Everywhen: Australia and the Language of Deep History

Abstract

extra-territorial power of a dependent country such as his native Brazil was always checked by regional limitations, in contrast to great powers that are territorially unconstrained to act globally. In the Australian case, it was used memorably by McQueen—Chapter 4 of A New Britannica is titled “Sub-Imperialists”—and more recently by Cait Storr in an important article for the Melbourne Journal of International Law. Fernandes cites Storr’s article but does not comprehensively engage with it, or other uses of his titular concept. A historian might wish for more nuance in the elaboration of Australian sub-imperialism over time. Fernandes outlines Australia’s contribution to imperial misadventures in the postWWII era—from wars aimed at suppressing Asian nationalism (Korea, Malaya, Vietnam), to Australian intelligence agencies’ role in the coup against Chilean president Allende in 1973, to the greenlighting of Indonesia’s invasion of Timor-Leste. Yet were the motivations identical in each case? What gets lost in subsuming each episode under the same rubric? What kinds of changes and continuities can we observe in the career of Australian sub-imperialism over the course of the past 150 years? These minor quibbles should not detract from the major contribution of this timely and provocative book. Sub–Imperial Power is polemical in the best possible sense, designed to reignite debate in an area of public policy that has been sclerotic for too long. In his unflinching assessment of Australia as a “tributary”, “sentinel” state and his dethroning of the “experts” who buttress the Canberra consensus, Fernandes makes a refreshing call for “long-term collective efforts to reveal rather than mystify Australian foreign policy” (124). It is an ideal towards which we ought to continue to strive, in spite of the difficulties. To question Australia’s participation in wars of aggression abroad in the context of our vanishing national sovereignty has never been more urgent.