For decades, Australia has anchored its defence and foreign policy in the presumed stability of the US alliance. Cloaked in the language of “mateship,” shared democratic values, and the enduring ANZUS treaty, the partnership was sold to the Australian public as both sacred and unshakable. But the shifting tides of American politics, particularly under Donald Trump’s brand of muscular nationalism, have exposed an uncomfortable truth: Australia can no longer afford to assume Washington will always be there.
The alliance, long asymmetrical, has now become increasingly transactional—and perhaps even expendable.
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 publics 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.
Beyond the Tariffs: A Stark Message for Canberra
When the Trump administration refused to exempt Australia from punitive tariffs on beef, steel and aluminium—offering only a dismissive shrug through a White House staffer—it wasn’t just an economic slight. It was a strategic slap in the face. The message was clear: historical ties, past loyalty, and rhetorical camaraderie are no longer enough to warrant preferential treatment.
While economists, like Dr. Emma Shortis of the Australia Institute, argue the economic impact of these tariffs may be negligible in the long term, the political and symbolic implications are profound. “This is Trump making it very clear that allies don’t count unless they’re useful right now,” Shortis says. “Australia still thinks it gets a gold star from America because of everything it’s given in the past. But that illusion has crumbled.”
In her book Our Exceptional Friend, Shortis dismantles the romanticism surrounding the US-Australia alliance, casting it instead as a pragmatic arrangement between a global superpower and a loyal junior partner—one that has never been truly reciprocal.
AUKUS and the Shift from Autonomy to Alignment
This imbalance has been further entrenched by the AUKUS agreement—a trilateral security pact between Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom—which will see nuclear-powered submarines transferred to the Royal Australian Navy. The deal represents more than a technology acquisition. It signifies a strategic shift: a deeper entanglement with American military planning, doctrine, and expectations.
Historically, Australia retained the right to choose whether or not to follow the US into conflict. AUKUS, however, changes that default setting. As Shortis puts it, “This isn't just deeper cooperation—it’s strategic dependency. Australia is embedding itself into the architecture of American warfare.”
This raises a vital question for policymakers: does greater alignment with Washington enhance Australia’s security, or does it entangle the nation in conflicts and agendas that may not align with its own interests?
Trumpism, Defence, and the Limits of Loyalty
Trump’s return to the political stage has sparked fresh anxiety among Australia’s defence community. A recent Australia Institute poll found that 31% of Australians now consider Trump the greatest threat to global peace, ahead of Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin. Nearly half the country doubts that a Trump-led America would honour its defence commitments to Australia if conflict broke out.
Even veteran insiders like Arthur Sinodinos, Australia’s former ambassador to the US, concede the strategic environment has changed. “We can’t keep mourning the decline of American leadership. We’re not in the old world anymore,” he says. While Sinodinos remains a firm believer in the alliance’s utility—particularly in defence cooperation—he acknowledges Australia must “be clear-eyed” about its interests and demonstrate its relevance to American security strategy.
“We can’t assume the alliance will function on autopilot,” he warns. “We need to show that Australia enhances American security, not just the other way around.”
This includes offering strategic assets, like joint-use military bases in northern Australia, collaboration on advanced technologies, and access to critical minerals. But it also requires hard conversations about sovereignty, risk-sharing, and the price of partnership.
Living in a Strategic Illusion
Dr. Allan Patience of the University of Melbourne argues that the Trump era hasn’t so much changed the US-Australia alliance as it has exposed its long-standing flaws. “Australians have been living in a fool’s paradise since ANZUS was signed in 1951,” he says. “The treaty never guaranteed automatic defence, yet we’ve acted like it does.”
Patience criticizes the bipartisan political tendency to mythologize the US relationship, calling it a pacifying narrative that has obscured real strategic vulnerabilities. “We’ve allowed our national insecurity—our fear of Asia—to push us into dependency. And now, we’re facing the consequences of that.”
He believes Australia must pivot, urgently and decisively, toward a more independent foreign policy. This means reducing strategic overreliance on the US and instead cultivating deeper regional partnerships, particularly with nations like Japan, South Korea, and Indonesia. It also means investing in more capable, sovereign defence forces that can operate autonomously in the Indo-Pacific.
