Tag Archive for: Donald Trump

In a divided world, momentum behind negotiations grows

At a time of rising geopolitical tensions and deepening global fragmentation, the Ukraine war has proved particularly divisive. From the start, the battle lines were clearly drawn: Russia on one side, Ukraine and the West on the other, and much of the Global South hoping only for the conflict to end. Now, however, alignments are shifting. Whether this will advance efforts to resolve the conflict and strengthen global stability remains to be seen.

After more than three years, Europe—including the European Union, Britain and Norway—remains largely steadfast in its support of Ukraine. The largest armed conflict in its neighbourhood since World War II has deeply affected the European psyche, as it has challenged basic assumptions about continental security and revived the spectre of nuclear annihilation that loomed over Europe throughout the Cold War. The prevailing view has always been that a Russian victory—including a peace deal that ceded some Ukrainian territory to Russia—would amount to an existential threat.

The United States, however, has decided that it no longer wants to ‘pour billions of dollars’ into what Secretary of State Marco Rubio calls a ‘bloody stalemate, a meat-grinder-type war’. So, US President Donald Trump is seeking to negotiate a peace deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin. To press Ukraine to accept the concessions such an agreement will undoubtedly entail, the Trump administration suspended and later resumed military aid and intelligence support.

This is not about ending a ‘savage conflict’ for ‘the good of the world’, as Trump claims. While years of sanctions were supposed to drain Russia, economically and militarily, to America’s benefit, they bolstered an unholy Sino-Russian alliance against the West, while sustaining a conflict that kept US attention and resources in Europe. With his push for a peace deal in Ukraine, Trump is seeking to cut the US’s losses and shift its strategic focus and military resources toward the Indo-Pacific—the home of America’s real enemy: China.

As Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden recognised, only China has the resolve and capability to surpass the US as the foremost world power. Yet the US still has more than 100,000 troops stationed in Europe. That is why US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently warned that the US can ‘no longer tolerate’ an ‘imbalanced’ transatlantic relationship that ‘encourages dependency’. Europe must take ‘responsibility for its own security’, Hegseth said, so that the US can focus on ‘deterring war with China’.

The question is whether Europe is capable of managing its own security. The answer probably should be yes. As Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk recently pointed out, Europe does not lack economic strength. Nor does it lack people: there are ‘500 million Europeans begging 300 million Americans to defend them against 140 million Russians.’ What is missing is the EU’s belief that it is a global power. The result is a rudderless Europe.

When it comes to supporting Ukraine, Europe has another critical shortcoming. As NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has noted, Europe lacks the necessary military-industrial base to provide sufficient arms support to Ukraine. That is why some, including Rutte, want to make a deal with the US: you keep supplying Ukraine with weapons, and we will foot the bill. Unless the Trump administration accepts such an arrangement, the British-French plan to build a ‘coalition of the willing’ to do the heavy lifting on Ukrainian security will face powerful headwinds.

Meanwhile, the Global South is still struggling to cope with the Ukraine war’s economic fallout, especially sharply higher food and energy prices, which have had particularly devastating consequences for small and vulnerable developing countries with limited foreign reserves. Sri Lanka is a case in point. In the months that followed Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, skyrocketing global prices drained its reserves, leading to fuel, food, medicine and electricity shortages. The resulting economic meltdown pushed a frustrated population over the edge, triggering widespread protests that toppled a political dynasty.

This explains why developing countries remain largely unified in advocating an early negotiated end to the war, even if that means leaving a sizable chunk of Ukrainian territory under Russian occupation. If anything, calls for a peace agreement have grown since 2023, with even NATO member Turkey and close US ally Israel charting more independent stances on the conflict. It does not help that, for many countries in the Global South, the West’s contrasting responses to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza reek of hypocrisy.

For now, Ukraine and Europe remain committed to seeking peace through strength. But as admirable as Ukraine’s resistance has been, and as important as it is to defend the international legal principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity that Russia has flagrantly violated, the fact is that the conflict has reached a stalemate, while the international fallout continues to grow. Rather than repeat the mistakes of the 1950-53 Korean War—in which an armistice agreement was reached only after two years of military deadlock—all parties should adopt a realistic approach to ending the war and negotiate accordingly.

