Trump, AUKUS and the US alliance
US President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed trade war, his proposals to increase military spending and the stacking of his cabinet with China hawks have made it clear that the US will continue preparing for war with China. Australia’s military alliance with the United States means that Canberra has practically signed up the country for such a war if it breaks out.
For the Australian political establishment, Trump’s election victory was an opportunity to express unwavering commitment to the US alliance. PM Anthony Albanese was one of the first world leaders to phone Trump and congratulate him on his election victory. Opposition leader Peter Dutton, who considers himself an Australian version of Trump, said the relationship with the US “will strengthen, and we will make sure that we work very closely with the incoming administration”.
The US alliance—and new agreements such as the AUKUS military pact between Australia, the US and the United Kingdom—have transformed Australia into a central base of operations for the US military in recent years.
Northern Australia is now routinely used by the US Marines and Air Force. The Tindal air base near Darwin has been expanded to accommodate nuclear-capable B-52 bombers. The construction of giant fuel storage tanks on Darwin’s RAAF base means that both now act as a stationing and refuelling point for US aircraft, enabling the US to conduct more flights to and from the NT.
Western Australia will soon host rotational deployments of US nuclear submarines and a naval industry that WA Premier Roger Cook claims will rival the state’s massive resources sector.
The joint US-Australian “guided weapons and explosive ordnance enterprise” aims to transform Australia’s weapons manufacturing industry to produce large enough quantities of precision-guided missiles to support deployed US forces across the Indo-Pacific. Spy and communications bases—such as the Pine Gap satellite surveillance facility near Alice Springs, which covers the Indo-Pacific to the Middle East—are vital elements of US strategic command, control, communications and satellite systems for launching attacks against China. Australia’s Defence Minister Richard Marles recently bragged that the US military is now operating in Australia across “all domains ... land, sea, air, cyber and space”.
What explains this slavish support for the US alliance—shared by Australia’s main political parties, the security establishment, business elites and mass media—no matter who occupies the White House?
The answer given by the political establishment is that the alliance protects the Australian population and deters threats from “our enemies”. Chief among these threats, we are told, is China. Yet the Australian government’s own strategic planning documents admit that an invasion of this island continent, by China or anyone else, remains a remote possibility. The risk of a Chinese attack on Australia arises only because Australia serves as a base for US military capabilities and because Australia’s own defence forces have pledged their commitment to joining a US war against China in the Indo-Pacific.
Most critics of AUKUS and the US alliance answer that Australia is a puppet of the United States: our leaders are nothing but spineless dupes grovelling at the feet of US presidents. Proponents of this view—from the Greens to former Labor PM Paul Keating—argue that Australia should pursue a foreign policy that is “more independent” from the United States.
But the Australian state jumps at the opportunity to stir imperialist tensions more often than not. This can be seen in it joining or supporting every US war since World War Two with little to no prompting.
The Australian political establishment backs the US not because it is too weak to resist US bullying but because the alliance enhances the power of the Australian ruling class and increases its capacity to dominate the Pacific region.
Australia is an imperialist power in its own right, with the thirteenth-largest economy in the world and the strongest military in South-East Asia. However, as a middle-ranking power, it has always relied on a “great and powerful friend” to help safeguard its regional interests, first through an alliance with Britain and since the Second World War with the United States.
Chief among those interests is the security of the sea approaches to the island continent: Australian capitalism is dependent on international shipping to buy and sell commodities in Asian markets, to import oil from the Middle East and to access deliveries of weapons, machinery and equipment from the United States. Only the US Navy can control the wide arc of maritime territory from the Indian Ocean off north-western Australia to the South Pacific.
In addition, Australian capitalists have long regarded the country’s neighbours—in particular Papua New Guinea, East Timor and the Pacific island states—as Australia’s “backyard”, with Australian companies dominating their economies.
Australia also lacks the industrial base to field a modern military without the support of a larger ally. Without the backing of the US, Australia would need to triple or quadruple its military spending. Instead, through AUKUS and the US alliance, the Australian capitalist class can piggyback on the US military. And this allows Australia to access the latest US military technology—not just nuclear submarines, but advanced jet aircraft, missiles, naval combat systems and more.
This is why the US alliance remains an article of faith for both ALP and Liberal governments. Any party that is serious about governing Australian capitalism must sign up to the alliance—the alternative is to face destabilisation by the capitalists and the military top brass.
Australia’s dependence on its “great and powerful friend” means that the ruling class goes out of its way to keep its “friend” firmly anchored in the Indo-Pacific. This helps thwart the emergence of a rival imperial power or nationalist forces that might obstruct the country’s sea lanes or disrupt its investments. One example is the Menzies government aggressively lobbying the Johnson administration in 1964 to commit more US troops to the Vietnam War.
