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Our Exceptional Friend: Australia’s Fatal Alliance with the United States

Our Exceptional Friend: Australia’s Fatal Alliance with the United States JOURNAL OF AUSTRALIAN STUDIES BOOK REVIEW Our Exceptional Friend: Australia’s Fatal Alliance with the United States,by Emma Shortis, Hardie Grant Books, Melbourne, 2021, 288 pp., $32.99 (paperback), ISBN 9781743797839 Emma Shortis’s Our Exceptional Friend: Australia’s Fatal Alliance with the United States was fortuitously published amid a heated debate on the Australian–US alliance. The book was released just weeks before the AUKUS security partnership was announced, an agreement that reflected Australia’s anxiety about China’s economic rise and military modernisation, and the Biden administration’s narrative of restoring order to the alliance and recentring the US’s role on the world stage. Yet, as Shortis writes, “returning to what is regarded as ‘normal’ is not only a bad idea. It’s a dangerous and immoral one” (6). Our Exceptional Friend is “unapologetically anti-American power” (11). To Shortis, the ANZSUS treaty “has perpetuated a craven and unquestioning fealty to the United States [and] created a world of simple, binary choices between superpowers that can only ever be understood as protectors or enemies, great friends or great foes, goodies or baddies” (4). By calling on readers to examine a shared social, political, cultural and economic history— and whose interests Australia’s approach to international relations really serves—Our http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of Australian Studies Taylor & Francis

Our Exceptional Friend: Australia’s Fatal Alliance with the United States

Cuffe, Honae
Journal of Australian Studies , Volume OnlineFirst: 2 – Apr 3, 2023
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Our Exceptional Friend: Australia’s Fatal Alliance with the United States

Abstract

JOURNAL OF AUSTRALIAN STUDIES BOOK REVIEW Our Exceptional Friend: Australia’s Fatal Alliance with the United States,by Emma Shortis, Hardie Grant Books, Melbourne, 2021, 288 pp., $32.99 (paperback), ISBN 9781743797839 Emma Shortis’s Our Exceptional Friend: Australia’s Fatal Alliance with the United States was fortuitously published amid a heated debate on the Australian–US alliance. The book was released just weeks before the AUKUS security partnership was announced,...
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Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Copyright
© 2023 Honae Cuffe
ISSN
1835-6419
eISSN
1444-3058
DOI
10.1080/14443058.2023.2175413
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

JOURNAL OF AUSTRALIAN STUDIES BOOK REVIEW Our Exceptional Friend: Australia’s Fatal Alliance with the United States,by Emma Shortis, Hardie Grant Books, Melbourne, 2021, 288 pp., $32.99 (paperback), ISBN 9781743797839 Emma Shortis’s Our Exceptional Friend: Australia’s Fatal Alliance with the United States was fortuitously published amid a heated debate on the Australian–US alliance. The book was released just weeks before the AUKUS security partnership was announced, an agreement that reflected Australia’s anxiety about China’s economic rise and military modernisation, and the Biden administration’s narrative of restoring order to the alliance and recentring the US’s role on the world stage. Yet, as Shortis writes, “returning to what is regarded as ‘normal’ is not only a bad idea. It’s a dangerous and immoral one” (6). Our Exceptional Friend is “unapologetically anti-American power” (11). To Shortis, the ANZSUS treaty “has perpetuated a craven and unquestioning fealty to the United States [and] created a world of simple, binary choices between superpowers that can only ever be understood as protectors or enemies, great friends or great foes, goodies or baddies” (4). By calling on readers to examine a shared social, political, cultural and economic history— and whose interests Australia’s approach to international relations really serves—Our

Journal

Journal of Australian Studies – Taylor & Francis

Published: Apr 3, 2023

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