Australia needs to find its courage because no matter what Trump says, this is not over

On Tuesday morning Australian time, President Donald Trump posted a message to Truth Social, declaring that a temporary “CEASEFIRE!” had been agreed to by the United States, Israel and Iran, and that it would come into effect within hours.

But what the president says or posts to his social media platform is rarely reliable or consistent. Though a ceasefire has since been agreed to, neither Iran nor Israel had confirmed their agreement at the time of Trump’s post. Not that Trump has any real interest in what other leaders think, know or do.

For Australians, this week has been a reminder of the significant risks and potential consequences of being aligned to a nation led by Donald Trump.Credit: Artists

Not long before this so-called “PEACEFUL and RESPECTFUL” ceasefire agreement was reached, Trump speculated (on social media, of course) about a “regime change” in Iran. It was “not politically correct” to say it, he wrote, but “why wouldn’t there be a Regime change???” It’s never about regime change. Until it is.

Trump has long framed himself as the anti-war president. Both his Make America Great Again supporter base (some of whom are genuinely anti-war), and many in the media lapped up his messaging.

But this has never been true. He is not anti-war. He’s not even an isolationist. Trump relishes violence and assertions of power. Already since returning to the White House in late January, his administration has bombed Yemen, and now Iran.

Trump is undeniably anti certain types of war, and anti certain types of people dying in them. He is also anti losing wars. He is the worst instincts of American power personified, violently asserting might over right.

For Australians, this week has been a reminder for us all of the significant risks and potential consequences of being aligned to a nation led by someone like this.

Australia – still, we are told, an important ally of the US – was not informed in advance of the strikes, even though Australian systems and bases, including the joint facilities at Pine Gap, may very well have been used to execute them.

Over the weekend, the first indication that strikes might be coming was the redirection of American bombers over the Pacific. Those planes had the option of refuelling in or over northern Australia, just as American planes had done during the Trump administration’s strikes on Yemen in March. Though that part of the operation turned out to be a decoy, Australia was, once again, implicated.

We do not yet know if Pine Gap was engaged in these strikes because our democratically elected government has steadfastly refused to disclose that information to the public. To date, we have been told only that the strikes were “unilateral”.

But we do know that Pine Gap was involved in drone strike operations during the United States-led War on Terror, when the signals intelligence base supported the location and tracking of targets. We also know that Pine Gap is deeply integrated into both intelligence-gathering and command and control – including for America’s nuclear arsenal. Decisions about this are also unilateral, and currently rest entirely in the mind of a “very stable genius”.

That makes Australia, at the very least, complicit in everything the United States does. And it makes us more of a target.

But in sections of the Australian media, the most significant ire was reserved not for that complicity and the consequent risks to our security, but for the “slow” response to Operation Midnight Hammer from the government.

Never mind that any response to Trump’s actions should be careful and considered, and perhaps wait until after his late-night posting sprees have calmed down. Instead, it is assumed that Australia should jump even before the United States tells us how high, as we have done historically.

Responses like Coalition acting foreign affairs spokesperson Andrew Hastie’s insistence that the government’s response was “ambiguous” and “too slow”, and that Australia effectively provided unqualified support to the Trump administration makes two things clear: first, no amount of pandering to the right will ever be enough. Yet even with a huge majority – enough to make the Coalition completely irrelevant – the Labor Party remains preoccupied with avoiding a fight on national security issues. Second, and arguably of greater consequence, is Australia’s hypocrisy when it comes to the principles of international law.

These laws do not, apparently, apply to Israel, which contravened those principles when it waged war on Iran. Nor do they apply to the United States, which can apparently do whatever it wants with the full support of the Australian government.

The Trump administration has the space to do whatever it wants because nothing about any of this is new. Trump and his ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, can now so catastrophically undermine the international rule of law because it was already so eroded by previous US administrations who had themselves pursued regime change and which, like the Biden administration, had facilitated the war crimes of the Israeli government. And they did so with the support of allied nations, including Australia.

Senior ministers within the Australian government, up to and including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, now seem unable or unwilling to say the most basic of things: that attacks against another sovereign nation on the basis of insufficient or no evidence of imminent threat are illegal and undermine the system of international law upon which our security depends. For that system to function, it must apply universally to all nations, including our most important security ally.

This is an appalling moral failure. And it is a failure which belies the prime minister’s election night invocation of “Australian values”. Those values, according to Albanese, include “fairness” and “the strength to show courage in adversity”.

No matter what Trump says, this is not over. The Australian government needs to find its courage in the face of the adversity being inflicted on the world by the Trump administration, because that adversity will keep coming. But there is no courage in complicity. That way lies disaster.

Dr Emma Shortis is director of the International and Security Affairs program at think tank The Australia Institute.

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