While there is already introspection both in the US and among its allies as to the long-term effects of this crisis on American capabilities and capacities, will Canberra seize the moment to reflect?

Donald Trump’s Middle East debacle looks to have delivered another heavy blow to American prestige and credibility. The spectre of “Suez” is now raised regularly in commentary.

The reference is to the 1956 Suez crisis, which, given Britain’s already ailing economic and military position following the end of World War II, marked the eclipse of its global reach and power.

While there is already much introspection in the US and other allied capitals about the long-term effects of this crisis on American capabilities and capacities, will Canberra seize the moment to reflect?

Such thinking would be a new experience for Australia. Canberra has never really had to confront squarely the consequences of shocks to American belief and purpose in recent decades.

Australia did not feel directly strategic failure in Vietnam. Or this century, in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We did not see fit to undertake, after those engagements, a fundamental rethink of the assumptions guiding our defence and foreign policy.

What then breeds the remarkable Australian self-confidence about  America’s staying power in Asia?

Part of it derives from the consistency – yes, you read that correctly – of the Trump administration’s focus on defending the first island chain, that arc of islands stretching from Japan down through Okinawa to Taiwan and onto the Philippines.

The White House’s national security documents released late last year and in January are consistent on this.

When Australian officials claim that US “self-interest” necessitates its staying in Asia, they are equating the defence of the first island chain with the defence of the continental United States.

Washington is not interested in the idea of sharing power in Asia. It is never quite clear, in any case, what kind of power is intended to be shared when this kind of language is being used – is it economic, or military? Nor, for that matter, are China or Russia interested in sharing power in a much vaunted “multipolar” dynamic.

Never mind, too, that the evidence for the US being rock solid in safeguarding Australia’s regional security is dubious. Even since ANZUS was signed in 1951, Washington has never said it would sacrifice the furthest sandhill of the Californian coast for Sydney.

So, does the alliance in any military sense still work for Australia? The question shocks, but it needs to be thought about.

Canberra faces tough questions

The hard questions Canberra should be thinking about include the following.

Australia might be reassured by the idea that US policymakers see Asia as the single theatre of consequence, but can Washington continue to have the financial, military and diplomatic capacity to play the role it has traditionally played in Asia?

We will have to wait for  Trump’s successor to find out – and surely that successor cannot be as bad. Still, whoever it is will have to reestablish that desire for power in the Washington elite. Is that possible? It would need all the old US-Asia hands, the likes of Hillary Clinton, Kurt Campbell and Michael Green, to remake the case.

A second, related question: how important does soft power remain? America’s residual soft power, ailing badly under Trump, is too often exaggerated – unless China does something similarly foul and invades Taiwan with huge Taiwanese casualties and the destruction of Taiwanese society.

The hardest matter of all, however, is to think about the view which holds that China is unable to overtake the US comprehensively, even over the next few decades.

Overtaking the US is a race the Chinese may not win, but what does that mean for countries such as Australia, which have to live with China, not beat it? Does China have to triumph over the US to dominate Asia?

China may not be the miracle economy that once dazzled the forecasters but it still represents successful state capitalism, delivering similar inequalities and a similar entrenched and wealthy elite that goes by the name of the Chinese Communist Party.

The kind of thinking is even more imperative when Washington sends signals that might easily be interpreted as indicating that Australia is the ally it takes for granted the most.

So even as American credibility sinks, consider that some of its national security officials are impatient to make the “rotations” of US military forces through Australia permanent. That means formal American bases on Australian soil. It was most likely Washington’s intention from the start.

For years, Australian officials and ministers have played semantic games with the US military presence here. Even Defence Minister Richard Marles – the most slavishly pro-American minister in cabinet – has often been at pains to stress that US marines in Darwin, or the port being constructed now at HMS Stirling in Western Australia to host rotations of US nuclear-powered submarines, are not “bases” but “facilities” or “force posture initiatives”.

Labor used to regard the presence of foreign bases on Australian soil as a derogation of national sovereignty. But is it going to consign this once proud principle of its party’s foreign policy to the scrapheap?

Consider too that several Americans – even movie stars – have been approached by the Trump administration to fill the vacancy of US ambassador to Australia.

Among them are Mel Gibson, former secretary of homeland security Kristi Noem and former Trump national security adviser Mike Waltz, now US ambassador to the United Nations. All apparently turned down the Canberra post.

Emotional Australian reactions about neglect won’t help. Hard thinking about the future of American power will.

Reposted from AFR, 12 April 2026