“In the 1980s and ‘90s, we talked about enmeshment with Asia. But over the last two decades, that vision has atrophied,” says Patience. “We need to return to that mindset—not because we’re turning our back on the US, but because blind loyalty is no substitute for strategic realism.”
A New Defence Doctrine for a New Era
As global power dynamics shift and America redefines its role, Australia must chart a new defence doctrine—one built not on sentiment, but on sober calculation. That means reassessing assumptions, diversifying partnerships, and building the capabilities to protect its own interests, with or without American backup.
The US may remain a partner—but it is no longer a constant.
The burden now falls on Australian leaders to abandon outdated illusions and craft a defence policy fit for an era of uncertainty. That policy must be built on self-reliance, regional diplomacy, and a clear-eyed understanding of power—not promises.
Because in today’s world, security doesn’t come from loyalty. It comes from leverage.
The Myth of Reliance on the US
For at least a decade, Australia has coasted on the assumption that the US security umbrella would indefinitely shield it from harm. As Washington shouldered the burden of maintaining a liberal international order, Canberra quietly downgraded its own defence posture, investing in diplomacy and soft power while neglecting hard capability. It was a calculated gamble: why invest heavily in defence when the world’s preeminent military superpower is just a phone call away?
But that wager was made in a different era—one in which American dominance was uncontested, and the global order largely static. That world is gone.
As new centres of strategic gravity emerge across the Indo-Pacific, the Middle East, Africa, and Eurasia, the illusion of unipolarity has crumbled. The comforting narrative of “the end of history” has collapsed under the pressure of hard power realities—from Russia’s war in Ukraine to China’s naval assertiveness in the South China Sea and beyond.
Australia now finds itself in a perilous position: strategically exposed, underprepared, and psychologically anchored to an alliance that may no longer function as advertised.
Breaking the Strategic Myth
This conversation cannot be separated from the myths that shape Australia’s defence identity. One of the most persistent is the belief that the United States “saved” Australia from Japanese invasion during the Second World War. Yet historical research suggests that such an invasion was never seriously contemplated by Japan’s high command. Rather, Australia’s strategic importance lay in its potential use by American forces as a base to strike northward—not in its own intrinsic value to Tokyo.
Then, as now, it was Australia’s position as a staging ground for US power projection that made it a target—not its own defences.
Toward a Doctrine of Sovereign Defence
To confront this new world, Australia must embrace a doctrine of sovereign defence—not as a substitute for the alliance, but as its foundation. That means not investing in aircraft, submarines and ships, but in genuine diplomacy. It means re-establishing the political and institutional muscle memory required to think strategically—not just reactively.
Most of all, it means recognising that the alliance with the US must be based not on sentiment, but on shared strategic interest—and that those interests may on many occasions fail to align.
The burden of Australian defence cannot be subcontracted to Washington forever. The next decade will determine whether Australia becomes a serious strategic actor—or remains a security consumer in a world where power is increasingly earned, not gifted.
As Senator David Shoebridge recently said, "The answer is not hundreds of billions more on US weapons and praying Trump will protect us, it’s an independent defence strategy focused on effectively protecting us instead of drawing us unprepared into the next disastrous US war."
Curtin’s Ghost and Albanese’s Dilemma: Echoes of Abandonment
Anthony Albanese must surely feel the chill of historical déjà vu, inhabiting a role eerily reminiscent of John Curtin in the wake of the fall of Singapore. Within Labor mythology, Curtin’s wartime struggles with Winston Churchill—accused of casting Australia adrift—form a cornerstone of national narrative, cemented by the Labor pantheon, from Curtin himself to Paul Keating, who regularly invoked the saga as a parable of strategic betrayal and the need for sovereign realism.
Curtin had long harboured doubts about the invincibility of the British bastion at Singapore, seeing through the illusion that its imposing naval base would deter Japanese aggression. With most of Australia’s military forces deployed in the Middle East, he feared that a collapse in Singapore would leave the continent dangerously exposed—and he was right. Yet unbeknownst to him, the United States and Britain had already settled on a grim calculus: defeat Germany first, contain Japan later. Australia’s vulnerability was a known collateral cost, not a strategic oversight.
