Donald Trump Archives - Page 7 of 24

Trump’s likely foreign policy: selective engagement, and helping those who help themselves

11 November 2024

In his second term, Donald Trump will be determined to pursue a foreign policy that more closely resembles how the US engaged with the world for the first 170 years of the republic: pursuing abundance at home and selective engagement abroad.

He will do so not because the US is weak and in decline but because it is powerful. Its power is a function of its economic size, military superiority, cultural influence, energy security, business innovation and productivity, labour flexibility, growing population, deep capital markets and immense private wealth, and the omnipresence of the US dollar and US Treasury bonds. US power will give Trump greater freedom to act, including by asking more of allies and partners who seek to benefit from the application or deterrent effect of that power.

True, US power faces several structural challenges. Compared with the Cold War era, America’s industrial base is weaker, as evidenced by its current inability to build nuclear-powered attack submarines at a fast enough replacement rate, which will likely compromise Australia’s ability to acquire Virginia-class submarines in the 2030s.

There will be a reckoning in relation to US public debt, which will rise to 122 percent of GDP by 2034 and already requires more to be spent on public debt interest than defence. Trump will need to better balance America’s commitments and its power if his foreign policy is to command domestic support.

However, these and other structural problems are reversible. They do not qualify as the great power killers that have led to the decline and fall of more conventional powers throughout history.

By virtue of its power, the US is able to shape world order to an extent no other actor is able to, China included. Trump is a power politician. He understands that foreign relationships and transactions are an unsentimental function of power relativities and not abstract global rules that seek to fetter the exercise of sovereign power by nation-states. (On this, his speeches to the UN General Assembly are worth re-reading.)

Trump will be prepared to continue to extend US security to those who are prepared to do more to defend themselves, so long as doing so is also in the interest of the US. Those who spend less on defence than the US (at least 3 percent of GDP) will have to lift their spending or make commensurate in-kind contributions to their own security.

Australia is well placed to make or extend mutually beneficial deals with the second Trump administration, especially in relation to critical minerals, the production of nuclear-powered attack submarines at a faster rate, advanced military technology and further access to our geographically crucial facilities and infrastructure.

However, our weak levels of defence spending will become a point of contention if it is judged that we are not doing more to ensure the self-reliant defence of Australia.

We should not assume, however, that a return to this older style of US foreign policy will result in a withdrawn and isolated US. The world is today too interconnected and closer than was the case in the early 1940s, when isolationists held significant sway in US politics. On the contrary, the US is likely to remain very active in the world, but under different terms and in pursuit of more focused objectives. When it is in the US national interest, Trump will take resolute action—as he did in his first term against Iran, including by way of imposing oppressive sanctions, withdrawing from the Obama-era nuclear deal and ordering the assassination of Qassem Soleimani.

As a disrupter, Trump may strike a grand bargain between the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia and others, whereby Israel would be secure, Palestinians would be able to live in peace and Iran would be contained. That deal would be worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize.

The US will be a powerful actor under and after Trump. For it to be great again, there is one challenge it will have to meet. Trump will have to intensify efforts to ensure that China does not establish itself as the hegemon of Eurasia.

Were it to do so, across time it would gain dominance over the resources, markets and economic power of the world’s strategic heartland. This would undercut the strategic and commercial interests of the US.

A hegemonic China would grow in strength and eventually threaten the US in its hemispheric citadel. It will be in the interests of the US to prevail in this struggle for mastery in Eurasia.

Trump will prefer to do this by way of aggressive trade, investment, technology decoupling and strategic deterrence, avoiding a military clash if possible. Intrinsic to this approach will be the maintenance of forward-deployed US forces in the western Pacific and the strengthening of the latticework of US-centred regional security partnerships that has emerged across the past decade.

Still, he will need to be convinced to defend Taiwan. The arguments for doing so would have to be framed within this counter-hegemonic strategy. Taiwan will need to show it is willing to do much more to defend itself, including by way of an extensive rearmament program.

