Australia’s former top diplomat says Donald Trump may achieve what 75 years of post-war anti-Americanism could not: concede the case for moral equivalence.
Donald Trump may achieve what 75 years of post-war Americanism could not: concede the case for moral equivalence.
Moral equivalence was the accusation that for all America’s claims to the ethical high ground, it was in practice no better than its authoritarian enemies.
Trump, of course, still speaks with the legitimacy of a democratically elected president. But the issue is not his authority to speak for the US, but what he says and does. Those who had gone into therapy for Trump derangement syndrome during his first term now face a virulent relapse.
When the re-elected Trump talks of US exceptionalism it is not the exceptionalism of the city on the hill or a US-built international order anchored in liberal democratic values. It is the exceptionalism of power, wielded not in a higher cause, but in the pursuit of narrow US interests: a call to the international community, it has been observed, to ask not what the US can do for you but what you can do for the US.
As David Frum, a former speech-writer for George W. Bush, recently wrote: “Trump is modelling the international image of the US after himself: impulsive, self-seeking, short-sighted and untrustworthy.”
Hard-headed realists may well say, so what’s new? Like all countries, America has always put itself first. But this shift in the articulation of US interests and the sidelining of values in the world view of the US president has profound consequences for Australia. Much of the world may be comfortable navigating only interests, but Australia cannot escape the intersection of interests and values.
In a world where the primary contest is between the US and China, Australia has rightly sided with the US because we could not be indifferent to the prospect of our region being dominated by an authoritarian power. We do not want to see a liberal democratic power displaced by a one-party hegemon. Whatever its faults and limits, the rules-based international order crafted by the US served Australia’s interests far better than the historical norm of might is right.
China may not be an enemy with designs on our territory. But it is not in our interests that it become the predominant power in the Indo-Pacific for as long as it retains its authoritarian character. This is where the charge of moral equivalence becomes so invidious for us.
If the president of the United States can openly speak of expanding US territory and not rule out the use of force to acquire Greenland or the Panama Canal, it invites comparisons with China reserving the right to use force to bring Taiwan into line. And what to make of the bizarre proposal to disperse the Palestinians and for the US to take over Gaza to make room for resort development? Where does all this leave our great strategic project of a US-led balancing of China?
If the US position is now to identify what you can do for the US and then use all its considerable leverage to ensure it is done, where does it leave our historical dependence on the US as the last resort defender of Australia?
Perhaps Trump has done us a huge favour by underlining the need for us to do more to defend ourselves. That starts with breaking out of the deeply held mindset that Australia is incapable of doing so.
This sense of vulnerability, the historical legacy of a small colonial population inhabiting a vast continent adjacent to an alien region, continues to dominate the way Australians see their security. Despite the advantages of distance, continental geography and a G20 economy, we remain convinced that Australia is simply incapable of meeting a direct threat to our territory however unlikely that may be.
Instead, we have convinced ourselves that our security can only be preserved by the maintenance of US primacy and making available our crucial geography and modest military assets as integral components of US strategy, including its ability to win a war against any nation that challenges its predominance.
But how sensible is such an approach if we are dealing with a completely transactional US with a narrow view of its interests, a dismissive approach to allies and a seeming indifference to the defence of values abroad?
This is not to argue against the US alliance or to suggest that we should walk away from it. The alliance has compelling utilitarian benefits that accrue irrespective of whether our values move in different directions. It gives us access to intelligence, to advanced defence technology and it will always have a deterrent effect on a potential adversary by having to factor in the possibility that the US might come to our defence.
However, the alliance was never intended to be a cheap substitute for a serious Australian defence force. If we are ever to realise the objective of the defence of Australia, it will require a much larger investment in defence capability including the acquisition of power projection which can credibly deter a potential adversary.
A re-elected Trump is no longer an aberration. But nor is his approach the only future for US policy. He secured a smidgen less than 50% of votes cast, and while there can be no return to the status quo before Trump, we should not completely rule out a return to a more familiar US foreign policy sometime after Trump’s second and final term.
But even if the US returns to a more traditional strategic and foreign policy, at best a 50/50 bet, Australia would be wise to recognise what we should have known all along: the defence of sovereignty is not something a serious country can leave to others. If we cannot defend Australia, we cannot make our own future.
Republished from Australian Financial Review, Feb 06, 2025
Peter Varghese AO is Chancellor of The University of Queensland and a former Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Director-General of Australia’s peak intelligence agency, the Office of National Assessments.