Churchill, dismissive of Australian fears and disdainful of their insistence on strategic autonomy, leaned heavily on imperial sentiment. He promised Australia that, should the worst occur, Britain would pivot its full might to the Pacific. Curtin, however, was not so easily placated. He recognized that even if Churchill's assurances were sincere—which was doubtful—the United Kingdom simply lacked the means to deliver. When Churchill diverted Australian troops, already en route home, to prop up British campaigns in Burma and Java, Curtin’s worst fears were confirmed. Some of those forces never returned, lost in early defeats across Asia, and unavailable for the defence of New Guinea. It was a bitter lesson in misplaced trust.
With Allies Like These...
That betrayal carved deep scars into Australia’s strategic psyche. Curtin, determined not to be abandoned again, turned to America. Thus began what historian Alan Gyngell dubbed Australia’s enduring “fear of abandonment”—a strategic anxiety that persists to this day, manifesting as an often unquestioned need to cling to “great and powerful friends.”
Fast-forward to today, and while Albanese hasn’t suffered the same humiliations at British hands, his inheritance is no less complex. The United Kingdom, now bound to Australia and the US through the AUKUS pact, promises shared nuclear submarine capability, advanced technology transfers, and intimate defence collaboration. But at a projected cost of $400 billion over 30 years, AUKUS represents not just a military investment, but a strategic wager of colossal proportions.
Originally conceived by former Prime Minister Scott Morrison as both a strategic pivot and a political trap for Labor, AUKUS was intended to showcase Australia’s commitment to the US alliance and expose Labor as weak on national security. Yet Albanese refused to take the bait. Instead of opposing the deal outright, Labor chose tactical ambiguity, neutralizing the issue during the 2022 election. Once in office, however, the government doubled down. AUKUS was not just accepted—it was embraced. Albanese and Defence Minister Richard Marles now stand among its most fervent champions, despite mounting domestic skepticism and warnings from elder Labor statesmen.
At a US Senate hearing on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST), Democrat senator Mark Warner said President Donald Trump’s decision last week to impose tariffs on US allies, including on Australia and the United Kingdom, “undermines our national security and frankly makes us not a good partner”.
“We’re supposed to be doing this major deal around jointly building submarines,” Warner said after the hearing. “I think [Australia] and all of our allies are rethinking whether we can be counted on as a partner.”
While AUKUS aims to strengthen defence ties in the Indo-Pacific, former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has voiced concerns, questioning whether Australia would ever receive a US nuclear-powered submarine. The US faces challenges in its own naval capabilities, with senior Pentagon officials also questioning the feasibility of the submarine deal, given current shipbuilding limitations.
The Trump Test: Alliance Under Fire
The fragile scaffolding of this entire edifice now trembles under the weight of Donald Trump’s foreign policy redux. From his return to the presidency on January 20, Trump has made it abundantly clear: America is no longer the benign hegemon presiding over a liberal international order. The new paradigm is transactional, zero-sum, and indifferent to old loyalties. NATO has become his punching bag; his rhetoric toward allies oscillates between contempt and extortion. Pay up or fend for yourselves. Be useful or be forgotten.
In Europe, the response has been swift and sobering. Allies once confident in American guarantees are now building their own defence capacity—not out of ambition, but necessity. Many now see NATO as a hollow shell, perhaps even irretrievably broken. Trust has eroded not just between governments but within command structures. Quiet conversations in Berlin, Paris, and Warsaw no longer assume American reinforcements will arrive. And Australia would be foolish to believe it occupies a separate, sacred tier of alliance immune from this trend.
Asia Watches, Australia Waits
While the spotlight remains on Europe, America's Indo-Pacific allies—Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Australia—watch nervously from the wings. The question isn’t whether the US will abandon NATO. It’s whether that abandonment foreshadows a broader retrenchment from global security commitments. Already, whispers abound that what Trump has unleashed in Europe will eventually be aimed at the Pacific.
Australia, however, appears paralysed—perhaps hoping that if it remains quiet, it won’t be noticed. That if it avoids criticism, the alliance might endure on autopilot until this moment of madness passes. But that strategy amounts to wishful thinking. America's defence posture is being recalibrated in real time, and Canberra’s reluctance to speak plainly—much less act decisively—suggests a nation still in denial about its fading centrality in US strategic calculus.
