In How to defend Australia, I argued that if we are to take our defence seriously, we need to prepare to defend Australia from a major Asian power independently. That is necessary, I said, because we can no longer take the support of powerful allies for granted in the decades ahead.

Many people disagree. Here on The Strategist and elsewhere they have argued that we can and should continue to depend on our allies, so our forces should be designed to fight alongside them, and do not need to be able to fight alone.

It’s important at the outset to be clear that this is not about whether we should choose to abandon our alliances. Of course we shouldn’t. Some people might think that strategic independence is inherently preferable to depending on allies, but not me. I think Australia has benefited enormously from our alliances in the past, and I’m as eager as anyone to find allies we can depend on in the future.

In my book (for example, pages 139–146 and 293–296), I argue at length that we should look for allies wherever possible, and that in defending our strategic interests beyond our closest Pacific island neighbours we have no choice but to do so. Moreover, I argue that ensuring the military capacity to do that should be a significant factor in designing our forces.

So, I’m not saying that we don’t want allies. I’m saying that we can no longer assume that we will find them when we need them—either in America or in the region or both. In this post I’ll focus on America, and in a later one I’ll explore the prospects for regional alliances.

Those who say that we should continue to depend on America offer variants of three arguments. They say that America has always been committed to our alliance in the past, so it always will be in the future. They say that Washington’s growing determination to confront and contain China today makes the alliance stronger than ever. And they say that the deep bonds of history, values and sentiment ensure that the alliance will endure no matter what happens.

Let’s deal with the sentimental argument first. Such talk—‘100 years of mateship’ and all that—abounds whenever the alliance is discussed, but we should not be misled about its significance. History is very clear here. Real alliances—the ones that impose real costs and risks, which are the only ones that matter—only work when there’s a clear alignment of strategic objectives.

That’s because countries only commit themselves to alliances, and accept those costs and risks, to serve their own objectives, not their allies’. History, values and sentiment play well in AUSMIN press conferences, but when war looms, and alliances really matter, they count for very little.

America’s commitment to Australia’s security has always been a product of its wish to preserve its wider strategic position in East Asia and the Western Pacific. That remains true. We can continue to depend on America as long as America remains committed to preserving that position. The question is, how long will that be?

Those who are confident that it will be a long time point out that America has been the leading strategic power in East Asia for over a century, and has seen off many challengers before. But I argue that this time it’s different, because China’s size and wealth make it more formidable than any rival America has ever faced in Asia, or anywhere else.

That means in the long term it will probably cost America more to resist China’s challenge than it did to resist earlier challenges. The question, then, is whether those costs will outweigh the benefits to America of preserving its position in East Asia. If they do, its strategic commitment to the region, and hence to Australia’s security, will fade.

The optimists counter by saying that America has already answered that question. Since the release of the US national security strategy in December 2017, they say, Washington has loudly proclaimed its determination to confront and contain China’s challenge and preserve its leadership in East Asia.

But is it serious? The tough talkers in Washington have yet to articulate a strategy to wage and win their ‘new cold war’ with China, but they plainly assume, quite wrongly, that it will be relatively cheap and easy. That’s because they continue to underestimate China’s power and resolve, as they have done for so long.

As I argued in Without America, containing China will require Washington to convince Beijing that it is willing to fight a nuclear war to preserve its strategic position in Asia. This really will be a new cold war, and if the last cold war is any guide, winning it will demand a massive mobilisation of US public opinion behind the idea that preventing Chinese domination of East Asia is essential to the security of the US itself.

Whether that can be done depends a lot on whether the underlying strategic judgement is true. It would be true if, but only if, China had the potential to dominate the whole of Eurasia. And how likely is that, with India, Russia and Europe all committed to preventing it? Not likely enough, I believe, to convince Americans they need to bear the costs and risks of a new cold war with an adversary even more formidable than the Soviets.

And indeed many important Americans are already unconvinced, including, it seems Donald Trump. He seldom if ever talks of China as a strategic, rather than economic, rival, and has never committed himself to his own administration’s ‘new cold war’ rhetoric. And what of his Democrat rivals? Does anyone see the next Harry Truman there among Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders?

