From home to horror: the association between domestic violence and terrorism

Domestic violence is an under-recognised early indicator of terrorism. It is not a reliable solitary indicator, but when observed alongside risk factors, it can prompt authorities to take a closer look at a potential terrorist.

So far as can be demonstrated so far by data, the connection is correlative, not causative: the two behaviours overlap. But knowing this is still valuable. Recognising the link could enhance public safety and national security.

Research from the UK’s Project Starlight shines a light on this issue. In 2019, an analysis of 3045 individuals referred to the Prevent program—designed to prevent extremism—revealed that more than a third had a link to domestic abuse, either as victims, perpetrators, or witnesses. This figure is far above the general population’s 5.7 percent rate of domestic abuse.

Alarmingly, many of those referred were victims or witnesses of domestic violence, not perpetrators.

Studies in Pakistan have also found that individuals who experienced domestic abuse were more likely to gravitate toward extremist ideologies. The study looked at 562 young people aged 16 to 25 and found a clear link between growing up with domestic violence and later supporting extremist beliefs.

So, we should think of domestic violence as a risk factor in someone’s conversion to violent extremism, just as doctors know that some things point to a risk of disease even though medical research hasn’t yet found out why.

Two examples, among many that could be cited, illustrate the association. Omar Mateen, who carried out the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, had a history of domestic violence. His violent behaviour toward his ex-wife included physical and verbal abuse. Likewise, Khalid Masood, who was responsible for the  2017 Westminster attack in London, had a record of abusive behaviour toward his partners.

Though the data does not show a causative relationship, we can reasonably theorise on the drivers. Research shows that domestic violence and radicalisation are both promoted by a deep need for control and identity—things extremist groups readily exploit. Survivors of domestic abuse, especially those who experienced trauma in childhood, often find these needs unmet in their lives. By searching for belonging and purpose, they become targets for groups that promise power, community and meaning. Recognising this is the first step towards intervening.

Central to both domestic violence and terrorism is moral disengagement—the process by which perpetrators view their harmful actions as necessary or justified. Whether it’s in the home or through terrorist acts, violence is rationalised as a legitimate tool to exert power and control.

In Australia, positive steps are being taken to address each issue. Though they are not coordinated with each other, they happen to align. The National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children (2022-2032) addresses domestic violence and gender-based violence, with an understanding of the complex social and psychological drivers at play. The plan is a vital first step in reducing violence and promoting the wellbeing of all Australians. Similarly, the Living Safe Together initiative aims to prevent violent extremism and provides support for individuals at risk of radicalisation.

While these efforts remain separate, they share strikingly similar goals. Both recognise the underlying trauma and vulnerability that can fuel violent behaviour—whether in the form of domestic abuse or extremism. Early intervention, community support and collaborative efforts between social services and national security agencies are core elements of both programs.

Australia should pursue a more coordinated approach—one that treats the prevention of domestic violence and radicalisation as complementary goals. Law enforcement, social services and national security agencies should collaborate to identify early warning signs of vulnerability and intervene before individuals are drawn into extremist ideologies.

 

This article has been corrected to say that research shows domestic violence and radicalisation are promoted by a need for control and identity. It has also been corrected to say that separate policies addressing domestic violence and risks of radicalisation are not coordinated with each other.

The Quad can help Australia monitor China’s naval behaviour

Australia should enlist partners in the Quad to help address China’s increasingly assertive naval behaviour in the Indo-Pacific.

The Quad may be slow in moving into security roles, but one militarily useful function that it has adopted is maritime domain awareness—knowing what is going on at sea. Quad members, which also include Japan and the United States, can cooperate in monitoring Chinese naval movements.

On 19 February, three Chinese warships were identified sailing 277km east of Sydney before engaging in live fire drills in the Tasman Sea on 21 February.

The incident created alarm in the region—including in Cook Islands, which has become closer to Beijing recently—because of the risk it posed to airline traffic over the area. It also raised concerns around transparency, as China provided little notice.

While China’s actions didn’t violate international law, they demonstrated a willingness to engage in risky behaviour. Moreover, they came in the wake of similarly assertive actions, including China’s interception of an Australian surveillance jet engaging in routine flights in international air space above the South China Sea.

Clearly, China is sending a message that it can operate close to Australia and New Zealand, just as the two Pacific powers operate in the South China Sea. Last year, the two countries, along with Japan, sent ships through the Taiwan Strait. The difference is that those passages were conducted without engaging in unsafe behaviour.

Such behaviour from China is becoming more common. The Australian Department of Defence has called on all militaries to operate transparently and with safety and professionalism. This is to be expected, but perhaps more is needed as China’s navy expands and its operations in the Indo-Pacific become more routine.

There can be little doubt that once China’s latest aircraft carriers become fully operational, they will engage in patrols in the South Pacific. China’s aircraft carrier program is proceeding at pace, with the 70,000-ton Shandong apparently now fully operational, with two more—the 80,000-ton Fujian and another, even larger unnamed carrier—on the way.

A more serious policy issue is how countries in the region should respond to China’s expanding naval presence in the Indo-Pacific. Defence has said that it is monitoring the movement of the Chinese ships as long as they are ‘in the vicinity of Australia’s maritime approaches.’ The department is also coordinating with the New Zealand Defence Force.

This is an understandable response, but what happens in the coming years when there are many more Chinese warships operating across the Indo-Pacific?

It would be foolish to imagine that the Chinese navy’s patrol along the east coast of Australia is a one-off incident. Australia, New Zealand and their strategic partners should not be under any such impression. Moreover, China has repeatedly demonstrated that it is not a responsible power that respects either international law or basic, common-sensical behaviour.

Australia needs to position itself to deal with China’s irresponsible behaviour in the coming years, and it cannot do so alone or with only New Zealand. China’s outing in Australia’s exclusive economic zone should prompt like-minded and capable partners to come together to track China’s naval movements in the Indo-Pacific.

Australia should engage with the Quad—comprising Australia, Japan, India and the US—to monitor China’s naval movements in the Indo-Pacific.

The Quad has been reluctant to engage in actual security cooperation, presumably because India is dragging its feet. But this kind of cooperation could be seen to fall within the scope of maritime domain awareness, which is part of the Quad agenda. Moreover, such cooperation can be structured in a manner that is much less intrusive than interoperating military forces, as it could be limited to information-sharing on surveillance and monitoring of Chinese naval activities.

