Hypocrisy and folly: why Australia’s subservience to Trump’s America is past its use-by date

Clinton Fernandes has established himself as one of the most original and insightful analysts of Australian security policy. An early career with the Australian Army Intelligence Corps no doubt gave him an inside view of the ideas that influence security policy in this country.

I’m not surprised he changed careers. To judge by this outstanding book, there is little regard for intelligence, much less independence of thought, among the people who shape “Australia’s” strategic outlook.

The scare quotes are merited because, as Fernandes observes, “Australia’s policy planners are motivated by […] a single standard – does something protect or advance US power and Australia’s relevance to it?”

Review: Turbulence: Australian Foreign Policy in the Trump Era – Clinton Fernandes (Melbourne University Publishing)

One of the most noteworthy features of Fernades’ analysis in Turbulence: Australian Foreign Policy in the Trump Era and his previous work, especially Sub-Imperial Power: Australia in the International Arena (2022), is his ability to account for policy outcomes by placing them in their distinctive historical and geographic contexts.

For those baffled by the decision to buy nuclear-powered submarines from the United States and possibly Britain as part of the AUKUS agreement, Turbulence is essential reading. A growing number of commentators, including former prime ministers and senior military figures, have questioned the wisdom of what Paul Keating called the “worst deal in all history”. Fernandes explains why AUKUS is an all-too-predictable continuation of past follies.

Supporters of AUKUS have suggested that buying and possibly building submarines is a nation-building project on a par with the Snowy Mountains scheme. But Fernandes makes it clear that, “despite ideologically strident claims by Australia’s leaders”, AUKUS is “a contribution of people, territory, materials, money, diplomacy and ideology to the war-fighting capabilities of the United States”.

The art of ingratiation

Making ourselves useful to our “great and powerful friend” is the default setting for strategic and by extension foreign policy in Australia. It has been for 80 years. As far as policymaking elites are concerned, it is literally unthinkable that we should do anything else.

This takes some explaining at any time, but when Donald Trump is president and many think the US is lurching headlong into full-blown authoritarianism, it looks indefensible and at odds with even the most expansive definition of the “national interest”.

What is more remarkable, perhaps, is that we are no longer alone in our enthusiasm to ingratiate ourselves with the Americans. In addition to an analysis of the AUKUS project, Fernandes includes chapters on the Trump administration’s relations with Europe, the Middle East and China. All of them reflect his breadth of knowledge of the contemporary strategic scene and the potentially catastrophic impact Trump is having on the international order America did so much to create.

The US is the principal beneficiary of that order. That Trump and his hand-picked team of flunkies question this reflects their historical ignorance and desire for enrichment.

Fernandes argues that the Trump administration’s disdain for Europe has culminated in policies designed to make Europe “fit in with US industrial policy, curtail their economic relations with China and help preserve US technological dominance”. As he wryly observes, “this system of paying tributes and protection costs will be familiar to students of past imperial arrangements – and to people who watch films about organised crime and its protection rackets”.

Indeed. The wonder is that Australian policymakers are so in thrall to the US that they appear not to care.

They are hardly unique in this regard, of course. Some countries have no inhibitions – or shame – about their willingness to ingratiate themselves, as Qatar’s gift of a Boeing 747 to Trump himself demonstrates. This was in addition to the US$45 billion investment in American corporations promised in 2019 and another US$10 billion to expand the existing American air base in Qatar.

The US is developing a system of tributary states, but without the sense of common culture and acceptance that made the earlier Chinese version rather more palatable and stabilising.

More importantly, Australia’s historical willingness to do whatever the US wants has seen us take part in pointless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fernandes’ book is full of sobering illustrations of our foreign policy hypocrisy. Australia rightly criticises China’s actions in Tibet and Xinjiang, for example, but has been slow to condemn Israel’s actions in Gaza, and has said nothing about the US’s extrajudicial killings in Venezuela.

“Human rights will be ignored or highlighted as needed,” Fernandes concludes – as needed to stay onside with the US, that is. He argues that Australia helps to legitimate America’s imperial project and its goal of controlling the Middle East “through a sub-imperial power (Israel) and protectorates (oil-rich Arab monarchies)”.

Threats: real and notional

For many Australians and for the Trump administration, China remains the principal object of concern. Fernandes uses the debate over “freedom of navigation” to illustrate how misguided and limited discussion of the “China threat” actually is.

As the world’s largest trading nation, China is even more reliant on safe passage for its exports than Australia. As Fernades points out, “the last thing China wants is a war in the western Pacific Ocean, which would disrupt nearly all its seaborn supplies”.

In practice, complaints about freedom of navigation are driven by the desire to spy on China’s strategic assets without being harassed:

The silence over what ‘freedom of navigation’ really involves protects the government from democratic accountability, and from debate as to how Australia’s intelligence agencies and military should be used. These are questions of politics, not military strategy.

Even China’s much criticised military build-up can be understood more easily in a wider context that includes a recognition of America’s perennial willingness to use coercive power, including nuclear weapons, to achieve its ends. Seen in this light the acquisition of nuclear weapons by China seems “rational”, at least when judged by the calculus of great-power grand strategy and the logic of deterrence.

Fernandes is enough of an ex-military man and a strategic realist to take seriously arguments about the need for an independent defence capacity. Indeed, he stresses that “submarines are an essential defence capability for a maritime nation like Australia”.

In this regard, Fernandes is at one with other prominent commentators, such as Albert Palazzo and Hugh White, both former insiders turned critics. They are all more concerned about the possibility of making an inappropriate choice of submarine than whether the submarines are needed or not.

Anyone doubting that Australian policymakers are making the wrong choice for the wrong reasons, should read Fernandes’ detailed argument in favour of “air-independent propulsion” submarines, which don’t encourage nuclear proliferation and have the added benefit of being comparatively cheap.

It really isn’t that hard or expensive to defend an island continent a long way from global trouble spots. New Zealand manages with the bare minimum of expense and equipment, no awkward alliance obligations, and yet remains one of the safest places in the world.

Redefining realism

Credible critiques from the likes of Fernandes are important contributions to a debate that may be gaining traction thanks to the efforts of academics and civil society organisations.

For those of us who think that environmental breakdown presents a more immediate and “realistic” threat to Australia’s security than the disruption of sea lanes, much less invasion, the prioritisation of traditional sources of insecurity looks misplaced.

It is striking that even the most informed analyses of security feel obliged to take on the “realists” on their own turf. The debate still revolves around the most cost-effective ways of threatening to kill people in countries we don’t know much about, a potential defence minister Richard Marles euphemistically describes as “impactful projection”.

Rather than fretting about a possible Chinese invasion, we ought to be thinking about ways we can cooperate with a country that is at least trying to address climate change. The US, by contrast, is not only becoming equally authoritarian. It has become unreliable and disruptive. And it is actively working to undermine existing efforts to address what Trump describes as a climate “con job”.

Such attitudes directly threaten the security of the entire planet. They give comfort to those who would prefer not to act and carry on with self-destructive business as usual.

In Australia, the major political parties are not that far apart on the environment. Projects like the North West Shelf gas development, which will significantly add to Australia’s – and the world’s – greenhouse gas emissions are waved through in the “national interest”.

As the environment disintegrates before our eyes, we really do need to rethink our priorities, especially for the sake of coming generations. If we don’t, the young may inherit more turbulence than they know what to do with.

Mark Beeson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.