AUKUS and the Anglobal colour line: race, Anglosphere aphasia, and (white) military supremacy

Existing studies of AUKUS have explored the security partnership’s geopolitics, diplomatic fallout, and technological potentials. However, they have not considered the foundational importance of historical, racialised warfare. Indeed, mainstream International Relations theories tend to exclude race as a formative influence on world order building and AUKUS’ political elites display ‘silent whiteness’. For both, the ties that bind remain unspoken. To remedy this, the article theorises the affective politics of racialised military superiority, and the productive role played by Anglosphere aphasia, as both combine to make possible AUKUS’ contemporary security possibilities. The article draws on a large comparative computer-aided content analysis, coupled to thirty-five elite interviews, which together enable a narratological analysis of racialised violence and constructivist analysis of contemporary security silences. It concludes by calling for a new, critical research agenda, and urgent, open debate on the problematic underpinnings of AUKUS—an unspoken formative ontology of recurrent, imbalanced, and racialised conflict.