There is a prospect of a golden age of American power, where a self-interested US, working with equally self-interested allies and partners, and not embarrassed to wield that power, accomplishes a world-changing quadrella: to thwart China, flip Russia, contain Iran and isolate North Korea. If it can accomplish this sweep of the grand chessboard of Eurasia, the US will be not just powerful but great again. Motivated by America-first instincts that are deeply rooted in US strategic culture, Trump has the opportunity to bring about a transformation of the world order that would rival the earlier achievements of Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan at the bookends of the Cold War.

We did well last time. Here’s how Australia should work with Trump again

7 November 2024

Australia managed the first presidential term of Donald Trump as well as any nation. Now it can also manage the second term well.

In doing so, we must work with friends in our region to ensure that the Indo-Pacific remains the main US strategic focus. That also means stressing to Trump and his team that Ukraine’s survival is an Indo-Pacific priority.

Trump will demand more of allies, and we should revel in doing more to attend to our own security and that of others.

In 2017, Australia quickly understood that invoking its long friendship with the United States was not enough in dealing with the then newly elected Trump. He expected to see ongoing efforts in helping the US with its burdens. And we could show that: we had begun, in the national interest, taking stronger security measures against China and were paying an economic price for them.

It helped, too, that we were increasing our defence budget. Altogether, our relationship with the United States actually strengthened during Trump’s first administration.

In his first term, Trump turned US strategic attention decisively towards China. This was deeply in Australia’s interest. The US focus on the Indo-Pacific has continued through the administration of President Joe Biden, and we want it to continue in the coming Trump term.

It was also in the interests of such friends as India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines, and still is. So, we should together send the reminder to Trump and his team that the Indo-Pacific is the main game, particularly because China is the captain of the totalitarian Axis.

In the face of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea working together, we should heed Edmund Burke’s clarion call of ‘when bad men combine, the good must associate else they will fail one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle’.

Vitally, Australia and its friends, including other Five Eyes members, should ensure Trump’s team knows that what happens to Ukraine matters for all of us. Trump and his future vice president, JD Vance, have campaigned on quickly stopping the war in Ukraine.

Australia cannot be silent on how damaging a victory for Vladimir Putin would be for Indo-Pacific countries, which would lose trust in the US and its allies and fall into fatalistic acceptance that China will dominate the region.

North Korea’s entry into the fight may have been the turning point needed to ensure the Trump team knows that Ukraine cannot be isolated from Indo-Pacific interests and that a victory for Putin would be a victory for his no-limits partner, Xi Jinping. This victory would be a setback for Taiwan, the Philippines, Japan, Australia and the US itself.

Trump’s decision in his first term to compete with China included economic action, setting the West on a path away from policies that misjudged trade and financial links with China as proof of stability.

There can be no stability when the Axis regimes’ routine is destabilisation. They sometimes pause their campaigns, not in good faith but to seek compromises from us while they reload for their next phase of attacks on global rules.

So, we should work with the new Trump administration to further reduce economic dependence on China. For that, Trump has the right instincts.

He has the right instincts on China’s exploitation of the information domain, too. Australia should encourage him to continue what he started in applying sanctions and tariffs on the Chinese tech sector.

Australia and the US must strive together to counteract China’s abuse of the information domain to divide our nations, turn them against each other, undermine our democratic institutions and shift the global order. The tech sector and digital world should be high on the Australian list for engagement with the Trump team.

Both AUKUS and NATO are vital and must be strengthened. The US’s partners within those groupings will need to show Trump they are pulling their weight.

AUKUS should thrive, since Britain and especially Australia are already spending on it and will spend more, deepening their cooperation with the US. NATO members will likely start with a lesser goal of just keeping their alliance together. Most will have to prove they will not fall back into military slumber, leaving the US to do everyone’s job.

For them, Australia and other US friends in the Western Pacific, Trump’s expectations will mean, above all, that they must spend more on defence. They should do so willingly.

Japanese Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru’s foreign policy adviser, Takashi Kawakami, said recently that an America that demands more from allies could be an opportunity for Japan to become a ‘truly independent country … and create an environment that allows Japan to defend its sovereignty with its own strategy against foreign forces.’

