Australia’s Route To Aukus: An English School Analysis Of Australia’s National Identity And Strategic Alignment [before doctoral defense]

Kivonat, rövid leírás

The announcement of the AUKUS partnership in September 2021 between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States generated immediate scholarly and policy attention (Beeson and Chubb 2021; Gyngell 2017; Medcalf 2020; Townshend 2022). Most early analyses interpreted the pact primarily as: • a realist balancing response to China’s rise, • a technological–defence cooperation framework, • or an element of broader U.S. Indo-Pacific containment strategy. While these interpretations remain analytically valid and useful, they largely frame AUKUS as a short-term strategic reaction within contemporary great power competition, which this dissertation sought to argue against (Curran 2021; Hall 2016; Laurenceson 2022; White 2019). The existing literature overwhelmingly focuses primarily but not exclusively on: • submarine capability, • military interoperability, • Indo-Pacific deterrence, • nuclear proliferation concerns, • and alliance management. However, the deeper historical and identity-based foundations of Australia’s participation in AUKUS have remained underexplored. This dissertation emerges from the recognition of this analytical gap.