How should Australia respond when the US, our closest ally, is engaged in a very public and petulant global meltdown?
Labor and the Coalition are desperately trying not to mention it while fearfully offering tribute to Donald Trump in the hope we will somehow be spared.
This will not work. Bullies can smell weakness and right now Canberra is giving off a very strong stink.
What’s urgently needed is a clear-eyed review of our relationship with the US, a fresh look at our geopolitical strengths and weaknesses and then some hard-nosed decisions about what military and political levers we can pull to protect our own interests.
For the last 70 years the Canberra consensus has been that the US is our indispensable ally. Because we have wanted to believe it we have seen the US’ promise to consult in the ANZUS treaty as a de facto security guarantee.
In return, Australia has diligently tried to prove our relevance to the US. We have done this by sending troops to every US war, (however distasteful), by meekly making the Australian Defence Force inter-operable with the US military and by consistently purchasing billions of dollars of weapons from the US defence industry.
The need to prove our relevance led to Australian troops fighting and dying in US-led wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. From the Australian public’s point of view, these were obvious losses, but viewed from inside the Canberra bubble, Australia “won” those wars by showing unquestioning loyalty to the US. The more hopeless the cause, the better we did.
The latest effort to prove our relevance is the $368 billion AUKUS boondoggle. Under this deal, Australia has already agreed to hand over almost $10 billion to the US and the UK as a tribute-style subsidy for their nuclear submarine industries.
Even with the billions in public funds, the US won’t be able to fix its woefully underperforming submarine industry. It is meant to be producing 2.33 new nuclear submarines a year to make enough to sell some “spares” to Australia. Currently, it is barely able to produce one.
Meanwhile the UK’s nuclear submarine industry is in freefall, it is draining the UK defence budget and its reactor program has been repeatedly declared “unachievable” by the UK’s infrastructure auditor. Any sensible investor would not go within a few hundred miles of it. Not us, though.
You might ask why does the US want Australia to invest in the UK’s nuclear mess? For the US, every British nuclear submarine is one that they don’t have to build. This is all the more important given their own production logjam. Seen from Washington and London, Australia is a strangely willing multi-billion dollar sucker who turned up just in time.
The truth is Australia is unlikely get any nuclear submarines out of AUKUS. But for Canberra insiders, that is not really the goal. Once again, this is all about showing our relevance to the US, either directly or by subsidising the UK industries.
This goes beyond the submarines. With AUKUS also comes Australia spending billions to build the US a nuclear submarine base in Fremantle, hosting B-52 nuclear-capable bombers in the Northern Territory, thousands of Marines in Darwin and US spy bases at Pine Gap and in North-West Australia.
Every one of these US military bases is a potential nuclear target in the US’ next major war. The excruciating cost and the fact that it actively harms our own defence forces and safety is all part of proving our loyalty, and our relevance, to the US.
All of this was meant to get us a US security guarantee. Enter Trump. Trump is dismantling NATO, cutting deals with Vladimir Putin, blackmailing Ukraine and threatening to invade Panama and Greenland. He is threatening Australia with punitive tariffs, starting a trade war with Mexico and Canada and destroying the US’ self-styled image as the leader of the democratic world.
Given all of this, why would anyone think that it will be different when it comes to AUKUS and ANZUS? The best guide of future behaviour is past behaviour. Trump cuts deals with dictators, threatens his allies and bullies anyone who shows weakness. He won’t be saving Australia from anything; in fact if we ever are in trouble he will likely use it as a chance to extort us, not protect us, just like he’s doing right now with Ukraine.
Just ask yourself, if one of those bases in Australia was hit, what would Trump’s response be? Would he risk Los Angeles for Perth, or New York for Alice Springs? We all know he wouldn’t so why are we putting ourselves in the firing line? Under AUKUS and Trump, the US alliance isn’t a nice safe security guarantee. It’s a big fat security risk.
AUKUS isn’t making us safer, it’s putting us at risk. We are diverting billions from our schools, hospitals and even our defence that could be used to make us healthier, smarter and safer.
