In his new Quarterly Essay, Hard New World, Hugh White delivers a devastating attack on Australia’s current defence policies.

Wider than a critique of both sides of politics, it represents a challenge to the community at large. He addresses what he refers to as, “the failure of our entire political system to respond to a changed world”. And what is more disturbing is that the failure “starts at the top”. Anthony Albanese, he observes, is “patently uneasy whenever questions of defence and foreign policy are raised” reflecting both a lack of interest and a lack of expertise.

When questioned his responses are “as scripted, stilted and superficial as ever”. But the inadequacy is far more general. Neither side of politics encourages open public debate about defence. They both clearly chose to skirt such consequential questions during the recent election campaign.

A generation of Labor leaders has vacated the whole terrain in fear of being “wedged” as it is called. Better to remain silent than to become tangled in contention. It may seem smart electoral strategy, but it has deprived the nation of geo-political understanding.

White is keenly aware of the dramatic changes that are now rearranging the world – the shift of economic and political power from the West to south and east Asia, the growing assertiveness of the global south, the expansion and increasing power of the BRICS countries and the shrinking authority of the United States dramatically accelerated by the return to power of Donald Trump. This is at the centre of White’s essay.

Australia, he argues, must recognise that Trump and his movement constitute a decisive shift in the way America works and the way this shapes the world. This is the aspect of the hard new world that Australian leaders find most difficult to adjust to. We can no longer depend on the ANZUS alliance and our belief that we have a unique and special relationship with the United States dating back to 1942. But now that long era is ending “and we come face to face with our post-American future”.

Our best path now, he declares, “is to recognise this and start acting accordingly. And we should move quickly to make this clear, because we need to begin right now to build that new post-alliance with America, and we need to start reshaping our armed forces to defend Australia independently”.

It is essential that we address the problem of Taiwan. The question of what we will do if war with China breaks out has been left hanging. But, as White explains through AUKUS, and countless other ways, successive Australian Governments have “encouraged Washington to believe that it can rely on Canberra’s total military support” in a war with Beijing. If the crisis comes, as it may well do, our leaders will face the “most momentous choice any Australian Government has ever faced”. We could be plunged into a catastrophic conflict as disastrous for the present century as the two world wars were for the 20th century.

White is quite clear about what we must do, and do now. “We should tell Washington that we will not go to war over Taiwan.” If that is not done, the government must declare their position and there will have to be a public assessment of the possible outcomes, the long-term cost to our economy, our place in the world and, in effect, a realistic cost-benefit analysis.

The fundamental questions are – how would we benefit by going to war with our major trading partner? Would our involvement change the balance of power in any way? What destruction, what loss of life might be expected? What intimations of engagement have already been made in covert conversations among defence and security officials? Will the government surrender its existing power to commit the country to war without consultation with the public and above all without a supportive vote in the parliament?

These critical debates should begin now because, in the absence of such public scrutiny, Defence Minister Marles and his department are busily preparing for war in ways that the electorate is scarcely aware of. In a recent address to an international defence conference in Singapore — the Shangri-la dialogue — Marles hammered his colours to the mast. The overriding regional security problem, he insisted, was the aggression of China and its accelerating militarisation. The United States was the essential counterweight to Beijing’s ambitions and Australia was duly increasing defence spending “based on the assets and capabilities we need to play our part and to meet the strategic moment”.

Above all Australia realised that there was no “effective balance of power in the region absent the United States”. But we could not leave this “to the US alone”. In the presence of US Secretary of Defence Hegseth, Marles gave an emphatic endorsement to America’s confrontation with China, making it obvious that “Australia would be there". Whether that is government policy is another matter altogether, given the emphatic view of the leaders of ASEAN who have made it very clear that they refuse to be recruited by either side or be involved in any impending military confrontation.

This raises the question of who determines Australia’s foreign policy – DFAT or Defence. DFAT may well favour diplomacy but defence policies lock us, in advance, into strategic decisions which are very hard to reverse. Decision after decision commits us not to defence of the homeland but projection of our power into the South China Sea and even as far as Taiwan, roughly 5000 kilometres away. Marles told his influential audience that our current defence build-up and “transformation of the ADF” was to “deter force projection against us” but also and more importantly “to prepare for a war against China”. AUKUS is the giveaway. The nuclear submarines are to operate far beyond the island chains of Indonesia and Melanesia and into East Asia to confront China. They are for attack, rather than defence.

There is also the rapid build-up of forces and capability right across North Australia not to defend the locals but as a central asset in the US’ war planning. The Americans have never hidden their ambition. In August last year, Michael McCaul, chairman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, spent 10 days in Australia. He declared that our geography offered key advantages to the US “as it sought to deter Chinese aggression” and, in fact, north Australia would become the “central base of operations in the Indo-Pacific to counter the threat”.

White’s advice that to navigate our way towards our post-American future we must tell Washington that we will not be involved in a war about Taiwan must be supplemented with the instruction they should also remove both personnel and equipment from our tropical north.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.