Such cooperative and focused activities around marine domain awareness could also allow Quad partners to pool their limited resources in a much more coordinated manner. This would provide them with visibility over the entire region rather than just their littoral waters.

Japan, Australia and India are limited in their capacity to monitor the seas much beyond their shores. But coordination would help all four Quad countries get a better grasp of Chinese naval activities: The US could help to monitor areas that cannot be monitored by the other three, such as southern Indian Ocean or much of the Pacific. Quad countries should accept that all of them cannot be involved in every maritime theatre in the Indo-Pacific. Burden-sharing is necessary to securing the region. The Quad is not there yet, but that is where it should be heading.

A unified Quad focus would allow other countries in the region to join these activities. South Korea would be the immediate contender, but some Southeast Asian powers might also step in. This would also give the Quad a greater security role, without infringing on India’s well-known fears of military forces operating together (outside of exercises or small-scale operations such as humanitarian relief or counter-piracy).

China’s naval activities will undoubtedly expand in the coming years. Australia and its partners must develop the means to monitor such expansion instead of simply complaining about it.

How Australia is advancing gender equality in the Indo-Pacific

Women’s rights and protections are regressing on the international stage, from the Taliban’s erasure of women from public life to US President Donald Trump’s misogynistic rhetoric and decision to suspend USAID.

Against this backdrop, Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) has launched its International Gender Equality Strategy. This strategy aims to deepen its partnerships in the Indo Pacific region, with a focus on gender responsive humanitarian and climate aid.

It is led by the notion that gender equality is the key to unlocking economic productivity, poverty reduction, climate action and wellbeing. Its inextricable link to policy outcomes calls for a stronger plan for delivery.

The strategy centres on five priorities:

—Working to end sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) and protecting reproductive rights;

—Pursuing gender responsive peace and security efforts;

—Delivering gender equitable climate action and humanitarian assistance;

—Promoting economic equality and inclusive trade; and

—Supporting locally led women’s leadership strategies.

Under its first priority, the strategy estimates the global annual cost of SGBV as US$1.5 trillion. To integrate SGBV protection and international engagement, Australia intends to invest in response services as well as agencies for sexual and reproductive health and rights. The strategy also outlines Pacific partnerships for cervical cancer screening and treatment.

Notably, Australia will hold nations accountable for violating international laws protecting women, such as the action brought against Afghanistan for violating the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women under the Taliban’s governance. In a welcome development, the strategy also advocates for working with boys and men to change perceptions and reduce incidents of SGBV.

The second priority will be guided by Australia’s second National Action Plan on Women Peace and Security (WPS). This priority focuses on addressing gendered aspects of security and supporting women’s participation in peace processes, particularly in the Indo-Pacific. It includes encouraging women’s mediator networks in the Pacific and working with partners to strengthen legislation designed to prevent gendered crimes.

Under this priority, the strategy also aims to confront new challenges under the WPS agenda. DFAT’s document highlights the increased risk of manipulation, online radicalisation and gender bias caused by a weakening distinction between online and offline worlds. The strategy aims to address these issues by sponsoring women’s participation and training in these spaces, while working to identify further opportunities and solutions.

Priority three highlights the need for equity in climate action and humanitarian responses. DFAT’s 2023 International Development Policy mandated that all investments over $3 million must include a gender equality objective. The strategy’s third priority reinforces the need to consider gender-specific approaches to development and assistance, while outlining the importance of working with diverse Indo-Pacific groups on adaptation and resilience.

The strategy aims to ensure trade benefits flow to all people through priority four, promoting women’s economic equality and inclusive trade. Unpaid care responsibilities exclude 708 million women are excluded from the labour force. Australia is supporting workplace reform and financial inclusion, targeting key indicators of economic equality. The need to reorient the norms and perceptions of women in the economy, however, is not addressed in this strategy.

The strategy highlights that women’s rights movements are the ‘most effective drivers of lasting change’. This motivates its fifth priority: to increase women’s leadership through supporting local women’s rights organisations. The strategy outlines methods such as funding education, professional development and amplifying underrepresented voices. Apart from Pacific Women Lead, details of DFAT’s specific partnerships are excluded. This lack of detail weakens the overall priority.

Five principles underpin DFAT’s practical approach. The first two are supporting local leadership and implementing outcome-based reforms. The third concept accounts for potential resistance against gender equality measures and highlights a commitment to avoiding unintended negative consequences. To do so, DFAT will bolster safeguarding mechanisms, including through reporting and accountability measures, and maintain a zero-tolerance approach.

DFAT’s fourth principle is to pursue both targeted and mainstream strategies. This twin-track approach will ensure that gender-specific issues are addressed, while also incorporating gender into general policies and activities. Under the final principle, DFAT commits to using high-quality evidence-based approaches to create effective responses. It will incorporate individual experiences to evaluate and revise programs.

Accountability on these priorities will be measured by existing mechanisms, namely official development assistance summaries, the Australian Development Cooperation report and the AusDevPortal. The strategy builds on this by establishing thematic evaluations of gender equality initiatives.

In some areas, the document lacks analysis and detail in its reforms. These include the tenuous links between promoting women’s economic equality and establishing policies, as well as a lack of details on how Australia will support local leadership organisations.

Despite this, the International Gender Equality Strategy shows that Australia is pursuing an inclusive liberal democracy in an age where increasingly illiberal policies are gaining traction. The strategy reaffirms ‘the centrality of Australia’s commitment to gender equality’ and provides a framework for advancing the rights and perspectives of women on the global stage.

As Trump sacks scientists, Australia should hire them. US drain is our brain gain

US President Donald Trump, his powerful offsider Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are slashing public spending in an effort to save US taxpayers anywhere between US$500 billion and US$2 trillion.

Caught up in these enormous cuts are scientists, researchers, medical experts, technologists and PhD scholars who are losing jobs, grants and scholarships at an unprecedented rate as funding streams are cancelled or put on hold.

To date, DOGE has allegedly made only US$105 billion of cuts. This means they have, at minimum, hundreds of billions to go. In the science and technology sector, these early cuts may be just the beginning.

Believe it or not, there is an enormous opportunity for Australia in this unusual situation. If the government acts quickly, this is a once-in-a-century brain gain opportunity.

Australia should take a two-pronged approach. We should attract some of our best and brightest back home from places such as Silicon Valley while also offering fast-track visas to top US-based scientists and researchers who are newly out of a job or low on the funding they need to keep their start-up or scientific lab running.