Of course, that may change. It’s possible that America under some future leaders will seriously commit itself to preserving its strategic position in our region, and hence ensure that the alliance with Australia remains strong. What would count as compelling evidence of that?

First, a clear and credible strategy to defeat China’s challenge. Second, a realistic assessment of how much that strategy will cost, and what risks it will entail, based on a sober estimate of China’s power and resolve in the decades ahead. And third, a robust demonstration that Americans at large are convinced that those costs and risks are worth bearing over many decades.

Unless and until we see that, we cannot be confident enough of America’s long-term strategic future in Asia to base our defence policy on the assumption that America will help defend us if we are threatened by a major Asian power. Which is why I believe we need to start thinking seriously about how to defend ourselves.

Although most eyes in Australia have been on Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s visit to Washington to meet with US President Donald Trump, it’s not the only game around. This week, thousands of dignitaries and diplomats will descend on midtown Manhattan for one of the biggest events on the diplomatic calendar—the United Nations General Assembly’s leaders’ week. The week in Turtle Bay is like diplomacy on steroids as the ‘UNGA games’ have delegations scrambling to set up last-minute ‘bilats’ and ‘pull-asides’ for visiting ministers while trying to keep on top of an ever-evolving agenda of side events throughout the day and night.

Later this week, Morrison will make his leaders’ week debut, delivering Australia’s national statement. You can expect his speech to echo familiar themes, along the lines of the one Foreign Minister Marise Payne delivered last year, which, like the statements of most countries, emphasised the importance of multilateralism, particularly in creating a system where ‘global differences are managed, and global challenges met, by agreed rules rather than by the exercise of power alone’. Morrison has flagged that he’ll raise two key issues to advance Australia’s interests for the visit: protection of the oceans and preventing terrorist use of the internet.

The focus on protecting the oceans will raise tricky questions for the prime minister. While not all work on ocean protection intersects directly with climate change, there’s an increasingly strong nexus between the two areas. Australia’s approach to climate change is likely to diminish its oceanic advocacy.

Climate change will be a focus of the week, with some 50 meetings expected on the issue, preceded by strikes around the world last Friday and a youth summit ahead of the UN secretary-general’s key event for the start of the week, a Climate Action Summit. However, Morrison and Trump won’t be attending the summit. Although the Australian government will be represented by Payne, the prime minister’s non-attendance, despite the fact that he’s already in the US, will be seen as reflecting the lack of priority attached to the issue by the government. This is likely to be of concern to our Pacific neighbours, many of whom were aggrieved by the outcome of the recent Pacific Islands Forum meeting in Tuvalu.

Nonetheless, it’s likely Morrison will seek to use his attendance as an opportunity to consolidate growing efforts to follow through on the ‘Pacific step-up’. Such engagement remains pertinent given the growing influence of external actors in the Pacific, most notably China. But China’s influence within the UN system is also likely to be an ongoing theme throughout the 74th session of the UN General Assembly.

China has taken an increasingly assertive approach to its engagement at the UN, seeking to incorporate language reflective of its views of the world. Things came to a head last week in the Security Council, when the US pushed back against China’s ongoing efforts to insert language on its Belt and Road Initiative into the mandate renewal for the UN Mission in Afghanistan (despite it previously making its way into the text). With Russia’s support, China put forward a second draft but ultimately acquiesced to the omission of a BRI reference, rather than vetoing the resolution. Despite this setback, China has had significant success in rallying the UN to support the initiative and ensuring that resolutions mention its value, in part due to an absence of US leadership in a range of forums.

Since Trump came to office, the US has withdrawn from the Human Rights Council, the Paris Accord and Arms Trade Treaty, cut off funding for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees, attempted to reverse gains on issues such as women, peace and security, and taken months to appoint an ambassador to replace Nikki Haley. Its ability to utilise the UN effectively has been diminished through a lack of consistency and coherence within the State Department, confusing traditionally like-minded countries such as the UK. It’s no surprise that China has seized the opportunity and sought to fill that vacuum in leadership.

