Australia needs a Plan B: if we can no longer rely on America’s intervention to defend our interests, we need to bolster our own defences.
It has been a fascinating and disconcerting week for observers of the war in Ukraine. Donald Trump’s post on social media apparently left open the pathway foror, at a minimum, accepting a Russian sphere of influence in eastern Europe. His phone call to Vladimir Putin conceded all of the Russian president’s key demands before negotiations start in Saudi Arabia. It appears Trump may repeat his disastrous Afghanistan agreement by leaving Ukraine and Europe out of key negotiations.
The political shock-and-awe campaign launched by Trump on his inauguration day has extended to European security. It will almost certainly drift to the Indo-Pacific, too. The sentiments that underlie the new American view of its role in the world will have major ramifications for the future security of Australia.
Second, the Australian government must assess the implications of Trump seeking a grand bargain with Xi in the same way he has with Putin. While America might engage in a trade war with China, Trump shows no stomach for an actual war with China to defend Western Pacific nations. Trump’s statement that “Ukraine may be Russian again someday” will be read in Beijing as an America more open to an accommodation on Taiwan.
In 2011, the then US secretary of defence, Robert Gates, said “the blunt reality is that there will be dwindling appetite and patience in the US Congress – and in the American body politic writ large – to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources or make the necessary changes to be serious and capable partners in their own defence”.
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