It’s an argument that Australia should consider. It doesn’t mean isolation and terminating alliances with the US but, rather, strengthening ourselves to strengthen those alliances. We become stronger individually and collectively.

Trump vs China, round two

7 November 2024

In August 2019, amid an escalating trade war with China, then-US president Donald Trump fired off a series of tweets directing US companies to ‘immediately start looking for … alternative[s] to China’ and shift their manufacturing back to the United States. The demand sent stock markets into a tailspin and alarmed US businesses with exposure to China.

While Trump ultimately softened his stance, the threat underscored a disturbing reality that the world must face now that he is returning to the White House: the president has the power to sever ties with the world’s second-largest economy and can do so on a whim.

With Trump’s resounding victory over Kamala Harris, the spectre of his impulsive, heavy-handed approach to diplomacy looms large. If his past actions are any indication, corporate America might soon be bracing for another round of erratic, high-stakes manoeuvres—or worse—against China.

The US constitution delegates authority over foreign relations to both the president and congress, a structure designed to temper executive discretion with legislative oversight. But this balance has shifted dramatically in recent decades. Foreign policy is now overwhelmingly concentrated in the executive branch and goes largely unchecked, a trend that political scientists attribute to a rise in partisanship and a decline in congressional expertise. With both parties favouring a hardline approach toward China, Trump will have even more freedom to lash out at the country.

Meanwhile, national security has proven to be remarkably pliable, extending far beyond traditional concerns such as homeland defense and cybersecurity. It now covers everything from cross-border data flows and supply chain vulnerabilities to protecting industries deemed too critical to be dominated by foreign competitors.

This broadened definition has enabled presidential actions that would have been unimaginable only a decade ago. Consider some of the measures taken by Trump and his successor, Joe Biden: sanctioning Huawei and ZTE; banning TikTok; blocking Chinese investment in a dating app; launching the controversial China Initiative, which disproportionately targeted Chinese scientists working in the US; imposing a semiconductor embargo on China; restricting US investment in Chinese artificial intelligence and quantum computers; and, most recently, slapping 100 percent tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles and batteries.

Many of these aggressive policies should be implemented only in emergencies. But what constitutes an emergency has also expanded considerably and now includes curbing China’s rise. And when Trump takes office in 2025, the executive branch’s capacity and willingness to declare an emergency and impose extraordinary measures under the banner of national security could increase substantially.

While US courts have the authority to check presidential powers—as they did in blocking Trump’s attempts to ban TikTok and WeChat—they have limited oversight of foreign policy. On matters of national security in particular, federal courts have historically been very deferential—even more so when congress and the president are aligned. The recent passage of the TikTok legislation illustrates how congress can quickly restore executive power after a judicial ruling constrains it. As a result, TikTok and other Chinese companies are constantly contending with renewed hostility from the executive, like an endless game of whac-a-mole.

Ironically, this concentration of power in the US presidency mirrors the Chinese governance model that US leaders criticise so sharply. As I show in my book, High Wire: How China regulates Big Tech and governs its economy, the consolidation of political power in China over the past decade has often led to dramatic policy swings that undermine investor confidence and dampen entrepreneurship. The Chinese government’s recent missteps—from mismanaging the Covid-19 pandemic to crackdowns on the tech and property sectors and now a sluggish response to mounting deflation risks—should serve as a cautionary tale.

The US is likewise beginning to feel the unintended consequences of its own hostile approach toward China. The China Initiative has led to an exodus of talented Chinese scientists, many of whom have returned home. Meanwhile, the effectiveness of tough US sanctions and export controls is waning. Huawei, which initially struggled under these measures, has grown stronger of late, invigorated by state support and a firm resolve to achieve self-sufficiency. In its efforts to contain China, the US risks creating a more resilient rival—one strengthened by the very pressures meant to suppress it.

But instead of reassessing the efficacy of its hardline tactics, US agencies are doubling down on sanctions and restrictions. Even the notorious China Initiative, despite being ‘discontinued’, persists in a barely concealed form.