Global cooperation and rising nationalism are issues of concern to the Europeans. France and Germany are intending to launch an ‘alliance of multilateralism’ to promote global cooperation this week. There are indications Australia may join, which would be a positive move. But pressure is clearly on the US. Australia’s 2017 foreign policy white paper stated clearly that ‘sustained US engagement in the international system, including the United Nations, remains fundamental to international stability and prosperity’.

Morrison should be commencing his multilateral advocacy while in Washington, using his one-on-one engagement with Trump as an opportunity not only to emphasise how Australia is contributing to the alliance, but also to stress the value of US leadership of and engagement with the United Nations, and in support of the rules-based global order. That includes speaking out on issues such as human rights.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has indicated that the US may seek to use this year’s forum to talk about human rights and China’s internment of Uyghurs. That would be a welcome move, although it will be quite rightly met with some scepticism given current US government policies on immigration. Australia might face similar criticism. With the exception of references to accountability in Syria and the ‘complex crisis’ in Myanmar, Australia was largely quiet on the issue of human rights abuses in its statement to the General Assembly last year, even though Payne referred to Australia’s current term on the Human Rights Council.

As the United Nations approaches its 75th anniversary next year, the Australian government should be giving serious thought to how it can work with allies and partners to encourage their strong engagement in shaping the multilateral system in a way that supports protections for human rights, addresses new challenges and commits to global cooperation. Morrison’s first national statement to the General Assembly should seize on that opportunity.

The planning guidance issued by the new US Marine Corps commandant, General David Berger, is unusually forward-leaning and well written by the standards of most military doctrine. It has received a positive reaction in the US and won over sceptics because its analysis is radical and persuasive.

The impact is likely to be felt in Australia, as a key US ally and host to a Marine Corps rotational presence. It could also usefully influence local debates on military strategy, joint force design and the changing nature of amphibious warfare.

The guidance includes innovative thinking about the manpower model that should be of universal interest to professional militaries. But the most consequential parts concern force design and war-fighting.

Berger ushers in a strategic mission shift, from the marines’ traditional power-projection role to a focus on maritime denial operations and support for the US Navy’s sea control functions. The core assumption underlying this major re-posturing is that America’s ‘ability to project power and influence … is increasingly challenged by long-range precision fires; expanding air, surface, and sub-surface threats; and the continued degradation of our amphibious and auxiliary ship readiness.’

That China, Russia and Iran loom large in this threat assessment is no surprise. But the inertia and complacency that have built up from years of US military operations in ‘permissive environments’ is hard to overstate. The planning guidance cuts through that.

With official statements of doctrine, impact is measured by both message and messenger. Few of the ideas are wholly original, but the guidance carries special weight because it bears the imprimatur of a service chief.

The US national defence strategy and national security strategy define strategy at the national level. But the planning guidance stands out as the most senior indication yet that the US military (or the Marine Corps at least) is belatedly adjusting to seismic shifts in the balance of power and technological change that have called time on US strategic primacy. This is not a radical document by the iconoclast standards of retired US Marine Corps Colonel T.X. Hammes. But as a fundamental shift in thinking, it marks a significant and long-overdue change of direction.

The guidance acknowledges that the status quo underpinning US forward-deployed forces is no longer tenable ‘as our forces currently lack the requisite capabilities to deter our adversaries and persist in a contested space to facilitate sea denial’. It argues for repurposing the marines to ‘create a mutually contested space’ by leveraging geographical ‘positional advantage’ and exploiting military technologies that give the edge to denial operations over classical power projection. The ability of adversaries to field long-range guided weapons that ‘threaten manoeuvre by traditional large-signature naval platforms’ is a two-way street that can be turned to the US’s advantage as a means to deny power projection to others and secure localised sea control.

Such a tectonic shift necessitates closer, back-to-basics integration with the US Navy. This aims to reverse the ‘anomaly’ of the past two decades when the Marine Corps served primarily as a land-based adjunct to the US Army in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

The guidance asks rhetorically what the navy needs from the marines.

