AUKUS – So What?: Reconciling Australia’s Geography with its History, its Fear of Abandonment and Fear of Entrapment

In light of the recent AUKUS pact between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, Professor John Blaxland from the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at ANU will explore the unreconciled dialectic in Australian consciousness between our geography, history and a lingering fear of entrapment.

Professor Blaxland’s talk will probe such issues as:

– As a multicultural nation, how important is the Anglosphere to Australia’s identity, its sense of history and its hopes for the future?

– How fearful should Australians be of being left to face the fears of our geography without a great and powerful friend by our side?

– To what extent do Australia’s interests overlap with its neighbours and how much hope can they place in regional partnerships?

– How much can AUKUS do for Australia in enlisting British and American help? And will that make the regional partnerships more or less likely to be successful?

This will be a thought-provoking discussion on highly pertinent questions about Australia’s place in the world.

Speaker: John Blaxland is Professor of International Security and Intelligence Studies, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australia National University and a former military intelligence officer. His publications include: The US-Thai Alliance and Asian International Relations (2012); Niche Wars: Australia in Afghanistan, 2001-2004 (2020); In From The Cold; Reflections on Australia’s Korean War (2020); A Geostrategic SWOT Analysis for Australia (2019); The Secret Cold War (2016); East Timor Intervention (2015); The Protest Years (2015); The Australian Army from Whitlam to Howard (2014); Strategic Cousins (2006); Revisiting Counterinsurgency (2006); Information era Manoeuvre (2003); Signals (1998) and Organising an Army (1989).

This will be a online webinar. Please registar by clicking the ‘get tickets’ button below.

Registrations close at 4:00pm AEST on the day of the event

IMPORTANT DETAILS

If you have registered for an ‘online’ ticket you will receive a follow-up confirmation email containing further details on how to join the webinar ON THE DAY OF THE EVENT. You will receive an email by 4:30pm on the day of the event. If you do not receive an email by 5:00pm, please check your junk folder. The event will start at 6pm AEST (Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne time, UTC+10).