Is There Life After America?
The wider world isn’t waiting for Washington. As the US pursues an increasingly isolationist and protectionist economic policy, countries are recalibrating their own trade and defence relationships. Trump’s recent sweeping tariffs—some as high as 90%—threaten to redraw global supply chains. Australia, heavily dependent on trade, especially with Asia, cannot afford to be shackled to a declining and unpredictable American market. Ironically, China—despite its authoritarian tendencies—has proven a more stable and predictable economic partner in recent years than the US.
If this shift continues, it opens the door to alternative trade blocs that exclude the US altogether. Regional coalitions involving China, Japan, South Korea, and Southeast Asia are already under discussion. Australia could, and perhaps should, seek greater integration with these frameworks. This doesn’t require abandoning democratic values—it demands strategic maturity. It means recognizing that the US no longer holds a monopoly on innovation, leadership, or stability.
The Alliance Is Not the Ally
America is still full of friends—its people, its culture, its ideas. But its government, under Trump, is no friend to multilateralism, diplomacy, or collective security. For Australia, that distinction is now existential. We must begin to untether our national security from romanticized notions of American reliability.
Australians want an open, liberal society—a place where science is respected, law is fair, and inclusion is cherished. Increasingly, that Australia stands in contrast to the America emerging under Trump’s leadership. As comedian George Carlin once quipped, “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a Bible.” We’re seeing shades of that now.
This is not about cutting ties with the United States. It’s about growing up. About accepting that alliances are not eternal and that blind loyalty is not a strategy. Our defence policy must start from the assumption that we may stand alone. That is not pessimism—it’s preparation.
End the Cringe: It’s Time to Rethink the US Alliance
What should Australia do when our closest ally—ostensibly the cornerstone of our defence policy—is having a public, petulant global tantrum?
Right now, both major parties in Canberra seem to agree on the answer: pretend nothing is happening and hope that flattering Donald Trump will spare us his wrath. Labor and the Coalition are engaged in a silent competition of appeasement, offering tribute in the form of weapons purchases, base hosting rights, and flattering words—desperate to appear loyal, useful, and above all, non-threatening to America’s current mood swings.
This is strategic cowardice masquerading as diplomacy.
Bullies, however, don’t reward submission. They exploit it. And right now, Canberra is radiating the scent of desperation. We are not projecting strength—we are advertising ourselves as easy prey.
What’s urgently needed is not another round of anxious alliance theatre, but a clear-eyed review of our strategic position: a sober reassessment of our relationship with the United States, a reality check on our actual geopolitical strengths and vulnerabilities, and a willingness to make hard decisions in defence of our national interest—not someone else’s.
The Myth of the Indispensable Ally
For 70 years, the “Canberra consensus” has been built on the idea that the US alliance is sacred and permanent. We’ve treated the ANZUS Treaty’s vague promise of consultation as if it were Article 5 of NATO. We’ve confused presence with commitment and flattery with security guarantees. And we’ve poured billions into proving our loyalty—on the battlefield, in the budget, and in our strategic posture.
The cost has been staggering. Australia joined every major US-led conflict since Vietnam—not because our interests were directly at stake, but to reinforce our relevance to Washington. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan—wars we lost in every conventional sense, but which Canberra insiders perversely counted as victories of loyalty.
Now, with AUKUS, we’re escalating that dependence to absurd new heights. The $368 billion nuclear submarine program isn’t a defence capability—it’s a geopolitical offering, a high-tech tithe to Washington and London. Already, Australia has committed nearly $10 billion just to subsidise the struggling nuclear submarine industries of our allies—industries that are, by most expert accounts, broken.
The US shipyards are already years behind schedule and struggling to produce even one submarine per year. They need to hit 2.3 per year just to meet their own fleet requirements before even thinking about selling “spares” to us. Meanwhile, the UK’s submarine industry is in such a state of disrepair that its own infrastructure auditor has declared its targets “unachievable.” If these were commercial investments, no sane investor would touch them. But Canberra isn’t investing—it’s sacrificing.
