As a quick study in the psychology of Australia-US relations, last week had it all.

There was the sound of cash registers ringing in Washington as Canberra handed over the first cheque for the US nuclear submarine production base.

There was the self-aggrandisement of Richard Marles at the Pentagon, chuffed at being the first defence minister to gain access to his counterpart, Secretary Pete Hegseth, as Hegseth went on to dismantle European assumptions of NATO security.

There was the incredulity that the AUKUS downpayment did not necessarily mean Australia would escape the Trump tariffs on steel and aluminium.

Demands from the usual suspects in the press that Prime Minister Albanese get on his knees and placate the president.

There was relief, briefly, when it appeared Australia might be spared. Even euphoria from some about Albanese’s “diplomatic win”.

Then, chronic anxiety when an 11th-hour White House statement alleged Australia had flooded the US market with aluminium.

This is not in the same league as placating Joe Biden, George W. Bush, Barack Obama or Bill Clinton. And there is little point seeking to place Trump in some kind of historical tradition.

His lodestar is contempt for the old order, shared by Musk and his Cabinet appointments. It is also overconfidence bred from the gasps of horror and excitement around the world. It is, too, the conventional lust for exercising power that all emperors indulge.

Trump’s actions so far, each bearing that trademark signature resembling the readout from an electro-cardiogram, are giving US allies far more than heartburn.

The result is that Australia now has as its major strategic partner a power that is likely to prove careless of its allies and may become as untrustworthy as Russia and China. At the very least, Trump is rapidly reducing the US to be a counterpart of the other superpowers.

Consider the evidence:

Trump tore up his own trade agreement with Mexico and Canada.

He has abandoned his own citizens, like USAID employees, some in threatening situations.

He pardoned January 6 rioters who attacked congressional members, officials and police in the Capitol, and attacked officials prosecuting the rioters as corrupt, threatening them with investigation.

He presided over a vice-president accusing judges of corruption and seeking to intimidate them because they took time to consider if the actions of the Musk team and the president were constitutional.

He has mused that Ukraine might be part of Russia – when might we hear his views that Taiwan might become part of China?

He is destroying international trade agreements on a whim, careless of the consequences in the developing world in particular. Where other than China might they turn?

Trump assumes the US can extend its empire to Greenland, Gaza and Panama without limits. His vision is a bigger America, but zero internationalism.

As to the very idea of Atlanticism, Washington’s threats this week effectively implied the US has departed NATO: any British and European troops that might be deployed to police a Ukraine settlement will do so without the treaty’s Article V guarantee.

Asia policy remains largely unknown. But those US officials who with counterparts in Canberra, Tokyo, Seoul and Manila patiently stitched together the ‘latticework’ of Asian alliances, will worry as to its fate. It is not clear yet what Trump makes of all that careful work over decades, much of it happening beneath the public horizon, of integrating these countries into American war fighting plans and strategy for facing down China in defence of American primacy.

What must China make of all this? Xi Jinping has answered in part: last week he met South Korea’s parliamentary speaker for the first time in 11 years. It followed his meetings with leaders from Pakistan, Brunei and Thailand.

What is certain is that Trump challenges all the assumptions Australia has ever made about American security guarantees. Will panic and platitudes be the only response? Is the political and bureaucratic elite capable of recognising and planning for the fallout from this Trump hurricane?

Preparing for the end of US primacy is the only realistic and possibly the only sensible policy provoked by Trump’s honesty about where he is taking the US.

We can no longer ignore the need for Australia to plan for its own defence, rather than fund a role as a compliant auxiliary of the US in the Pacific. Easier said than done when we have another unpredictable superpower in East Asia. But it is an essential national task.

The alienation from the US which may come if Trump continues down this path will not be a comfortable time for Australia. It will feel, not for the first time in its history, alone and abandoned. And the calls for greater self-reliance in defence will also hit the reality of a political culture unwilling to relinquish the bedrock paternalism of Australian social democracy.

Trump, too, might well be serious about reaching some kind of understanding with China that excludes the interests of US allies. This week he signalled that he wants the US, China and Russia to restart nuclear arms control talks and consider halving their defence budgets. Desirable, but surely dreaming as China pursues nuclear catch-up.

There may be no grand bargain, or détente, between the US and China. But if there is, it will prompt soul searching about much of the last 20 years of Australian strategic policy – the ostentatious, relentless drive to get closer to the US, regardless of the consequences for Australian security. Prudence requires an urgent recall to the Australian diplomatic tradition, along with a realistic post-Trump strategy from defence and intelligence authorities.

Republished from AFR, Feb 16, 2025