Australia’s ability to keep up with rapid advances in scientific developments and critical technologies will determine the shape and size of our economy for decades to come. Most of our strategic partners—the United States, Japan, Britain, the European Union and South Korea—are larger and have globally competitive tech sectors they’ve spent decades building. In recent years, these have included artificial intelligence, semiconductors, quantum and biotechnology.

As a mid-sized mining and tourism-dependent economy, Australia has long known we need to diversify our economy and increase our low national spend on research and development, which sits well below the OECD average.  We also know we need greater self-sufficiency so we don’t continue to become over-reliant on any one single market for access to technologies we have deemed ‘critical’ to our future. Building greater sovereign capability in our science and technology sector is a more important goal than ever.

But we are struggling to keep pace with others. We haven’t spent decades investing in building up our tech sector or making big technological bets when we’ve had the opportunity. Things are now moving so quickly that we’re increasingly in danger of being completely left behind.

Coming from behind doesn’t mean we can’t catch up. It does mean, however, that we need to prioritise innovative and out-of-the-box thinking and we must take more risks.

In early 2025, we find ourselves in an unusual situation where our closest ally has, rather unexpectedly, flooded the global market with science and technology talent. The cuts are ongoing and broad, impacting almost everything, including medical schools advancing cancer prevention, high-performance computing, climate and oceanic analysis and the use of AI in national security work.

Other countries will respond to this opportunity quickly. As public funding into universities declines and US universities reduce PhD admissions, top Chinese universities are already proactively recruiting overseas students, allowing undergraduates to skip traditional pathways to fill up PhD programs in areas such as mathematics, engineering, computer science and environmental science.

Canada, seen as a global leader for attracting technology talent, will likely be a key beneficiary of this talent flood. Its variety of visas, low processing times and proactive talent recruitment campaigns is one reason it recently saw 10,000 foreign tech workers in the US apply for permanent residency in Canada in one 48-hour period.

For decades, the US has provided funding and a home for many of our scientists, entrepreneurs and technologists. Now there’s a unique opportunity for us to reverse that brain drain while also increasing our investment in US talent and technologies. In doing so, we’d be contributing to greater burden-sharing in the US-Australia alliance (specifically AUKUS Pillar 2), noting that Australia has long benefited from—even piggybacked—on US scientific advancements and breakthroughs made in everything from health to renewable energies to defence technologies.

In order to identify the types of scientists, researchers and technologists that would be of greatest benefit to Australia and the potential visa options open to them, the Department of Home Affairs should work with our diplomats, our defence, CSIRO and Department of Industry Science and Resources officials, our intelligence community, and others to form a small, agile taskforce.

Minister for Home Affairs Tony Burke should work with parliamentary colleagues and his department to quickly explore options to expand and fast track visas. Visa options must be fast and flexible or we’ll lose out to other countries vying for their expertise.

Australia’s ambassador in the US, Kevin Rudd, and his team are well placed to provide a picture of which top scientists have lost funding. They could work with others in government to promote Australia as a top destination for technology talent while also working collaboratively with the US government to explain how these investments would also benefit them.

The government can play a key knowledge broker role by helping to link up scientific labs and startups with grant opportunities, universities and venture capital firms open to investing in them. In exceptional cases, wealthy individuals should make an extraordinary contribution to Australia’s national interests by partnering with the government to attract outstanding scientists and their teams. This public-private investment may end up helping Australia through the next pandemic, provide us with a leading edge in AUKUS Pillar 2 technologies or devise a cure for Alzheimer’s. It could unearth new methods for environmentally sustainable and cost-competitive extraction of critical minerals. All would provide shared benefit to our alliance with the US and close partnerships.

Knowing Musk’s cuts will continue, the winner of the Australian election should assess and expand this talent drive, particularly given the inevitable benefits to our job market and national prosperity.

In 2025, in the concerning global environment we find ourselves in, a business as usual approach won’t cut it. Australia must be ready to jump on rare opportunities as they arise, take more risks and make big bets.

An enormous opportunity is here now. Soon it will be staring us in the face. It’s time for our parliamentarians to jump.

If Trump’s US abandons liberal idealism, others must pick up the baton

Donald Trump’s description of himself during last week’s excruciating Oval Office meeting as a ‘mediator’ between Russia and Ukraine was revealing even by the standards of the past six weeks.

It showed an indifference to who the goodies and the baddies are; who is responsible for a three-year war, who shares traditional US values; who is democratic; who is a war criminal. The US is no longer the leader of the free, rule-abiding world that stands up for principles; it’s some kind of neutral mediation panel that tries to get two equally aggrieved litigants to resolve their differences.

Yet a pretense to neutrality is nonsensical. Trump sees Russia as a globally and historically relevant major power. That’s who he wants to work with over the long term, not its small and annoying neighbour that keeps asking for weapons and keeps fighting a war he thinks it can’t win.

Trump and senior members of his administration have said they want the US to have a geopolitical and economic relationship with Russia. The outcome of his Ukraine-Russia ‘mediation’ will reflect his perceived long-term desire for not just stable, but prosperous relationships with other major powers.

There’s a kind of awful realism to Trump’s attitude. It says that the world is dog-eat-dog, the law of the jungle—that rules are fictions that only idiots observe. Remember when Trump boasted that paying no federal income tax ‘makes me smart’? Psychological and personality assessments are admittedly risky, but there is an undeniable pattern here: Trump has by all accounts conducted himself this way his whole life, regarding rules as being for losers and wimps.

Trump’s world view is yet to be tempered as it was during his first term. His instincts are being translated into policy without any evident filter. Barely six weeks into his second term, there are so many signs that this jungle philosophy will guide his actions that other countries need to start planning accordingly.

This means two things. First, someone else, most obviously European democracies, must take up the baton of foreign policy idealism. The past 80 years, in which the US led the liberal international order it now questions, have been the best 80 years of the modern era. The idealistic system says countries that launch unprovoked aggression should be penalised and countries that face such aggression should be helped. You form lasting friendships with countries which share your values of justice and work with you in security, and you keep a distance from those that don’t. You show loyalty and trust to your friends, and you maintain readiness to use force when absolutely necessary against countries that threaten this network of friendships.

Over time, the preponderance of countries that believe in, and abide by, the system of rules creates a stable international order. The past eight decades are testament to this.