‘First and foremost, we must be prepared to be employed as Fleet Marine Forces.’ This looks like a disjuncture from the marines’ recent operational experience, but in broader sweep, the corps is reverting to historical type, as an amphibious force designed to support fleet operations and naval campaigns.

While the guidance is global in scope, III Marine Expeditionary Force is identified as the ‘main focus of effort’ to maintain a ‘credible deterrent to adversary aggression in the Pacific’. This heightened emphasis on the Indo-Pacific is underscored by a ‘prioritized focus on China’s One Belt One Road initiative and Chinese malign activities in the East and South China Seas’. Leveraging the strategic advantages of ‘key maritime terrain’ lends itself most obviously to a Pacific geographical setting with regard to the first and second island chains. Maintaining a strategic focus on the Indo-Pacific Command area is easier said than done, but Berger has at least signalled his priorities clearly.

The most refreshing aspect of the guidance is its willingness to shed shibboleths in force design: ‘What served us well yesterday may not today.’ Berger has already jettisoned the Marine Corps’ longstanding, almost canonical attachment to a 38-ship requirement. In a nod to a more flexible, distributed and survivable force structure, he eschews fixed numbers and platform preferences and calls for ‘smaller more lethal and risk-worthy platforms’. He comes close to admitting that large, flat-topped amphibious ships are too vulnerable to risk in active conflict zones against major adversaries, such as China, however useful they remain in peacetime and low-intensity conflicts.

Like any strategy, the guidance depends partly on the Pentagon’s ability to fund it. Change of this kind cannot happen as long as political dysfunction rules the US defence budget. But implementation costs should not be prohibitively high, especially if the shift in thinking is accompanied by a diplomatic effort to enlist US allies as integral to the new strategy.

The guidance references the possible forward deployment of HIMARS batteries armed with long-range anti-ship missiles. The Marine Corps is already equipping itself for a maritime denial role, recently committing to buy Norway’s Naval Strike Missile. When the Pentagon deigns to buy foreign weapons, that usually indicates serious intent.

There’s every reason for the navy and its new chief of naval operations, Admiral Mike Gilday, to endorse a new mission set for the Marine Corps that actively supports sea control and subordinates the marines’ role in a maritime strategy. The effect on the US strategic position in the western Pacific could be restorative, and potentially transformational.

What are the implications for Australia and the ADF?

First, the guidance should underline the necessity of leveraging Australia’s surrounding geography to maximise the defensive advantages of archipelagic Southeast Asia and the Southwest Pacific, our own concentric island chains. The ADF could do a lot worse than to adhere to Berger’s injunction to ‘focus on exploiting positional advantage and defending key maritime terrain that enables persistent sea control and denial operations forward’. The same principles apply.

Second, Australia isn’t mentioned in the guidance, but its locational advantages in the kind of strategy outlined by Berger are obvious even though the marines’ current activities in the Northern Territory are training-based.

Third, even more than the marines, the ADF needs ‘risk-worthy platforms’. Too much capability is concentrated in too few platforms. While Berger refers specifically to the future amphibious portion of the US fleet, one line seems equally pertinent to the high-priced procurement habits of Australia’s navy and air force: ‘We must continue to seek the affordable and plentiful at the expense of the exquisite and few’.

Fourth, the fact that the Marine Corps is thinking in such bold terms about its future missions may persuade non-diehard Australian sceptics that amphibious warfare is not obsolete in high-intensity conflicts. Rather, it evolves. ‘Forced entry’ still has its place in amphibious warfare, just as storming the beach is a photogenic staple at exercises like Talisman Sabre. But the acme of amphibiosity is more about how to incorporate land, sea and air forces within an overall national maritime strategy.

There are obvious differences in scale and setting between the US Marine Corps and the ADF, but the intellectual framing of the guidance is sufficiently robust as to suggest a transposable model for closer integration of Australia’s army, navy and air force, as well as a realistic footing on which to base future joint operations and planning within the alliance.

