Reject the AUKUS death machine, join the fight for the future

The nuclear powered submarine USS Colorado docked at the HMAS Stirling naval base on Menadup/Garden Island, five kilometres from Rockingham in Perth’s southern suburbs, on October 27.

The vessel is in port for a month of maintenance exercises in preparation for the Submarine Rotational Force — West program which will start in September next year, being the first of four United States’ and one British nuclear powered submarines based at HMAS Stirling.

Its arrival was an opportunity for Labor to insist that AUKUS is “on track”, without resolving any of the significant cost and time blow-outs associated with the plan to build the SSN-AUKUS class submarines.

It also means that HMAS Stirling has become a de facto US navy base, with its submarines and crew not just visiting, but stationed in Western Australia, allowing the US to qualitatively step up its presence in the Indian Ocean.

When AUKUS was announced five years ago, in the shadow of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we were told it was necessary in order to uphold a mythical “rules based order”. Since then, Israel has gone on a genocidal rampage with the support of western governments.

Any hope that US President Donald Trump’s violent rejection of international law, in both word and deed, might lead the Anthony Albanese government to have second thoughts about integrating Australia ever more tightly with US military strategy, through AUKUS and the Force Posture Agreement, has been smashed on the rocks.

The opposite is true. Neither Albanese, foreign minister Penny Wong or defence minister Richard Marles have spoken against Trump’s rampage across the world; be it the kidnapping of the Venezuelan president, threats against Greenland and Canada, the criminal blockade of Cuba, bombing of Iran or the cruelly misnamed "Board of Peace” foisted on Gaza.

When Wong was directly asked by a journalist whether she agreed that the war on Iran was a breach of the United Nations Charter, the best she could manage was this mealy-mouthed response — “It’s up to the US and Israel to explain the legality of their actions”.

While the Albanese government might still cloak its domestic neoliberal economic agenda in some token progressive rhetoric and gestures to mark out some space between it and the Coalition, its foreign policy is now completely subordinate to Trump’s.

Reinforcing this orientation is the long established ambition of both Labor and Liberal to make Australia one of the world's top ten weapons exporters, further tightening integration with both US and Israeli weapons manufacturers.

Trump’s decision to boost US military spending by 50% on 2025 levels by 2027 has turned this push into a stampede as Australian governments, businesses and universities fall over themselves to try to get a slice of the action.

Meanwhile, urgent action to address the real existential threat to humanity posed by runaway global warming is stalled, demonstrated by the approval of new and expanded fossil fuel projects and Labor’s lowering of expectations ahead of the COP31 climate summit. 

Capitalism, based on the endless search for profits and growth, is incapable of solving the climate crisis.

Since the industrial revolution, every new source of energy — biomass, coal, oil, nuclear and renewables — has added to energy production, not replaced it. In other words capitalism welcomes renewables, but in addition to fossil fuels, not instead of them.

Both the federal government and senior military strategists are perfectly well aware of this, just as they know that this will lead to climate breakdown, social crisis and war.

Consequently the real long term climate plan of the Albanese government is increased repression at home and war abroad. It’s not an exaggeration to say that militarism is their deadly serious response to the climate crisis.

Confronting and dismantling AUKUS, the Force Posture Agreement and the weapons industry is central to the fight for a safe climate.

A certain amount of catastrophic warming is already baked into the system. Even if we do everything materially possible to halt and reverse warming starting today, we still face massive ecological disruption. But this is no excuse for giving up.

Replacing a society based on greed, that is pushing us to ecological collapse and war, with a society based on human solidarity is necessary to face the climate crisis. But we face serious obstacles in the fight to pull humanity back from the brink. 

Modern day capitalists represent the most powerful and violent ruling class in human history, when measured by the sheer number of innocent lives they are prepared to sacrifice to defend their system.

Furthermore, in a relatively wealthy country like Australia, a section of the population is prepared to give their loyalty to the empire in return for a few extra crumbs off the capitalist table, despite the cost to our sisters and brothers in the Global South.

This includes that section of business, workers, and indeed sections of the union movement, who put aside considerations of their children’s future in exchange for profits or well paid jobs in the “defence” industry death machine.

Many more well paid jobs could be generated by directing war spending to social services  — public transport, health, education, public housing and environmental repair — but you have to believe that is possible in order to be convinced.

This won’t happen simply through abstract alternative visions or by convincing people that Trump’s vision of the world is profoundly sociopathic. It will grow out of each and every struggle against the war drive and fossil fuel expansion. 

The youth rebellion ripping across the world is a symbol of hope. Change is both possible and necessary. 

There’s no time to waste, join us in the fight for the future.

[Sam Wainwright is a national co-convenor of the Socialist Alliance.]