The US dividing Russia from China? Forget about it

The Trump administration’s effort to divide Russia from China is doomed to fail. This means that the United States is destroying security relationships based on a delusion.

To succeed, Russia would need to overcome more than a century of hostility and distrust. Both Russia and the US would have to reorient their relationships with allies and adversaries; and the US would need to replace China’s economic support to Russia. Russia would also have to be sure that the US would fully abandon its commitment to democracy and human rights for the long term. None of this will happen.

Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, Keith Kellogg, said at the Munich Security Conference on 15 February that the US would try to break Putin’s alliances, including those with China, Iran and North Korea.

Just nine days later Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping explicitly reaffirmed their ‘no-limits partnership’. That should have come as no surprise: the new US policy does nothing to change the reasons underlying Moscow’s political alignment with Beijing.

These reasons include: a shared commitment to autocracy and opposition to democracy; more than a century of distrust and conflict with the US; historical commitments to partners such as North Korea, Iran and Cuba; and Russia’s economic dependence on China.

Most significantly, the bond between Russia and China is firmly rooted in a shared fear of the US and a mutual commitment to autocracy. Putin will never trade China for the US as long as the latter remains a law-governed, multi-party democracy. One could argue that the Trump administration’s authoritarian tendencies change this calculation, but for Putin, Xi’s dedication to despotism is a much safer bet than a full and long-term collapse of US democracy.

Similarly, Putin cannot safely trust that the US’s new pro-Russia turn will endure. This administration appears inclined to set aside Russia’s campaigns of assassination, espionage, cyber-attacks, economic sabotage, nuclear sabre rattling, hostage taking and information operations against the US. But this new pro-Russia policy is not guaranteed to continue under future administrations or even survive this one’s full term.

On the other side, few Russians have a positive view of the US. Indeed, Russians’ antipathy to the US is entrenched and persistent. Indeed, except for a brief honeymoon in the 1990s, US-Russian (and US-Soviet) relations have been characterised almost entirely by suspicion, tension and conflict, even including when they were (reluctant) allies during two world wars.

In addition, for the US to pull Russia away from China, either Putin or Donald Trump would have to agree to abandon multiple foreign commitments in which both have invested personal and domestic political capital.

It is difficult to imagine that Putin would give up his political support for Kim Jong-un, given that North Korea is providing both troops and supplies for Putin’s war against Ukraine. Putin is far less dependent on Iran, but it is not likely that he would back President Trump’s maximum pressure campaign against the Islamic Republic.

It is equally improbable that the US would soften its hostility to Russia’s ally, Cuba, since Trump immediately reversed the Biden administration’s slightly more moderate policies. Putin, especially, is unlikely to abandon long standing relationships and policies based on a new, uncertain US-Russian friendship.

Finally, economics offers the most immediate basis for Russia’s preference for China over the US. China funds Russia. China is a net energy importer; Russia is an energy exporter. China bought $237 billion worth of Russian goods in 2024, almost all of it gas, oil and coal.

By contrast, US-Russia trade was $3.5 billion in the same period, not even 1.5 percent the value of China-Russia trade. The economies of Russia and China are complementary; the economies of the US and Russia barely touch at all. The US cannot and will not replace China as Russia’s best energy customer, and Russia has nowhere else to turn. Europe will not make up that difference, and Russia’s unbalanced economy depends on hydrocarbon exports.

The US’s about-face on Ukraine was a gift Russia happily accepted, but it is not enough to divide Russia from China. Playing Russia and China against each other seems tempting to those who recall Richard Nixon’s overture to China in 1972, but historical analogies are superficial and in 2025, Russia’s interests lay clearly in alliance with China.

Trump’s speech to Congress: America First in trade and alliances

In what might have been the longest presidential address to Congress in American history—an hour and forty minutes without intermission—President Donald Trump delivered a performance on Tuesday night that was simultaneously grandiose, confrontational, optimistic and revealing of the direction in which he intended to take his administration and his country.

It also received high marks from nearly seven in 10 Americans who watched it.

For Australian observers, the annual address, as expected at such spectacles, offered few specifics but did provide insights into how the United States’ role in the world is evolving. It’s a transformation with implications for the Indo-Pacific and allies’ strategic calculations.