So far, much of the discussion about the Sino-American rivalry has framed China’s rise as the primary catalyst for US policy shifts. But this misses a crucial point: the conflict can also be traced back to a democratic deficit in US foreign policymaking. If the US takes increasingly extreme measures to contain China, as it likely will during Trump’s second administration, it risks widening that deficit—and becoming defined by what it opposes.

America under Donald Trump: views from ASPI analysts

6 November 2024

Foreign policy

Greg Brown, senior analyst, ASPI DC—If personnel is policy, we have a fair idea of the Trump foreign policy. The voices competing for the president’s ear all emphasise peace through strength and agree that China is the first order of concern. The debate to watch is between advisers arguing that confronting China is an imperative for maintaining US global primacy and others calling for a narrower strategy that prioritises US attention in the Indo-Pacific.

Nishank Motwani, senior analyst, ASPI DC—As president, Trump will likely reinforce foreign policy unpredictability. This could undermine US commitments to NATO and Indo-Pacific allies, including Australia. This in turn could embolden Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea to act aggressively. Trump views alliances transactionally, favouring financial returns over strategic interests. This could prompt him to scrutinise AUKUS, perceiving missed financial gains and seeking to renegotiate for greater Australian contributions—a move in line with his art-of-the-deal approach.

Raji Pillai Rajagopalan, resident senior fellow—Trump’s presidency brings uncertainty, as he is unlikely to have a steady policy. It is more likely that each issue will be taken in isolation rather than as part of a strategic whole. Such unpredictability will likely scare adversaries such as China and Iran, as it did in Trump’s first term. But US partners will also be concerned by Trump’s shotgun approach, particularly on issues such as trade and economic security partnerships, if he does not distinguish between friends and foes. For this reason, minilateral groups, especially the Quad, may need to play more of a leading role than bilateral relationships, with Australia, Japan and India working together to ensure Indo-Pacific principles and interests are met.

China

Bethany Allen, head of China investigations and analysis—Trump is a wild card on foreign policy, including towards China. On the campaign trail he promised increased tariffs on China but criticised Taiwan. Anti-China sentiment runs deep in the Republican Party, but so does its opposition to US support for Ukraine. A Russian win in Ukraine would be a major foreign policy victory for Xi Jinping, Putin’s top supporter, and would make the world safer for revisionist authoritarians such as Xi.

Defence

Alex Bristow, senior analyst—Although Trump will probably abandon the term ‘integrated deterrence’, because of its association with Biden, he could retain and more forcibly assert the expectation that allies must step up and share risk if they want US nuclear protection. Elbridge Colby, who is tipped for a senior national security role in the new Trump administration, has said ‘all options are on the table’ for shoring up the nuclear umbrella in the Indo-Pacific. That may hint at stationing or sharing US nuclear weapons on allied territory, which would test legal barriers in Australia. Trump’s dismissive approach to multilateral non-proliferation regimes could fuel disinformation about AUKUS, but Trump may also help pressure Australia’s Labor government to disavow the counterproductive Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The prospects for nuclear arms control look bleak as long as Beijing, Moscow and Pyongyang keep seeking leverage by expanding their nuclear forces.

Southeast Asia

Fitriani, senior analyst—Trump’s re-election may diminish US engagement with Southeast Asia, given his transactional engagement with the region during his first term. One point to focus on is whether the US will uphold its commitment under the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty and stand by with the Philippines when tensions with China over the South China Sea flare. As Southeast Asian countries are small to medium in power and size, Trump will care about them only when he can use them to counter a bigger bully: China.

Climate

Mike Copage, head of the Climate and Security Policy Centre—Trump will weaken climate policy and international engagement, with deeper and longer-lasting effect than in his first term. If his administration follows the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 recommendations, US national security institutions will be prevented from addressing climate resilience, and world-leading US agencies may see their climate science programs disrupted. This would damage climate resilience and momentum among key allies and weaken important relationships with Pacific island countries.

However, Trump’s close circle includes major private sector proponents of clean energy technology, such as Elon Musk. Their influence may moderate his effect on climate policy.

