Australia’s $368 billion submarine program is apparently wobbling again, not because US shipyards can’t keep up, or because a future president could cancel the deal with the flick of a pen.

Those are mere details.

The real “problem”, we’re told, is tonal.

According to a recent report by Nine Newspapers, John Bolton (he of moustache and missile fame), Bryan Clark (Hudson Institute, Pentagon whisperer), and Alexander Gray (Trump-era adviser turned Atlantic Council fellow) all offered the same diagnosis:

Australia’s problem is tone. Too soft, too ambiguous, too unwilling to denounce China by name.

Their remedy? Talk tougher, spend more, commit deeper.

In other words: pay the bill, shout the lines, and rehearse for someone else’s war.

Apparently, reliability is now measured in decibels.

Ambiguity for Washington, clarity for Canberra

Bolton insists it makes him “a little nervous” that Australia isn’t being as candid as he’d like about “the real threat”.

This is the same Bolton who freely acknowledges that Washington itself maintains “strategic ambiguity” on Taiwan – deliberately refusing to say what it would do in a crisis.

America gets to keep its options open. Australia, apparently, must scream its intentions from the rooftops.

It’s a neat trick: the superpower stays silent, the middle power shouts, and Beijing knows exactly which economy to punish when the shouting gets too loud.

We’ve already lived through that film once: chest-beating and megaphone diplomacy cost our exporters $20 billion. Farmers, vintners and miners bore the pain. Albanese’s quieter reset has clawed much of it back.

Yet Bolton wants Canberra back on stage, reciting Cold War lines as though Beijing were an abstraction, not our largest customer.

Submarines as loyalty oaths

Clark adds his own twist: if we can’t say in public that the subs will be used against China, then maybe we don’t deserve them.

This, after Australia has already poured billions into America’s shipyards, money that will deliver boats for the US Navy whether or not ours ever arrive.

It’s like pre-paying for a car, funding the factory, and then being told the dealer might not hand over the keys unless you first announce who you’ll crash into.

Australians might be forgiven for thinking the alliance is starting to sound less like security and more like a protection racket.

Pay up, say the right words, show loyalty. Otherwise – nice submarine program you’ve got there, shame if something happened to it.

And hovering behind it all, as Clark reminds us, are the “off-ramps".

At any time, a US president can simply cancel the deal.

Billions sunk, sovereignty pledged, economic bridges burned – and still no guarantee the submarines actually materialise.

Gray’s complaint is more subtle, but no less revealing.

He worries that Australia’s rhetoric on China shifts, depending on which party is in power.

As though this were instability, rather than the basic function of democracy.

Different governments reflect different mandates.

Voters, not think-tanks, decide the tone.

The professionals in Defence and DFAT have been consistent about China’s capabilities.

What changes is how politicians balance those assessments with trade, prosperity and social stability.

But in the Bolton-Clark-Gray worldview, this is weakness. They prefer their allies bipartisan, predictable, and preferably mute – except when denouncing Beijing on cue.

Whose alliance, whose price?

Australia has fought alongside the US for a century: from the Pacific campaigns of World War II to Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

We’ve proven reliability even when the wars were costly, even when they made us no safer. We host Pine Gap, share intelligence, align with US sanctions and devote our budgets to interoperable kit.

By any fair measure, we’ve earned trust.

Yet we’re told billions and decades of loyalty are not enough – that we must pre-commit our submarines, lift defence spending to 3.5% of GDP, and abandon ambiguity in favour of public denunciations that only make us a bigger target.

How can anyone disregard this record, all this blood and commitment, and still question Australia’s reliability – as if we are not a sovereign nation with our own interests to protect?

The US-Australia alliance is not the problem here. It remains a cornerstone of our security and will endure.

The problem is the small circle of self-appointed “guardians” who claim to speak for Washington, but peddle their own Cold War clichés.

They would have Australia play deputy sheriff, loudly and expensively, while they keep their own options open.

We have every right to push back – to say we are a partner, not a pawn.

And if decades of loyalty still leave us accused of unreliability, perhaps the unreliability lies not in Canberra, but in those who confuse their own voices with the voice of the United States.

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