Electoral politics is theatrical by nature, but Trump has elevated the art well beyond the standards of the campaign season and his first term in office. His address to Congress displayed all the elements of classic political theatre: the heroes (Trump himself, and the various ‘everyday Americans’ whose stories he highlighted), the villains (the Democratic opposition, sitting glumly throughout), and the dramatic narrative arc of national redemption

‘America is back,’ Trump declared in the opening moments, setting the tone for what would be a celebration of his administration’s accomplishments and a vision of US restoration.

The president’s embrace of tariffs signals a fundamental shift in American economic policy that will reverberate throughout global supply chains.

‘On April 2nd reciprocal tariffs kick in,’ Trump announced, explaining his philosophy: ‘whatever they tariff us, other countries, we will tariff them.’ This principle of reciprocity was framed not as protectionism but as fairness. ‘We will take in trillions and trillions of dollars and create jobs like we have never seen before,’ he added.

Trump’s economic vision represents a rejection of the post-Cold War neoliberal consensus that has dominated Western economic thinking. In its place stands a muscular economic nationalism that prioritises American manufacturing, energy production and job creation above abstract principles of free trade. Australia, with its robust trade relationships with both the US and China, will need to navigate carefully across this evolving landscape.

The president’s emphasis on US energy dominance further underscores this nationalist approach. By declaring a ‘national energy emergency’ and authorising expanded fossil fuel production as part of an all-energy policy, Trump is signaling a reversal of policies that is sure to rile many Americans and Australians.

Perhaps most consequential for Australia’s strategic position was Trump’s articulation of his foreign policy vision, which represents a break from both Republican neocons and Democratic liberal interventionism.

His approach blends two different veins of American foreign policy thinking identified by Walter Russell Mead. The president taps Hamiltonian elements, such as economic strength as power, national security linked to economic strength, and alliances between government and business. He talks about making the world safe for American business.

Trump also exhibits a Jacksonian streak—sceptical of foreign entanglements, preferring a restrained military but willing to exercise overwhelming force when US interests are directly threatened, and insisting on putting America—and rank-and-file Americans—first.

On Ukraine, Trump revealed he had received a letter from President Zelenskyy stating that ‘Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer.’ This announcement, coupled with Trump’s assertion that he had also had ‘serious discussion with Russia,’ simply repeated his determination to end the conflict rapidly.

‘It’s time to stop this madness,’ Trump declared. ‘It’s time to halt the killing. It’s time to end this senseless war.’ For Australia, which has supported Ukraine diplomatically and materially, this pivot represents a challenge. Canberra can get on the peace train now or decline to align with its chief security provider with the hopes that Trump won’t see Australia as an obstacle to ending the fighting and that prolonging the war may, perhaps, result in some future better outcome for Kiev.

Similarly, Trump’s approach to the Middle East suggests a willingness to allow Israel greater freedom of action while the US simultaneously works to end the conflict in Gaza. ‘Iran, of course, is at the nexus of Middle Eastern tensions,’ Trump said, suggesting a harder line against Tehran than his predecessor’s administration.

The president’s announcements regarding the Panama Canal (‘We are taking it back’) and Greenland (‘We need Greenland for national security’) are classic Trumpian figurative language but also reveal his policy of hemispheric prioritisation.

Perhaps most striking was the evidence of how Trump has transformed the Republican Party. His speech revealed a party no longer defined by free-market orthodoxy, limited government and interventionist foreign policy but instead by economic nationalism, cultural conservatism and a focus on working-class interests. Trump concluded his speech thus: ‘Every single day we will stand up and we will fight, fight, fight for the country our citizens believe in and for the country our people deserve.’

‘The Republican Party is now the party of peace,’ Trump declared, cementing his break with Republican primacists—those who are committed to US global dominance. His criticism of endless wars, coupled with his emphasis on border security and economic protectionism, represents realignment of American politics with Pacific implications. The US, after all, is a Pacific power and, among many things, a Pacific island state.

Trump’s address is just another signal of shifts that Australians have seen coming. First, his emphasis on America First economic policies suggests potential trade tensions, even with allies. Australia’s export economy may suffer from reciprocal tariffs and Trump’s focus on American manufacturing.

