Cruise control – arresting the drift in national security
Despite the US-Australia alliance being central to our security, Albanese has decided he is happy to have a second-tier relationship with his counterpart, Trump. Three significant failures underscore this.
Days before Anthony Albanese’s 40-minute “constructive and warm” phone conversation with Donald Trump on Tuesday this week, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba met the President in person, released a three-page joint leaders’ statement and held a joint press conference.
The meeting barely made a ripple in the Australian media. It was a very positive expression of each country’s “unwavering commitment” to mutual security. The joint leaders’ statement reads as if it was drafted mostly by Japan because it delivers everything Ishiba may want.
Japanese leaders know they face some risks with Trump. Unlike Australia, Japan has a significant trade deficit with the US and does not have a free trade agreement. Before his first term as president, Trump criticised Japan for “killing us on trade” and for the costs of an alliance relationship where “if we get attacked, Japan doesn’t have to do anything. If Japan gets attacked we have to fight for them.”
Japan’s then prime minister, Shinzo Abe, famously worked hard to befriend Trump before and in his first term. Abe was not beyond flattering Trump, praising his golf game, presenting a gold-plated golf club.
The attention dramatically benefited Japan-US ties. Ishiba likewise moved fast to secure Japan’s interest. Far from complaining about the defence alliance, the leaders’ statement commits to an American “increasing bilateral presence in Japan’s Southwest Islands”, affirms their defence treaty covers the Senkaku Islands, also claimed by China, and calls out Beijing for “threatening and provocative activities in the South China Sea”.
The statement stresses that Japan will increase its defence budget and backs a Trump interest to “create high-quality jobs in each other’s countries”. There is even a warning note for Australia in Tokyo “increasing exports of US liquefied natural gas to Japan in a mutually beneficial manner”. Isn’t that our market?
Job well done, Japan.
Late this week, Indian leader Narendra Modi made a similar positive visit to the White House.
Trump likes selling American aircraft. He will know that US defence sales to India are approaching $US25bn ($39.7bn) a year.
Contrast this active Trump management to the Prime Minister’s approach. There was a brief phone call last November congratulating Trump on his decisive election win. And a call this week – way too late in the process to give Trump second thoughts on signing a proclamation “Adjusting Imports of Aluminum into the United States”.
The administration, senior counsellor for trade and manufacturing Peter Navarro in particular, saw Albanese coming: Trump’s proclamation comprehensively writes out any likely exclusion for Australia. Navarro is actively on a mission in the media to prevent any special consideration for Canberra.
Writing in The Australian this week, editor-at-large Paul Kelly says “every sign is that Albanese is managing Trump as a professional”: “You don’t blame Albanese for Trump’s deluded destructiveness.”
Respectfully, I disagree. Australia’s interests are on the line here. It could not have been clearer after Trump’s first term that Australian steel and aluminium exports would be hit with tariffs in the second term, particularly after the volume of exports grew after Joe Biden sanctioned Russian imports. It’s not Trump’s fault that Albanese, for months, has resisted opportunities to meet the President in person. Indeed, if Albanese is re-elected, he will most probably not meet Trump face-to-face until the second half of 2025.
This morning I had a great conversation with President @realDonaldTrump
— Anthony Albanese (@AlboMP) February 10, 2025
We committed to working constructively together to advance Australian and American interests, drive economic prosperity and face shared challenges.
For decades, the Alliance between the United States and… pic.twitter.com/92884sewyD
There are three significant Albanese failures here.
First, the alliance always has been Australia’s to manage. Sure, we provide important defence value to the US, but the alliance is central to our security and no one in Washington has more interest than we do in strengthening the alliance, including against Trump’s renewed protectionism.
And, make no mistake, it’s uniquely the Prime Minister’s job to build a relationship with the President, setting the tone for the alliance. No cabinet minister and no ambassador – not even a former prime minister – carries the same weight in the Oval Office.
Second, unlike Abe in 2016 and Ishiba and Modi in 2025, Albanese has failed to make a strong case for the value of the alliance. It’s not hard to make that case: Australia is a tough and capable military ally, buys billions of dollars’ worth of American equipment and is an increasingly important geographic asset for the US military.
