First in, worst dressed
The Albanese government didn’t waste a moment, rushing off to Washington in its effort to court the incoming Trump administration.
Richard Marles was the first defence minister from any nation to meet with newly minted US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Handing over $800 million dollars as the first AUKUS downpayment to the incoming Trump administration, Richard Marles said Australia was happy to “pay its way” into the strategic consciousness of a discombobulated government. The payment was the first of a $4.7 billion dollar Australian taxpayer funded injection to prop up the US shipbuilding industry, in an effort to secure nuclear submarines for the AUKUS agreement.
The visit seemed premature, because while Marles was mumbling his way through Washington trying to convince the new administration of the need for AUKUS, it was among a flurry of executive orders, blustering statements, and unpredictable announcements. Nevertheless, among the chaos, Marles hoped to get in early and impress upon the distracted and barely sworn-in Trump administration. As the new government was setting about rug-pulling USAID, dismantling public services, withdrawing from the WHO, and implementing and a raft of tariffs, sanctions, and decrees on a raft of nation-states, Hegseth took a little time, offered a few non-committal words of encouragement towards AUKUS, and took Marles for a few photos, before parting ways.
Marles won’t be returning to Australia with any ironclad guarantees from our discombobulated security partner. He won’t be able to tell us that we are getting nuclear submarines any time soon, because he doesn’t really know. There are no guarantees that the US shipyards he throws billions at can even meet the domestic quotas for the United States Navy, and hearing that President Trump was witnessed saying he is “very aware” of the maligned agreement is no consolation to the Australian public who could see the money better spent at home, so the Defence Minister will shuffle back to Canberra overexposed, and not having any better idea of where Australia sits on the order of priorities of a superpower in flux.
The urgency of Marles’ visit seemed primarily aimed at reminding the incoming Trump Administration of the mere existence AUKUS, to throw in some cash to make it so, and to reiterate that his Labor government wishes to embrace Trumpism despite all the norms, rules and conventions it is willing to trample on. Marles and Ambassador Kevin Rudd have been reiterating the ties that bind Canberra to Washington, giving pop history lessons, and fluffing up the shag for a Trump White House which is tentatively disinterested at best, ready to fleece us out of our hard earned with a dwindling likelihood we’ll ever see a sub, and may only result in a complete sovereign handover due to our politicians dealing in self-interested personal exchanges against the public and national interest.
When the ICC was sanctioned by Trump in the opening volleys of his first weeks in office, Marles’ government ensured Australia was absent from the list of 78 countries that instantly issued a letter support, and he walked the halls with Israeli delegations that had just announced a forced displacement strategy of millions of people in Gaza. The contiguous borders of Canada and Mexico strain under a new US interpretation of what they mean, the Gulf of America has erased the Gulf of Mexico via executive order, South Africa is deemed an apartheid state, and invasion plans for Greenland may or may not be getting workshopped in a Pentagon office. The opening stanza of Trump is chaotic and unpredictable, so why is Richard Marles so eager to be the first head in the door? There needs to be strategy in diplomacy, and every country in the world is rearranging the furniture for Trump positioning themselves to hopefully best be able to deal with the disruptive US President, what is Australia giving away (unnecessarily) by bolting through the door?
Former PM Malcolm Turnbull says going to Washington concerned with “winning the affections” in the “imperial capital” is a “waste of time’, resulting in anxious Australian senior politicians playing checkers with our sovereignty on the US grand strategic chess board, giving away more than they have to and gaining nothing of significance. In his opening remarks beside Hegseth, Marles gushed about “a very significant increase of the American footprint on the Australian continent” speaking on our behalf that that was “something we very much welcome”, before mentioning at the “half-a-billion dollars” we were dropping on their lap.
“The cheque did clear”, came an underwhelming response from Secretary Hegseth.
Marles and his government had a chance to reset AUKUS under Trump. With so many ambitious plans in the Trump White House, from acquiring Greenland and the Panama canal, to fundamental stoushes with long term allies, tariffs, sanctions, and trade wars in the northern hemisphere, the Trump administration is disinterested in AUKUS at best, disingenuous at worst, and ready to take fistful of dollars either way, but distracted nonetheless. Canberra could’ve taken a wait-and-see approach, and let Trump’s Washington come to us to pitch AUKUS, not for us to go over to them with our tail between our legs to beg and remind them of its meagre existence.
It’s in Australia’s best interest to preserve international systems, laws, and resolutions, as they act as a bulwark to great powers exerting power and control in the way that the United States currently is. It is also in Australia’s interests to demonstrate temperance, restraint, and patience when it comes to dealing transactionally with Washington, and to display sovereign resilience, especially after how the Trump White House has spoken towards more proximate and important allies in its opening days.
Henry Kissinger once said that "America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests", and axiom couldn’t ring more true in the less nuanced zero-sum geopolitical calculations of Trump’s America. The way Trump has already spoken about Denmark, Canada, Mexico, the EU, and Gaza has been with a sense of callous disregard and dangerous arrogance, and this demonstrates that US interests always triumph over US alliances. And as those interests become increasingly “America First”, the Trump Administration will increasingly pursue its interests in an absolute manner over every one of its allies, including Australia. How close do our irresponsible leaders want us to be sitting when we cop a spray? How does AUKUS survive with such a partner?
One of Australia’s top former diplomats Peter Varghese wrote in “Pearls and Irritations”, speaking to the essence of this vital issue, “The defence of sovereignty is not something a serious country can leave to others. If we cannot defend Australia, we cannot make our own future”. It is better to be an independent nation with Westphalian borders, and the luxury to make sovereign choices in the national interest, rather than the lapdog vassal of an increasingly mercurial, erratic and volatile master. Despite what the compromised handful of punch-drunk wonks in the bipartisan security class think of it, throwing billions down a funnel in Washington for a few plum jobs, some subjective hopefulness, and the unnecessary loss of our independence as a nation is a blight on our sovereignty, and and the consequences are unforgivable.
Brilliantly well said 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻. How humiliating this is for Australia , and a hammer blow for its sovereignty . “The cheque did clear”, remarked
Secretary Hegseth in callous arrogance , as his response to the grovelling handing over of the AUKUS billions of dollars . ( This time it was HE who was wearing the brown shoes , not Marles 😆😆). Marles might have attended Geelong Grammar , but he has shown no class in his race to the
White House .
The first thing that should have been done when Labour got into government was to put a halt on AUKUS. We could have then, apart from nipping Mortison's hopes of more ladder climbing, returned to the original deal with France, or gone for the quieter and much cheaper and, so ready to deliver that we could from, the Netherlands, already have some. Meaning no more dealings with a country that does not play fair with friends.
Marles genuflecting to an unqualified person, who should never be in that job, has made Australia look like crawlers willing to throw its taxpayers' funds at a country that has spent, since its inception, how best to cheat which other countries and in whatever way it chooses.
When I was age four I met my first American soldiers flashing their medals--for crossing the Atlantic to UK, while our fathers, hubands, brothers and uncles were in German prison camps dying, or already dead but very few go medals for crossing to America. Even then I could have old to not be part of anything they offered because I use they only saw one side to any deallings -- theirs.
This business with Gaza means sod all when put forward by a American with too much of a greedy, cowardly German in his blood. The fruit did not fall far from that tree.
Believe anything he, or they, tell you at your peril.
Americans are so wrong to believe in their own propaganda