Second, Trump’s scepticism of legacy alliances and international institutions—whose value and utility he measures against contemporary US interests—may create uncertainty in the regional security architecture that Australia has relied on. While Trump did not specifically or directly address the Indo-Pacific or China in this speech, his America First theme should remind Australia to demonstrate its value to the alliance more explicitly.

Finally, Trump’s populist realignment of US politics mirrors a broader shift in Western democracies that may yet influence Australian politics. The success of his economic- nationalist and cultural messaging offers a template for Australian politicians.

Australians, watching this political theatre from afar, would do well to remember that this is also reality. Structural demands for change in the global order will remain on stage long after the applause for Trump fades.

A loss in Europe is a loss in the Indo-Pacific

The United States shocked the world last week with President Donald Trump’s very public rift with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. This was followed by a US pause on military aid and some intelligence sharing with Ukraine, all intended to push Ukraine to agree to a ceasefire on terms favourable to Russia. But Russia’s interests are also China’s. A bad peace in Europe may mean more bad behaviour in the Indo-Pacific.

Trump campaigned for the presidency in part on a commitment to end Russia’s war on Ukraine, without regard for who is the aggressor and who is the victim. He seems to want a legacy as the president who ended wars, contrasting with his predecessors, both Republican and Democrat. The overall direction of US foreign policy is now being shaped to fit within these constraints.

This has empowered voices within the Republican Party who see China, not Russia, as the pacing threat of our time. Key figures in the administration, such as nominee for Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby, have for several years pushed the idea that to meet the threat posed by China, the US must direct resources away from Europe and the Middle East and towards the Indo-Pacific. That position has been widely, though not universally, adopted within the Republican Party.

There is certainly bipartisan agreement in the US that East Asia is now the key theatre for US grand strategy, and that China’s global ambitions and growing military prowess pose a pacing threat to the US and its democratic allies and partners.

In his Senate confirmation hearing this week, Colby said the US must focus on ‘denying China regional hegemony’ and that it ‘would be a disaster for American interests’ if Taiwan were to fall to China. But US aid to Ukraine and Israel has delayed arms shipments to Taiwan, and Colby has said the US simply doesn’t have the capacity to support conflicts in three regions. By his logic, and perhaps now that of the White House, the US must remove its support for Ukraine so it can concentrate its resources against China and in support of Taiwan.

But the reality is that the European and Indo-Pacific fronts are intricately linked as long as Russia and China support each other and their interests are aligned. Countering one adversary will require addressing the influence of the other.

The two countries declared a no-limits partnership just days before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Chinese President Xi Jinping reaffirmed that partnership last month on the three-year anniversary of the war. The partnership has been material and substantial: China has provided assistance to Russia’s war machine, geospatial intelligence for its military, markets for its natural resources and sanctioned companies, and backing at the United Nations.

Russia, meanwhile, is strengthening military cooperation with China, including in the Indo-Pacific. In 2024, the US intercepted Chinese and Russian bombers flying for the first time together near Alaska, and Russia joined China in military exercises in the Sea of Japan.

Both countries echo each other’s propaganda, and their massive media and covert disinformation apparatuses amplify each other’s messaging.

Why would China dedicate its resources and risk its reputation in Europe to support Russia in Ukraine if leaders in Beijing did not believe that a Russian win in Ukraine was vital to Chinese interests? Indeed, a Russian victory would be an immense victory for China as well. It would shatter the image of a strong and unified west, show NATO to be a paper tiger and sow doubt throughout the world about the value of US security guarantees. These are all goals that Beijing has pursued for decades, and that are key to the revisionist world order Beijing hopes to craft.

A Russian win in Ukraine, moreover, would create a clear precedent for one of Xi’s most important goals—taking Taiwan. That’s why the Taiwanese government, which has more to lose than anyone else in the Indo-Pacific region, has for three years loudly cheered US support for Ukraine. If Colby’s argument were correct—that is, if US military support for Ukraine ran counter to Taiwan’s interests—Taiwan would now be rejoicing. Instead, Taipei is filled with trepidation.

