Both Moscow and Beijing will be jubilant, watching a unilateralist America throw tariffs and diplomatic extortion about like drunken punches. Donald Trump’s willingness to berate America’s allies, while cosying up to autocrats and overturning 80 years of US strategic policy, is matched only by his enthusiastic gutting of American democracy at home.
For Australians there’s little point in bleating, indulgently saying “we told you so”, or nostalgic wishful thinking. What matters is what we do, starting now.
Reality check
First, a reality check: power relations have returned as the main determinant of world politics. Self-help will be the main guiding principle.
Given that, Australia must commit to a strategy of national resilience. We must plan for America to make decisions indifferent to our interests, and sometimes overtly hostile to them. At worst, if Trump’s domestic wrecking-ball continues, we must prepare for a new age of empires, with our region squarely in the great power contest zone.
Even under the rosiest scenario, both Washington and Beijing will seek to entrap Australia, using trade and security as levers. For its part, Beijing will seek to position itself as the world’s main integrationist power. Sending Foreign Minister Wang Yi immediately after the Munich Security Conference, to offer a frazzled Europe closer cooperation, made that clear.
Resilient defence
Our best chance of avoiding entrapment is to avoid putting our military and economic eggs in one great power basket. Multipolar worlds can allow middle powers to thrive – but only if they’re nimble enough to adapt to a fluid and often-changing order.
In seeking a balanced region, where the US is a force for stability, we’ll need to clearly communicate that Australian participation in US military operations is not assured, and that our national interests won’t always intersect.
What might that look like in practice? Successive Australian defence planning documents – the Defence Strategic Update, the Defence Strategic Review and the National Defence Strategy – have foreshadowed increased self-reliance. We have acquired, and are acquiring, new platforms that make the ADF more lethal. We are producing a more integrated force that will function more effectively than as separate parts.
But more needs to be done, and urgently. No option for strengthening our defence capabilities should be off the table: even AUKUS, if it becomes apparent that the US won’t deliver. If deterring by denial remains our objective, we’ll need to engender deterrent effects asymmetrically, and – crucially – across different domains of warfighting.
Australia’s strategic location means we have plenty the Trump administration will want. Australia has gone to great lengths to facilitate American access to bases and security infrastructure, and we have long been willing participants in US military activities.
Here, knee-jerk calls to discard the Australia-US alliance are premature. But in seeking a balanced region, where the US is a force for stability, we’ll need to clearly communicate that Australian participation in US military operations is not assured, and that our national interests won’t always intersect.
Resilient society
Of course, defence is just part of the equation. Any credible deterrent requires warfighting stocks, fuel reserves, and national stockpiles to help us withstand hostile sub-threshold activities – such as maritime blockades, for instance. But national resilience also presupposes robust social cohesion. Achieving that will be tough, since temptations will abound for Australian leaders to embrace the politics of division in pursuit of power.
As the United States has shown, fragmented democracies are vulnerable to antidemocratic forces and outside manipulation. Indeed, Australia can expect concerted future foreign information operations against us. Much of our attention in this space has been directed at China, but Russia remains the chief antagonist. It is willing to go beyond interference, even including acts of sabotage. And it will be emboldened by hearing Trump administration officials repeating Kremlin talking points. As economic competitors, we would be naïve to think Moscow would not target Australia if doing so enhanced its regional footprint.
Sadly, the United States is also now part of the picture, making intelligence sharing difficult, and creating another hostile information attack vector. In addition to White House mistruths, we must expect agencies helmed by Trump loyalists to be active disinformation distributors. Worse, social media powerhouses are already participating in that process. To respond, we will have to commit to clear and consistent fact-based messaging, embrace civil society rather than lecture at it; and promote good judgment based on reason and evidence.
Friends and partners
Fortunately Australia has regional friends grappling with the worsening strategic picture, and simultaneously nervous that America could become unreliable. We have ramped up cooperation with Japan and the ROK, and deepening “spoke-to-spoke” connections between American security allies is an obvious mutual interest. But many ASEAN states – Singapore, the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia – will also worry about regional power imbalances. Closer security cooperation should therefore be on our mutual agendas.
A real opportunity also exists for Australia to invest in reconnecting with Europe. In that context, it was prescient to appoint Angus Campbell – Australia’s former Defence Force Chief – as Australia’s ambassador to Brussels. To maximise that opportunity, we’ll need to acknowledge that Europe and Asia occupy a shared strategic space. That’s not as hard as it sounds. After all, our common interest is to be resilient against alignment between autocratic regimes. Australia can both learn much from the experience of Poland, Estonia, Finland, Sweden (and others), and share our own experiences in pushing back against great power pressure.
True, Europe will be busy. Three years of heroic Ukrainian resistance have blunted Russia’s conventional forces, giving the EU a short window to arm itself and finally take ownership of its own security. If we want European support, we should help with that objective, even after a potential Ukrainian sovereignty carve-up by Washington and Moscow that neither Brussels or Kyiv were invited to.
Ultimately, a national resilience strategy is Australia’s best hope to navigate the geopolitical headwinds it faces. Whereas past Australian failures to seize opportunities were mitigated by a benign environment, supported by a benign security partner, anyone paying the slightest attention over the last few weeks would know one thing: those luxuries no longer exist.
