Liberal Militarisation and the Interplay between Domestic and International Order: Lessons from the Settler Colonial State of Australia

Presented by Federica Caso. 

The paper explores the idea that, in liberal societies, war is an ordering principle for domestic politics. I refer to this as militarisation of liberal societies. I offer a reconceptualization of liberal militarisation as domestic governance predicated on the idea of war preparation. Thus, the paper emphasises the connection and interplay between domestic and international order. I build the case by looking at militarisation in the context of Australia. It is my contention that Australia curates a particular representation of war as a strategy of nation-building that erases colonial warfare and the ongoing colonial conflict. More specifically, Australia has a vested interest in emphasising World War I as the birth of the nation to the extent that this aids the process of connoting colonial warfare as premodern and therefore of little relevance to modern Australia. Thus, Australia relies on international warfare to cut, edit, and order its domestic warfare. Simultaneously, the militarisation of Australian society understood as domestic governance predicated on the idea of war preparation enables Australia to be a player in the international order covering the role of a post-colonial state.

Federica has recently completed her PhD at UQ with a thesis on liberal militarisation. She looks at representations of war to analyse and understand the social and political narratives that we tell ourselves. Federica also looks at art and aesthetics in relation to neoliberalism and identity politics.