Australia’s security abandoned to the folly of declining US empire

The world has shifted beneath our feet and our great security gamble is collapsing, but the government is acting as if nothing happened, he writes Michael Pascoe.

The breasts on the bull, the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defense and Trade and the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, are all the same. The first committee is as random a mix of oddities and assholes as one might put them together – even Ralph Babet; the latter is stacked with enthusiasts of Pax Americana, fans of security stories of the last century, fed and watered by the domestic and American security establishment.

thinking of nothing but outdated Anglosphere prejudices.

This was the year the world took action for Australia’s security; Our timid government kept its head under the pillows, desperately hoping that it would not have to face changes and challenges, praying that its political strategy of replicating coalition policy would help it stay safe at the ballot box. What is Labour’s main security concern? What does it look like in khaki on election day?

Can the opposition find a more pro-American defense spokesman than Richard Marles? No. Labor remains safe on the safe right flank, traditionally the Liberals’ high ground.

While the Albanese/Marles/Wong government is committed to imposing discipline, suppressing dissent and standing by Donald J all the way, Australia’s national security future remains unexamined as its current plan burns.

strategic failure

We have proven to be rich on the greatest strategic failure: lack of imagination. Our defense establishment (politicians, spies, bureaucrats, military, salesmen, foreign agents) could not imagine the change being thrust upon them, could not imagine any future for Australia other than the one buried under the armpits of the American military.

I cannot fathom that the game has changed irreversibly.

Now, as America changes faster than anyone could have predicted, we are following the path of failure that comes from not believing what is happening. It is very painful for the establishment to face America’s retreat, to be proven wrong, when we had clearly bet our strategic future that America would always protect us, that it was our only hope for survival.

Australian Deputy Sheriff

There are rare and largely ignored voices that predict what is happening under the Trump administration. A decade ago Geoff Raby warned that the US would eventually withdraw from its dominance of the Western Pacific, leaving Deputy Dawg Australia an orphaned shag on the rock. Hugh White has recently revealed that America is stepping back from its core interests.

This was stated in the Trump administration’s National Security Statement and by “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth. America will be concerned with the Americas, with Europe left to its own devices, or Russia and China’s military rise recognized and accepted in Asia.

No fog, no war. Hegseth’s war crimes put Australian soldiers at risk

A new reality

Crikey’s Bernard Keane summed up the new reality ($) While highlighting the local mainstream media’s failure to investigate this, he cited a speech last weekend in which Hegseth said the quiet parts out loud:

“Our interests in the Indo-Pacific are important, but also comprehensive and reasonable… This includes our ability, together with our allies, to maintain a strong enough posture in the Indo-Pacific to counterbalance the growing power of China.

“President Trump and this administration seek a stable peace, fair trade, and respectful relations with China…which includes respecting the historic military establishment they have undertaken.”

Keane concluded that Hegseth had said the unthinkable: the United States aims only to exist in the Pacific, not to dominate it. It is merely trying to balance China’s power, not defeat it. And he “respects” China’s military establishment.

“Imagine the absolute backlash from not just News Corp but the media if Anthony Albanese had talked about ‘respecting’ China’s military establishment,” Keane suggested.

Just as the US has recklessly committed war crimes and now engages in piracy off the coast of Venezuela, America’s stated security strategy is an embarrassment Australia does not want to see. This is America choosing Russia over Europe.

Not “just a phase”

The optimistic view in the defense community that clings to the American coat of arms is that Trump will pass and everything will go back to the way it was before.

It won’t happen. It doesn’t happen like this when the world changes. Even if Democrats take back the White House and Congress, much of MAGA will remain sticky.

Once land is given, it is very difficult to take it back.

Not much of Trump 1.0 has been overturned by Biden. Tax cuts and Chinese tariffs continued. The domestic chaos Trump has created will be more than enough for a Democratic administration to deal with if a Democratic administration is next.

America faces so many problems by 2028 that China’s role in Asia will be obscured.

We’ll watch cricket and sleep all summer long in little Australia. Prime Minister Albanese’s interview on the last Insider program of 2025 was purely local and typical. A minister’s expensive plane tickets were a major problem; America’s war crimes and the national strategic statement applauded by Russia were not mentioned at all.

Albanese/Marles/Wong, with his tight grip on Labor members and irrelevant opposition, will continue to treat the sleepwalking Australian people with disdain, refusing to be open about our AUKUS fantasy.

By refusing to risk public inquiry,

He refuses to tell us what more the United States wants from its South Pacific subjects.

Well, we can concentrate on cricket, ignore our complicity in piracy and war crimes, and keep handing out billion-dollar cheques.

AUKUS. Deal of the century! …for Americans