If the war in Ukraine ends on terms favourable to Russia, both China and Russia will be free to concentrate more of their joint efforts in the Indo-Pacific. Instead of a cautious China and a distracted Russia in the eastern theatre, the US will have to deal with an emboldened China and a vindicated Russia—even as US allies and partners in the region view the US with newfound skepticism. If the US at some point calls on Europe for assistance in East Asia, few would expect them to heed that call.

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.

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.

Trump’s challenge to international order

US President Donald Trump has cast serious doubts on the future of the postwar international order. In recent speeches and UN votes, his administration has sided with Russia, an aggressor that launched a war of conquest against its peaceful neighbour, Ukraine. His tariff threats have raised questions about longstanding alliances and the future of the global trading system, and his withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement and the World Health Organization has undercut cooperation on transnational threats.

The prospect of a wholly disengaged, self-focused United States has troubling implications for world order. It is easy to imagine Russia taking advantage of the situation to try to dominate Europe through the exercise or threat of force. Europe will have to show greater unity and provide for its own defence, even if a US backstop will remain important. Likewise, it is easy to imagine China asserting itself more in Asia, where it openly seeks dominance over its neighbours. Those neighbours will surely have taken note.

In fact, all countries will be affected, because the relationships among states and other major transnational actors are interconnected. An international order rests on a stable distribution of power among states; norms that influence and legitimise conduct; and shared institutions. A given international order can evolve incrementally without leading to a clear paradigm shift. But if the preeminent power’s domestic politics change too radically, all bets are off.

Since relations among states naturally vary over time, order is a matter of degree. Before the modern state system, order was often imposed by force and conquest, taking the form of regional empires such as China and Rome (among many others). Variations in war and peace between powerful empires were more an issue of geography than of norms and institutions. Because they were contiguous, Rome and Parthia (the area around modern-day Iran) sometimes fought, whereas Rome, China and the Mesoamerican empires did not.

Empires themselves depended on both hard and soft power. China was held together by strong common norms, highly developed political institutions and mutual economic benefit. So was Rome, especially the Republic. Post-Roman Europe had institutions and norms in the form of the papacy and dynastic monarchies, which meant that territories often changed governance through marriage and family alliances, regardless of the subject people’s wishes. Wars were often motivated by dynastic considerations, though the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries brought wars born of religious fervour and geopolitical ambition, owing to the rise of Protestantism, divisions within the Roman Catholic Church and increased inter-state competition.

At the end of the 18th century, the French Revolution disrupted the monarchical norms and the traditional restraints that had long sustained the European balance of power. Although Napoleon’s pursuit of empire ultimately failed after his retreat from Moscow, his armies swept away many territorial boundaries and created new states, leading to the first deliberate efforts to create a modern state system, at the 1815 Congress of Vienna.

The post-Vienna Concert of Europe suffered a series of disruptions over the following decades, most notably in 1848, when nationalist revolutions swept the continent. Following these upheavals, Otto von Bismarck launched various wars to unite Germany, which assumed a powerful central position in the region, reflected in the 1878 Congress of Berlin. Through his alliance with Russia, Bismarck produced a stable order until the Kaiser fired him in 1890.

Then came World War I, which was followed by the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations, whose failure set the stage for World War II. The subsequent creation of the United Nations and the Bretton Woods institutions (the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the precursor to the World Trade Organization) marked the most important institution-building episode of the twentieth century. Since the US was the dominant player, the post-1945 era became known as the ‘American century’. The end of the Cold War in 1991 then produced a unipolar distribution of power, allowing for the creation or strengthening of institutions such as the WTO, the International Criminal Court and the Paris climate agreement.

Even before Trump, some analysts believed that this US order was coming to an end. The 21st century had brought another shift in the distribution of power, usually described as the rise (or more accurately, the recovery) of Asia. While Asia had accounted for the largest share of the world economy in 1800, it fell behind after the Industrial Revolution in the West. And like other regions, it suffered from the new imperialism that Western military and communications technologies had made possible.

Now, Asia is returning to its status as the leading source of global economic output. But its recent gains have come more at the expense of Europe than the US. Rather than declining, the US still represents one-quarter of global GDP, as it did in the 1970s. While China has shrunk the US lead substantially, it has not surpassed the US economically, militarily, or in terms of its alliances.