Australia needs to support this idealistic world view through public statements, economic measures such as sanctions, and hard power when possible—which is why Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is right to consider further support to Ukraine.

In the meantime, we need to worry about our immediate circumstances, which depend on a continuing relationship with the US.

Europe, including Britain, has two nuclear weapons powers, four G7 countries, and the NATO alliance. The European Union’s economy is about 10 times that of Russia’s. If the US walks away, Europe should be able to manage its security handily—and the belated sense of urgency it’s now showing suggests it can get there.

Australia has an alliance with New Zealand, a close-to-allied relationship with Japan and good friendships with India, South Korea and some Southeast Asian countries. But we can’t ensure our own security on this basis. We can’t turn ourselves into an independent power, nor convene an Asian NATO overnight, and so we need the US in ways that Europe does not.

Our region’s would-be hegemon, China, is the peer competitor to the US for the foreseeable future. If the US walks away from the Indo-Pacific, China will dominate. Worse, if the US under Trump or his successors decides it can deal with Beijing the way Trump is dealing with Moscow, the Indo-Pacific could face a regional hegemon that feels even less constrained.

The good news is that Russia and China are quite different. China is structurally stronger and therefore more of an ongoing threat to the US. Based on Trump’s history of commentary, he sees China as having got rich at the US’s expense. The Trump Administration has backed both AUKUS and the Quad—a positive indication.

Australia can still work towards greater national resilience and self-reliance. This, along with our advantageous geography and our good relationships with neighbours, might persuade the US that it has Indo-Pacific allies worth supporting. In parallel, we should use what influence we have to remind the US that rules are good for everyone. If the post-war global order is, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said, ‘now a weapon being used against us’, that’s a good argument for working with friends to modernise it, not to abandon it entirely and throw the world back into the jungle.

Trump is making the mistake that FDR shunned

In April 1941, Charles Lindbergh, the America First Committee’s most prominent leader, outlined his position that Nazi Germany’s victory was inevitable, that the United States should stay neutral and that Britain was ‘a belligerent nation’ which should agree to ‘a negotiated peace’. Lindbergh said, ‘It is a policy not of isolation, but of independence.’

The upheaval of the Oval Office meeting on 28 February between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and US President Donald Trump, punctuated by the interjection of Vice President JD Vance, did not reveal the US switching sides to join Russia but rather a foreign policy shift towards the notion of US independence and neutrality advocated by Lindbergh’s America First.

During the meeting with Zelenskyy, Trump made his position clear: ‘I’m not aligned with Putin. I’m not aligned with anybody. I’m aligned with the United States of America and for the good of the world.’

Such an impartial statement would be fair in many circumstances, such as a valuer in a property sale or an umpire officiating a sports match. But here we are dealing with a powerful nation committing war and war crimes on an innocent democracy, so sides are exactly what should be taken, and the US should be on the side of right, not might.

Those who describe Trump’s US as isolationist are simplifying a more complex foreign policy shift that sees the US role in the world no longer as the global policeman expending resources on holding aggressors to account, but as the global peacemaker between other nations in conflict, regardless of which is at fault.

Trump has not withdrawn from the world, as shown by his support for Israel and distrust for Iran, his focus on China, and even his aims to end the war in Europe. And, of course, it is always possible that in the art of the deal what we are hearing is not necessarily what we will see.

So it is Australia’s job as America’s most trusted ally to help show the dots connecting each corner of the globe and to ensure the next phase of American exceptionalism doesn’t result in geographic spheres of influence.

The US in effect joining the non-aligned movement would more likely result in a ceasefire that rewards Russia’s aggression, proves the effectiveness of the Russia-China ‘no-limits’ partnership and emboldens China in the Indo-Pacific.

What happens in Europe and NATO does matter to the Indo-Pacific. The Oval Office train crash reverberated across the globe, unsettling the US’s closest allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific. As European leaders rushed to London for a conference hosted by British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, governments across Australia, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and Taiwan were all examining the implications for our own security. Worse, China was no doubt doing the same—only looking at the possibility for territorial and strategic gain, not loss.

The US would be mistaken to think we live in an age in which China and Russia are separate. Just as US actions are raising questions about the value of its democratic alliances, the axis of authoritarian regimes is becoming more aligned.

So have we seen lasting damage? Diplomatic bust ups between friends are generally temporary, as seen by the Australian experience with the infamous first phone call between then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and Trump in January 2017. More important is the potential for permanent policy changes relating to the US’s international friends and foes.

Trump’s desire for peace and to be seen as a peacemaker is not inherently a bad thing. The US should use its strength to stop aggression—but not in a way that stops the victim fighting back, which is why any belief that the US can achieve peace by serving as a detached conflict mediator is seriously flawed.

Justice and lasting peace is not achieved through moral equivalence. The reality is stark: one side, Ukraine, was invaded, while the other, Russia, initiated an unjust war. A neutral America treating both parties as having equally legitimate claims rewards the rule breaker and would simply incentivise more of it. Indeed, in referring to Ukraine as not having the cards at the table, Trump seemed to be suggesting that Russia’s more powerful status carried with it an automatic right to come away from the negotiation with more. This shift from the US’s role as global enforcer to conflict mediator would result in a weaker world, a weaker US and Trump’s legacy being peace in his time but at any cost.

Trump has expressed admiration for former president William McKinley and has a bust of Winston Churchill in the Oval Office. His team should want to help him avoid being remembered more like Lindbergh—or like Neville Chamberlain, who appeased Hitler by signing the Munich Agreement which gave up the Sudetenland ‘for peace for our time’. Trump’s staff should put Winston Churchill’s response to the Munich Agreement alongside his bust in the Oval Office:

You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour and you will have war.

After all, not supporting Ukraine now would have been akin to Franklin D Roosevelt’s United States not supporting Churchill’s Britain to carry on the fight against Nazi Germany. FDR did expect some recompense for US materiel support, including leasing of British bases, which is why the proposed US-Ukraine minerals deal is not the outrage some mistake it to be. But FDR did not demand Churchill sign a bad peace deal with Hitler. And Churchill made it clear in 1940 that Britain would not accept an end to the war that involved surrender.

We shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

Churchill’s ‘New World’ was the US as the global leader fighting against tyranny and for freedom. The battle in the Oval Office was a loss for democracy but the war is not yet over. The US would shortchange itself if it were to choose independence and fail to recognise the contribution of others to US security.

