a good suggestion.

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:42 PM | | Comments (4)
Comments

Comments

I disagree with that. We end up in expeditionary forces because of our "great and powerful friends" (GAPF) doctrine of foreign policy, the expeditions arent the driver, they are the follow on. The GAPF is about defence and economic security, and to an extent cultural security. I think scrymarch has called Australian political history one valiant attempt to deny geographic reality. Billy Hughes pursued the GAPF as he thought Australia was only secure with the Royal Navy, and Fortress Australia (an outpost of empire in a hostile Asia) required the British Empire to remain secure. Hughes also wanted to leverage the RN to create a bastion of the empire in the pacific with Australia at the centre. So at Versaille he used Australia diplomatic weight to further British interests (not Australian interests) and tried to get Britain to adopt Australia's concerns. Dopey. Super-powers play power politics, we are playing a subset of international liberalism, which is we get rail-roaded so often.


Cameron,

I'm trying to explore the way the national security state is based on Hobbes; or more accurately the way that Hobbes is relevant to now.

I would argue that the search for security is due to the fear instilled by insecurity, a sense of imminent threat, and a belief in constant danger. It is the fear and insecurity that is the driver.

From a Hobbesian perspective the "great and powerful friends" (GAPF) doctrine of foreign policy is the response to fear and insecurity. Fear of death rules.

I would argue that the GAPF doesnt come from fear of death, but instead a cultural cringe from our politicians. It is they that are pursuing it, against the people's wishes and better judgement. I dont think it is Hobbesian as you have been writing, but instead the inability for our politicians to see beyond Australian being an imperial outpost of a hyper-power's client state.

Cameron,
I don't think this is a case of either or. Your interpretation makes good sense in terms of Australia as a colonialised territory that was part of the British Empire and which struggle to become independent.

The ALP runs this narrative and it tells a good story about unifying Australia into a single state and liberating the state from foreign domination.

But Australia is also a modern nation-state--a liberal democracy--and so we can also understand this state in terms of the tradition of political philosophy ----ie., Plato's Republic, Hobbes' Leviathan, Rousseau's Social Contract, Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Rawl's Theory of Justice.

That tradition is not a continuum, as it can be divided into a a variety of more specifiic traditions, with the most fundamental divide being ancient and modern. Ancient or classical political philosophy is concerned with, or takes its bearings from, the idea of a natural order discernible by reason to which human beings ought to conform.-

Leo Strauss understood these bearings very well and he stood on this classical ground to critique the modern political philosophical tradition ---Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau etc--in his Natural Right and History.

Modern political philosophy takes its bearing from the idea of freedom and the centrality of freedom in understanding political life in modernity. It subdivides in terms of its understanding of freedom, ie. negative and positive.