Why would the US want us to throw money at the UK’s failing nuclear sub program? Because every British submarine Australia helps build is one less the US needs to. And Washington knows a willing sucker when it sees one.
The False Promise of Protection
The brutal truth is that Australia is unlikely to receive any submarines from AUKUS in a useful timeframe—if ever. But in Canberra’s eyes, that’s not the point. The real aim is symbolic: show the Americans we’re “all in,” no matter the cost or strategic return. AUKUS isn’t about capability—it’s about performance. A show of obedience, written in billions.
And it doesn’t stop at submarines. Australia is spending billions more to build a US nuclear sub base in Fremantle. We’re hosting B-52 bombers in the Top End. Thousands of US Marines are stationed in Darwin. Spy facilities like Pine Gap and others in the northwest continue to embed us deeper in America’s military footprint. Each one of these installations is a potential nuclear target in a future US conflict—none of them makes Australia safer.
This strategic sacrifice was meant to buy us security. But enter Trump. He’s openly dismantling NATO, cutting backroom deals with Putin, blackmailing Ukraine, and even musing about invading Panama and Greenland. His trade policies are an economic wrecking ball, threatening punitive tariffs not just on rivals but on allies like Australia. His entire approach to alliances is transactional, coercive, and contemptuous.
If Trump will abandon Europe, what makes us think he won’t abandon us?
If one of those American bases on Australian soil were struck in a future conflict, do we really believe he would risk Los Angeles for Perth? Or New York for Alice Springs? He wouldn’t. We know it. He knows it. And that’s what makes this alliance, under Trump, not a security guarantee—but a security liability.
Turning Strength Into Weakness
AUKUS, in theory, is supposed to make us stronger. In practice, it’s undermining the very thing that has kept Australia secure for generations: our geography.
We are one of the most geographically insulated nations on Earth. Surrounded by vast oceans, buffered to our north by a chain of archipelagos, and with friendly New Zealand as our only immediate neighbour, Australia is uniquely positioned to be self-reliant in its defence.
Yet instead of leveraging that natural advantage, AUKUS throws us headlong into forward-projection fantasies—projecting military force thousands of kilometres away into the South China Sea, in conflicts we neither control nor comprehend. It’s the strategic equivalent of marching into someone else’s knife fight, unarmed, just to prove you’re tough.
Meanwhile, the Rest of Defence Is Burning
While AUKUS dominates headlines, the rest of the ADF’s procurement program is quietly crumbling. We’re paying nearly $8 billion per Hunter-class frigate—vessels still a decade away from delivery. We’ve bought tanks too heavy for our transport infrastructure, drones too expensive to risk in combat, offshore patrol vessels with unclear roles, and supply ships that don’t work.
This isn’t a defence strategy. It’s a catalogue of dysfunction.
There Is Another Way
The good news? There are alternatives. A growing cohort of independent strategists, diplomats, and defence thinkers are pushing for a shift in focus: away from dependence, and toward self-reliance.
That starts with an honest admission: the US will always act in its own interests—not ours. So will China, India, Japan, and Indonesia. If Australia wants a stable region, it needs to focus on its immediate neighbours—not threaten them with token displays of long-range power projection. Some call this the “echidna strategy”—defensive, self-reliant, prickly if provoked, but fundamentally designed to deter without destabilising.
We can work with ASEAN countries on climate resilience and security cooperation. We can invest in sovereign shipbuilding and missile defence systems suited to our own geography. We can redirect AUKUS funds into building a real domestic defence industry, resilient supply chains, and national capabilities that make sense for our circumstances.
Time to Cut the Cord
The days of cultural cringe, of tying our fate to the decisions of increasingly erratic superpowers, must end. Trump is not an aberration—he’s a symptom of a deeper American disinterest in alliance obligations. Hoping for his favour, or fearing his wrath, is no substitute for strategy.
It’s time to cut the apron strings. Not to become isolationist—but to become independent.
Let’s stop measuring our strategic success by how much we can impress Washington. Let’s start asking what actually keeps Australians safe, and how best to invest in it.
The future of our security won’t be written in Washington or London. It will be written here, at home—if we have the courage to pick up the pen.
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