The United States is rapidly restructuring its military presence in Asia and rethinking how it could fight a major conventional war in the area which the Pentagon has identified as the ‘single most consequential region for America’s future’.

This will have important strategic consequences for Australia.

The Indo-Pacific strategy report released this month in Washington DC alarmingly concedes that China, described as a ‘competitor’, is ‘likely to enjoy a local military advantage at the onset of conflict’ in East Asia.

The strategy makes it clear that rapid growth of Chinese military power is forcing wholesale changes to how America will base, move and fight its forces in Asia.

The strategy gives priority to the role of ‘allies and partners’ because they offer an ‘unparalleled advantage that no competitor or rival can match’.

The strategy aims to overcome American dependence on a handful of military bases in Japan, South Korea and Guam which are vulnerable to missile attack, in favour of a ‘more dynamic and distributed presence and access locations across the region’.

For the plan to work, the US will need to preposition military equipment in multiple locations, have access to a large number of ports and military-grade runways and be able to rapidly project combat forces with extended reach and hitting power.

According to the Pentagon, the strategy is designed ‘to create temporary windows of superiority across multiple domains’ where US and allied forces can ‘seize, retain, and exploit the initiative’.

The ‘rotational presence’ of up to a 2,500-strong US Marine task force in Darwin, along with longer duration and more sophisticated US Air Force training in Australia’s north, has become a model of the dispersed strategy America wants to pursue around the Indo-Pacific. These ‘Force Posture Initiatives’ are described as promoting ‘a combined capability to respond to crises and contingencies’.

Another intriguing reference in the strategy, yet to be explained in Australia, points to ‘investments in advanced missile defense systems interoperable with allied systems in Japan and Australia’.

This new strategy offers Australia opportunities and some risks depending on how intelligently we manage our interests with President Donald Trump and the Washington system.

What does the Indo-Pacific strategy report tell us about America’s role in the world? First, forget Trump’s tweets and the New York Times’ outrage; Washington is as capable as it has ever been of developing thoughtful policy ideas across multiple departments and agencies.

The first two years of Trump’s presidency, his administration has released a national security strategy and a national defense strategy that, along with this latest report, define a more coherent, sharply focused plan to promote American interests than we ever saw from Barack Obama’s administration.

As always with Trump, the challenge is to look beyond the theatre and the undeniably dysfunctional way he runs the White House. There’s a growing clarity around the central lines of Trump’s Asia policies that show he’s setting some clear directions.

Trump’s Asia doctrine comes down to this: keep China unsettled and off balance because that reduces its capacity for bad behaviour; keep pressuring North Korea by refusing to cut a deal with Kim Jong-un unless he really does denuclearise; support Japan and Australia as the two most consequential allies in the region; and, finally, sharpen America’s military posture in Asia, working with as many countries as possible to counter Chinese influence.

All told, that’s sensible and appropriate. Obama elegantly talked about Asian engagement but failed tests of policy resolve on the South China Sea and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. By contrast, Trump clumsily talks about his America First policy but is actually doing more to strengthen US interests in the region.

The president’s unpredictability means one can never be completely sure that the urge to cut a deal won’t overturn one or another policy objective, but that hasn’t happened yet and the ‘no deal’ from the Hanoi summit with Kim shows that Trump can be disciplined when he needs to be.

As Trump announced his intention last week to run for a second term of office, some Asian governments would have been wishing the president good luck. Most would choose crude but effective US engagement over a return to an Obama-style elegant distancing of American interests from the region’s sharpening security problems.

A second conclusion is that America has made its mind up about China. The US doesn’t want war but is not afraid of competition and will not take a backward step when it comes to protecting American interests.

That’s good for Australia because of the substantial overlap between America’s interests and ours. But, except for our defence organisation and intelligence agencies, Canberra is still unwilling to accept the reality that China is the most pressing strategic problem we face.

This gives rise to daily policy contortions as our foreign affairs team and others stick to 1990s-style rhetoric about how we have a ‘constructive relationship with China, founded on shared interests, mutual benefit and mutual respect’. The reality is different. Whatever the official soothing public utterances, the need is for a hard-headed assessment of how to deal with the risks presented by Beijing.

