Needy, Dismissive and Critical: Australia & the U.S. Allliance

The Albanese government’s relationship with the U.S. Trump Administration is a mix of contradictions–needy, dismissive and critical. It’s hard to see this as working well for either nation right now, and the U.S. probably cares less about this than we do.

However, Trump thrives on face to face contact and apparently learns by speaking.  His relationship with the UK’s Keir Starmer was built this way, with Trump contacting Starmer before the U.S. strikes on Iran showing the connection built there.

And Mr Albanese has told Australians repeatedly how important direct leader to leader contact is in key relationships. Putting this into practice, the PM has travelled anywhere anytime to have face time with China’s Xi Jinping, meeting him in Beijing, Bali and Rio de Janiero so far. In May he announced he would fly to Beijing for his fourth meeting with Xi.

And there’s some substantive policy difference on the security and foreign policy fronts in areas that are important to Washington and that play into our security alliance and the AUKUS submarine program. Last year, the Albanese government shifted its stance on UN resolutions around Palestinian statehood and voted against the U.S. position for the first time in 20 years. It’s widened the policy difference with America by saying that our government may recognise a separate Palestinian state before a peace process concludes.

In the aftermath of the Trump-directed B-2 strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, the widening gap on policy towards Israel plays into our alliance in a way that diplomats in Foreign Affairs probably appreciate.  It took until Monday morning for Foreign Minister Wong to support the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The weekend reaction was left to a ‘spokesperson’  who did not mention the strikes, instead quoting the happier bit of Trump’s announcement to say “We note the U.S. president’s statement that now is the time for peace”. Fence sitting and vacillation are not respected in the U.S. administration, although they are noticed.

But the government’s most dismissive response to American security directions hasn’t been on Israel or Iran, it’s around China and around Australia’s level of defence investment.  These cut to the heart of the alliance and are at the core of why America embarked on sharing nuclear technology and nuclear-powered submarines with Australia through AUKUS.

On China, prime minister Albanese has again gained much domestic support–notably from the business community–for ending Beijing’s coercive trade embargoes against Australian wine, lobster, beef and wheat sales.  And he has celebrated his positive working relationship with Xi Jinping. 

But the flipside of this is that he has steered a mile from saying or doing anything that might cause Xi Jinping to criticise him, which has meant that the prime minister is almost silent on the security challenge China’s government and military pose to our region and the wider world. Mr Albanese and Defence Minister Marles both went to considerable lengths to downplay any security implications from the 3 Chinese warships Beijing sent to circumnavigate Australia earlier this year, conducting live firing along the way, instead, they both emphasised how lawful this.

Asked directly about whether China poses a security threat to Australia during his recent National Press Club appearance, the prime minister conducted his own circumnavigation, talking instead about diplomacy, relationships, complexity and simple binaries.

In Washington, by contrast, Xi’s China is the ‘pacing challenge’ and the Pentagon’s priority when it comes to military power and deterrence. It’s driving America to shift focus from Europe to our region and is behind Washington’s growing demand that its allies ‘step up’ on defence investment and military capability. 

Our prime minister being unable to say China is a security threat is a poor foundation for alliance cooperation on defence and security focused on deterring China from starting a conflict.

And such uncertain policy foundations cut to the heart of AUKUS.  The whole point of U.S., UK and Australian cooperation around submarines is to shift the military balance in the Indo Pacific away from China and so make conflict less likely.  That requires this to be a shared understanding between the AUKUS partners and that is now obviously in doubt. 

How can any American president agree to weaken the U.S. Navy’s own submarine fleet by handing over Virginia class submarines to Australia when they can’t be sure we share the larger purpose of acting collectively to deter China?

There’s one other area of policy difference that has got a whole lot more attention and will also be on Washington minds as the Pentagon AUKUS review happens and as officials and key Administration figures like Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth engage with Australian counterparts: defence spending. 

The Trump administration is now openly calling on its Indo Pacific allies to match NATO spending increases, which look like taking NATO nations to 3.5 per cent spending on defence and a further 1.5 per cent on defence-related investments.  Defense Secretary Hegseth is leaving no doubts here, saying: ‘With NATO stepping up, we now have a new standard for allied defence that all of our allies around the world should move to”, adding ‘we can’t want their security more than they do’.

Mr Albanese has dismissed the U.S. position, which again has played well with many Australians watching the Trump administration’s approach to government. But attempts to redirect the issue away from the fact the government is spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence, rising over ten years to 2.3 per cent, towards issues of particular lists of potential capabilities isn’t likely to work when talking to Washington. 

There, Mr Albanese sounds more like a leader insisting it’s his nation’s sovereign right to underinvest on its own security because he is banking on American power bailing him out.  Free riding on America is one of the things Trump’s America First policy is meant to end.  And there’s the simple mathematics that says Australia is unlikely to be able to pay for a sophisticated conventional military along with nuclear submarines for between 2 and 2.3 per cent of GDP.

Overall, the picture of alliance management by Canberra is disturbing and determined by a combination of domestic politics and denial.  It’s almost as if there is no plan for dealing with the implications of a more demanding and less reliable America. Instead, Canberra’s policy blob seems to be hoping for some return to ‘business as usual’ in a time after Trump.

What happens from here really depends on how much independence Australia seeks from America on security and what we are willing to do to achieve that. 

At current levels of spending we are simply becoming more dependent on American power, not less.  And the spending the government is allocating to defence is going increasingly to acquiring American weapons and systems, doubling down further on that dependency.

At some point, this makes it likely that the Albanese government will need to subordinate more of its wider foreign and security policies to what seems to be its overriding security priority: maintaining AUKUS – which is now mistakenly identified as the alliance itself. 

Otherwise it’ll be hard to avoid consequences from the obviously growing policy gaps between Canberra and Washington.  That’s a far cry from an Australia that is able to be a more independent and constructive security actor and voice in our world.

Michael is Director of Strategic Analysis Australia. From 2018 until September 2022, he was the Director of the Defence, Strategy and National Security Program at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) in Canberra.

A version of this article was first published by the Lowy Interpreter.