Australians are in serious danger of drawing all the wrong conclusions from the Trump administration’s harsh lessons and tough, plain-speaking to its European NATO allies.
The lesson is not to acknowledge the unsatisfactory nature of some of Donald Trump’s words and actions. Nor to have a national nervous breakdown about what threatens to be quite marginal US tariffs on us (given the tremendous economic self-harm of our own policies).
The real lesson is to understand that every tough bit of scolding Trump has applied to feckless Europeans, in terms of defence capability, applies to us only a hundred times more strongly.
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth told NATO that Europe’s security would no longer be America’s No.1 priority. European nations had been freeloaders on America for too long. As sure as night follows day, a US administration will eventually say the same thing to Australia, but with more justification, and much more devastating consequences.
The challenge is not to tut-tut about Trump. We can do that as much as we like. The Australian national challenge is to recognise the changed strategic reality and work out what we do, on our own responsibility, to preserve our own national security.
Don’t get me wrong. Some of what Trump has done is appalling and tragic. Negotiating about Ukraine without Ukraine there is horrible, and repeats the worst mistakes of the past. Giving major concessions to the Russian dictator, Vladimir Putin, such as that Ukraine can never join NATO, is bad in principle and as a negotiating tactic. A widening fissure between the US and European NATO nations weakens the West. Ukraine deserves support.
I wish Donald Trump were Ronald Reagan. But there it is.
But let’s also be absolutely clear that every criticism Trump, Hegseth and Vice-President JD Vance make about Europe is true, devastatingly true. Collectively, Europe creates sterling narratives but does nothing. It talks like Winston Churchill, governs like Bernie Sanders. It writes cheques without funds, knowing Washington will have to cash them. US presidents have been making such complains for decades. Some say Trump is entitled to make such complaints, but he’s gone too far. That analysis is hopeless. It completely absolves Europe of adult responsibility. Russia has a smaller economy than Italy. Yet Italy, Germany, France, Britain, Spain and all the other NATO Europeans, whose combined economy is bigger than the US, can’t deal militarily with Russia.
Many Europeans at the Munich Security Conference spoke eloquently about the need to support Ukraine indefinitely, about Ukraine joining NATO, etc. All sentiments I’d agree with, but what are the facts? If you add the five biggest European donors to Ukraine together, the US has given Ukraine 50 per cent more military aid than that cumulative total.
Both Russia and Ukraine are in Europe. Trump, rudely but not without reason, asks: Why should American blood and treasure defend Europe, when Europe will not defend itself?
Similarly, Vance’s tart but honest assessment that Europe’s greatest dangers come from within – uncontrolled immigration, the loss of belief by European societies in their own purpose, the intensely undemocratic and anti-security way in which the EU, and other international bodies, ruinously constrict national governments. Vance spoke in a venerable American tradition of providing leadership on core political values to wayward Europeans.
Joe Biden spoke the language of open-ended security commitments, but no one really believed Biden could take decisive action about anything. Trump’s words and some of his actions starkly reveal underlying truths.
So what about Australia?
Britain, where I’ve spent the past couple of weeks, is having a distressed debate about the state of its much-diminished armed forces.
Yet Britain, apart from Poland, is the best of the considerable Europeans. It spends 2.3 per cent of its GDP on defence, which is much, much bigger than Australia’s effort. It’s surrounded by allies, it has an independent nuclear deterrent, yet everyone involved in security in Britain recognises its defence effort is woefully, woefully inadequate.
The quite ideological, and quite left, Labour government of Keir Starmer has pledged to raise defence to 2.5 per cent of GDP.
How does Australia compare? We face, in China, an infinitely more capable strategic competitor than Russia. We face the worst strategic circumstances since World War II. Apart from New Zealand, which has no defence capability to speak of, we have no nearby allies.
In the last completed budget year, our defence spending did not even reach 2 per cent of GDP. Our defence capability has gone badly backwards under Labor.
Like Europe we’ve had decades of warnings, but our feeble, tiny defence force is less capable today than it was three years ago. We have just three capable war ships and they are by no means tier-one combatants. The Albanese government has made one big decision about our most capable service, the air force, which is to cancel the fourth squadron of F-35 jets.
We should have vastly more of everything in defence.
We could, by following an asymmetric military strategy, make ourselves a very tough nut indeed. We do none of that because, like the Europeans, we won’t make a tough resourcing decision. All the security cheques we write are meant to be cashed by our great and powerful friend, Uncle Sam.
We consume vastly more American security than Washington consumes Australian security. We’re not in the US alliance to please Washington. The US alliance is the alpha and omega, the absolute totality, of our security policy. We’ve chosen to be impotent.
Our reaction to potential American tariffs is grossly overblown. We could learn something from the Brits’ phlegmatic reaction. The US has often enough applied rough tariffs to security partners, such as Japan in the 1980s. Tokyo didn’t destroy the alliance over these trade actions because the alliance is overwhelmingly in Japan’s interests.
Much that we tell ourselves about security is a lie. We claim to have been with the Americans in every military engagement since World War I. It’s not literally true and it’s not remotely true in spirit. We normally make tiny, niche contributions, with very little military risk, and do so early to maximise political advantage. Our strategic purpose is never to have meaningful military effect but only to ingratiate ourselves with Washington. Our only military contribution today is to invite the Americans to use northern Australia.
The one piece of admirable rat cunning the Albanese government has displayed, and it’s entirely consistent with our strategic history, is to donate several billion dollars to the Americans and the Brits for nuclear submarine building.
As this column has argued before, these subs may never arrive. Even if they do, it will be far too late to affect today’s dangers. But it’s as near as can be to effectively a national bribe, to ask the Americans and, less crucially, the Brits, not to call out our obvious defence delinquency.
More than 100,000 Americans died defeating Japan in World War II. They secured Australian freedom. No other nation has done anything like that for us. One day a president will ask: Why should American blood and treasure defend Australia, when Australia will not defend itself?
We have no answer to that question.
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