A final thought about America’s strategy for Asia is, simply, that the US is not giving up on the region. For most of my 30 years working on defence policy in Canberra, I have listened to many policy intellectuals forecast with relish the inevitable decline of the United States, usually as a result of the unstoppable rise of China.

Neither of those propositions is true now or likely to be so in the next couple of decades. We habitually overlook China’s many structural flaws and overstate America’s problems. It’s true that there’s an increasingly incompatible clash of strategic interests between the US and like-minded democracies on the one hand and China and revisionist authoritarian regimes on the other hand.

This is not a clash of civilisations—although Beijing would like to present it that way—but a clash of political systems. It’s hard to see how these divergent interests can be reconciled to a point where both sides agree that the rule of international laws and norms promotes the interests of all parties. As the US Indo-Pacific strategy starkly puts it: ‘Inter-state strategic competition, defined by geopolitical rivalry between free and repressive world order visions, is the primary concern for US national security.’

Australia’s fundamental strategic interests lie in doing what we can to reinforce America’s commitment to Asian security. Without that commitment Australia will be in a very lonely place, with a defence force that goes nowhere near protecting our strategic interests.

At the G20 meeting in Osaka next weekend, it’s likely that some of the most consequential discussions will be happening in bilateral marginal meetings. The agenda for the multilateral gathering of the world’s 20 largest economies is, at best, worthy, but it doesn’t address the competitive strategic forces that are reshaping Asia.

China’s President Xi Jinping is reported to have said in a phone call last Tuesday with President Trump that he was willing to talk about ‘the fundamental issues’ affecting China–US relations, but their planned bilateral meeting will not change much. The two countries are developing a more sharply competitive relationship that will draw in the rest of Asia, Australia and the Pacific islands.

Assuming Scott Morrison will have a bilateral meeting with Trump in Osaka, what should the prime minister be aiming to do with that encounter?

First, he should tell Trump that America’s Indo-Pacific strategy aligns perfectly with Australia’s independent decision to invest in a ‘Pacific step-up’—the Morrison government’s plan to regain Australian security leadership in partnership with the Pacific island states.

Second, Morrison should declare that the past seven years of enhanced cooperation with the Marine Corps and air forces in northern Australia have been a resounding success and it’s time for both countries to do more in the north as a major contribution to the confidence and stability of Southeast Asia.

It used to be the case that Australia was considered too far south to figure in the strategic balance of North Asia. That assumption will have to be revised in the context of an American plan that wants to disperse its forces in the face of increased Chinese military reach.

Morrison should privately note that the Indo-Pacific strategy plans to locate a new ‘Marine Air Ground Task Force’ of 5,000 marines in Guam. Wherever that group comes from, it shouldn’t be at the expense of the Marine Corps presence in northern Australia. Indeed, this would be the moment to suggest to Trump that Australia would welcome a larger US military presence, matched to our own increased efforts.

Australia could go further: with the Pacific step-up now in play, why not discuss an Australia and US shared approach to enhance security cooperation with Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Singapore which strengthens those countries’ independent defence capabilities?

Southeast Asia remains a central point of competition for influence between China and the developed democracies. If round one in that strategic game was the South China Sea, Beijing decisively won that competition by effectively annexing the region and building artificial islands, now with three well-defended airbases.

The Indo-Pacific strategy notes with concern ‘democratic backsliding in Cambodia’ and reports that ‘China is seeking to establish bases or a military presence on its [Cambodia’s] coast’. That development would fundamentally change the strategic balance in Southeast Asia, presenting risks for Vietnam and for Thailand, a formal US ally.

Australia, the US and indeed all the developed democracies must do what they can to reassure Southeast Asian countries that there are practical alternatives to turning to Beijing for funding and defence cooperation. Expanded defence and security cooperation between equals would be good for the region, be welcomed in Washington and promote a key Australian strategic interest.

