Change can be difficult to accept. Nowhere is it clearer than in what goes too much of the debate, the discussion, the analysis – calls it what you want – related to Australia’s national security position since Donald Trump won US presidency eight months ago. It was not only America that changed when 49.8 percent of Americans voted gave Trump a second turn in the White House – that was the world.
Much changed, because he promised it would, and he is responsible for the richest, most powerful country on the planet, so he can make it happen. His governing style is to treat everything like his play. One day he thinks about this, a few days later he thinks so. Like most of his followers, he is guided by his feelings and suspicions. It is his inconvenient connection point with them. On Tuesday, in a one-to-one phone call, the BBC asked Gary O’Donoghue Trump if he trusted Vladimir Putin. Trump took a long break and replied, “I trust almost none, to be honest with you.”
Illustration of Dionne Gain
What happens in America is not an entertaining distraction or less diversion, after which previous verities will be naturally reintroduced. The international order is reworked. Nowhere is this more obvious to the Australians than with Anthony Albanese’s visit to China, which crystallizes in the Australian mind our new reality.
On the one hand, we have China, an authoritarian state that we have few shared values, which are in our region and are our most important economic partner. We have a hand -exposed economy and one third of our export income comes from China. On the other hand, there are America, our friend and ally for more than 80 years, which quickly moves away from what we previously thought was an extensive set of shared values. More and more, its new administration reveals an intention to make Australia a form of vasal state via the Aukus Agreement.
Aukus has not yet reached his fourth birthday, but the original signatories to the pact, Joe Biden, Boris Johnson and Scott Morrison, are all away from their posts and leave either in shame or embarrassment. Aukus was an exercise in AngloSphere Hubris. Biden believed that he had figuratively spearheaded Trump and Maga movement through the heart of the 2020 election and that America was back on his former multilateralist post-war. Johnson went high after his Brexit victory and his crushing of British Labor’s so-called Red Wall in 2019. Morrison chose well and thought he was on a winner with his China-Bashing position. He was not worried that he was leaving a deal with France to build our next fleet of submarines.
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Of crucial importance, he saw political advantage of Aukus and expected the work to be able to baulk in its inclusion of nuclear power. It would have given him the opportunity to portray Labor under Albanese as unfair to our greatest friend, America, and in Thrall of Beijing on the way to the election 2022. But Albanese and his older colleagues, nervous about their choices, saw that it came and immediately gave Aukus Nicken. As it turned out, Morrison Labor accused of being China’s doll anyway, to little benefit. More importantly, however, the work had, by embracing Aukus, saddled itself in the service with an uncommon, decades long security pact.
If Aukus was ever suitable for the purpose, it is not now, since our relationship with America, although it remains strong, cannot go back to what it was. Much of the Australian defense facility cannot see it that way. Many analysts, former bureaucrats, academics and coalition parties will not adjust their views on the Australia-USA relationship as one where our interests and the US’s blur to a whole. They are obsessed with the fact that Albanese met China’s president before meeting Trump. Somehow the lack of a face to face with Trump is all Albanese’s fault. What does it say about Trump that he has not made it happen? The large number of holdings in the defense and security facility that insists that America in 2025 is friendly and predictable America in recent decades with just a few Trumpian properties refuses to accept the obvious. America is no longer what it used to be, through a democratic decision by their own people.
It is shocking to think that as horrible as the Chinese government is, at least we know what we are dealing with. Can we really say the same thing about America? It is now reviewing Aukus, although the signs are that it actually wants to negotiate it. Last week, the Trump administration informed its demands on Australia to the media, mainly that it wants insurance that the submarines it delivers to Australia under Aukus would be distributed to help the United States in the event of a conflict with China. This was some disturbances in Albanese’s imminent meeting with President XI.