Albanese’s disdain for the US – and Trump – is hurting Australia
As relations with the US take a dive, the Australian government’s shift in foreign and strategic policy is built on contradictions which leave the nation dangerously exposed.
Here’s the problem: the Albanese government wants the US to deliver it the most sensitive military technology there is – nuclear-propelled submarines – while the Labor government simultaneously moves decisively away from America, geostrategically, militarily, politically, culturally.
The Albanese government is making the strongest effort of any government since Gough Whitlam’s disastrous interregnum in the early 1970s to distance itself from Washington and to contradict the US on specific issues and on world view.
Albanese is changing Australia’s fundamental strategic orientation, all the while claiming not to be doing anything of the kind.
The government’s foreign and defence policies are built on one giant contradiction and many lesser contradictions.
The giant contradiction is trying to get nuclear submarines from the US while deliberately downgrading the alliance and distancing from Washington.
The lesser contradictions are trying to acquire nuclear submarines without significantly increasing the defence budget, and proclaiming the most dangerous strategic circumstances since World War II while doing nothing about them.
And perhaps most poignant of all, claiming to be committed to contributing to joint military deterrence while being unwilling to say what or who you’re deterring, how you are deterring them, what military force you might exercise in deterrence, how you would actually ever fight alongside your strategic partner in a serious conflict, and without being willing to acquire any significant military muscle in the short term and embracing only the most modest plans, apart from the AUKUS subs, in the medium term.
And most important of all, why, in such dangerous circumstances, you’re downgrading public elements of the US-Australia alliance.
This week in Adelaide the Australian American Leadership Dialogue met.
The Americans included a powerful congressional delegation, headed by Democrat senator Chris Coons, who might well have been secretary of state in a Democrat administration.
It included his fellow Democrat, Joe Courtney, and Republican congressmen Trent Kelly and Mike Turner.
There were serving US generals and think tank leaders, past officials, and future officials.
The Leadership Dialogue was created in 1993 by Phil and Julie Scanlan, and is now run by the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tony Smith.
It’s a magnificent, autonomous institution, the most important exercise in private diplomacy in our history.
Without being partisan, ideological or prescriptive, it has brought together, educated, socialised into the alliance and into each others’ politics and national security, generations of US and Australian leaders.
The Albanese government is living off institutional and human capital such as the Dialogue, built up by its predecessors.
It’s especially living off the institutional momentum of the long intertwining of the US and Australian militaries.
Kid gloves approach
The visiting congressmen were extremely polite about Australia.
In a press availability, Coons, while acknowledging “tensions in the relationship”, declined to lecture Canberra about defence spending, although he did say repeatedly: “All of us need to increase our defence spending.”
Given the US spends 3.5 per cent of its GDP on defence and has done that for decades while Australia spends barely 2 per cent of its GDP on defence, the contrast is obvious, though Coons was too polite to draw it.
The Republican Turner, at the same press availability, endorsed Coons’s kid-gloves approach to Australia but, in the context of repeated questions about Australia’s defence budget, went on to say: “Who would have expected the recent NATO summit to be so successful? It was successful because of the pressure Donald Trump put NATO under.”
If it was brilliant for Trump to rudely pressure NATO nations to increase their previous defence spending commitment of 2 per cent of GDP to 3.5 per cent of GDP, as they’ve now overwhelmingly done, then it’s unacceptable for Australia to remain at 2 per cent, a point Trump’s Defence Secretary, Pete Hegseth, has argued.
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Similarly, Coons said he hoped and expected the Albanese government’s decision to recognise a Palestinian state would not be a problem between Canberra and Washington. But he also said his position, as a leading Democrat senator, was to support Israel’s right to exist and oppose recognition of a Palestinian state.
That was also the majority position of his fellow Democrats
So the Albanese government has moved to a more pro-Palestine and anti-Israel position than even the left of centre Democrats in the US.
Courtney, for his part, said he thought the AUKUS deal would proceed and Australia would get its nuclear submarines from the US in the 2030s.
The characteristic politeness of these well-behaved congressmen, pursuing bipartisanship abroad and aiming to sustain the US-Australia alliance, is admirable and a genuine asset for Australia. However, their kindly emollience can’t conceal the real drift, politically and personally, going on in the alliance.
Through the week, Albanese’s actions were praised by Hamas, in admittedly various and untidy statements, and rubbished by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Rubio said Albanese’s actions on Palestine were entirely motivated by domestic political considerations and were a meaningless gesture.
Then on Thursday night, US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, a former governor and presidential candidate and very close to the Trump White House, told the ABC’s 7.30 that Washington felt a mixture of frustration, disappointment and disgust at the Australian action. He had discussed Canberra’s move with Trump and Rubio and, while he didn’t quote them directly, the words disappointment, frustration and disgust described, he said, their general reaction to the Albanese move.
Although presenter Sarah Ferguson several times cut him off, presumably because she didn’t like what he was saying, Huckabee said the only consequence of the recognition was to convince Hamas not to negotiate seriously over a ceasefire. If it had any effect in Israel it would be to encourage extremists.
It would have been fascinating to hear why Huckabee thought that was so, but again Ferguson cut him off when he was about to say so she could make a statement of her own views, an odd role indeed for an interviewer.
Israel and Palestine are unlikely to be a major source of tension between Albanese and Trump, partly because Australia has almost zero influence in the Middle East, and Trump plainly doesn’t pay Albanese much mind.
