Contemporary Australia is a case of dependent, high-technology liberal militarization, but with distinctive characteristics pointing to a model that must look beyond standard concerns with increasing national defense budgets, more and better weapons systems, an “exceptionalist” approach to immigration security and a predilection for use of military force in international affairs.

In a world and time where militarization is a global norm embedded in globe-spanning military alliances and world-wide networks of foreign military bases, discerning the lineaments of one particular national instance can be both difficult and potentially misleading. In liberal democracies, national self-conceptions resist identification with the harsh implications of reliance on, or valorization of, military force, unless it can be viably represented as defense of freedom, just war, or wars against unspeakable Others. And in the case of liberal democracies originating in a settler state with ongoing unrecognized conquest of indigenous peoples – think Australia, the United States, Canada and Israel – the racially inflected violence at the foundations of state-formation and national identity continues to ramify through the default settings of contemporary foreign policy. All three qualities distinguish the contemporary pattern of Australian militarization from the standard versions of either exceptionalist or liberal militarization.