The Trump test: PM chose a side, Dutton picked the fence

Anthony Albanese would not talk about sending troops to Ukraine in any normal week in Australian politics. But this was no ordinary week. In the days after Donald Trump bawled out Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House, Australia had to make a choice about where to stand on a distant conflict.

The sight of the United States president berating the Ukrainian leader while parading his sympathy for Russian president Vladimir Putin was a signpost to American decline. The Western alliance built over the past 75 years cannot survive presidents who betray friends and help enemies. The response from allies, especially those in Europe, has been to do whatever they can to limit the damage.

Peace in our time? From left: French President Emmanuel Macron, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, US President Donald Trump, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.Credit:

This is the essential context for what has become a partisan divide in Australia over whether to consider peacekeepers for Ukraine – a sudden question that sets up another dispute over defence between Labor and the Liberals. It is little more than a week since Opposition Leader Peter Dutton went after the prime minister over the provocative visit from three Chinese ships, now off the coast of Western Australia. Trump, meanwhile, is almost certain to put tariffs on Australian iron and steel. Security concerns now cloud the election campaign.

Whether the threat comes from Tropical Cyclone Alfred or the Trump administration, the government has to adjust at high speed. It has to watch for the natural disaster in Queensland and northern NSW as well as the unnatural one in the White House.

Albanese has the option to call the election within days, given April 12 is a potential date, but he would not and could not do this during a national emergency. With luck, the cyclone will not cause the damage feared. Whatever happens, the election will probably have to wait until May, after a March 25 budget. This could easily make security an even bigger issue at the ballot box when Trump is wrecking alliances before our eyes.

Albanese was wary at first about the idea of Australian peacekeepers arriving in Ukraine to help hold a truce with Russia. The concept is so hypothetical it seems naive when Russian forces are inflicting daily cruelty on Ukrainian civilians – launching 181 drone attacks and three ballistic missiles on Wednesday alone. Even so, the idea is being advanced by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and other NATO leaders in the hope of finding a path to a ceasefire.

The peacekeeper plan has to be seen as part of the European response to the ugly spectacle in the White House one week ago when Trump sought to belittle Zelensky.

Canberra initially played down the prospect of Australians joining this theoretical force. “We’re not envisaging that sort of commitment,” said Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy in the press gallery corridor on Tuesday afternoon. The guidance from others was that there was no reason to put boots on the ground.

Dutton had rejected the idea earlier the same day. He offered an instant “no” when a reporter asked about peacekeepers during a campaign stop in his electorate of Dickson in Queensland. “There’s no need for Australia to send troops, but we should continue our support for Ukraine,” he said. This seemed to be a bipartisan position.

That changed overnight. The government could see that the US was about to freeze military support for Ukraine. At the same time, the message from European leaders was clear: please back the peacekeeping plan. The choice for Australia was whether to side with other liberal democracies in pursuing the best outcome for Zelensky, not Putin.

Albanese sent the necessary signal on Wednesday morning when asked a general question about Ukraine. “There’s discussion at the moment about potential peacekeeping,” he said. “And from my government’s perspective, we’re open to consideration of any proposals going forward.” He mentioned Australia’s history of sending peacekeepers to other flashpoints.

Albanese noted on Thursday that there was no request for this help. Of course there isn’t – there is no peace to keep. The key point is that the government does not rule it out. There is no prospect of an Australian division heading to Europe and no plan to send troops to fight a war, but there is the chance of a small peacekeeping group. Call it moral support, perhaps, or a symbolic action. Everything depends on whether Starmer and Macron make a convincing case for peacekeepers when an American security guarantee is so unlikely.

Anyone who wonders about Labor’s response to Trump should take note. Albanese has asserted an independent stance that supports European allies and other liberal democracies. Dutton, meanwhile, rules out the option. The opposition leader can point to practical reasons for rejecting an Australian contribution to a peacekeeping force – the logistics, risk to soldiers, and distance from Europe when we need to focus on the Asia-Pacific. Even so, he has offered no help to European friends during a desperate time.

This is becoming a way to measure how politicians and commentators respond to Trump. Some want to make excuses for the president by finding fault with others. A common refrain is that European leaders can only blame themselves because they did not spend enough on defence.

But there are no excuses for Trump deserting European allies. It is less than 25 years since NATO members, including Britain, France and Germany, joined US forces in Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks on New York City and Washington. Now, US Vice President J.D. Vance talks about allies like these as “random” countries trying to help Ukraine – a puerile remark.

Nobody can be sure whether Australian peacekeepers will ever be needed in Ukraine because everything depends on the negotiations a long way from Canberra. Dutton has kept up his criticism of the idea, knowing he will look weak if he backflips, but he did not need to be so quick to rule out the help. Australia has sent peacekeepers to at least two dozen countries over the decades.

The result is that Albanese sides with European allies, while Dutton seems more equivocal with his support. Australians get to see the two leaders navigate one of the big challenges of the coming election campaign: how to respond to Trump. And it was Albanese who took the stronger line, messing with Coalition taunts about his weakness.

Australians will be praying that Cyclone Alfred leaves the country unscathed, but nobody will be spared from Hurricane Donald. British photographer Platon once asked Trump how he handled the storm around him when everything he did was so controversial. Trump’s reply? “I am the storm.”

No weather radar can tell us what this might do to the election.

David Crowe is chief political correspondent.

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