Trump’s volatility has exposed the fragility of the global order, but the deeper danger lies in Australia’s uncritical attachment to a declining US empire – and the refusal to rethink our place in a changing world.

Seldom since 1945 has the global landscape seemed so desolate, so stained by mindless violence. Seldom have we been exposed to such crassness in high places.

Seldom has Australian foreign policy been so mired in the orthodoxies of the past, detached from the realities of the present, unmindful of the dangers looming on the horizon.

The inability of Australian governments to change course is troubling enough. More troubling still is the steadfast refusal to undertake anything approaching a probing review of the seismic changes unfolding at frenetic pace across a globalising yet fractured world.

When it comes to Australia’s umbilical alignment with US strategic interests and priorities, many commentators across the political spectrum have jumped on to the inanities of Trumpism as providing the rationale for a loosening of the alliance.

There may well be some tactical value in taking advantage of Trump’s hastily improvised brainwaves when making the case that the United States is fast becoming a less dependable ally. But if it involves little more than pointing to the excesses of the Trump administration, the strategy may well prove to be a double edged sword.

True enough, the first year of the Trump presidency has seen a string of statements and initiatives which have troubled many faithful allies, including a wide cross-section of the Australian public.

The list is a long one: the erratic imposition of trade tariffs and the spurious arguments used to justify them, military intrusions in Iran, Syria, Yemen and Venezuela, the abduction of Maduro, threatened intervention in Greenland, wholesale support for the Israeli government’s genocidal policies in Gaza, a meandering diplomacy in the Ukraine conflict that has deeply unsettled the NATO alliance, not to mention the illiberal avalanche of executive orders that have brought democracy in the US to its knees.

Yes, Trump’s conduct on the world stage is little short of farcical, but farce aside there is remarkable continuity with what preceded it. According to a major study, between 1945 and 2023, the United States conducted more than 200 military interventions, the vast majority without UN Security Council authorisation. Since the mid-1990s, it has launched more military operations than it did during the Cold War years.

During the Biden years, the US operated some 750 overseas military facilities, mostly in Europe and East Asia, at an annual cost of $55 billion. US military spending stood at $84 billion in 1968. By 2023, it had risen to $916 billion.

It was not the Trump Administration but previous Democrat and Republican administrations which embarked on the disastrous military expeditions in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq at immense financial and human cost.

Two important conclusions emerge. Bluster aside, Trump’s interventionism is in keeping with America’s longstanding reliance on military force as the primary and indispensable instrument in its pursuit of imperial power.

There is nevertheless an element of discontinuity, or at least apparent discontinuity, that separates the Trump presidency from earlier administrations. US power is in visible decline. It is no longer able to exercise the hegemonic role it assumed at the conclusion of the Second World War and maintained for the best part of half a century.

Since the late 1990s, life for the hegemon has become progressively harder. This is the lesson Trump is learning, rather slowly so far. Making America great again is a much more challenging undertaking than he and his associates imagined.

One thing is now clear enough. After the initial shock of Trump’s bluster and belligerence, allies and adversaries alike have taken stock of the limits to US power.

This January we have seen a string of major trade agreements, all of them entailing a substantial reciprocal reduction in tariffs: between Canada and China, between the EU and four Mercosur countries (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay), and between the EU and India.

These agreements and others, in which the US is noticeably absent, carry a distinct geopolitical message: US allies are willing to resist US unilateralism.

European leaders have made it clear that they are totally opposed to America’s annexation of Greenland, while Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has stated in blunt language that the world is “in the midst of a rupture, not a transition,” and that as a consequence Canada had no option but to “fundamentally shift its strategic posture”.

US power is ageing. In the first year of his administration Trump chose to stem the tide by putting on a tantrum, but to little effect. Far from forcing China into submission, Trump’s tariff blitz on Chinese goods invited Chinese retaliation, which has since led to a drastic reduction of US tariffs. And by year’s end, China could report a staggering trade surplus of US$1.2 trillion, the largest trade surplus ever recorded by any economy.

In the face of this rapidly changing international landscape, Australian governments have stood still. Their energies have largely gone into an unrewarding juggling act. This has meant maintaining the trade relationship with China as the largest importer by far of Australian goods and services and quasi-total subservience to US strategic interests and policy preferences.

Such a stance cannot but end in tears. A major rethink is called for, not because of Trump’s antics, but because of the dangers posed by a declining empire – still the world’s pre-eminent military power – that is not yet reconciled to its decline. All this at a time when American society is sharply polarised, gripped by grotesque inequalities of wealth and power, and morally rudderless.

A rethink involves much more than a few knowledgeable people designing a set of policy directions, and then somehow convincing government that this is the way to go. If it is the case that Australia together with the rest of the world is entering a period of profound transformation, then only a whole of society conversation can generate the will and capacity to rise to the challenge posed by such transformation.

If we are to extricate ourselves from our present alliance arrangements, we need to have a clear appreciation of the reasons why this is worth doing.

It is nowhere near enough to say that we wish to avoid involvement or complicity in future US military expeditions, or in some future Sino-American confrontation. To say just that is to leave too many questions unanswered.

What would a non-aligned, more independent Australia look like? What would be its new sense of place in the world? How would Australia exercise its independence? In pursuit of what objectives? What do we see as the prospects for a renewed, more democratic multilateralism, or for international law to be placed on more solid foundations? In all this, with whom would we consult and collaborate?

All of which raises yet another question. What are the moral, emotional and intellectual resources Australia can bring to the conversation? Two potential contributions loom large.

If Australia is a genuinely multicultural society, then we need to find ways to integrate the insights and experiences of the different cultures represented in this country. How, for example, could we arrive at a coherent and constructive view of our future relations with China, unless we do it with the full participation of our large and still growing Chinese community?

Importantly, how can Australia redefine its sense of place in the world without the active engagement of First Nations peoples? How can we reimagine the future of Country without the benefit of Indigenous wisdom? If we are to reassert Australian independence, it would be better done by finally recognising Indigenous sovereignty which derives from a unique spiritual and historical connection to the Land, and which has never been ceded.