This time it’s different. America has detailed plans for Australia to play a role in breaking China. Not unlike the role of Ukraine against Russia. Or countless other parallels. That’s what is in the pipeline for Australia. Decades of war at oscillating levels, designed to drain China, mounted largely by America’s friends in Asia, under supervision.

Serious thinkers on Australia’s foreign policy are now suggesting that our defence should focus on defending Australia, instead of embracing America’s Asian security posture aimed at China. Peter Varghese, one time secretary of Foreign Affairs and Trade, argues, “Perhaps Trump has done us a huge favour by underlining the need for us to do more to defend ourselves. That starts with breaking out of the deeply held mindset that Australia is incapable of doing so… the defence of sovereignty is not something a serious country can leave to others. If we cannot defend Australia, we cannot make our own future.”

And former PM Malcolm Turnbull says, “ We cannot assume that America has any altruistic regard for Australia. Our leaders have got to stand up for Australia. The reality is the alliance is different because the United States has changed, not us… at the end of the day we have to be able to defend ourselves." The same Turnbull famously exclaimed that Australia and the US are “joined at the hip” while his government pliantly diverted our defence assets and territory into America’s stance against China.

Extraordinarily, neither of these eminent geo-thinkers shows any awareness that Australia had assiduously pursued a policy of self-reliant defence for decades. Nor that each had a big role in dismantling it. Varghese was head of DFAT from 2012 to 2016, precisely when the Americans were stitching up our fate formally, culminating in the Force Posture Agreement signed away in 2014. Thereby John Kerry walked away with the prize of a continent for his military strategy. For free. Henceforth America could base its attack aircraft, troops, ships and submarines in Australia, to operate against anywhere, anytime. We now host nuclear capable B52 aircraft able to strike China from our shores. Varghese appears to have had no inkling of what was being thrown away. Otherwise, how could he now believe in “a deeply held mindset that Australia is incapable of defending itself”? Whereas, for the previous 35 years every Australian Government had shown it believed the opposite – single-mindedly, with large targeted expenditures, year in, year out, since 1976.

What a dire comment on the fragility of our nation’s security and administration the mindset of these two leaders is. And now they seem to expect the damage can be turned around by decree. Surely we need a Royal Commission into our nationhood.

The last time Australia decided it could not rely upon the US for security, in 1976, it took five years of analysis, consultation and head-banging before the results began to emerge. In 1981, Bob Hawke’s first Cabinet scrapped the Navy’s aircraft carrier. Finally, land-based aircraft were recognised as both more effective and less costly. Institutional barriers to new realities finally fell away. It took another five years to overcome for our defence’s blindness to air and sea activity around us. With a unique, homegrown fusion of technologies in over-the-horizon radar the lights went on, elevating our defence capability unimaginably.

This progress has now been undermined, seriously, by the creepy zeal of governments over the last 15 years embracing America’s capricious hostility to China. Our defence self-focus has been shattered. The army thinks it exists to fight high-intensity amphibious wars alongside US marines in north Asia. And has been heavily equipped to do so. Everything else is subsumed by the egregious fantasy of manufacturing nuclear submarines hoping to kill a few Chinese submarines in north Asia, for America as part of the US Navy. Even if these follies were closed down tomorrow it would take decades to fashion a new way back to independence in a world of galloping opportunity from technology – attitudinally, practically and affordably.

More immediately we need a leader able to carry our interests against America’s whims. The first time, 50 years ago, it suited America for us to be independent. It was entirely consistent with the ANZUS treaty which has no security guarantee. After suffering the Vietnam travesty and abandonment (trickily articulated in President Nixon’s Guam statement), Australian leaders really had no alternative. Even then, it is doubtful that self-reliance would have happened without the singular political and intellectual weight of Gough Whitlam.

This time it’s different. America has detailed plans for Australia in its breaking of China. Not unlike the role of Ukraine against Russia. Or countless other parallels. For America, obtaining a decisive “win” is not the object. Decades of war at oscillating levels, designed to drain China, mounted largely by America’s friends in Asia under supervision. That’s what in the pipeline for Australia.

Words will matter little to America when we step aside. It will not matter that we have been here before agreeably; that no treaty obligation exists; that our economic future is at risk. In practice, we should move to independence in steps, withdrawing progressively from joint operations in Asia, then negotiate closure of facilities here sequentially. America knows we are not critical to its plans against China. Either side can withdraw from the Force Posture Agreement with 30 days notice. That is agreed. Lots of straight, patient talking over time. Let’s fantasise that a political leader will emerge. Even then the risk of a political galoot undoing it all for a vote is high. Australia sure needs every bit of that luck we used to talk about.