How is it possible that Albanese is wedged into making his first substantive discussion with Trump an exercise in special pleading for a favour? There is no second opportunity for the Prime Minister to make a better first impression.
The third failure is that Albanese is not bringing together economic and national security advice. It is not acceptable that a vital defence alliance is put at risk because of a (frankly) second-order export access problem.
The one place in government that brings economics and national security into the same discussion is the national security committee of cabinet, but it’s the Prime Minister who sets the agenda. The Canberra bureaucracy will not provide that mythical thing, whole-of-government national security advice, unless the Prime Minister knows to call for it.
Amid this languor, there was a fleck of inspiration in Defence Minister Richard Marles handing over $US500m to his US counterpart, Pete Hegseth, on February 8 as a first “contribution to the tune of billions of dollars to the United States industrial base” last week.
The Trump administration will quickly see, though, that Australian defence spending remains stubbornly locked near 2 per cent of GDP; that the Australian Defence Force’s current capability is declining; that there is a “workforce crisis” as military people resign; and that AUKUS delivery is years into the future even as submarine costs eat more of the budget.
What should Albanese do to win a presidential exemption from tariffs? He should try to meet Trump in Washington this month, making the trip bipartisan by inviting Peter Dutton to attend some of those talks on the basis that an election is near.
Albanese could reverse Marles’s decision to cancel – sorry, “delay the replacement of the Super Hornet” – by not buying a fourth squadron of American F-35 combat aircraft.
F-35As and the “short take-off and vertical landing” F-35Bs are on the production line right now. They work. They will strengthen deterrence this decade.
That probably won’t happen because Albanese has decided he is happy for Australia to have a second-tier alliance relationship with the US – one that doesn’t require his priority engagement or a strong ADF.
But the risk is that this won’t pass a Trump test of adequacy. For Biden and Trump, AUKUS is worth the US investment if they judge they get a more capable and committed Australian ally. Beyond the promise of AUKUS magic and wonders in the 2030s, that’s not what Albanese’s managed alliance delivers today.
With or without the Opposition Leader, an Albanese visit needs to do exactly what the visit by Ishiba did, which is assure Trump that we are stepping up our alliance efforts.
Dutton also needs to calibrate his thoughts on Trump’s expectations for alliance co-operation should the Coalition win the election. The age of alliance free-riding is well past.
Returning to the theme of the national security committee, my view is that this vital part of cabinet government is failing to bring international and domestic security together for proper decision-making. This is not just about US tariffs on exports and the failure to offset that with alliance engagement. There is an equal disconnect between Australian policy on the Middle East, the rise of anti-Semitism and the risk of domestic terrorism.
There is a clear connection between a more aggressive policy against Israel; a conditions-free endorsement of a Palestinian state; criticism of Jerusalem’s military actions in Gaza; and the tolerated rise of an aggressive domestic pro-Palestinian protest movement. The only place where these elements come together for government policymaking is the national security committee. But remember, this is the agency where ASIO and some other intelligence heads were dropped from the attendee list (while the secretary of the Department of Climate Change was invited).
This is why we see policy disconnects between domestic and international security – for example, such as ASIO called in only belatedly last year to conduct security checks on thousands of Gazans issued with visitor visas.
It is also why the government is happy to discuss the rise of so-called far-right extremism but would rather talk about politically motivated violence than Islamist extremism.
Governments get the policy thinking they demand from the public service. Albanese has not driven the national security committee in ways that encourage forward thinking, addressing anticipatable problems and connecting the dots between different policy areas. The whole system is on cruise control.
This could be reformed. The next government should bring back the position of a national security adviser, one senior enough to deal with Trump’s cabinet-level National Security Adviser, Michael Waltz.
A modest-sized office of national security should be given the policy remit to connect economic with security risk, and also international with domestic threats. This work requires big thinking, not big bureaucracies. We need an injection of ideas and energy.
All public service institutions have to be paid for, but let’s make an office of national security cost-neutral to the taxpayer by ending the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s folly of a first nations ambassador and paring back the 100 per cent growth in star-rank generals in the ADF and 80 per cent growth in Defence senior executive public servants since 2004.
Peter Jennings is director of Strategic Analysis Australia and was executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute from 2012 to 2022. He is a former deputy secretary for strategy in the Defence Department (2009-12).
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