Space

Malcolm Davis, senior analyst—Trump is likely to take a much bolder approach to space, in part driven by a need for personal prestige. This could see him try to get US astronauts back to the lunar surface before the end of his four-year term. He will also confront the growing risks presented by Chinese and Russian counterspace capabilities by promoting the role of the US Space Force. He’s likely to shrug aside notions of international cooperation on space and de-emphasise international diplomatic efforts to maintain norms of responsible behaviour.

Trump’s relationship with Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, will also prioritise space policy. The administration is likely to demand a greater effort by allies such as Australia to step up and share the burden of military space capability, including space control. It may also encourage Australia to more rapidly open its launch sites for US space launches and returns, potentially including SpaceX’s fully reusable Starship rocket.

Trump’s meaning for America, win or lose

30 October 2024

See Donald Trump as a symptom, not a cause.

Trump has a massive ego, the appetites of a supreme narcissist and the language of a fascist. But he has a finely tuned popular antenna that has again taken him to the gates of the White House. He is an extraordinary symptom of tectonic shifts in geopolitics and geoeconomics.

Win or lose on 5 November, Trump as a phenomenon tells us much about where the United States is heading as ‘the dysfunctional superpower’.

If he wins, Trump will have another four years to turn the popular mood into policy. In defeat, though, Trump is still a symptom that signposts the future. The trends he expresses will endure to shape the temperature and tone of US politics and foreign policy.

Trump revolutionised the Republican Party. America’s conservative party is transformed into a more rabid beast. Republican grandees shake their heads in woe and wonder. America’s trade policy is remade, even as US economic influence in Asia declines. The protectionist consensus is at its strongest in American politics since the Great Depression, nine decades ago. The economic instinct feeds an isolationist mood that will push at US strategy and alliances. The one international question that unites Washington is the new cold war with China.

Turn to a couple of Republican grandees to see how this shapes America’s future. The ‘dysfunctional superpower’ label is from Robert Gates, who served as defence secretary in both Republican and Democrat administrations (an unimaginable double in these fevered times).

Gates fears that a divided America has no long-term strategy to prevail in the struggle with Russia, China, North Korea and Iran. He judges that ‘dysfunction has made American power erratic and unreliable, practically inviting risk-prone autocrats to place dangerous bets—with potentially catastrophic effects.’

The diagnosis from Condoleezza Rice, national security adviser and secretary of state to president George W Bush, is that the ‘new four horsemen of the apocalypse—populism, nativism, isolationism, and protectionism—tend to ride together, and they are challenging the political centre.’

Rice says the US needs an internationalist president, explaining ‘what the world would be like without an active United States’. Looking beyond Cold War II, Rice sees analogies with today’s dilemmas in

the imperialism of the late nineteenth century and the zero-sum economies of the interwar period. Now, as then, revisionist powers are acquiring territory through force, and the international order is breaking down. But perhaps the most striking and worrying similarity is that today, as in the previous eras, the United States is tempted to turn inward.

Globalisation may not be dead, but the Trump symptom says it’s ailing. The US has given up on free trade. In the region that matters to Australia, the Indo-Pacific, the US has gone AWOL on trade issues since Trump withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership the day he became president in 2017.

Trump’s campaign promise this time is to boost tariffs on all US imports by 10 percent and increase tariffs on China by 60 percent. A Republican candidate who gets his history from television brandishes the beggar-thy-neighbour protectionism of the 1930s.

Asia wants the US to help achieve strategic balance, not deliver trade war. A rich new era of Asian commerce arrives, marked by the decline of US economic influence. As Asia trades with itself, China wins, trumping the US almost by default.

The ‘stark reality’ is that the US ‘will not be a partner in East Asian regionalism or show leadership on trade and global economic governance, for at least the next few presidential terms’, according to Peter Drysdale and Liam Gammon, writing in the East Asia Forum. The Democrats have offered no intellectual response to the slide into protectionism, Drysdale and Gammon observe, so Trump has defined the policy terrain:

The ‘America First’ trade policy has won a strategic victory over the past eight years, shifting the US bipartisan consensus towards the idea that globalisation was a lousy deal for Americans.

