Mark Beeson, Adjunct professor, Australia-China Relations Institute, University of Technology Sydney
Even the most ardent supporters of the alliance with the United States – the notional foundation of Australian security for more than 70 years – must be having some misgivings about the second coming of Donald Trump.
If they’re not, they ought to read the two essays under review here. They offer a host of compelling reasons why a reassessment of the costs, benefits and possible future trajectory of the alliance is long overdue.
Review: After America: Australia and the new world order – Emma Shortis (Australia Institute Press), Hard New World: Our Post-American Future; Quarterly Essay 98 – Hugh White (Black Inc)
And yet, notwithstanding the cogency and timeliness of the critiques offered by Emma Shortis and Hugh White, it seems unlikely either of these will be read, much less acted upon, by those Shortis describes as the “mostly men in suits or uniforms, with no democratic accountability” who make security policy on our behalf.
White, emeritus professor of strategic studies at the ANU, was the principal author of Australia’s Defence White Paper in 2000. Despite having been a prominent member of the defence establishment, it is unlikely even his observations will prove any more palatable to its current incumbents.
Shortis, an historian and writer, is director of the Australia Institute’s International & Security Affairs Program. She is also a young woman, and while this shouldn’t matter, I suspect it does; at least to the “mostly men” who guard the nation from a host of improbable threats while ignoring what is arguably the most likely and important one: climate change.
The age of insecurity
To Shortis’s great credit, she begins her essay with a discussion of a “world on fire” in which the Trump administration is “locking in a bleaker future”.
This matters for both generational and geographical reasons. While we live in what is arguably the safest place on the planet, the country has the rare distinction of regularly experiencing once-in-100-year floods and droughts, sometimes simultaneously.
If that’s not a threat to security, especially of the young, it’s hard to know what is. It’s not one the current government or any other in this country has ever taken seriously enough.
White gives a rather perfunctory acknowledgement of this reality, reflecting an essentially traditional understanding of security – even if some of his conclusions will induce conniptions in Canberra.
While suggesting Trump is “the most prodigious liar in history”, White thinks he’s done Australia a favour by “puncturing the complacency” surrounding the alliance and our unwillingness to contemplate a world in which the US is not the reliable bedrock of security.
Shortis doubts the US ever was a trustworthy or reliable ally. This helps explain what she calls the “strategy of pre-emptive capitulation”, in which Australian policymakers fall over themselves to appear useful and supportive to their “great and powerful friend”. Former prime minister John Howard’s activation of the ANZUS alliance in the wake of September 11 and the disastrous decision to take part in the war in Iraq is perhaps the most egregious example of this unfortunate national proclivity.
White reminds us that all alliances are always transactional. Despite talk of a “history of mateship”, it’s vital to recognise if the great power doesn’t think something is in its “national interest”, it won’t be doing favours for allies. No matter how ingratiating and obliging they may be. While such observations may be unwelcome in Canberra, hopefully they won’t come as a revelation.
Although White is one of Australia’s most astute critics of the conventional wisdom, sceptics and aspiring peace-builders will find little to cheer in his analysis.
A good deal of his essay is taken up with the strategic situations in Europe and Asia. The discussion offers a penetrating, but rather despair-inducing insight into humanity’s collective predicament: only by credibly threatening our notional foes with nuclear Armageddon can we hope to keep the peace.
The problem we now face, White argues, is the likes of Russia and China are beginning to doubt America’s part in the “balance of resolve”. During the Cold War both sides were confident about the other side’s ability and willingness to blow them to pieces.
Now mutual destruction is less assured. While some of us might think this was a cause for cautious celebration, White suggests it fatally undermines the deterrent effect of nuclear weapons.
Even before Trump reappeared, this was a source of angst and/or uncertainty for strategists around the world. The principle underpinning international order in a world in which nuclear weapons exist, according to White, is that
a nuclear power can be stopped, but only by an unambiguous demonstration of willingness to fight a nuclear war to stop it.
Trump represents a suitably existential threat to this cheery doctrine. Europeans have belatedly recognised the US is no longer reliable and they are responsible for their own security.