The AUKUS agreement fits within this general orientation: it is an aggressive alliance designed to maintain US imperialist domination of the Indo-Pacific region. But it also strengthens the power of the Australian state as a junior partner of US imperialism. Rory Medcalf, the head of ANU’s National Security College and a leading China hawk, has hailed AUKUS as Australian imperialism’s “coming of age as a truly Indo-Pacific power”.
The price paid for US military protection is that Australia contributes to almost all US wars and occupations. From Vietnam in the 1960s, Afghanistan and Iraq in the 2000s to staking itself as China’s most aggressive antagonist in the region today, the Australian government embraces these opportunities to remind the US of Australia’s value to its broader imperial project.
China is indeed challenging US domination of Asia and hence Australia’s own imperialist project, which is closely identified with the US. China’s growing ambitions threaten Australia’s informal empire in PNG, East Timor and the Pacific island states, as well as its trade routes and, potentially, its influence in Indonesia, a critical power to Australia’s north.
China’s state capitalist model of economic development is also viewed as a threat to the US-dominated liberal economic order that Australian capitalists have greatly benefited from.
Trump’s first administration was an aggressive response to the rise of China (although he only generalised what Barack Obama before him acknowledged with his “pivot to Asia”). His program to “Make America Great Again” used tariffs and increased military spending to increase US military-industrial might. Nonetheless, by alienating US allies and destabilising American politics, the Trump administration created opportunities for China to expand its influence, thereby undermining America’s ability to contain its new imperialist rival.
Rather than mark a break with Trump, the Biden administration continued and intensified the China pivot, continuing the focus on rebuilding domestic manufacturing capability and infrastructure alongside an escalation of military pressure in the South China Sea and Taiwan.
Where Biden did depart from Trump was in his multilateral approach to building alliances and his ability to sell war as peace. Indeed, Biden and Albanese (the so-called “progressive” wing of the establishment) have overseen the biggest destabilisation of the Indo-Pacific region and acceleration toward war with China of any recent governments: they have carried out Trump’s program with gusto.
Trump has made it clear that his main priority during his second presidency will be great power confrontation with China. This includes a proposed 60 percent tariff on imports from China and a promise to raise the military budget from 3 percent to 5 percent of GDP (US$1.5 trillion) annually. His appointment of aggressive China hawks to key positions in his new administration fits with this general strategy. Peter Hegseth, the proposed defence secretary responsible for the Pentagon, recently bemoaned: “China has a full spectrum long-term view of not just regional but global domination and we have our heads up our arses”.
Contrary to what much of the liberal commentariat says about him, Trump is not an isolationist, nor does he propose a withdrawal of US global power. Trump is an economic nationalist who sets out to make deals with both friends and foes alike; unlike liberals such as Biden, he does not hide the fact that it must be to the advantage of the United States and its corporations. It is this transactional nationalism that leads Trump to downgrade participation in geopolitical alliances or withdraw from them completely. In place of alliances and multilateral pacts, Trump prefers bilateral deals with US allies.
While Trump’s strategy is to restore US imperial dominance, it will most likely, just as it did in his first term, accelerate its relative decline. This means other imperial powers as well as regional ones becoming more assertive, which will intensify conflicts between states over a failing capitalist system.
What this means for AUKUS and the US alliance is unclear. Trump’s demand that US allies “pay their own way” already fits with a general consensus among Australian ruling circles that they must do more to increase their self-reliance as part of the US alliance. The AUKUS pact is a prime example of a junior partner that “pays its own way”.
What is clear is that the Australian political establishment is frantically preparing to use the second Trump presidency to further enhance the power of Australian imperialism. Their main orientation so far has been to accept Trump’s argument that US allies must do more to foot their own defence bills. For example, John Blaxland, former head of ANU’s Strategic and Defence Studies, recently argued:
“The prospect of Australia’s defence being dependent on a presidential whim points to the need for Australia to muscle up on its own, including with as much US-sourced technology as can be accessed, without waiting for another white knight or great white fleet to come to the rescue.”
In other words, Canberra must prepare to further increase military spending (probably funded by cuts to working-class living standards) and pick up the slack among US allies in preparation for the diplomatic dysfunction that is likely to emanate from Washington under a second Trump presidency.
For the Australian ruling class, the lie that the US alliance is about protecting the Australian population helps legitimise increased military spending and the drive to war. AUKUS and the US alliance have been much easier to sell to (and hide from) the Australian public with Biden and not Trump leading in Washington. Under Trump, larger numbers of people might see the alliance for what it really is: boosting Australian imperial power to protect US domination of the region.
