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# Labor doubles down on US military alliance
- URL: https://redflag.org.au/article/labor-doubles-down-on-us-military-alliance/
- Published: 2026-09-21T01:30:58.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-21T01:30:58.000Z
- Description: The US alliance has long been a pillar of Australia’s foreign policy, but the current Labor government seems particularly eager to grovel to America.
- Author: Ruby Healer
- Tags: Imperialism, Australia, USA and North America, Asia Pacific, International, #310

“American force posture in Australia is growing”, Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles declared on his visit to Washington, DC, this month. “Since we’ve come to government”, Marles said, standing alongside US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, “you can see a through line there of growing American force posture in Australia”.

It was a fairly straightforward summary of the Albanese Labor government’s attitude, followed up with promises of further integration between the Australian and US militaries. A shifting “force posture” will mean more American troop rotations, more US air and naval operations and more pre-positioning of military equipment like warplanes, fuel and munitions in Australia.

Agreements made by the Albanese government will ramp up co-operation on all fronts, with a newly [revitalised](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/defence/home-truth-us-touches-base-at-was-hmas-stirling/news-story/5a1ddcb7569aa880933535a2390ceadd?amp&ref=redflag.org.au) HMAS Stirling base near Perth set to host American nuclear-powered submarines and an estimated 2,300 US troops within five years. As America’s military machine looks ahead to an era of aggressive contest with China in the Asia-Pacific, Australia’s ruling class is desperate to make itself an indispensable part of US war planning.

Weapons trade regulations have also been [loosened](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-15/weapons-trade-between-us-and-australia-streamlined-aukus/104232092?ref=redflag.org.au) under a bilateral agreement to help both countries access shared research to develop arms and surveillance systems. And, Marles promised ominously, “you will hear more from us ... in the coming months” about further arrangements to increase co-operation.

Of course, there’s nothing new about the Australian ruling class throwing itself into a military alliance with the United States. This is a long-standing arrangement pursued by every Australian government since the Second World War. Permanent joint intelligence and communications programs have run out of Pine Gap in the Northern Territory and the Harold Holt naval station in Western Australia since the 1960s.

Data [published](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/ng-interactive/2026/sep/07/us-military-bases-in-australia-map-list-spy-satellite-pine-gap?ref=redflag.org.au) by the *Guardian* in early September revealed that American forces and weapons corporations control or make use of over 100 military facilities across the country. And Australia is one of the biggest recipients of US arms in the world, with around 85 percent of weapons purchased in 2021-25 coming from the US, [according](https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/2026-03/fs%5F2603%5Fat%5F2025.pdf?ref=redflag.org.au) to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s arms transfers database.

Hegseth himself [recalled](https://www.minister.defence.gov.au/transcripts/2025-02-08/opening-remarks-meeting-us-secretary-defense-washington-dc?ref=redflag.org.au) during a separate love-in event with Marles last year: “We \[the Australian and US militaries\] fought shoulder to shoulder in every major conflict since World War One—from the Western Front, to Guadalcanal, to Vietnam, to Afghanistan”.

“During my time in Afghanistan”, he reminisced, “I served with members of the Australian military who were some of the finest”. We can only imagine the sorts of unconvicted war criminals who consorted with Pete Hegseth during the joint twenty-year occupation of Afghanistan.

The US alliance has long been a pillar of Australia’s foreign policy, but the current Labor government seems particularly eager to grovel to America. Just one month after Donald Trump’s inauguration, and before the current Australian and US defence ministers had even met for the first time, the Australian government arranged a [payment](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02-08/donald-trump-supportive-of-aukus-pete-hegseth-says/104913062?ref=redflag.org.au) of US$500 million towards the Trump administration’s military budget.

“We’re really pleased that the first payment ... we’ve been able to make in the first couple of weeks of the Trump administration”, Marles told Hegseth ahead of their first formal meeting in February 2025\. “We’re really pleased to make it in the first week of your tenure as the secretary of defence.”

In the meeting that followed, Marles [explained](https://www.minister.defence.gov.au/transcripts/2025-02-08/opening-remarks-meeting-us-secretary-defense-washington-dc?ref=redflag.org.au) that Hegseth’s enthusiasm for military ties with Australia made sense, since “the whole idea of a free and open Indo-Pacific really has its origins during the first Trump Administration”.

You wouldn’t be wrong to interpret this behaviour as pathetic bootlicking. The Australian government is a simpering bunch of pro-American lowlifes. But the problem isn’t that our leaders are “weak” or being strong-armed into subservience. They run the twelfth largest economy in the world. Their armed forces outstrip those of any oceanic neighbours by a wide margin. The reality is that Australian capitalism is a willing and culpable participant in the world’s most powerful military coalition alongside America.

As former Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd recently [stated](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/sep/12/rise-of-china-is-australia-us-alliance-still-worth-the-risk-kevin-rudd?ref=redflag.org.au), the “alliance with the United States remains a force multiplier for Australia’s defence needs”. With the help of its powerful ally, Australia maintains the second strongest defence network in the Asia Pacific, [according](https://power.lowyinstitute.org/countries/australia/?ref=redflag.org.au) to the Lowy Institute’s 2025 Asia Power Index.

