The US is almost always at war, not in defence of values and democracy but in its “manifest destiny” as the world hegemon.

It is the most aggressive and violent country in the world both at home and abroad. It is almost always at war and has dragged us into futile wars – Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan.

We have joined in because we believed that in so doing we would win brownie points with the US which would then come to our aid if we were attacked.

It has never been the case that the US is obligated under ANZUS to come to our aid. That treaty only obliges the US to consult. It is not like NATO.

The erratic behaviour of the Trump administration tells us more than ever that the US will pursue its own interests and only come to our aid if it suits US interests, as in World War II.

Does Trump really care about Australia? Or Brazil, hit with a 50% tariff for not dropping the prosecution of his friend ex-president Bolsonaro? Or India, threatened with a 50% tariff for buying Russian oil and running a “dead economy”, that probably brings the Quad to an end? Or Canada with a 35% tariff for being “defiantly Canadian”?

Trump’s America tells us that we must attend to self-reliance in our own defence.

We have done that successfully in the past. Bipartisan agreement for that emerged in the ’70s after the Vietnam war and the Nixon Guam Doctrine. That doctrine stated that the US “shall look to the nation directly threatened to assume the primary responsibility of providing the manpower for its defence”.

So, in 1976 the Fraser Government committed us to that “primary responsibility”.

Our remoteness has some benefits, but defending a large continent is difficult, even with a very large budget. But Australia has developed unique surveillance technology (Jindalee over the horizon radar) to provide real-time surveillance of our vast areas of concern. Canada has now taken this for its own defence.

Self-reliance was Australia’s unswerving defence focus for 35 years following the Fraser Government’s Defence White Paper in 1976. Then it was obtrusively buried in 2010 by Obama/Gillard with our Parliament’s standing ovation for Obama’s tilt to Asia. Step by foolish step since 2010, we have allowed the US to build a military colony in Northern Australia to confront China.

From the 1970s onwards, we constructed a highly capable defence built around unique sensors to give us transparency of our sea and air approaches, through airfields and versatile aircraft for strike and intercept, surveillance and patrol and against submarines, with mobile light ground forces focussing on Australia.

Specifically, squadrons of F/A-18 strike fighter and F-35 multi-role and P8 Poseidon patrol aircraft supported by Airborne Warning and Control Systems and refuelling tankers formed the spine, complemented by naval combat vessels and an array of sensors and electronic countermeasures.

Early on, submarines were assessed as having little utility in defending Australia as their roles are done more cost-effectively by aircraft and ships. This was ignored by Kim Beazley, who was determined to create a submarine construction industry in South Australia for political gain, paid for by the defence budget.

Submarines thereafter have clouded public awareness of defence. Even less justification exists for nuclear submarines – that single project will cost five times the entire annual defence budget, an incomprehensible financial burden compounded by the vessel being unsuitable for operations in our shallow northern waters. This is madness bordering on national suicide.

The government could scrap our submarine capability tomorrow and defence would be better off, enabling further strengthening of the spine.

It is not too late to revive our independence in defending Australia. Our defences would prevail in all but the extremely unlikely event that a major power chose to attack us free of another power having an interest and role.

The clamour for more defence spending comes mainly from the Austral-Americans who have been on the American drip feed, including the Five Eyes for most of their adult lives.

They are in league with ‘think-tanks” that are fronts for US interests and its arms industry – the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, the Lowy Institute and the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. The latter had the dubious honour of being one of the authors of the Australian Government’s Defence Strategic Review. And of course, there is Strategic Studies at the ANU that journalists run to whenever they want an anti-China angle.

Peter Hartcher and his bombastic and pretentious “panel of national security experts” told us with bated breath in Red Alert in March 2023 that we must be ready for war with China, not by 2030 or even 2040 but by March next year, that is in seven months’ time! Paul Keating described Red Alert as “egregious and provocative”. He was being polite.

How do these people keep their jobs? How do competent editors allow this sort of crazed nonsense?

They join a conga line of anti-China hawks who make their living retelling at every opportunity that China is a military threat to Australia and even the US. Have they ever stopped to think that the most likely way that we could be in conflict with China is by acting as a proxy for the US, the “dangerous ally” that Malcolm Fraser warned us about?

The anti-China hawks on their US propaganda drip feed continue to beat the drums of war. The assumption is that the military threat, even unnamed, is China.

And because of the rise of China these hawks believe that the bipartisan self-reliance strategy launched by Malcolm Fraser is no longer sufficient. As a nation frightened of our region, hawks suggest that we need US support more than ever.

In a series of articles from 11 November 2022**,** we contended that “ China has neither the intent or capability to attack us". Neither is China a threat to the US homeland.

Looking through its rear vision mirror, the US assumes that a rising power like China will behave as aggressively as the US itself has behaved over two centuries.

But there is little in China’s history to suggest that. China does not have a history of military aggression beyond the defence of its own borders. It has only one foreign base in Djibouti, mainly for anti-piracy purposes.

In contrast, the US has more than 800 overseas bases, many on China’s doorstep. It has 15 major military bases in Japan with 55,000 active personnel. In the ROK, the US has eight major bases and 28,000 military personnel.

The US fleet, with our support, regularly patrols off the China coast. The US would have hysterics if Chinese vessels patrolled off the Californian coast and the Florida Keys. Or if China had B-52 type aircraft based in Mexico!

With a century of Western humiliation, China is determined to defend its homeland. Not surprisingly, it is rapidly building its military capability. But it does not project its military power around the globe as does the US.

China has not been engaged in military activity for the past 40 years. In that time, the US has overthrown numerous governments and illegally invaded many countries.

China has a large and diverse population in areas such as Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. It has land borders with 14 countries and 22,000 kilometres to protect. Not surprisingly, China focuses on domestic issues and the protection of its borders.

If China was an imperial power, it would have swallowed up adjacent Mongolia long ago, a democratic, mineral rich state which is more than twice the size of Ukraine.

There is also no sign that China is exporting its ideology.

We should urgently develop our own self-reliant defence capability instead of becoming a vassal of the US. And insist that the US cannot launch hostilities from Australia without our permission, including Pine Gap.

We would also get better value for our defence dollars if Anthony Albanese could find a pretext to shift Richard Marles to a new job that matched his abilities.

An unhinged US is a greater threat to Australia than China.