If instead the US, Europe and allies in the Indo-Pacific, including Australia, can stick together, our collective might will ensure the side of right will still win in the end.

The value of Ukraine’s critical minerals is overstated

Anyone involved in Australia’s critical minerals industry would be rolling their eyes at the transaction still reported to be under consideration between Ukraine and the United States.

US President Donald Trump was initially asking for the first US$500 billion in proceeds from Ukraine’s minerals development. Preliminary discussions spoke about the country’s critical minerals reserves being worth ‘trillions of dollars’.

As Lynas Rare Earths chief executive, Amanda Lacaze, said to The Australian:

In the time that I’ve been involved in rare earths, I’ve heard about a rare earth race to the moon because there could be lots of mining on the moon to get rare earths.

I’ve heard about a sort of rare earths race to the sea floor because there’s lots of rare earths on the sea floor, which could be useful in the future. I heard about a rare earths race to Afghanistan at one stage.

In fact, Ukraine has no proven rare earths reserves—as distinct from deposits, which may or may not be economically recoverable. Its only established rare earths deposit, of unknown size or quality, is near Azov, a town currently under Russian control.

Ukraine does have some other critical minerals, but nothing established to the point that it would warrant the investment of billions of dollars, let alone hundreds of billions or trillions.

Ukraine’s geological survey agency claims 19 million tonnes of reserves of graphite, used for batteries. China was the major world supplier of graphite, but it restricted exports last October in response to US controls on sales of semi-conductors.

Australian listed company Volt Resources holds 70 percent of Ukraine’s major graphite operation, the Zavallivsky mine, which has been active since 1934. However, its output is not up to lithium-battery standards. The scale of its operation is indicated by Volt’s market value of just $18 million.

Ukraine has more substantial deposits of manganese, but its output is barely a tenth of Australia’s and would earn it little more than $200 million a year.  Ukraine’s claims of critical minerals riches mainly rest on Soviet geological surveys done 30 to 60 years ago, not nearly recent enough to justify investment by Western financial standards.

Trump said Ukraine ‘holds no cards’ in negotiations over its future. Ukraine’s government essentially invented its mineral riches to give itself a card to deal with Trump.

With considerable foresight, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy used the D-Day ceremonies in France in June to lobby a key Trump ally and rare Republican supporter of aid to Ukraine, Senator Lindsay Graham. Zelenskyy told him that Ukraine’s minerals were worth as much as US$12 trillion.

‘If we help Ukraine now, they can become the best business partner we ever dreamed of’, Graham said. ‘That $10 to $12 trillion of critical mineral assets could be used by Ukraine and the West, not given to Putin and China.’

Graham repeated those comments after leading a Senate delegation to Kyiv, a few weeks before Zelenskyy travelled to the US last September. Zelenskyy’s visit was controversial: the Republican leader of Congress, Mike Johnson, refused to meet him, and Trump was expected to do the same.

After making a personal appeal to Trump, Zelenskyy was granted an audience at Trump Tower in New York. During this meeting, he evidently sold the idea of a minerals partnership, mentioning the potential revenue of US$500 billion.

Ukraine doubled down on these claims at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where its delegation spoke of critical mineral reserves worth US$12 trillion. Trump took the bait, but Zelenskyy could not close the deal, despite guidance from Graham on how to handle Trump ahead of the ill-fated televised meeting on 28 February.

While Trump responded to the appeal of large numbers, the reality of critical minerals mining, and particularly rare earths, is that it is painstaking work. It takes years to prove up deposits, to determine how to process them, to secure customers and then, and only then, to raise the capital for development.

Australia has been discussing collaboration with the US on critical minerals ever since former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull’s first meeting with Trump in February 2018.

There has been follow-up: the US Department of Defense helped fund a Lynas joint venture to process heavy rare earths in Texas; the US Export-Import Bank provided conditional letters of intent to lend $1.3 billion to two Australian rare earths miners; and there has been collaboration between Geoscience Australia and the US Geological Survey.

The Albanese government agreed on the Climate, Critical Minerals and Clean Energy Transformation Compact with former president Joe Biden in May 2023. However, it was not formally ratified by US Congress ahead of the new administration, which will likely not appreciate the compact’s climate change focus.

While Japanese government support was pivotal to the success of Lynas, the Australian government has been left to put up the risk capital behind the development of recent Australian rare earths processing capacity.  There has been no influx of US risk capital.

Trump’s upending of US intelligence: implications for Australia

Australia has no room for complacency as it watches the second Trump Administration upend the US Intelligence Community (USIC). The evident mutual advantages of the US-Australian intelligence partnership and of the Five Eyes alliance more generally are not enough to guarantee preservation of benefits. In addition, Australia’s National Intelligence Community (NIC) will need to adopt a more deliberate and coordinated approach to its relationship with the USIC, centred around agreed national objectives.

Amid the turmoil being experienced in the USIC, and the longer-term challenges for American partner agencies themselves, especially as a result of likely disruption to fragile workforce development pipelines, there will be opportunities for the NIC. As happened after US intelligence reforms in 2004, Australia can learn what works, what doesn’t—and what can be adopted by the NIC, particularly in relation to the utility of the ‘China challenge’ as a potential organising principle. Already, the NIC can note the vital need for intelligence organisations in democratic societies to not just protect reputations for bipartisanship but to keep the trust and confidence of the broader public.

Trump and his spies, the second time around

Donald Trump’s first presidential term was characterised by conflict and tensions between him as a neophyte politician and the USIC. This was exemplified by Trump’s remarks at a 2018 summit in Helsinki, where he appeared to side with President Vladimir Putin over the FBI’s assessment that Moscow had tried to interfere in the 2016 US election. In one regard this estrangement between Trump and the USIC seemed incongruous. A president otherwise so keen to advance US interests through the forceful exercise of American power did not make best use of a policy instrument designed to do just that, the USIC.

The re-elected and emboldened Trump need not make the same mistake (although he might still).

Looking beyond current political debates surrounding his cabinet picks and the handling of broader US government reforms, what will the intelligence community look like in the next four years, and what are the implications for close intelligence allies like Australia?

By the end of Trump’s first term his estrangement from the USIC was confirmed, and it was accentuated by his four years out of office, his legal troubles, which included charges (now discontinued) for mishandling classified material, and an electoral campaign in which he cast intelligence agencies as an inveterate deep state.

