If anyone is yet to be disgusted with war and the reckless use of armed force, recent news from Gaza and Ukraine will change your mind.

We have seen in the past that conflicts that are far away can still have an impact closer to home. These may be followed domestically by over the top urgings to increase defence spending, or for the mobilisation of volunteers for military service. But the lesson here from the past is not to rush in with this too fast.

When the US alliance seemed secure and stable, deploying our forces abroad with US forces did not seem too risky (at first). Now with uncertainties rising, we need to assess more carefully where and with whom we might deploy Australian forces abroad again.

Let’s look at the record in recent times. How did we get involved and was that sound and sensible?

Memory of past conflicts and mobilisations are fading and the adverse social impacts of inappropriate militarisation are long forgotten. We should recall how easily oversimplified assertions of threat and spurious justifications for a call to arms were accepted and asserted as gospel by government. Vietnam and Iraq provide striking examples.

No longer does Australia exist in relative isolation. We cannot remain in our comfort zone for ever. We must retain and develop our critical faculties and be prepared to scrutinise and assess more deeply when urged to accept conventional wisdom about our strategic circumstances.

When in the early 1960s I joined the foreign service the conventional wisdom had two anchor points, the US Alliance (ANZUS), and the alleged downward thrust of Asian (Chinese) communism – a key issue in domestic politics for wedging Labor. These policy constraints could not be questioned at any level but we conscripted our soldiers to Vietnam. After many years, that involvement ended in an undignified retreat, symbolised by dramatic helicopter rescues of allied personnel stranded on the rooftop of an embassy in Saigon.

Further, in the early 1970s, we were told that an Iraqi dictator had acquired nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, and Iraq had to be invaded and turned upside down to secure their elimination. The Iraq War lit fires throughout the region, stirring up people and deep-seated resentments, spreading conflict far and wide where the objective had been stabilisation.

The 20-year intervention later in Afghanistan, ostensibly a civilising mission, required numerous semi-suicidal rotations of Australian military personnel, culminating in another humiliation for allied forces – symbolised by the thousands of desperate people at Kabul airport, some clinging hopelessly and helplessly to the wheels of a giant US transport aircraft as it took off.

In each of these cases, there was either no Chinese invasion force in Vietnam waiting to take us over; no weapons of mass destruction justifying the Iraqi invasion; and third, after some 20 years of military intervention (and alleged brutality) in Iraq and Afghanistan with no result, the deployments had to be abandoned in a region and culture which neither we nor the US understood.

These assertions or policy assumptions could not be questioned at the time. How could they when the policy was being set elsewhere, albeit by an ally – the United States?

Strategically and politically there is now good reason for a review of policy as the global order that has existed since World War II is being upended and the worth of alliances is being questioned. The trade system, too, is being upended and the World Trade Organisation is being sidelined – largely by the United States whose models these were originally.

We are seeing a return to power politics as conducted in the 19th century. There too, there were examples of misconceived and fatal campaigns, one being in the great game by Britain to prevent Russian access to the gateway of India – even though the Hindu Kush mountains already stood in the way of any intruder.

The big players — the US, Russia and China — are determined to protect and even expand their spheres of influence. There is plenty of scope for future conflict in their intersections because the spheres may be poorly defined or understood, blurring in some cases their sense of which regions belong and which don’t.

What is the sphere, if any, within which Australia might fit? Was our involvement in World War I rightly questioned over Ireland by many Australians, but not in the case of Japan in 1942 when the US became involved? A sphere in this sense is as much a matter of geography and culture, so for us Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan would not have qualified in that sense. Were we there only because of the US?

Europe’s sphere is unlike that of the major powers as its power and influence is diffused, with no dominant centre, though in cases like Ukraine it may provide the weight to one or other of the acknowledged spheres. This it is seeking to do through the EU.

Is Europe still central to our national interest as it was a century ago? But how should we view Ukraine if it lies traditionally within Russia’s sphere justifying Russia’s intervention in the face of global rules (UN rules) governing the use of force? Is Russia wrong about Ukraine? China has been slow to criticise Russia’s invasion as there could be parallels for itself some day in relation to Taiwan.

The nature of China’s sphere of national interest differs from Russia’s in the Eurasian region where the spread of nationalities and cultures could raise complex questions for Australia. China, for its part, has more than enough to worry about with some 1400 kms of border with Russia; and a 14,500 kms of coast line on the Pacific which, like the US, they need to protect to the nth degree. Eurasia stretches from the west of China almost to the Eastern Mediterranean. It includes Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, but not Ukraine as many believe. It is not surprising that China’s security forces are as massive and comprehensive as they are, and growing. They only threaten Australia if there is the intention on the part of China to do so.

Are we within a sphere of strategic influence anywhere? One might have said the Indo-Pacific, with its potentially huge reach. We could be if it included categorically the United States but the limits of that is now in doubt notwithstanding the US’ determination to limit China’s reach. There is nothing automatic about Australia’s inclusion if the US were not.

But we do have a direct interest in freedom of navigation through and beyond the Pacific which calls for a level of naval capability commensurate with that interest – not a level which would require us to be able to defeat China on its terms, which without the US would be an impossibility (with or without nuclear subs). Being realistic, we should accept that as fact.

Some might recall that just a month or so ago an esteemed Melbourne Daily (not News Ltd surprisingly) headed its front page in huge block letters “Red Alert! Red Alert!” – warning us of China.

[One might ask whether the Chinese navy enjoyed their recent circumnavigation of our continent. Some apparently saw this as a prelude to the predicted invasion. As it was we didn’t have a capable naval vessel within sight to track them! Nor a single submarine, nuclear or otherwise!]

There can be no going back to the comfort of the past. That comfort was largely illusory relying on a treaty, ANZUS, that lacked any substantive commitment in the event of attack. Canada and the major European allies in NATO are coming to terms with the likely cancellation of Clause 5 of the treaty which states that an attack on one is an attack on all, compelling a military response by all. Paradoxically, this vulnerability due to uncertainty is bringing Europe back closer together which must be a good thing for them.

Australia has never had that kind of guarantee. Certainly not under ANZUS. Nor under AUKUS unless, under a joint deployment, it might be thought otherwise.

To repeat, there are no such things as ironclad security guarantees in the present world. Everything depends on circumstances. When the Japanese attacked in 1942 (when I was four), we didn’t have an alliance with America but we came together for a mutual purpose. I recall a reported exchange post-war between an Australian lady and the American supremo, General Douglas MacArthur. The lady thanked the general for saving Australia. MacArthur replied: “Ma’am, I didn’t come to Australia to save Australia, I came to save America!”

The need for cool thinking on such strategic issues is paramount should we feel propelled as before into avoidable conflict.

We are not alone here. Comparable neighbours include India and Indonesia for starters, with whom we have mutual interests and mutual concerns. Neither sees a compelling need to make an enemy of China. ASEAN, too, is of this view.

We should think critically and carefully through the next stages of our strategic response, starting now. Deployments with the US are not like an insurance premium as often asserted. There is no policy underlying that premium other than a big pig in a poke.