The greatest absurdity in Australia’s political discourse about the second Trump administration is the mantra that America perpetually remains a “reliable ally’’.
Trump’s United States is no longer Australia’s dependable big buddy as it was since the second world war. All those imperial conflicts Australia trailed Washington into (Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan) for “alliance maintenance’’ mean nothing to an expansionist Trump who treats far more geo-politically important supposed friends, like Canada, with blatant contempt.
And yet a cloak of major party bipartisanship ensures no mainstream political challenge to the sanctified US-Australia relationship, as embodied in the 1951 Anzus treaty and, more recently, the reckless $368bn Aukus submarine plan.
Asked on Radio National this week if the US remained a reliable ally, Coalition foreign affairs spokesperson, David Coleman, blithely parroted the increasingly risible Australian orthodoxy: “Yes of course. The US is our most important ally … and has been for many decades and will continue to be.’’
But Australians, perhaps never as heightened to global danger since the second world war, the Cuban missile crisis or US-Soviet nuclear tensions of the early 1980s, can decipher the precarious strategic realpolitik, even from way down here.
It’s not that complicated, no matter how lacking some of our politicians might condescendingly think us.
In late February when the United Nations considered a resolution condemning dictatorial Russia’s invasion of democratic Ukraine, the US voted against it. Their bedfellows? Russia naturally, but also pariah states Belarus and North Korea.
And, so, the US stands solidly with Russia over its invasion of a democratic neighbour, at the UN and for the TV cameras as Trump (with the help of vice president JD Vance) made clear in his White House meeting with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
What shape might Trump America’s support of Putin’s Russia ultimately take? Will it go beyond UN resolutions to access to satellite technology currently afforded Ukraine? To intelligence sharing, perhaps? In which case should Canberra simply cut another front door key for Putin to what is in all practical terms a fully American-controlled military base, Pine Gap, in Australia’s midst? Might it go beyond Trump America’s suspension of critical US military aid to Kyiv towards a shift of more profound military cooperation with – and support of – Russia?
Which, of course, would put America at odds with its other supposed best friend forever, the United Kingdom, as well as the European Union. It is, indeed, as George Monbiot pointed out, a “troubling question’’.
It’s one being publicly canvased by some independents, and public figures associated with both major sides of politics who are, thankfully, beyond the reach of party strictures and their inane talking points.
As former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull recently observed with poignant understatement: “He [Trump] appears to be at the point of facilitating a victory for Vladimir Putin over Ukraine. Now, just contemplate that. It is mind-blowing … we have to recognise the world has changed, America has changed. And we cannot assume that we can rely on America in the way we have in the past.’’
America. Has. Changed.
We’ve got the memo. It seems like our leaders haven’t, or won’t.
Former Labor minister Peter Garrett recently pointed out Australia’s political elites have long assumed Australia’s only viable security option was to have a very powerful friend in the US even if they were an “unlikeable bully’’.
“There was a degree of subservience – that that was the price you had to pay. Now, that has been taken to a new dangerous, illogical and expensive extreme with the Aukus deal’’.
These sentiments certainly reflect the deep private concerns of some major party politicians who are concerned by their parties’ continued unerring sycophancy towards Trump’s America amid its alignment with Russia. And, of course, the bipartisanship protecting Aukus, whose fundamental feature is dramatically enhanced, hand-in-glove, military interoperability with the US. In simple words: it locks Australia in as an unerring military ally at a time when it would be prudent to be anything but.
How? Look to a near future where the EU and Britain and most right-thinking nations, are at odds with an America aligning militarily, morally, strategically with Russia.
And where would Australia be? Despite the consistent major party condemnations of “murderous dictator’’ Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, we will be militarily hocked for $368bn – and therefore tied – to the expansionist America of Trump (or perhaps Vance, should Trump not show further contempt for his own country’s institutions and somehow engineer another term).
The dangerous folly of it all, Australia’s come-what-may bipartisan obsequiousness, was on full cringe-making display when reliable buddy Trump seemed never to have heard of Aukus, despite it being the centrepiece of Australian defence and foreign policy since 2021.
Hearing our leading politicians from both major parties contort to defend him, to forgive his apparent ignorance because, you know, acronyms can be so damn tricky and he’s a helluva busy guy, was an Olympic exercise in gaslighting the Australian public.
We – you – deserve better in these dangerous times.
• Paul Daley is a Guardian Australia columnist