The Trump effect has pushed at Washington’s Blob in profound ways. The Blob was an Obama-era description of the settled outlook of the foreign policy establishment. Trumpism points to generational change in the Blob’s operation. This is one of the deep differences between Joe Biden and Trump.

In foreign policy, Biden has repaired alliances and delivered traditional sermons on America’s central role in the world. Yet he will be the last US president whose policy instincts are rooted in Cold War I. In contrast, one of Trump’s few consistent messages is that the US was stupid to spend all its blood and treasure overseas while allies got a free ride. ‘No more lousy deals,’ he proclaims.

The generation that is stepping into the top jobs in Washington was in high school or heading to university when Cold War I toppled with the Berlin wall in 1989. Their understandings are shaped by the 9/11 attacks, America’s longest war in Afghanistan and the Iraq morass. For 20 years, until the last American aircraft left Afghanistan in August 2021, US soldiers were at war.

Trump’s message is that the era of war and global responsibility is over. And that view will weigh on America’s course, even if Trump fails.

Former defence minister and ambassador to the US: ‘If Trump is elected, will Australia need a plan B?’

12 March 2024

If you are leader of an Australian political party, prime minister, defence minister, foreign minister or Ambassador to the US, the opening paragraph on a speech on the Alliance will contain a reference to our ‘shared values’. These usually include democracy, the liberal international order, respect for sovereignty and commitment to peace aided by mutual military support.

Donald Trump does not share these values, neither do many of his supporters. When last in office he struggled to free himself from these precepts. He was held to them by people he appointed to office and by the Republican leadership in Congress. If elected this year he has made clear his contempt for the US Constitution, and for democracy.

Trump has made clear his admiration for authoritarian leaders, and his understanding he was hampered by supporters of these values last time. He has expressed an intention to wreak vengeance on those who have hindered or stood against him. He has a team around him he’s determined to place in positions in departments, the military and intelligence who share his contempt for loyalty to the Constitution. His first attack will be on institutions like the Justice Department and the FBI. But those other institutions will also get his and his team’s attention.

What has happened in the Congress foreshadows this. The Republican leadership in the House had been traduced and the majority have been politically emasculated. If he is elected, a Republican majority in the Senate is all but assured. The Western alliance at its core will be rattled. Those reliant on American support will be in a state of confusion. Trump will believe his support for Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has been vindicated.

It’s difficult to envisage him defending Taiwan. Those around him however and in Congress are very hostile to China and Xi Jinping. Xi will need to be cautious, despite what will appear to be an opportunity. Trump’s supporters may educate him on the critical importance of Taiwan, particularly as its semiconductors are vital to American industry.

President Biden has been particularly aware that, though powerful, the US does not have unilateral primacy in the Indo-Pacific. He believes American interests are advanced by its alliances and its friendship with powers like India, Vietnam and Indonesia which are essential in his view to balance China.

Trump’s advisors don’t share these views though their default response, no matter how unrealistic, will be to seek to restore that primacy. For them the plan to provide Australia with nuclear-powered and conventionally armed submarines (SSNs) under Pillar 1 of the AUKUS agreement with Britain and the US is an anathema if it slows American capacity before it reaches a force of over 60 SSN now slated for achievement in the late 2050s.

They recognise that SSNs and ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) are at the heart of American military power. They have little ownership of AUKUS though Republicans in majority in Congress support it. They have little ownership of it and Trump would likely see the agreement as Biden writ large.

Most US opinion polls now point to a Trump victory. The only useful thing on the horizon is that the exit polls in the primaries have indicated around 25% of Republicans would not support Trump and would either vote against him or not vote. Were that to transpire, Trump would not win.

A majority of Democrats supported Biden strongly in the primaries but consider him too old and are not particularly enamoured of his vice president. As one friend points out to me the ultimate result will be determined by whichever group of voters is the greater—those who think Biden too old, and those who think Trump too unstable. That is, it seems, a choice between which negative sentiment proves to be the greater.

