{"id":277785,"date":"2025-07-20T16:25:17","date_gmt":"2025-07-20T16:25:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/277785\/"},"modified":"2025-07-20T16:25:17","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T16:25:17","slug":"aukus-review-leads-to-questions-on-australias-defense-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/277785\/","title":{"rendered":"AUKUS Review Leads to Questions on Australia’s Defense Strategy"},"content":{"rendered":"

The U.S. Defense Department\u2019s announcement of a review<\/a> of the Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) pact in June sent shockwaves through the Australian national security establishment. While some commentators have tried to downplay these concerns<\/a>, the review\u2019s leader, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby, is a noted skeptic of the pact. Among U.S. defense and military leaders, Colby is not alone in holding \u201cvery serious concerns<\/a>\u201d about AUKUS. There is a real chance that the planned transfer of three to five Virginia-class nuclear submarines will be canceled, postponed, or renegotiated for an unacceptably high price. And the United States\u2019 initial decision to halt weapons shipments to Ukraine<\/a>\u2014since reversed\u2014reflects Colby\u2019s willingness to ruthlessly prioritize\u00a0U.S.\u00a0military preparedness.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has\u00a0resisted<\/a>\u00a0U.S. calls for Australia to raise its defense spending targets. Such calls have come amid heightened anxiety about the future of the alliance, only worsened by the Trump administration\u2019s\u00a0refusal<\/a>\u00a0to exempt Australia from its tariffs. In a recent landmark speech, Albanese\u00a0emphasized<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cAustralia\u2019s security and our prosperity depend on engaging with our region, as ourselves,\u201d pointedly defending Australian foreign policy independence.\u00a0Renewed concerns about the alliance have come at a particularly delicate time for Australia, as Albanese concludes an extended<\/a> and well-received<\/a> trip to China. During the trip, Albanese met with President Xi Jinping and other Chinese leaders\u2014notably before<\/a> he has met with Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

Regardless of its outcome, the AUKUS review poses a fundamental challenge to the overwhelming prioritization of defense considerations in the U.S.-Australia relationship, and Australian foreign policy generally<\/a>. AUKUS was intended to be, in former National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan\u2019s\u00a0words<\/a>, \u201ca strategic marriage between the United States and Australia for half a century.\u201d<\/p>\n

The end of AUKUS would not necessarily entail a strategic divorce. More degrees of freedom may in fact\u00a0strengthen the U.S.-Australia alliance long-term<\/a>, enabling each country to prioritize its most pressing economic and security interests. Yet how Australia should conduct its foreign policy beyond defense cooperation with the U.S. remains unclear. Three recent books provide a potential way forward.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The silhouettes of crew members appear before a blue sea as an aircraft flies ahead toward them.<\/p>\n

Members of the U.S. and Royal Australian Air Force observe an MC-130J Air Commando II flying in formation off the coast of New South Wales, Australia, during an exercise on July 3, 2021. USAF\/Cover-Images.com <\/p>\n

In\u00a0Girt by Sea<\/a>, academics Rebecca Strating and Joanne Wallis rethink Australian security, with a particular focus on its maritime dimensions. In a significant vote of confidence, Foreign Minister Penny Wong helped to\u00a0launch<\/a>\u00a0the book in 2024 and has referenced it repeatedly across regional and international forums.<\/p>\n

\"Book<\/p>\n

Book cover for Girt by Sea<\/p>\n

Girt by Sea: Re-Imagining Australia\u2019s Security<\/strong>, Rebecca Strating and Joanne Wallis, La Trobe University Press, 304 pp., $36.99, April 2024<\/p>\n

Since finishing up as a senior advisor to Wong in 2019, Allan Behm has authored two new books on Australian foreign policy.\u00a0No Enemies, No Friends<\/a>\u00a0explores how Australia can overcome the historical pathologies that, in Behm\u2019s view, have impeded its strategic thinking. The 2024 sequel,\u00a0The Odd Couple<\/a>,\u00a0extends his argument through a richly detailed examination of Australia-U.S. relations past and present.<\/p>\n

All three books are skeptical of increased military spending in general and AUKUS in particular. They do not, however, disavow the Australia, New Zealand, and United States (ANZUS<\/a>) security treaty, nor do they deny the potential threat posed by Chinese regional hegemony. Instead, they thoroughly document the shortcomings of Australian foreign policymaking to lay the foundations for a new approach.<\/p>\n

For Strating and Wallis, any effort to transform Australian foreign policy must start with critically reevaluating \u201cwhat and whose security we mean when we say \u2018Australia\u2019s security.\u2019\u201d In their telling,\u00a0how\u00a0one imagines Australia profoundly influences\u00a0who\u00a0its foreign policy serves. The novelty of this approach lies in their focus on Australia\u2019s \u201csix maritime domains,\u201d pointedly marginalizing distant allies such as the United Kingdom. It also foregrounds the heterogeneity of a region now widely referred to as the Indo-Pacific.<\/p>\n