In a more competitive strategic age, the advantage will go to countries that are able to think laterally and promote innovative ways to partner with their friends and neighbours. This is a time when our political leaders must show courage and imagination or risk losing our ability to shape strategic outcomes to our national security interest.

Discussions of burden-sharing among allies typically focus on the amount of money spent. Yet there is also an intellectual burden that needs to be distributed.

In April 2017, two relatively new leaders of global superpowers, US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, held a two-day summit to build relations and discuss taking action on US concerns about North Korea. Ninety minutes before the formal dinner, however, Trump was reviewing operational plans for a missile strike on Syria over its use of chemical weapons. The attack naturally overwhelmed the meeting and the press coverage. China didn’t get the peer recognition it sought and the US missed out on a firm commitment from Beijing to help with Pyongyang. Once again the urgent had crowded out the important.

For policymakers, this scene of being stretched in several directions at once must feel like an ordinary Tuesday. As Eliot Cohen has commented, ‘American decision-makers are generally at least as talented as their counterparts, and often better served by their staff. The problem lies in that they are overwhelmed by the need to direct military operations in different parts of the globe, using different means, and to different ends.’ This overloading, he argues, ‘makes the challenges of wielding hard power as daunting, from the intellectual point of view at least, as they have ever been’.

In the two years since Cohen wrote those words, the intellectual burden of America’s leadership has only grown. In 2018 it was reported that the US had special forces deployed to 149 countries worldwide (the UN recognises 193 countries, to put that in perspective). In 2019 and in an example close to Australia’s concerns, the US 2020 National Defense Authorization Act called for a significant expansion of the membership of the Indo-Pacific Maritime Security Initiative. As Blake Herzinger has noted, even if the initiative is well meant, the proposed changes both increase the difficulty of this group achieving its purpose, and replicate leadership and initiatives by India in South Asia and Australia in the Pacific. As US Senator Lindsey Graham, of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has lamented, ‘We don’t know exactly where we’re at in the world, militarily, and what we’re doing.’

This is where Australia, as a ‘mate’, needs to help share the burden. While officials and scholars have long trotted out the indulgent line that the US looks to Australia for insight and leadership in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific, that claim has far less substance than it ought. That’s partly because Australia itself hasn’t always understood these regions as well as it should, and partly because the US is so unwilling to allow anyone else to do what it can. In the 1940s with the ANZAC Agreement and 1980s with the ‘Defence of Australia’ policy, Washington tried to overrule and reduce Australian initiatives that were—at least in Canberra’s eyes—not only compatible with but directly supportive of US interests.

Where Australia has significant initiatives, such as our Pacific step-up, we should insist on the US working through both us and Pacific states. We need Trump and his team to be able to look to the Pacific and know that Australia and the region are handling it. We will surely need US resources and involvement, but American officials have to trust that their Australian counterparts can tell them when and how they need to get involved—and not ask for involvement that isn’t absolutely crucial. It’s about finding ways to relieve the US of the intellectual burden of yet another region to worry about, and giving opportunities for the US—even if it’s just for a few weeks or months at a time—to focus elsewhere, confident that Australia is keeping a close eye on the situation.

None of this is easy. It speaks to a very different kind of trusting relationship between countries than is normally possible. And yet, if all the rhetoric about mateship is to come through, then sometimes that burden really does need to be shared, and the smaller friend trusted to do as they pledge and watch the other’s back.

Lest this talk of cognition and Trump gives rise to mirth, this is not an extended subtweet of the president’s intelligence. Far from it. The same mental burden overwhelmed Barack Obama, and if a different president takes office in 2021, without significant change they too will be overwhelmed. As the world grows more complex, we should not automatically assume that electing the ‘best and brightest’ will save us (and technocratic leaders such as Obama and Hillary Clinton need to stop running on that mistaken promise).

The simple fact is the US covers too much territory and tries to do too many things for its system of government to handle. This is not merely a financial but also an intellectual burden. Unless the US and its allies find ways to alleviate this cognitive burden, the US will struggle to focus on its core strategic interests and help protect its allies.