Likewise, an ageing Xi Jinping may want to assure his position in China’s pantheon of great leaders by forcibly returning Taiwan to the motherland. It would be an enormous gamble, of course, but given Trump’s admiration for Xi, and Trump’s apparent willingness to see the world carved up into 19th century-style spheres of influence, it can’t be ruled out.
Australia’s options
If there’s one thing both authors agree on it’s that the AUKUS nuclear submarine project, the notional centrepiece of Australia’s future security is vastly overrated. It’s either a “disaster” (Shortis) or “insignificant” (White).
Likewise, they agree the US is only going to help Australia if it’s judged to be in America’s interest to do so. Recognising quite what an ill-conceived, ludicrously expensive, uncertain project AUKUS is, and just how unreliable a partner the US has become under Trump, might be a useful step on the path to national strategic self-awareness.
Shortis thinks some members of the Trump administration appear to be “aligned with Russia”. Tying ourselves closer to the US, she writes, “does not make us safer”. A major rethink of, and debate about, Australia’s security policy is clearly necessary.
Policymakers also ought to take seriously White’s arguments about the need to reconfigure the armed forces to defend Australia independently in an increasingly uncertain international environment.
Perhaps the hardest idea for Australia’s unimaginative strategic elites to grasp is that, as White points out,
Asia’s future, and Australia’s, will not be decided in Washington. It will be decided in Asia.
Former prime minister Paul Keating’s famous remark “Australia needs to seek its security in Asia rather than from Asia” remains largely unheeded. Despite plausible suggestions about developing closer strategic ties with Indonesia and even cooperating with China to offer leadership on climate change, some ideas remain sacrosanct and alternatives remain literally inconceivable.
Even if we take a narrow view of the nature of security – one revolving around possible military threats to Australia – US Defence Secretary Pete Hesgeth’s demands for greater defence spending on our part confirm White’s point that,
it is classic Trump to expect more and more from allies while he offers them less and less. This is the dead end into which our “America First” defence policy has led us.
Quite so.
Australia’s strategic elites have locked us into the foreign and strategic policies of an increasingly polarised, authoritarian and unpredictable regime.
But as Shortis observes, we cannot be confident about our ability, or the world’s for that matter, to “just ride Trump out”, and hope everything will return to normal afterwards.
It is entirely possible the international situation may get worse – possibly much worse – with or without Trump in the White House.
The reality is American democracy may not survive another four years of Trump and the coterie of startlingly ill-qualified, inhumane, self-promoting chancers who make up much of his administration.
A much-needed national debate
Both authors think attempts to “smother” a serious national debate about defence policy in Australia (White), and the security establishment’s obsession with secrecy (Shortis), are the exact opposite of what this country needs at this historical juncture. They’re right.
Several senior members of Australia’s security community have assured me if I only knew what they did I’d feel very differently about our strategic circumstances.
Really? One thing I do know is that we’re spending far too much time – and money! – acting on what Shortis describes as a “shallow and ungenerous understanding of what ‘security’ really is”.
We really could stop the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza if Xi had a word with Putin and the US stopped supplying Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with the weapons and money to slaughter women and children. But climate change would still be coming to get us.
More importantly, global warming will get worse before it gets better, even in the unlikely event that the “international community” (whoever that may be) agrees on meaningful collective action tomorrow.
You may not agree with all of the ideas and suggestions contained in these essays, but in their different ways they are vital contributions to a much-needed national debate.
An informed and engaged public is a potential asset, not something to be frightened of, after all. Who knows, it may be possible to come up with some genuinely progressive, innovative ideas about what sort of domestic and international policies might be appropriate for an astonishingly fortunate country with no enemies.
Perhaps Australia could even offer an example of the sort of creative, independent middle power diplomacy a troubled world might appreciate and even emulate.
But given our political and strategic elites can’t free themselves from the past, it is difficult to see them dealing imaginatively with the threat of what Shortis calls the looming “environmental catastrophe”.
No wonder so many of the young despair and have little confidence in democracy’s ability to fix what ails us.
Mark Beeson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