In fact, Strating and Wallis take particular issue with the concept of the Indo-Pacific<\/a>, which featured prominently in Australia\u2019s\u00a02017 Foreign Policy White Paper<\/a> and has dominated the country\u2019s strategic thinking since the publication of Rory Medcalf\u2019s highly influential 2020 book,\u00a0Contest for the Indo-Pacific<\/a>.\u00a0From the\u00a0Australian government\u2019s perspective<\/a>, contributing to collective Indo-Pacific security constitutes a key imperative of AUKUS.<\/p>\n

Itself an act of strategic imagination, the term \u201cIndo-Pacific\u201d frames India, the United States, and supposedly likeminded partners as allies in a joint quest to resist China\u2019s challenge to the rules-based international order. Strating and Wallis are quick to remind the reader that this narrative overlooks entrenched strategic differences among \u201clikeminded\u201d states, as well as the Americans\u2019 own coercive tendencies. But they go further, arguing that \u201cgeography continues to render Southeast Asia and the South Pacific as Australia\u2019s primary areas of strategic interest\u201d\u2014given that the \u201cIndo-Pacific region is so vast that it would be unrealistic for a middle power such as Australia to seek to secure it entirely.\u201d<\/p>\n

By attending to the political effects of Australia\u2019s strategic vocabulary, Strating and Wallis also strive to move beyond the totalizing framework of U.S.-China competition. They persuasively argue that \u201c[m]any states in the Indo-Pacific are predominantly concerned with economic development and nation-building rather than strategic competition,\u201d and that \u201c[a]n Indo-Pacific strategy that fails to account for the economic priorities of regional states is one that is doomed to fail.\u201d Many of their policy recommendations consequently revolve around issues such as climate change, development assistance, transnational crime, and, more idiosyncratically, illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing.<\/p>\n

Girt by Sea\u00a0is, for the most part, a cautious book that expertly seeks to nudge the national security establishment toward a less defense-oriented approach. The same cannot be said of Behm\u2019s bitingly brilliant\u00a0No Enemies, No Friends.<\/p>\n

\"Book<\/p>\n

Book cover for No Enemies No Friends<\/p>\n

No Enemies No Friends: Restoring Australia\u2019s Global Relevance<\/strong>, Allan Behm, Upswell, 320 pp., $29.99, March 2022<\/p>\n

Behm writes with the authority and freedom of an unshackled former insider. He depicts Australia as a country that was once admired for its progressivism but is now a \u201cnation of flunkeys.\u201d Behm further laments that Australia has become, for the United States, a \u201cvassal, engaging in conflicts in the Middle East and Afghanistan which were none of our business, terrorism notwithstanding.\u201d Naturally, AUKUS comes in for special criticism for \u201cdemolish[ing] four decades of national strategic policy focused on the direct defence of Australia.\u201d<\/p>\n

What explains the dire state of Australian foreign policy in Behm\u2019s eyes? The book turns repeatedly to history to explore how racism and misogyny have \u201ccondition[ed] Australia\u2019s strategic mindset, shaping both our understanding of the world around us and the responses we have to it.\u201d His analysis traverses the colonization and ongoing dispossession of Australia\u2019s First Nations peoples; the Australian slave trade in the Pacific; Prime Minister Billy Hughes\u2019s infamously concerted opposition to Japan\u2019s racial equality clause proposal at the 1919 Paris Peace conference; and the legacy of the \u201cWhite Australia\u201d immigration policy.<\/p>\n

No Enemies, No Friends\u00a0provides a timely rebuke to those who believe that Australia is, by its very nature, a progressive international actor. Yet the book is ultimately redemptive. Behm is eager to show how, after confronting its historical pathologies, Australia can leverage its considerable diplomatic acumen and economic clout to build a better and more prosperous world. In a similar vein to Strating and Wallis, Behm centers \u201chuman security\u201d concerns such as climate change, pandemic response, and nuclear nonproliferation.<\/p>\n

Strating, Wallis, and Behm\u2019s shared emphasis on \u201chuman\u201d and \u201cnon-traditional\u201d security in some ways already feels borrowed from the post-Cold War moment. But this feeling has become impossible to ignore since the second inauguration of Donald Trump. Brick by brick, Trump has sought to dismantle the pillars of 21st century liberal internationalism, from exiting the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Agreement to defunding USAID. This assault has been further compounded by Europe\u2019s own defense-driven foreign aid cuts.<\/p>\n

The dawning of this \u201cnew world disorder<\/a>\u201d\u00a0has already prompted renewed calls for increased Australian military spending, including from\u00a0Wallis<\/a>. China\u2019s continued economic and military ascent, an unpredictable Trump administration, and the broader collapse of the global development and trade orders present Australia with difficult challenges on multiple fronts. These challenges also elude an exclusively regional approach. After all, tariff wars do not stop at the ocean\u2019s edge.<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/p>\n

Two men sign documents before the flags of the United States and Australia as a poster reading “United States-Australia, Free Trade Agreement, Partners in Prosperity” appears behind them.<\/p>\n

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick (left) and Australian Trade Minister Mark Vaile sign free trade agreements in Washington on May 18, 2004. REUTERS <\/p>\n

