If I were drafting astrology advice for Anthony Albanese over the next few weeks, I would be hinting that it was the worst possible time for international travel, and that a serious bout of diplomatic flu might be the best way to secure his (and Australia’s) long-term interests.

This would not, of itself, be to duck a meeting with Donald Trump, because such an encounter, at least in the next month or two, may soon be overdue. But one should choose the moment, and sacrifice a little for an appointment time. The next few weeks do not look auspicious for a frank interchange, and Trump is likely to be in a mean mood over the next fortnight. He is returning from the UK believing he has secured a great personal triumph by showing that the King, and to a lesser extent, a politically ailing and infirm prime minister, are under his thrall. He will be returning to very domestic politics in the US focused on the canonisation of Charlie Kirk, recently assassinated as he was preaching hatred of all things liberal on a university campus. Trump has already used the occasion to accuse the Democrats of dividing and polarising the nation around a culture of hate and has talked of a jihad against them.

He is doing it having virtually perverted the US civil service into a MAGA cheer squad, openly partisan, and no longer concerned with following law or procedure if it is against the will of the chief executive. With a private army of ICE agents and the FBI, likewise operating outside the law or any form of accountability, Trump’s rule is becoming increasingly authoritarian, and one can expect that official visitors will be expected to admire it. Even if, as we would hope, Albanese refrains from obsequious flattery and avoids the opportunities to pay court to Trump, he may prove Trump’s briefing that Albanese is practically a communist – that is, a slightly right-of-centre liberal.

Albanese does not even have an appointment yet, and, assuming they meet, it is more likely to be at the UN in New York than in Washington. That may spare Albanese having to cope with ceremonial and official dinners, let alone opportunities for MAGA lovers to bait him. But Australians can no longer assume that one day, probably in 2029, all the Trump madness will be behind us, and that the US will revert to some sort of “normality”. Trump is remaking America in a way that cannot be undone. There may come to be a new republic, rather more given to constitutionalism and the rule of law, but it will be very different from before.

Most justices on the US Supreme Court have shown themselves ready to rubber-stamp anything that is done under the authority of the president. I have predicted in the past that it will ultimately be for this court to rein in a lawless president. But the judges are, for the moment, entirely unable to see their duty to the nation, the constitution and the rule of law. It is America’s problem rather than ours, even if we cannot escape the backwash. But it very definitely means the mutual back-scratching cannot involve talk of lands with common values, people of similar character, or even the pretence that we are both united in being democracies.

Trump still under pressure in Europe and the Middle East, but Albo won’t be a welcome distraction

Trump’s trip across the Atlantic involved no concessions to Europe, but did not relieve any of the pressures on him from Russia and the war in Ukraine, or the mass murder in Israel, the effective annexation of Gaza and the West Bank, and Israel’s increasingly murderous stalking of neighbouring nations, most recently Qatar. That Albanese will be in New York to show support for Palestine may not greatly increase the Trump disdain for Albanese or Australia, although it will necessarily be one of his targets as a number of traditional “friends” of the US position, including Britain, abandon ship.

But it may well stoke another rage about Trump’s increasingly apparent incapacity to bring the world, and his supposed allies, to heel. Apparently, some of them, not necessarily Australia, put their own nation’s interests first, just as Trump does.

Things are hardly better in the Indian Ocean, where he is now at odds with India, or in the Pacific, where China appears to be making its way without much regard to events in the US. It has been Trump himself who seems to have calmed some of the trade tensions, particularly over tariffs. But those of his team determined on a shooting war, preferably over Taiwan, are doing their best to maintain tensions. For some indeed, one of the loyalty tests the US military is trying to impose on its allies involves advance promises of fighting together, regardless of the way that any conflict is manufactured, or by whom.

It may not matter much on the grand chessboard of the superpowers, but Albanese has also recently failed with a simple task – one for which he volunteered, of draining the South Pacific of a Chinese military and security presence. Australia was making very generous offers to Vanuatu – in effect to fund its security needs so long as it had a veto over Chinese economic development activity, but, to its surprise, its offer was rebuffed. Vanuatu is interested in any help it can get from anywhere, but not in trading its sovereignty.