More recently, attention has focused on the president’s unorthodox choices for some leadership positions, notably Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence (DNI) and Kash Patel as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. These choices shouldn’t be dismissed lightly. After all, the old axiom holds that personnel is policy, and this is amplified by Trump’s personal loyalty-driven approach to governing. In addition, Trump has come to office the second time around considerably better prepared to staff a new administration than in 2016—and these picks are his, not those of advisers. But in trying to understand what this might mean we should seek further contextualization, especially on where the USIC might be steered by its new captains.

Project 2025, new (and old) faces and implications for US Intelligence

Alongside public statements by the Trump administration and its appointees, another potential source for such context is Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, published in 2023 by the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. It should be noted that during the election campaign Trump disavowed knowledge of this conservative think-tank project but he has since re-embraced the manifesto’s authors and recommendations. And Mandate for Leadership’s chapter on intelligence reform offers detail absent from the 2024 Republican Party Platform.

More particularly, that chapter draws heavily on the views of John Ratcliffe, Trump’s former DNI, now director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Ratcliffe’s leadership of the CIA now heightens the significance of his expressed views, suggesting that the manifesto’s policy priorities and prescriptions for CIA (and the USIC generally) will influence the administration’s own.

The chapter is not without its idiosyncrasies and errors. Nonetheless, a close reading of Project 2025 gives insights into the USIC for the next four years, especially through its five consistent themes: politicisation, China, the CIA’s future, technology and centralisation through the Office of the DNI (ODNI).

Politicisation is an unavoidable topic, the bitter fruit of the estrangement in Trump’s first term. Mandate for Leadership makes the case for a return to a politically neutral USIC, but that itself seems challenging in the current environment in which so much is tarred as politicised. The future of the enabling Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is bound up in relitigating past cases that affected individuals in Trump’s orbit. Integrity in analysis is framed by continuing debate over the appropriate emphasis on electoral interference threats from China instead of Russia. One resulting measure recommended in the manifesto is USIC leaders and their agencies withdrawing from the public square. It will be interesting to see whether this recommendation carries through to the new USIC leadership, given the existing public (and very political) profiles of Gabbard and Patel.

The positive mirror image of ‘politicisation’ is responsiveness, and this is borne out in Mandate for Leadership’s case for a more empowered DNI, one who is more directive over the rest of the USIC and responsive to the president. This change would be accompanied by down-sizing and shedding some of the responsibilities ODNI has accumulated since 2004—unsurprisingly, since bloat has been a criticism of ODNI since its establishment. It’s telling that the handful of Republican senators who were initially sceptical about Gabbard’s nomination as DNI were apparently won over by her commitment to just such downsizing.

It’s also worth noting that an invocation to laser focus on the president’s defined needs risks undermining an intelligence community’s important role in seeing over the horizon to unknown unknowns.

Nonetheless, statutory ambiguities have already weakened the ODNI’s authority over budgets, personnel and operations, leaving it unable to resolve interagency rivalries or streamline intelligence activities. According to the manifesto, these deficiencies, compounded by entrenched inefficiencies, have relegated the ODNI to a bureaucratic bottleneck rather than a strategic leader, raising concerns about its ability to address evolving global threats effectively.

Key manifesto recommendations therefore include granting DNI full authority over budgets and personnel to dismantle institutional silos and reduce redundancies. These structural changes would be accompanied by efforts to address cultural issues such as politicisation and overclassifying the secrecy of information, which are said to hinder operational effectiveness.

Where might that more directive DNI drive the USIC? One answer is a more joined up national intelligence effort that sees the generational threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party as an imperative, if not an organising principle. That would certainly be the choice of Ratcliffe, who boasted to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that:

As DNI, I dramatically increased the Intelligence Community’s resources devoted to China. I openly warned the American people that, from my unique vantage point as the official who saw more US intelligence than anyone else, I assessed that China was far and away our top national security threat.

Ratcliffe’s coda—that ‘President Trump has been an incredible leader on this issue, and it is encouraging that a bipartisan consensus has emerged in recent years’—belies the ambiguity otherwise apparent in the new DNI’s own testimony (which gave little insight into her thoughts on the targets of US intelligence) and by both Gabbard and Ratcliffe’s unwillingness to comment on the messiness of the president’s approach to TikTok’s future.

Presumably USIC focus will follow policy priorities, including on China. We’ve already seen other, alternative priorities aired in public: countering the Mexican cartels, the western hemisphere more broadly, and economic intelligence (the reflex of all new governments everywhere when contemplating what intelligence machinery can do for their policy agenda).

The CIA features as prominently in Mandate for Leadership as the ODNI, unlike the other 16 agencies of the USIC. It’s the CIA that stands accused of managerialism run amok, and for which there are calls for the return of an ‘OSS culture’. (The Office of Strategic Services was the CIA’s World War II antecedent. Presumably Mandate for Leadership is referring to the OSS’s famed can-do pioneering spirit and not to its penetration by the Soviets.) Hence Ratcliffe’s clarion call at his nomination hearing:

To the brave CIA officers listening around the world, if all of this sounds like what you signed up for, then buckle up and get ready to make a difference. If it doesn’t, then it’s time to find a new line of work.

Manifestations of this desire for a cultural shift within CIA are found in the manifesto’s argument for greater external and lateral recruitment into the agency, a more ruthless up-or-out approach to promotion, and transfer of various CIA elements and facilities away from Washington DC and northern Virginia.

Perhaps more consequentially, the manifesto makes the case for recalibrating covert action responsibilities away from CIA and towards the Department of Defense (and its ‘certain clandestine capabilities […] that may resemble but far exceed in scale similar capabilities outside of DOD’). Covert action is described as activities ‘to influence political, economic or military conditions abroad, where it is intended that the role of the United States Government will not be apparent or acknowledged publicly’. This aligns with a broader shift in confidence towards the military intelligence agencies, which are seen (fairly or not) as more reliable and responsive than the CIA. This shift has been highlighted in conversations with Republican-aligned national security figures over the past year.

Finally, the newfound alignment between conservative US politics and the US technology sector finds expression in the manifesto’s pushback against the European Union’s data privacy regulations and a warning to the USIC to avoid duplicating technology development by the private sector. Mandate for Leadership also takes to task the current USIC for not adhering to an ‘obligation to share’ relevant intelligence, especially on cyber threats to industry. It similarly echoes the president’s criticisms of over-classification (which, it must be fair, have been bipartisan and broad-ranging for many years). Thus, according to the manifesto, ‘an ODNI-run declassification process that is faster, nimbler, default-to-automated, and larger-scale should be a priority.’