In this context, Behm\u2019s appraisal of Australian economic and trade diplomacy in\u00a0The Odd Couple\u00a0is particularly illuminating. Before detailing the 2005 Australia-U.S. Free Trade Agreement\u2019s (AUSFTA) numerous faults, Behm incisively describes the strategic logic behind negotiating an FTA with the United States as seeking \u201cprotection against American protectionism.\u201d He defends AUSFTA as \u201cgood in parts\u201d as it \u201ccemented an economic relationship,\u201d while denouncing its more coercive elements and rejecting its alleged security side-benefits as \u201cjust another step in the ANZUS long con.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Book<\/p>\n

Book cover for The Odd Couple<\/p>\n

The Odd Couple: The Australia-America Relationship<\/strong>, Allan Behm, Upswell, 230 pp., $29.99, July 2024<\/p>\n

Behm further praises Australia\u2019s trade diplomacy in the 1986-1994\u00a0Uruguay Round<\/a> negotiations\u2014which led to the establishment of the World Trade Organization\u2014as \u201cimaginative, \u2018big-picture\u2019 and broad-sweeping in its ambition for both an equitable global trading system and a distinctively Australian role in it, particularly in Asia.\u201d<\/p>\n

On April 2, Trump ruthlessly exposed the hollowness of Australia\u2019s FTA wager, subjecting Australia to a 10 percent tariff rate despite the United States having a trade surplus and enjoying largely unwavering Australian defense support.\u00a0The legal status<\/a> of the AUSFTA\u00a0did little to prevent the Liberation Day carnage, even if its immediate economic consequences for Australia have so far been minimal. But now, the United States is threatening additional tariffs<\/a> on Australia\u2019s multibillion-dollar pharmaceutical export industry of up to a mammoth 200 percent. The proposed tariffs have come despite prior Australian concessions in AUSFTA regarding its pharmaceutical sector regulations, concessions which Behm presciently critiques.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A submarine is pictured at a dock as the sun rises.<\/p>\n

The sun rises over a Royal Australian Navy submarine berthed in Garden Island, Australia, on Jan. 21, 2021. POIS Yuri Ramsey\/Australian Defense Force\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

Ultimately, Behm, Strating, and Wallis call for a humbler, more inclusive, and more regionally focused approach to Australian foreign policy that puts diplomacy and development on\u00a0an equal footing<\/a> with defense. A combination of Strating and Wallis\u2019s foregrounding of Australia\u2019s maritime security and Behm\u2019s call for a regionally anchored Australian multilateralism would serve the current government well as a blueprint for a post-AUKUS future.<\/p>\n

In terms of the U.S.-Australia defense relationship, the end of AUKUS would also allow for greater strategic prioritization, with Australia\u00a0refocusing<\/a>\u00a0on its direct defense while the United States navigates its great power relationship with China. As a result, Australia could free up resources for a foreign policy agenda that is far more responsive to its immediate economic and security interests than AUKUS ever was.<\/p>\n

That being said, business as usual on global development and trade governance simply won\u2019t cut it. Australia cannot ignore the epochal shift taking place in the United States and beyond. It must instead engage constructively with the new protectionist wave, which may even\u00a0signal<\/a>\u00a0the downfall of the neoliberal free trade order as we know it. This wave has been driven both by concern within wealthy countries like the United States about the distributive consequences of unfettered financial and trade globalization, as well as a global south-led backlash against the hypocrisy of many WTO\u00a0rules<\/a>\u00a0and their constraints on\u00a0development policymaking<\/a>. Developing countries in Asia such as Indonesia and Vietnam have notably capitalized on the United States\u2019 abandonment of free trade to pursue their own protectionist, industrialization agendas.<\/p>\n

Rather than seeking \u201cprotection against American protectionism,\u201d Australia should instead help to chart a new path forward for global trade via bilateral, regional, and multilateral diplomacy. Given Australia\u2019s liminal position as a global north state in the Asia-Pacific region, it is particularly well-placed to revive\u00a0its tradition<\/a>\u00a0of creative economic multilateralism. But it will require first acknowledging Australia\u2019s comparative\u00a0marginality<\/a>\u00a0as a global defense actor. Achieving increased defense independence, albeit with more modest ambitions, would then provide Australia with far greater strategic credibility in pursuing this generational multilateral endeavor.<\/p>\n

Australian policymakers will also need to undergo one final act of strategic imagination: rethinking the country\u2019s ironclad commitment to free trade. Otherwise, Australia will be unable to help strike a global bargain with the United States and its regional neighbors on\u00a0managed\u00a0trade<\/a>, the lodestar guiding us out of this period of global economic disorder.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The U.S. Defense Department\u2019s announcement of a review of the Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) pact in June sent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":277786,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[186,3444,87623,6218,98716,1771,49,978,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-277785","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-books","10":"tag-fp-weekend","11":"tag-geopolitics","12":"tag-homepage_regional_asia","13":"tag-u-s-foreign-policy","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-us","16":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114886497209378986","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277785\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}