US foreign policy is underpinned by ideational myths, like that of the ‘innocent nation’, which requires a succession of ‘immoral’ enemies to sustain it. Does Australia fully comprehend the potential implications of the American sense of righteousness and mission?
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Even in the improbable setting of a joint media conference in Jerusalem, US Secretary of State Blinken serves up the ‘shared values’ narrative of higher motives underlying US foreign policy. But the real values on display are not universal and enduring – they are fluid, adaptable and self-serving.
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Formidable illiberal forces are emerging in the US, which, in power, could have profound consequences for America domestically and for America’s position in the world. After the 2024 US presidential election, America’s reliability, predictability, and compatibility as an ally could even be less than under Trump.
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On PM Albanese’s watch Australia has, without explanation, agreed to host US B-52H Stratofortress aircraft: “a nuclear stand-off platform with global reach”. The recent US National Defence Strategy provides the missing context, and effectively confirms Australia’s role in American nuclear war planning.
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Submission to US strategic objectives is often on display as new Australian Defence Ministers ritually wend their way to Washington to offer up jaded homilies, full of hagiographic accounts of ANZUS and strained assertions of shared values. The new Minister’s recent visit, however, foreshadows a more dangerous abandonment of fundamental elements of national sovereignty.
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Australia’s interests are not obviously met by joining gatherings on distant shores with leaders sharing different strategic concerns. The Asia Pacific remains at the heart of Australia’s economic and strategic interests and the crucible where Australia’s prosperity and peace will be forged.
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Bidenesque tales of a beneficent and wise ruler, who only wants his land to be the richest and strongest nation because of the benefit that it would bring to all, can’t be allowed to obscure the real situation in America, nor its brutally realist pursuit of its own interests through power.
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US President Biden could be succeeded by a democratically elected illiberal administration beholden to violent and bizarre supporters. What would the implications of an illiberal America be for Australia?
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When the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarines are delivered, they will be expensive white elephants. And this strategically unsupportable and inordinately expensive project will distort defence policy for a generation.
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The prospect of nuclear powered submarines has generated a lot of magical thinking in defence and strategic policy circles. But the incontrovertible fact is that submarines that don’t exist cannot either defend or deter.
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The nuclear submarine issue is simply a blind. AUKUS is just a distraction. The AUSMIN 2021 Joint Statement reveals the extent to which Australia is now entwined in US military war preparations.
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Leaving aside the potentially adverse strategic implications of Australia’s nuclear-powered submarine decision, for those who think a submarine capability is important, it is simply bad defence policy. Australian governments are now certain to be bedevilled by submarines for generations.
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As an ally of the US, Australia should be reflecting deeply on America’s third major postwar strategic fiasco. In each, the allies have been let down or suffered. In Afghanistan, in the final analysis, US domestic politics and US interests determined its actions. Allies were left to make do.
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US political factions seem to have moved beyond seeing each other as legitimate competitors in a democratic marketplace of ideas. The other side is perceived as the holder of totally unacceptable moral, economic, and political ideas and values, and only their total overthrow will suffice. Each side sees the other as the “enemy inside the gates”. Can the divisions in America be resolved in a pluralistic compromise?
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This article explores the reasons why South Korea has been unwilling to join ‘the Quad’, suggesting that here the issue is not just about balancing diverging economic and security interests, but the reality that progressing South Korea’s key security priority – North Korea – requires a more accommodating approach to China.
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In ‘It’s still hard to be America’s ally’, Richard Fontaine writes about the post-Trump challenges for US allies. Biden’s welcome celebration of US alliances, he writes, raises its own set of ambiguities and contradictions which pose new dilemmas for long-term allies.
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The enormous military power of America will continue to make alliances with it attractive. But the Europeans and East Asians will strive to balance their alliances with their economic entanglement with China. America might find diplomatic support against China, but will in all likelihood find itself alone in a war with China in East Asia.
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It is reported that North Korea’s claim that it had launched a new type of tactical short-range ballistic missile has highlighted military advances by the nuclear-armed state and propelled it to the top of new U.S. President Joe Biden’s foreign policy agenda.
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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken addressed NATO members in Brussels on Wednesday 24 March 2021 calling on them to work with the US to counter China. However in a shift of tone from that of recent weeks, he also said that the US “won’t force allies into an ‘us-or-them’ choice with China,” and acknowledged that the US knows “that our allies have complex relationships with China that won’t always align perfectly”.
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US President Joe Biden will join with the leaders of Japan, India and Australia on Friday this week [12 March 2021] at a virtual gathering of the “Quadrilateral Security Dialogue”.
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