Insights for Washington’s intelligence partners

The above is necessarily a partial view of what will be the next four years for the USIC. Just as a decades-long prioritisation of global counter-terrorism was not on the cards when George W Bush took office in 2001, so events will play their own part in deciding what happens next. But there is a useful foundation from which close intelligence allies like Australia can take some cues.

The USIC will be distracted and inwardly focused, partly because it will be working through contradictory impulses and directives early in this administration. This is where the question of personnel is particularly important. The apparent effort to denude the FBI of its existing leadership and structure, particularly moves to downsize the bureau’s National Security Division (including disbandment of counter-foreign interference efforts, victims of the bad political blood of the past decade), bodes poorly for US counter-intelligence. So too does the call for the FBI to return to crime fighting. Yet these circumstances (and the partisan political climate) don’t suggest that an idea advanced in the past by conservative critics of the FBI, creation of a separate non-law-enforcement security intelligence agency comparable to ASIO or MI5, is likely to come to pass anytime soon.

As for the remainder of the USIC, their workforces are being buffeted by the same forces affecting the wider US civil service. Of particular concern are moves to pause entry-level recruitment processes or even to dismiss probationary staff. These kinds of disruption have historically (in the US but also elsewhere) had cascading effects through intelligence agencies over years, indeed even decades, especially for streams requiring careful selection and considerable training (such as for CIA’s Directorate of Operations).

As radical as aspects of the new administration’s approach might appear, there is also a certain (and not always unwelcome) conservatism. For example, Mandate for Leadership rejects expansion of the Five Eyes alliance, a perennial subject of think pieces, favouring instead ‘ad hoc or quasi-formal intelligence expansion […] amongst nations trying to counter the threat from China’. This underplays the long-term efforts typically required in building effective liaison relationships. But even ad hoc relations might not remain viable. For example, Gabbard has been notably hostile in her past public commentary about Japan’s defence build-up and desire for a closer security relationship with the US. She was given the opportunity to moderate those comments during questioning before the Senate intelligence committee but declined to do so. And we’ve also seen remarks, now walked back, by a separate member of the administration (albeit one from outside of national security policy) about excluding Canada from the Five Eyes.

Gabbard also declined senators’ myriad (almost pleading) opportunities to dissociate herself from her past support for Edward Snowden. That she did not do so only underscored the priority she accords to her interpretation of civil rights, also reflected in her answers to the other matter of importance to those same senators: the continuation of FISA’s section 702. The other priority apparent from the new DNI’s remarks, and from related administration actions, is a more forward leaning approach to declassification and over-classification.

Taken together, these emphases are likely to engender some concerns among close intelligence partners used to sharing sensitive secrets by default. It would be natural in this situation for those partners to take stock of existing relationships with the USIC, especially where, in parallel, there are perhaps new divergences on stated policy objectives.

At the same time, the mutual advantages of the Five Eyes relationship (now almost 80 years old), including in the advancement of US interests, are readily identifiable. But this shouldn’t be a reason for complacency. Such demonstration of obvious advantage may still not be enough to insulate relationships from unwelcome developments. After all, the single best example of the US gaining from an intimate security arrangement with a close partner remains the North American Aerospace Defence Command, a US-Canadian military organisation, better known as NORAD, that stands ready to warn of nuclear attack. Yet such a close relationship has done little to shield Canada from recent actions by the White House.

What will be required is a careful and coordinated approach from the Australian government across all points of the alliance (including intelligence). As always in Canberra, the simplest but also most challenging part of the exercise will be determining and sustaining a clear national (and whole-of-government) objective for that approach to serve.

Recommendations for Australia’s National Intelligence Community

Amidst this turmoil in Washington, there are opportunities for Australia’s NIC also. There will be lessons to be learned from new directions in IC organisation and leadership, just as Australia’s establishment of the Office of National Intelligence was well informed by what went right and wrong in the creation of the US ODNI. This includes the potential value of using China as a central organising principle for an intelligence community that is also required to deal with other persistent, if not as strategic, national security challenges.

There will also be opportunities for cooperation on technology, whether that’s the next frontier of space surveillance (which the manifesto identifies as an opportunity for Five Eyes collaboration) or in addressing the challenge presented to intelligence operations by the burgeoning phenomenon of ubiquitous technical surveillance.

So, the Office of National Intelligence should be thinking about how to engage with a potentially different looking and focussed ODNI. Likewise, Australia’s defence intelligence agencies should be thinking about an even more important engagement role, if there is a swing in confidence and influence within the US system from the civilian to the military.

More broadly, it will be incumbent on Australia’s NIC to closely monitor US policy changes and evaluate their potential effects here. Furthermore, as we adjust to those changes and continue to demonstrate mutual advantage from the intelligence partnership, we need to prioritise investing in truly sovereign intelligence capabilities for Australia—both as a hedge against the unknowable future and as a tangible and valuable contribution to the continuing partnership.

We would also do well to learn from experience in the US and redouble existing commitments to a NIC that enjoys not only bipartisan support but also the trust and confidence of the Australian public beyond Canberra. This includes when negotiating the complex national security (and unavoidably political) challenges presented by foreign interference and disinformation.

Indonesia steps up defence relationships, but stays non-aligned

Indonesia has recognised that security affairs in its region are no longer business as usual, though it hasn’t completely given up its commitment to strategic autonomy.

Its biggest step was a Defence Cooperation Agreement (DCA) signed with Australia in August 2024. The agreement acts as a de facto status-of-forces agreement, providing for the presence of foreign forces in Indonesian territory, traditionally an uncomfortable idea for the country.

Jakarta has also stepped up specific defence cooperation with other countries over the past five years, notably with Australia. The United States has also become a closer partner.

While China’s strengthening presence in Southeast Asia is an obvious factor in Indonesia’s diversification of defence relationships, Jakarta declares no policy of trying to counterbalance Beijing. Moreover, it is still far from tying itself down in close and permanent security relationships. Instead, Indonesia adopts a more nuanced approach.

Indonesia lacks a formal strategy to navigate great power competition. However, its impartial stance—rooted in what it calls its ‘free and active’ foreign policy—has resulted in a hedging strategy, balancing economic ties with China and strong political relations with the US and its allies. Meanwhile, Indonesia is expanding its global engagement through active participation in regional and international organisations, including the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the United Nations, and through south-south cooperation.