If it turns out that Trump’s negatives are fewer than Biden’s, we will have a lot to think about. Trump has a proven capacity to direct Republicans in Congress. Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, resistant to Trump, has taken himself off the chess board.

The problem for Australia is that the US has not been so critical to Australia’s defence since World War II as it is now. Conversely Australia has not been so important to the US as it is now. One of the aims of the 1987 defence white paper was to have a force able to defend Australia in its area of direct military interest without burdening the US. The US would provide critical equipment and intelligence. This was effectively achieved in the 1990s.

Then we drifted. The force provided for the emergencies we confronted when we handled the Timor crisis and provided useful forces for the Middle East commitments, not just in Afghanistan. We arguably peaked in the third phase of the battles arising from the Iraq war, the struggle with ISIS when we provided for a time the second largest foreign contingent.

We played a role with the Pentagon to add to the ‘training’ and ‘assist’ mission, accompanying the Iraqi force in action. Throughout, the Royal Australian Navy played a useful role in patrolling the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea.

In the contemporary era and issues involving our direct defence, we find ourselves with a force not adequate for the task. We’ve discovered the consequences of years of underfunding.

At the time of the 1987 white paper, spending was 2.5%-3% of GDP. That was a continuation of levels set in the 1970s after being at 4% during the Vietnam War. The figures were not targets, just reporting what had become normal. In 1994, the objective was set at 2%, effectively an unwarranted peace dividend. However, this figure was seldom achieved and not at all in the new century until the last defence budget.

Though now spending at 2% is the level the US (and Trump) requires of its allies, it does not defend us. The new focus for the government in the defence review and decisions taken by the government on the new surface fleet and the SSNs put in place what appears needed. But its timetable stretches to the late 30s and 40s.

In the meantime, we depend on the US. No one should kid themselves about this. The US will be needed for a long time—and no one has a better idea that does not require unsustainable expenditures.

At the same time the US has discovered the value of Australia to its own defence needs. Pine Gap has developed massively as the capacity of the technologies it serves have increased exponentially. The two more recent joint facilities in Exmouth are important for American space activities. More significantly the northern bases developed from the 1980s and the naval facility in Western Australia are now vital for the US posture in the Western Pacific. They provide another angle on activities involving China. Deft use of them across our vast North gives them a higher survivability than many US bases elsewhere in the zone. As the US has become more important to us, we have something of a character of a Western Pacific last bastion.

Will all this be clear to Trump? Critical for us will be his response to the SSN project. This raises genuinely hard questions for the Americans. Not the deployment of SSN from Stirling but the timetable and perhaps the principle of our acquisition of US SSNs.

While Congress is favourably disposed to AUKUS and the programme there is much unease there. For Australia to acquire the boats and not deplete US numbers requires a production rate of 2.3 Virginia class boats per year. The new bloc V version of the Virginia class (which is too big for us) is required to replace the capability of four SSBNs converted for conventional missiles now being retired from service. Tonnage of submarines produced is not diminished it is increasing substantially, but the numbers to be produced are challenging.

When these 10,000 ton block V vessels end production they’ll be replaced by the SSNX which is more like the weight of the Bloc 4 variant we are acquiring. The SSNX would make a good AUKUS submarine but that is very unlikely to happen. However, when the US reaches that stage, producing 2.3 submarines per year would be easily achievable. The number of workers at construction locations in Connecticut and Newport News needs to keep increasing but some in Congress are asking for a slower pace to ease production pressure.

That would be damaging. The most knowledgeable Congressman on submarines in the US is Joe Courtney and he campaigns against anything that is not full speed. He says ‘AUKUS is in a good place right now but I don’t think we should assume it will last forever. Time and inertia are the enemy’.

The SSNs might be the least of our worries with a Trump administration. The relevant agencies may be caught up in the Trump revenge. The knock-on impact on capability and policy could be considerable. With our new plans, small finances and dependence on the US, we will be challenged. Trump will be a chaos president and we could pass from view. Plan B would be difficult to evolve, and it would be very expensive.