A quarter of a century ago, the world was a pretty comfortable place for Australia. Our prosperity seemed assured by the apparently irresistible and irreversible forces of globalisation, driven by free trade and the free movement of investment, technology, ideas and people. That in turn was turbo-charging our Asian neighbours, especially China, offering us economic opportunities that were the envy of the world. Our security seemed assured by the apparently unchallengeable power of the United States, its manifest determination to uphold a global order in which aggression would be swiftly and surely punished, and its deep commitment to close allies, of which we were among the closest. The values that we like to think define us – our commitment to electoral democracy, the rule of law, freedom of speech, respect for human rights, tolerance of diversity – were now, we thought, becoming truly universal, as the long arc of world history bent towards freedom and justice. All this – what our political leaders have in mind when they talk about the “rules-based order” – was thanks to America. Australia was flourishing in a world made safe and easy for us by American power, influence and ideas.
Since then, a lot has gone wrong: 9/11 and the War on Terror, the global financial crisis, the Covid-19 pandemic and the fractious and faltering struggle against global warming, to name just the most obvious. And now we seem to face something even more fundamental: a shift from a world which worked well for us to one that looks a lot harder to navigate. The basis of our prosperity is imperilled by the collapse of globalisation and the prospect that rival trade blocs will be built on its ruins. The foundation of our security is undermined by the eclipse of the US-led rules-based order. And the power of our values is undermined by the persistence of strong authoritarian governments in many powerful states, and the rise of populism and the erosion of democratic norms in places where these once seemed strongest, especially the United States. The world America made for us is passing away. Its place is being taken by a new and harder post-American world, and we are at a loss to know what to make of it and how to make our way in it. Our leaders are still in denial about all this. They hope that the old rules-based order will somehow revive and survive so that things go back to the way they were in John Howard’s day.
They grew complacent when the shock of Trump’s first term gave way to the misleading normality of the Biden presidency, which somewhat restored confidence in democratic values and institutions. They were reassured too by Washington’s apparently robust response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, while its commitment to resisting China and upholding our nation’s security seemed to be reaffirmed by AUKUS.
But now Trump is back, worse than ever. His first months back in office have been an astonishing spectacle. His absurdly inappropriate appointments to key jobs. His grotesque ideas on Gaza. His open contempt for US allies. His threats to Canada, Panama and Greenland. His treatment of Ukraine. His frontal assault on the global trading system. The wrecking ball he has swung at the machinery of US government. His contempt for democracy and the rule of law. We must now recognise that Trump and the movement he inspires constitute a decisive shift in the way America works and in how this shapes the world. We must now see just how much we have already lost of the old world order, and how much more we are in danger of losing.
But the can’t-look-away spectacle of Trump’s second presidency should not mislead us. Everything that is happening is not just because of Trump. Deeper forces are also at work, and we must understand them if we are to understand this hard new world and how to make our way in it. That is what this essay is about. It focuses especially on the strategic elements of the current crisis. Ever since Imperial Japan destroyed Britain’s position in Asia almost eighty-four years ago, our security and our place in the international system have been built upon our dependence on America, formalised seventy-four years ago in the ANZUS Treaty. Now that long era is ending, and we come face to face with our post-American future.
We are not alone. US allies in Europe and Asia have also relied on America, but they are now thinking seriously about their post-American futures. We have not even started. In February, as the full extent of Trump’s abandonment of Europe over Ukraine was becoming clear, Anthony Albanese blithely confirmed that he believed our alliance with the United States was “rock solid.” Peter Dutton was equally confident. Our alliance, we are told, stands above the ebb and flow of politics and policies in either country. Presidents may come and go, but nothing can shake the sure foundations of this great partnership.
America has strategic alliances with a lot of countries – over fifty, by one count. But the custodians of Australia’s alliance with America – political leaders, officials, commentators and assorted schmoozers – believe that ours is something very special. They are convinced that between Australia and America there is a unique intimacy and mutual commitment that lifts our alliance under the ANZUS Treaty to a different level, above the cool and sometimes cynical calculus of national interests where ordinary alliances operate. Faced with the prospect of a second Trump presidency, Penny Wong said last year that the US–Australia relationship “is bigger than the events of the day” and is “shaped by enduring friendship and timeless values.”
The claim is that we are more than allies, we are “mates.” Tony Abbott once went so far as to tell an audience in Washington that Australians did not really regard America as a foreign country. “We are more than allies, we’re family,” he said. Thus the proud boast that Australia has fought alongside America in every war it has fought since 1900. How else to explain America’s generosity in letting us share its most prized military assets under AUKUS?
This is an illusion, and like many illusions it springs from anxiety. We are eager to claim that the alliance is built on foundations firmer than the shifting sands of national policies and interests precisely because we are unsure that policy and interests alone are enough to keep it alive. For all the sentimental talk of imperishable bonds, Australians have always been the most anxious of allies, and for good reason. No country in history has depended so much, and for so long, on allies so far away from us and to whom we matter so little for the defence of their most vital interests.
That is why for 150 years, since the splendour of Pax Britannica first began to fray, “Can we depend on our allies?” has always been one of the central questions of our national life. And what we have learnt, again and again, is that all alliances, without exception, are transactional. That is what we discovered when Singapore fell in 1942, when the vaunted imperial ties of history, language, values and kinship were outweighed by the demands of Britain’s own vital interests.
It was a lesson imprinted indelibly on the minds of the wartime and postwar generations, for whom the Fall of Singapore was a touchstone, reinforced by Britain’s final withdrawal east of Suez after 1968 and America’s uncertain support in regional crises of the early 1960s. But the lesson needs relearning today, as we emerge from the era we still call the “post–Cold War,” when American power and resolve appeared to be limitless and unchallenged – rather like Britain’s seemed at the height of its nineteenth-century imperial power. In a world with only one global power, an alliance with that power seemed to offer all we needed to make our way in the world. That era has now passed.
Recognising this and adapting to it is especially hard because the flipside of our deep comfort with the world America has made for us has always been a certain ambivalence about Australia’s embrace of an alternative, Asian destiny. That has offered opportunities for politicians to exploit if they dare. John Howard was one who did. His mantra was that Australia does not have to choose between its history and its geography, by which he meant that we can bow to the logic of geography and comparative advantage by building our economy on Asian markets, but still look to America and Europe for our identity and our security. Australians would feel, he used to say, more “relaxed and comfortable” that way.
It seemed to work in the 1990s, when America’s power seemed unchallengeable, and it was possible to think that Asia need be no more to us than a market for our exports. It made less sense by the time Howard left office in 2007, as I think he may have understood, because by then Asia was already more than just a market for us. But it didn’t work for Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton in 2020 and 2021. They tried to make political hay from Australians’ growing anxiety about China’s power and ambition by talking up the China threat and accusing their opponents of being agents of Beijing. Their David and Goliath act played well for a time, but not so much in the 2022 election, when Chinese Australian voters deserted the Coalition in numbers sufficient to cost them a couple of seats. For an electorally significant number of Australians today, Asia is not just a market: it is where they come from, and it means a lot to them. A lot more of us may be starting to understand, with or without Trump’s help, the truth of Paul Keating’s mantra that Australia must look for its security in Asia, not from Asia.
