The latest Boyer Lecture portrays Australia as trapped by anxiety about the United States. In fact, for decades the country pursued a deliberate, bipartisan strategy of defence self-reliance – abandoned only in recent years.

The ABC’s Boyer lecture has a reputation, built over half a century, for unearthing new insights into the Australian soul, in a professional way, with intellectual flair. We have come to expect a Boyer’s words will enrich our knowledge, truly, for better and worse. Exhibiting a penetrating curiosity by the author about Australia, delivering insights based on evidence, whether by experience or documentation, interpreted wisely. Eminently credible, the product of years of specialised achievement.

I had this prospect in mind when offered the recent 2025 Boyer 'Is America Still the One?', by professor of history at Sydney University James Curran – expecting a knowledgeable, perceptive portrayal of Australia’s security relationship with the United States, inferring what might lie ahead.

How wrong could one be?

Throughout, Curran describes Australian behaviour in terms of “we” as if there’s a uniformity in attitudes, from bus-drivers to moguls.

He opens with: “We are experiencing another bout of panic about whether or not we are loved by America, and whether America will be there for us. This kind of panic has gripped elements of the national security system at least once, if not several times every decade, since wartime prime minister John Curtin looked to America in 1941.”

Thereby Curran reveals utter ignorance of the substantive achievements of Australian governments, of both political sides, post-Vietnam. In fact, since the 1973 Defence Review tabled in Parliament in Whitlam’s years, our national security policy calmly created unique systems able to secure this nation across its vast land and sea interests, self-reliantly without dependence on US forces.

Far from panic, that policy was pursued openly, deliberately, affordably, knowledgeably and imaginatively for 35 years, delivering outcomes way beyond initial assessments of what Australia might achieve. The genesis of that transformation was a bipartisan government view that Australia could not run the risk of relying upon the US for its security – shaped largely by US behaviour and advice.

On the strength of his fantasy Curran advised ABC listeners that Australia is afflicted with a deep-rooted neurosis: “We seem incapable of relinquishing the chronic anxiety about access to American power, protection and affection. We remain fundamentally unable to determine when we need to depart from US strategy and the moments we need to align with it.”

If, instead of reaching for psychiatry, Curran had researched the history of Australia’s defence policy he would have found logical reasons for his unease.

One of the reasons Australia was able to build defences for its own special needs for so long was that US global priorities lay elsewhere – in Europe, North Asia and the Middle East. The rise of China eventually turned Washington’s attention our way, resulting in the Obama Presidential visit of 2010. Out of the blue, America wanted our territory to be used militarily in its ‘Tilt to Asia’. Prime Minister Gillard signed anything and everything, steered by Washington ambassador Kim Beazley. And our Parliamentarians rose as one in ovation to applaud Obama for suckering them.

Perhaps someone in government tried to preserve self-reliance, which had been explicit in every Defence White Paper since 1976, until its extinction under Prime Minister Abbott. But no Australian prime minister since has mentioned it. Nor has any Australian government had a coherent defence policy since 2010. So Curran can relax, the confusion over our defence policy is not a national mental condition. It’s just the venality of our political leaders, from Gillard to Morrison, which dumped Australia into security obeisance to the United States.

Historian Curran might be on firmer footing when he talks about the present: “The United States is now publicly and privately confronting the Albanese Government over whether it will commit to joining American forces in planning to defend Taiwan from a Chinese takeover.”

But he avoids the nub – that US “planning to defend Taiwan” is simply a front to initiate debilitating military harm to China’s legitimate sovereign activities, especially trade. This has long been evident in Pentagon planning reports to Congress. To be put into play at a time of US choosing. The way ahead has been made complicated, as Curran notes:

“ Some public intellectuals and strategists say that Australia can join this war planning now but take the sovereign decision to not activate and operate it if conflict broke out. But as the major contribution by Australia in war planning would be the use of the US facilities, bases and logistics hubs in Australia that the US has established with our agreement, then we would have to cut power to Pine Gap in Alice Springs and elsewhere and even block the tarmac at air bases to make that sovereign decision. Now that would be virtually impossible to do if we should agree to joint war planning.”

Our military is already engaged with the US in joint war planning and exercising, alongside Japan and the Philippines. While Foreign Minister Wong complains of being mystified by China’s growing defence expenditure, Defence Minister Marles has been involved with the Pentagon from day one.

Let’s get real about the risks and consequences facing Australia. American foreign policy over the years has demonstrated that it will not hesitate to reduce Asia to an economic basket case if that’s what it takes to crush China’s vigour. The odd respected commentator is saying this time it’s different, as US leaders realise that China is too powerful to confront, so both inevitably must seek a global deal. A G2? Meanwhile the Pentagon’s budget and its objective for US global domination flourish. We are about to find out more, as the Pentagon is due to report to Congress in December.

Of course, the US and its allies lack the capacity to dominate China militarily. The Pentagon’s ‘Island Chain’ plan, fraught with amphibious combat, is fanciful. So many dead American boys. China’s economy is vulnerable through its sea lanes. Typically, the US would worry that weakness in a devious campaign, engulfing the entire region economically. It will serve the US purpose to wreck the prosperity of China, and thereby subdue Asia. Taking Australia down as collateral damage. Shucks.

Of Asia’s entirety, only Japan and Philippines have responded positively to America’s military confrontation of China - the former affected by historical enmity; while disputed adjoining waters explain the latter.

After years of Australia embracing the US strategy, Albanese’s government is signalling caution. But it’s full steam ahead on defence expenditure – the longer Australia bets the house on nuclear submarines (an egregious political decision) the less possible our independence will be. If ever the US had wanted to sabotage Australia’s aspirations for strategic independence no more clever means than enticing this nuclear submarine folly is imaginable. And that is without the fiscal effect of China’s economic strangulation.

Australia has to drop its entirely political defence planning as it invites national collapse. That’s only possible, however, with political leadership. Curran is optimistic our diplomats can find a way through, based on pedigree. That’s easier said than done after the recent effort stitching-up the Pacific for America, and is no alternative to maniacal defence spending for America’s benefit.

Curran offered listeners no clue as to what Australia’s defence posture should be. Wisely, as he displays no grasp of that pedigree.

Readers wanting more can do no better than Hugh White’s fulsome essay Hard New World. White concludes that “our armed forces must be designed primarily to defend Australia independently, rather than to support America in a war with China.” This is precisely the policy enunciated in the Fraser government’s white paper of 1976. Without any acknowledgement by White – we’ve been here before and made a success of it, over many successive governments.

What is it about our eminent historians that a singular national achievement is buried so? Australia’s political leaders have found ways enough to diminish us without those we rely upon for truth abdicating.