But the alienation in the US-Australia relationship is clear. Inquirer has been told by several sources that the Trump White House would have been prepared to host a White House meeting with Albanese before the G20 summit in Canada. Albanese was scheduled to see Trump in Canada but the President went back to Washington early. Trump and Albanese have never met and only barely spoken on the phone, an astonishing low point in the alliance.
A White House meeting before the Canada G20 would have been at the time of the military parade Trump held in Washington. Albanese’s advisers may have thought this a bad look.
In any event, Albanese was apparently not willing to go out of his way to meet Trump.
Given that Australia is totally reliant on the US for security, and that the US is by far the biggest foreign investor in Australia, and by far the biggest destination of Australian foreign investment, that is a staggering misjudgment, at best extremely incompetent foreign policy. But the Albanese government, as Rubio rightly suggests, seems driven entirely by domestic politics. Albanese weaponised Trump against Peter Dutton during the election. Without quite denouncing Trump himself, Albanese benefited from being seen as anti-Trump.
Deliberate provocation
This has contributed to a deep reluctance on the part of the Albanese government to be seen celebrating the alliance, or walking an inch out of its way to accommodate Washington on anything.
There are now too many cases where Albanese has deliberately been provocative or disagreeable to the Americans.
He sees political benefit in repeatedly distancing himself not just from Trump but also from America, answering any question about Washington with the cringingly gratuitous declaration that Australia is a sovereign nation.
Albanese’s bizarre John Curtin speech was grossly inaccurate historically, portraying wartime leader Curtin as defying the US as well as defying Winston Churchill. Sources tell Inquirer that US Under Secretary of Defence for Policy Elbridge Colby, who is conducting the Pentagon’s celebrated inquiry into AUKUS, rang a senior Australian Defence official furious at the misrepresentation.
Curtin in fact was desperate to involve the Americans in Australia’s defence and put all Australian troops under the command of US General Douglas MacArthur. Thousands of Americans died providing Australia’s security.
Trump himself is adding a great deal of uncertainty to the relationship. It’s true that given our massive trade deficit with the US, and the billions of dollars we’re paying to augment the US submarine industry, Trump has for the moment kept tariffs on Australia at 10 per cent. But there’s no US ambassador in Canberra. Trump has no interest in consulting Albanese.
There’s no one not on the Albanese government’s payroll who believes Australia is spending anywhere near enough on defence.
My colleague Joe Kelly reports senior Pentagon officials saying Australia is not spending enough to defend itself nor to satisfy the requirements of the AUKUS submarine deal, nor to make a significant contribution to the alliance. All that is undeniable. There’s little prospect of corrective action. The budget is out of control. Defence is not a priority. The Albanese government doesn’t take it seriously. And it will no longer talk to the public about the Beijing threat.
This is not a demand for war talk, far from it. But the government will no longer have an honest, much less sophisticated, dialogue with the Australian people about our most important strategic circumstances.
Australia’s main contribution to the US alliance today is its geography, nothing more.
Last month, the incoming US Naval Chief of Operations, Admiral Daryl Caudle, told congress “the delivery pace (of US submarines) is not what it needs to be to make good on the pillar one of the AUKUS agreement” (selling subs to Australia).
However, talking at length to numerous American sources the picture is complex and nuanced. In 2031, when Washington has to decide whether to sell Australia a Virginia-class nuclear submarine, the US will not have enough submarines of its own.
However, selling one, or eventually three, to Australia will over time mean more submarines in the allied deterrence force, but only if Australia is actually part of deterrence.
Even the courtly Courtney says the US having submarines based part time in Perth benefits Washington because it offers easier access to the South China Sea. That means the purpose of US forces in Australia is to militarily deter China. Americans will say this. The Albanese government won’t. That’s bizarre.
It has been mistakenly reported that the Pentagon wants Australia to precommit to fighting alongside it in the event of hostilities over Taiwan. That’s untrue. The Pentagon does, however, want genuine joint contingency planning as serious allies would routinely do.
That wouldn’t precommit Australia to any conflict but means in the event of conflict the allies could operate effectively together.
For Canberra to refuse even this is to want the benefits of the US alliance without any schmick of mutual commitment in return.
Mike Green of the US Studies Centre has suggested the Albanese government could say that it would view any attack on Taiwan as a serious threat to Australia’s interests. This is no precommitment to military action but would echo America’s own language in the Taiwan Relations Act. It would reassure Washington while any objection from Beijing would be unreasonable.
Labor could still be in power in Canberra in 2031. If it continues along the Albanese lines, Australia won’t by then be an intimate ally of Washington, won’t have a credible defence capability and won’t get nuclear subs. And it won’t be able to defend itself against any competent opponent.
Since the late 19th century leaders in Australia have consistently tried to intensify the strategic relationship with the US.
Alfred Deakin successfully invited Teddy Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet to Australia. Robert Menzies and Percy Spender got the ANZUS Treaty out of Harry Truman. Harold Holt was Lyndon Baines Johnson’s deep friend. Bob Hawke and Ronald Reagan were two charmers who charmed each other. John Howard and George W. Bush were as close as two leaders could be.
Apart from Whitlam, only Albanese as Prime Minister has seen a benefit in moving away from America. The Albanese government now identifies with the European left, not with Washington.
Trump is unpopular in Australia. But the US alliance commands overwhelming support.
In moving away from America, Albanese is compromising the national interest.
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