‘Disrupter’ Turnbull questions worth of AUKUS, challenges US alliance in light of Trump presidency

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull says Australia needs to rethink its relationship with the US under Trump. NewsWire / Martin Ollman

As the federal election campaign gets under way, Malcolm Turnbull is seeking to challenge, if not upturn, a century of Australian reliance on America as its principal ally and security partner.

In his newly self-appointed role as the great disrupter, the former prime minister will host a high-powered security forum in Canberra on Monday that seeks to pressure both sides of politics to distance themselves from the US while Donald Trump is President.

Turnbull’s controversial push against Canberra’s long-established pro-American diplomatic and defence priorities is a rare – but not unheard of – position for ex-prime ministers to take. Labor’s Paul Keating and Liberal Malcolm Fraser both railed against the Australia-US alliance after leaving office.

Turnbull claims his so-called “Sovereignty and Security Forum” is necessary because “the second Trump administration is challenging and overturning assumptions about the international order (which) compels close allies to re-examine the fundamentals of their foreign and defence policies. This is happening in the capitals of Europe, in Ottawa and elsewhere, but not in Canberra”, he says in the invitation to the one-day forum.

Turnbull believes Trump’s maverick behaviour in global affairs since assuming office, and especially his transactional approach to close allies, should lead to “serious scrutiny” of the mutual benefits of the ANZUS alliance and the AUKUS nuclear submarine pact as well as “a fundamental rethink across a broad range of policies including the AUKUS submarine project, trade, defence and regional diplomacy”.

Turnbull’s push for such a forum will not be welcomed by either side of politics in an election campaign in which both sides will be seeking to avoid any fallout with Trump when he is considering imposing more tariffs on US allies.

But Turnbull has already been criticised for the timing of his attacks on Trump last month, when he attacked the President’s pro-tariff policies in the event of Trump’s decision whether to proceed with 25 per cent tariffs on steel and aluminium imports to the US. A furious Trump attacked Turnbull on social media just days before refusing to grant an exemption to Australia. There is no evidence that Turnbull’s comments played a role in Trump’s decision but they were widely viewed as unhelpful.

Turnbull also wants his forum to spotlight the weaknesses of the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal. There is more than a degree of self-interest at play here for Turnbull, who appears to be relishing the pressure and uncertainties now facing AUKUS under Trump, given that the AUKUS deal scuttled the Turnbull-brokered deal to purchase French conventional submarines from France.

Turnbull has chosen some of the best diplomatic, strategic and defence brains to attend the forum. He has sprinkled the panels with critics such as Hugh White, Gareth Evans, Geoff Raby, John McCarthy and Sam Roggeveen, who generally agree with Turnbull’s world view that Australia has been too cosy with the US and needs to question the relationship more.

He has included some fierce critics of AUKUS, including Rear Admiral Peter Briggs. But Turnbull has also included political centrists and even a few China hawks on panels to provide some balance and sparks in the debate.

The central questions will include how Australia should defend itself in the face of a less reliable America, what type of security threats the country faces, how valid are current policies to respond, and whether the AUKUS deal is viable and realistic

Whether anything comes of the Turnbull forum in terms of influencing the policies of either the Albanese government or Peter Dutton’s Coalition is doubtful. But it seems nothing will stop the former PM trying to deal himself back into the public debate.