Australia, explained.
(Kym Smith/Defence Imagery)
Marles’ dash to Washington as Australia’s old anxieties resurface in the Trump era
Perpetual worry about US access says more about Australian insecurity than American indifference to allies.
Australia, explained.
(Kym Smith/Defence Imagery)
Perpetual worry about US access says more about Australian insecurity than American indifference to allies.
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Marles’ dash to Washington as Australia’s old anxieties resurface in the Trump eraMarles’ dash to Washington as Australia’s old anxieties resurface in the Trump era
Only months after the Albanese government was elected in May 2022, Defence Minister Richard Marles sent a special envoy to Washington to assure the Biden administration that Labor would be trustworthy on managing the American alliance.
That visit was short: little longer than a day, and with the message conveyed by a trusted pair of bureaucratic hands. Labor felt it needed to reassure the White House, especially Asia “Tsar” Kurt Campbell and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, that its commitment to AUKUS was genuine.
This time Marles went himself.
Yet we remain in the dark as to whether the mission was a success. Whether he was sent to lock down a meeting between President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese; whether the administration trusts the commitment Canberra appears to be giving on higher defence spending.
Putting aside the bizarre diplomatic hopscotch about whether Marles’ meeting with Secretary of State Pete Hegseth was a “happenstance encounter” or “coordinated”, the parliamentary and press furore created by Marles’ dash to Washington says so much more about Australia than it does about this Trump administration and its treatment of allies.
The government is being cautiously reactive in its dealing with Trump, and, despite all the shouting from the Opposition and sections of the press, the alternatives are not obvious in terms of a viable strategy.
This seemingly endless, chronic anxiety about Australian “access” in Washington has been a permanent feature of the relationship since ANZUS was signed in 1951. External Affairs Minister Percy Spender, who led the negotiations on the treaty from the Australian side, never got for Canberra the seat that he craved at the table of US global planning.
Even today, the footprints of former Australian ministers and prime ministers can still be seen in Lafayette Park opposite the White House, traces of a near annual pilgrimage to ask the administration of the day, in effect, “does ANZUS still mean what we hope it means?” Still there too, evidence of the crestfallen trudge back to the embassy when the Americans would not be drawn on the matter.
This kind of anxiety was at its height again in 1973 when President Richard Nixon made Prime Minister Gough Whitlam wait for six months before receiving an invitation to see him, this as Nixon was bear-hugging Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev on the South Lawn. As Whitlam’s exclusion from the White House became an increasingly emotional issue in Australia – we were being “snubbed” according to reporters – Whitlam sent his private secretary, Peter Wilenski, to sort out a visitor’s pass for him. He got it, but the meeting with Nixon ended up being a one-hour conversation – no press conference, no joint statement, and certainly no lunch or fanfare.
Back then, Nixon and Kissinger believed Australia under Whitlam was wobbling, vacating the strategic field in Asia. As Nixon told Whitlam that day:
“We are at a critical turning point in history. After all the wars we have been through … do we have the will and economic power to cope with the challenges ahead? Can we afford to create a vacuum which others will fill? The view in Peking and Moscow is that their systems will prevail, not through nuclear war, but through other means. By pandering to public opinion we could leave the world. But why should we do so when it is within our power to maintain a sufficient presence along with our friends so that that there can be a reciprocal reduction in armaments and the prospect of real peace?”
However much that same kind of American angst might manifest in Washington’s worries today about Australia’s improving ties with China, or Canberra’s unwillingness to pre-commit to joint planning for a possible Taiwan war, there remains too a residual prickliness in Washington when a close ally does not dance merrily to Uncle Sam’s tune.
Let’s be frank about the Marles visit. The Pentagon quip about a “happenstance encounter” is churlish, but far better than the kind of treatment this White House meted out to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy earlier this year, or South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa. Better than the tariff noose Trump has slung around Modi’s neck in recent weeks. Better than the truculent lecture Vice President JD Vance delivered to the Europeans in Munich earlier this year. Or Trump’s abuse of Canada and others. Better too than the evidence that American skulduggery might be at work in fanning an independence movement among Greenland locals.
After all, Marles still met with Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller. He may even have returned with greater understanding of the range of competing views in the administration; seeing first-hand an inter-agency process beset by clashing egos and flights of fantasy.
But it is a telling indicator of how much harder Australia may have to work in future to get noticed. That’s probably healthy: to finally cut through the tired Aussie big noting about “punching above our weight” in the American capital.
There may well be more trouble to come with the AUKUS review, or an AUSMIN later this year that might be less sonorous than in the past.
The government is being cautiously reactive in its dealing with Trump, and, despite all the shouting from the Opposition and sections of the press, the alternatives are not obvious in terms of a viable strategy. What will these Australian critics have Albanese do? He is trying to balance an ugly pair of leaders in both Washington and Beijing. And if you can escape Trump’s attention while adjusting your policies to a new world, is that so bad? Australia remains in a strong position unless Trump is provoked.
About the author
James Curran
James Curran is Professor of Modern History at Sydney University and foreign affairs columnist at the Australian Financial Review , where he was also International Editor from 2023-25.
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