Australia has gone much further in discussion of an actual alliance with Papua New Guinea, but it was made clear that it will not be on Australia’s timetable, or on terms dictated by us. The PNG Cabinet left town without ratifying it. The main purpose of the treaty, explicit in its text, was again a right of veto over Chinese economic military or security activity in the area, and, at the least, Australia’s right to manage conflict between the China-PNG trading relationship and its security relationship.

Australia also has hopes and expectations for an enhanced security relationship with Fiji. But it is not happening as fast as it would like. And Fiji, like most of the other Pacific nations, is hardly thrilled that Australia insists on looking at it more in the context of China’s expansion than in terms of our mutual history and common economic interests.

Our Pacific big brotherhood talk does not impress the locals

It had hardly escaped the attention of the Pacific Island forum members that Australia was making a pretence of deep concern about the impact of climate change in the region, and promises of funding for local crises even as Australia was making policy decisions to massively increase the pollution it was pouring into the environment. The Pacific nations are not fools, even if some of them are increasingly mendicant.

They have long seen Australians as patronising and pushy, lacking respect for their cultures, customs and their individual interests. In recent years, Australia’s Pacific neighbours have often been ignored, and starved of aid. The relationship has improved after the election of the Albanese Government. Yet, the focus of the renewed attention has been plainly the “threat” from China, not any real sense of partnership with our Pacific siblings. With or without direct security arrangements between the Pacific Island states and Australia and the US, and with or without more focus and better adapted aid from the West, China will always have a place in these nations’ economies and security perspectives.

Albanese, in short, is hardly going to the US with a host of little presents for Trump personally. Even on directly bilateral matters, the AUKUS arrangements are still uncertain, and Australia has yet to commit itself to a virtual doubling of the GDP spend on defence. It has also resisted giving guarantees of alliance over any sort of Taiwan adventure, something which may be disrupting American planning as well as raising the question of why Australia should get privileged access to top-grade American military hardware and software. The US, in short, is not particularly interested in affirming Australian sovereignty over whether it joins in an American war, even if, whether under the ANZUS or AUKUS treaties, the US has made no firm commitment to coming to Australia’s aid if it was attacked.

It is unthinkable to the US military that it could be handing over nuclear submarines to Australia without an explicit commitment that these would be fighting alongside America in a war over Taiwan. American officials may be forced to echo Australian assertions that the AUKUS arrangements leave our sovereignty untouched, but they do not mean it.

These are all good reasons why Albanese and his team should be very careful about being pushed into making concessions simply because Trump is in a rage, or is exuberant, or vindictive and inclined to take a “holistic” view of Australia: the perhaps unreliable ally, and the nation that lives off its trade with China, America’s chief rival. Is Albanese strong enough to stand up to him? Or will Australia make concession after concession until Trump is appeased? If Albanese can’t get his way with Vanuatu, can he prevail with Trump?

Losing the AUKUS deal altogether would not be the worst defence or diplomatic disaster

Many, probably most Australians, are not as anxious that the AUKUS deal, particularly with nuclear submarines, triumphs in any event. It would be, in my opinion, a great blessing if the US extracted itself from its commitments, particularly if, as seems likely, there will never be submarines to deliver. It would be even better if it were Australia which extracted itself from an unequal arrangement hardly likely to increase the nation’s military security. But that, it appears, is too much to hope for. Defence Minister Richard Marles has seemed increasingly desperate to appease Washington; Albanese, if less subservient in tone, has never taken a step backwards in affirming an arrangement made by his predecessor for crudely political, not security, purposes.

It is a tribute to the lack of professionalism of Marles and the defence department that there is no let-out clause for Australia, even though both the US and Britain have one. Nor is there any relief for Australia from the prospect of one day building nuclear submarines with the British. That’s because the Brits will have even more timetable problems than the Americans. It is hard to see that Australia would persist with the arrangement, even with enormous costs, if Trump, or his successor decided that the US could simply not supply the submarines.

Indeed, one imagines that if the president at that time was J.D. Vance, he would likely be even more hard-nosed about honouring the contract, even if there was a world left in which old military alliances and financial contracts meant anything. If America, by itself or with the hapless Australia, attacks China over Taiwan, or dedicates itself to defending Taiwan to the last Taiwanese, there will be a lot of dead Americans and Australians. Chinese too, of course, but still in charge I should imagine. There has not been a single war game which has shown an American team (with or without Australia) in the winner’s circle, or within 2000km of the Chinese coast when it is all over.

Republished from The Canberra Times, September 2025

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