This so-called defence framework includes advanced surveillance and targeting capabilities used for drone strikes and bombing raids in Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza, Yemen and elsewhere. It encompasses airfields in the Northern Territory and command centres in Queensland that were important staging posts for Allied operations in Asia during the Second World War and the Cold War, and that are now being rejuvenated for the coming clash with China. This “defence network” is the mechanism through which Australia economically and militarily dominates neighbouring Pacific nations and whatever trade routes or resources may exist in and around their borders.

Australia’s own imperialist aims—and its commitment to the US alliance—arise from the needs of Australian capitalism.

Those supposedly “anti-imperialist” voices who call for a more “independent” foreign policy are in denial about the central dynamic at play. Slavish support and enthusiasm for American military power *is* the independent attitude of the Australian ruling class.

The Australian state actively chooses to be an aggressive partner in America’s force posture. It’s a long-standing and preferred strategy for projecting Australia’s own power in the region and gaining influence on the world stage. That is why every government since the Second World War, Labor and Liberal, has supported further integration with the US, regardless of who serves as US commander-in-chief.

The more craven posture taken on recently by the Labor government has [parallels](https://time.com/article/2026/07/22/us-asia-pacific-allies-china-hegemony-taiwan-japan-australia/?ref=redflag.org.au) elsewhere in Asia. As Trump threatens to rejig alliances and expectations for allies in the region, many traditional American allies are increasing efforts to secure partnership with the US. Japan is doubling its defence spending to 2 percent of GDP and using that money to purchase American Tomahawk cruise missiles. South Korea is stepping up arms spending and producing more weapons for export. Taiwan and the Philippines are increasing US access and rebuilding military capacity.

Unlike some of America’s strongest allies in Europe, the Asia-Pacific states, including Australia, cannot rely on North Atlantic Treaty Organization membership and tend not to have independent nuclear arsenals. They are therefore more eager to prove their usefulness to the US through displays of loyalty like Marles’ half-a-billion-dollar gift and fawning on Hegseth.

Yet US allies around the world are also using this moment to remilitarise in their own capacity, which they justify as a precaution against the “uncertainty” of Trump’s capricious approach. As Rudd told the National Press Club this month, while the US alliance is crucial, “We must also re-embrace national self-reliance to anticipate the full range of future uncertainties”.

Insofar as there is any divergence of opinion over the US alliance within Australia’s ruling establishment, this is the terrain of debate. How much should Australia invest at this moment in shoring up American backing, and how much should it spend on its own military infrastructure? Are these projects immediately compatible with continuing trade relations with China, or is it time to pull the plug with Australia’s largest trading partner? These are the questions that keep foreign policy strategists and ex-prime ministers like Paul Keating awake at night.

The Greens are the only mainstream political force that seems to question the US alliance, but their policies don’t reject militarism in principle. In March 2025, the Greens [released](https://greens.org.au/news/media-release/greens-announce-new-policy-decouple-australia-us-military?ref=redflag.org.au) their first-ever fully costed military policy designed to “seriously decouple the ADF from the US and to proudly take an independent foreign policy”. Military spending would be dramatically reduced under the Greens’ plan, but the fact they are starting to develop proposals for the Australian military at all is a rightward shift from a party seeking to become a potential coalition partner for Labor. And they are reinforcing a perennial ruling-class line about the need to build a “defensive” war machine, including a $4 million commitment towards “defensive” locally produced drones. We should completely reject the idea that Australia—or any nation-state—has a “national interest” shared between bosses and workers, oppressors and oppressed that must be projected or defended internationally.

While the Greens’ platform demands an end to AUKUS, it does not call for an end to the US alliance, only for “renegotiating” it and “reducing reliance” on America. The party’s criticism of the AUKUS pact also tends to focus on the environmental and financial impacts of the deal, rather than the broader framework.

Greens Senator David Shoebridge promises to “use parliament to force scrutiny” of Australia’s purchase of US submarine technology. More transparency about the deal would certainly be welcome, not least because it could help engender the kind of public outrage the Labor government surely deserves. But are we seriously to imagine that a more “scrutinised”, more environmentally friendly military pact would be any more tolerable? Any foreign policy pursued by the Australian ruling class can only be about serving the needs of Australian business.

The Greens, moreover, are thoroughly discredited as an opposition to Labor given their pattern of parliamentary compromise on major climate and housing bills. Breaking the US alliance will take more than parliamentary questions and crossbench amendments. It will require a serious confrontation with the entire edifice of Australian capitalism.

Only a socialist political current can build a real opposition to Labor’s aggressive pro-American military strategy. Socialists reject the entire framework of capitalism and the imperialist competition that is a necessary part of it. We don’t want to help manage a different defence strategy for the Australian state—we want to see that state overthrown. A society that wasn’t built on profit and competition would not require military aggression between different populations. Against the drive to imperialist war between separate ruling blocs, socialists want to build our forces for a class war against the exploiters and oppressors of this world.

It will take time and serious effort to establish a genuine anti-imperialist tendency in Australian politics. But as our leaders push us further along the road to war, we need socialist organisation to set a principled terrain for the years ahead.