The truth is, our greatest security asset isn’t the United States, it’s our geography. Apart from New Zealand, Australia is in the most geopolitically secure part of the planet. We are protected to the north by thousands of kilometres of open seas and the archipelagos of southeast Asia and every other side by the Indian, Pacific and Southern Oceans. This is our greatest defence asset.
Instead of leaning into our geopolitical strength, AUKUS has us spending hundreds of billions of dollars to make it a weakness, as we desperately try to project military force thousands of kilometres away in the South China sea. This turns our clearest military asset against us.
In the process, we are entangling ourselves in potential conflicts that we aren’t prepared for and aren’t of our choosing. It’s like inviting yourself to another person’s knife fight, when you don’t own a knife.
While the AUKUS project melts down in the public spotlight, the rest of the ADF’s military procurement scandals keep on coming. We are paying an eye-watering $7.8 billion a pop for half a dozen Hunter Class Frigates that are still a decade away. We are spending billions more buying US tanks that are too heavy for us to move, drones that are too expensive to risk in a conflict, offshore patrol vessels that we don’t know what to do with and supply ships that don’t work.
What could we be doing instead? The good news is that some independent thought is being applied to Australia’s defence interests. It starts by realising that the US will do what’s in its perceived interests, not ours. So too will every other country including China, Indonesia, Japan and India. If we are not threatening China with an empty shoulder holster, then that can help ease tensions.
We can work with our regional neighbours on bilateral security co-operation and use some of the funds saved from AUKUS to invest on joint programs that address the greatest security risk of climate change. Australia has the industrial capacity to invest in a sovereign defence industry that works to protect us without threatening our neighbours. Some have called this the “echidna strategy” which sure looks a lot safer bet than the “hope and pray Trump comes to save us strategy”.
It’s hard to watch the so-called defence experts in the Coalition and Labor so desperate to appease Trump that they are offering billions in AUKUS pre-payments and even suggesting we hand over our mineral resources as some kind of pathetic offering. History teaches us he will only see that as weakness and demand more.
It’s time to cut the apron strings to the US, to end the endless scare-mongering and cultural cringe and start asking what we can do ourselves to keep us safe.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.
David Shoebridge
Senator David Shoebridge
- State: Member of the Legislative Council (NSW) from 2010 to 2022.
- Federal: Elected to the Senate for New South Wales, 2022.
Committee service
- Joint Select: National Anti-Corruption Commission Legislation served from 29.9.2022 to 10.11.2022
- Joint Standing: Implementation of the National Redress Scheme served from 6.3.2023 to present; Migration served from 25.3.2024 to present
- Joint Statutory: Law Enforcement served from 26.7.2022 to present; Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity served from 26.7.2022 to 1.7.2023; National Anti-Corruption Commission served from 9.2.2023 to present; Human Rights served from 4.7.2024 to present
- Senate Legislative and General Purpose Standing: Legal and Constitutional Affairs: Legislation served from 26.7.2022 to present; Legal and Constitutional Affairs: References served from 26.7.2022 to present; Economics: References served as Substitute member from 28.9.2022 to 30.11.2023; Finance and Public Administration: Legislation served as Substitute member from 9.3.2023 to 31.7.2023; Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade: Legislation served as Substitute member from 22.6.2023 to present; Economics: Legislation served as Substitute member from 30.11.2023 to 28.2.2024; Finance and Public Administration: References served as Substitute member from 7.12.2023 to present
- Senate Select: Australia’s Disaster Resilience served from 1.12.2022 to present; Adopting Artificial Intelligence served as Deputy Chair from 27.3.2024 to present
Parliamentary party positions
- Australian Greens. Served: 01.07.2022 to present
- Australian Greens Spokesperson for Justice, Defence and Veterans’ Affairs and Digital Rights from 17.6.2022 to 15.5.2023.
- Australian Greens Spokesperson for Justice, Defence, Veterans’ Affairs, Digital Rights and Science from 15.5.2023 to 25.3.2024.
- Australian Greens Spokesperson for Defence and Veterans’ Affairs, Digital Rights and IT, Home Affairs, Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs and Justice (includes Attorney-General and Drug Law Reform) from 25.3.2024.