Following its cautious foreign policy, Indonesia avoids alliances with great powers. This approach has allowed it to maintain neutrality and stay ‘defensively active’ for decades. Yet, Indonesia has begun to break from this tradition.

Indonesia’s Ministry of Defence aims to increase the defence budget from 0.8 percent to 1.5 percent of GDP. In recent years, Indonesia has signed several arms acquisition deals. These include buying 42 Dassault Rafale fighters from France for $8.1 billion, 12 drones from Turkey worth $300 million and 24 Sikorsky S-70M Black Hawk helicopters from the US.

In the past five years, Indonesia has deepened various bilateral defence relationships. Australia has become a prominent partner, engaging in 48 defence diplomacy activities. These activities saw steady growth throughout the past five years, with the 2024 DCA as the pinnacle of their cooperation.

The 2024 DCA between Indonesia and Australia is their greatest commitment yet to enhancing defence collaboration and addressing shared security challenges. For Indonesia, it is historic as it allows military drills and mutual force operations within each other’s territories. For Australia, this agreement offers better operational proximity to potential flashpoints, such as the South China Sea.

Although yet to be a status-of-forces agreement, the DCA reinforces previous arrangements. It establishes a legal framework to enhance military cooperation and joint activities between the two countries. The agreement also includes provisions for enhanced educational exchanges and closer maritime operations.

However, this agreement does not signal Indonesia’s alignment with any bloc. The country continues to balance its relationships with major powers, staying true to its principle of strategic autonomy.

In 2023, Indonesia elevated bilateral ties with the US to a comprehensive strategic partnership, expanding defence cooperation, including joint exercises such as Garuda Shield. Simultaneously, Indonesia reinforced diplomatic ties with China and the two countries issued a joint statement in 2024 claiming ‘common understanding on joint development in areas of overlapping claims’ in the South China Sea. This sparked controversy among maritime law and international relations experts. It appeared to contradict Indonesia’s long-standing policy of strategic denial regarding China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea.

Additionally, Indonesia has sought to diversify its defence partnerships by engaging with other Global South middle powers, including Turkey, India and Brazil. Indonesia’s recent decision to join BRICS is also motivated by its willingness to enhance cooperation and collaboration with other developing countries.

The depth of the Indonesia-Australia DCA reveals several key aspects of Indonesia’s approach. First, as great power competition increases, Indonesia is moving beyond its ‘defensive-active’ strategy. Indonesia is now integrating bilateral strategies alongside multilateral approaches to better navigate the evolving security landscape.

Second, Indonesia’s deepening ties with Australia through the DCA serve as a regional safety net in its hedging behaviour. Consequently, Indonesia must reassure other countries that the DCA with Australia aims to enhance cooperation and doesn’t signal alignment with the West.

Finally, while it has shown adaptability in recent years, defence capacity remains crucial for Indonesia to maintain its independence and increase its bargaining position in the geopolitical landscape.

The DCA, alongside global engagement and enhancing defence capacity, indicates Indonesia’s shifting strategy to face the increasingly competitive environment while maintaining its strategic autonomy.

Britain’s cut to foreign aid undermines threat prevention

Britain’s decision to cut foreign aid to fund defence spending overlooks the preventive role of foreign aid. It follows the pause and review of USAID activities and is an approach to foreign aid that Australia cannot afford to consider.

In late February, Britain said it would cut foreign aid. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the decision was extremely difficult and painful. Foreign Secretary David Lammy described it as a hard choice. Both said it was necessary to keep Britain safe.

But foreign aid does help keep Britain safe.

Threats come in many forms. This means there are hard-headed security arguments for foreign assistance.

If another, poor country’s health system can’t deliver vaccinations or cope with a disease outbreak, your country can end up with a pandemic. If a nearby country suffers government collapse, military coup or state failure, this will affect your country economically and politically. If people affected by climate change are not assisted, you could end up dealing with a migration crisis.

Development funding is worthwhile investment. Dealing with a full-blown security crisis is far more expensive than the small amounts that help prevent it from happening.

People often assume that overseas development assistance gets a much larger slice of the budget pie than it does. For example, the 2018 Lowy Institute Poll showed that people thought that Australia spent $14 from every $100 in the budget on foreign aid when, in reality, it was about 80 cents. Now it is 68 cents.

Considering current threats, it makes perfect sense for Britain to increase defence spending. Lammy has said ‘Putin’s Russia is a threat not only to Ukraine and its neighbours, but to all of Europe, including the UK.’

But increased defence spending should not be at the expense of foreign aid: the preventive spending that guards against future threats. It is like taking money from preventive health care to fund emergency units. Britain is following the United States in a path that makes the world less safe.

This is something that Australia should not even consider.

The context is strikingly different. In the US, the target was the standalone aid agency USAID. Australia has already amalgamated AusAID into the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, meaning development programs are integrated across the entire department. Minister for International Development Pat Conroy has described it as an egg that can’t be unscrambled.

Unlike Britain, Australia’s development spending has already endured huge cuts during the Abbott years, and the vacuum this created for other actors in the Pacific is a salutary lesson not to follow Britain and cut further.

For those concerned about what aid money is being spent on, the government has a transparency portal that tells them. It lists conflict and security development projects including early warning reports, mediation services, reducing illicit arms flows, monitoring landmine and cluster munition use, strengthening cyber and critical tech resilience and reducing the threat of violent extremism.

And unlike the US and Britain, Australia simply can’t afford to vacate the field. Australia is surrounded by developing countries, and if it wants to have friends and partners in the region it must support them in the things that matter to them. The damage to Australia’s long-term interests would be incalculable. That’s what’s at stake. An adequate development budget is non-negotiable if Australia wants to have influence in its region.

Cutting aid might feel like a quick budget fix, but it will cost more in the long term as the world’s problems become expensive crises. In the British parliament, the chair of the International Development Select Committee made this point: ‘Cutting the aid budget to fund defence spending is a false economy that will only make the world less safe.’ She said she was ‘bitterly disappointed’ with a decision she sees as ‘endangering our long-term security’.

Humanitarian organisations have described the move as short-sighted, reckless and a betrayal of Britain’s national interest. Importantly, they have called out the decision as a political choice, noting that other options were possible.

Cutting aid is not a hard choice; it’s a weak choice—and a counterproductive one. People who care about Australia’s defence and security should be making this point.