Australia in Aukus: Rise of a Leviathan State

The book focuses on the making and implication of AUKUS for Australians in their relations with their own state and governance, the Asia-Pacific region and the rest of the world. AUKUS is an incipient military state and a highly dangerous development, moving rapidly to integrate society, the state and the economy in the US imperial project of warfare and global domination. It constitutes the crucible of a Leviathan state, militarising climate change. The study in this book is framed in a geopolitical analytical paradigm of revolutionary and counterrevolutionary movement and power energising together the existential threat of climate change to humans and capitalism, questioning the viability of the nation-state system, highlighting the predicament confronting Australians as a nation. The book’s analysis is presented in four chapters, broadly indicated in the contents page. The book’s architecture is framed in the political philosophy and intellectual legacy of Eric Hobsbawm, Rosa Luxemburg and George Orwell and their contribution to the understanding of the contradictions of the nation-state and imperialism, capitalism and socialism, in the emancipation of humanity from war.

Erik Paul is a highly experienced lecturer and a widely published researcher specialising in Australia’s relations with the Asia-Pacific and the US and issues of regional and world peace.