If the international order is eroding, the US’s domestic politics are as much of a cause as China’s rise. The question is whether we are entering a totally new period of US decline, or whether the second Trump administration’s attacks on the American century’s institutions and alliances will prove to be another cyclical dip. We may not know until 2029.

To avoid a Ukraine-style quid pro quo, Australia needs to work with the US on critical minerals

With Donald Trump back in the White House, Washington is operating under a hard-nosed, transactional framework in which immediate returns rather than shared values measure alliances. For Australia, this signals a need to rethink its approach to the US relationship.

A key step would be to work with the United States in the extraction and processing of Australian critical minerals. By partnering with the US in this area, and freeing both countries from reliance on China, Australia can solidify its alliance position. It can raise itself further above the level of Ukraine, whose vast reserves of critical minerals (including rare earth elements) have become a mere bargaining chip in negotiations with Washington.

Trump’s objective with Ukraine—a minerals-for-security quid pro quo—is emblematic of the new US foreign policy doctrine, in which assistance is granted not on principle but in return for something tangible. Since Australia is a top-four global producer of rare-earth elements, with reserves critical to US defence and technology industries, a question arises: could Trump demand a similar deal from Australia?

Australia should not wait for the request to come but rather put forward a strategy, or series of proposals with the US and other partners such as Japan, that are in the interests of itself and global security.

Unlike Ukraine, which seeks military aid to fight an immediate existential threat, Australia has an alliance with the US that is still based on the shared strategic interest of regional stability and deterrence of aggression. Articles III and IV of the ANZUS Treaty oblige the parties to ‘act’ in response to threats against the other, but interpretation of that has always been uncertain.

Under Trump’s America First doctrine, coming to Australia’s aid could be accompanied by a compensating demand for greater access to Australia’s rare earth elements, lithium, cobalt and titanium.

Unlike Ukraine, however, Australia is not merely a resource supplier. As a regional power with strategic assets of immense military value to the US, it has a far stronger bargaining position.

Trump’s approach to alliances is brutally simple: nations must prove their worth in tangible, immediate terms. This is where Australia has an advantage. Beyond critical minerals, it provides the US with something far more valuable: strategic positioning and intelligence infrastructure. Robertson Barracks in Darwin hosts rotational US Marine deployments, bolstering US force posture in the Indo-Pacific without the cost or political sensitivity of permanent basing. Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap is essential to US intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, providing real-time missile warning and electronic signals intelligence that the US cannot easily replicate elsewhere. Harold E Holt Naval Communications Station is one of the US’s primary links to its submarines, securing its undersea deterrence in the Indo-Pacific. Northwest Cape and Cocos Islands radar installations are vital to US Space Command, tracking adversary satellites and space debris amid China’s expanding orbital footprint.

If Trump sees Ukraine’s rare earths as leverage, Australia must ensure that its strategic assets are recognised as even more valuable. The risk lies in failing to assert this before any transactional demands are made.

Australia cannot afford to passively assume alliance obligations will hold under a leader who views diplomacy as a business process. Instead, Canberra must shape the terms of engagement, reinforcing why its role in the Indo-Pacific delivers more long-term value to the US than simple access to its minerals. This requires a more assertive, transactional approach that speaks Trump’s language of hard bargains while safeguarding Australia’s sovereignty.

Australia should pursue a strategic critical minerals agreement with the US that reduces both nations’ dependence on China’s dominance of rare earth supply chains and processing. A deal that prioritises joint investment in refining and manufacturing capacity, rather than just raw material supply, will strengthen sovereign capabilities, enhance supply chain resilience, and ensure long-term security for both economies.

This type of practical initiative would complement Canberra’s framing of the alliance as one of true partners, with emphasis on joint military infrastructure, intelligence cooperation and Indo-Pacific stability as assets of equal value worthy of security guarantees. Strengthening leverage before negotiations are forced to start by some third-party action is essential to ensuring the US recognises that Australia’s strategic geography, intelligence facilities and force integration are irreplaceable advantages.

Expanding resource partnerships with like-minded nations such as Japan and EU members will reduce dependency on any single power’s economic coercion tactics. Pre-emptively signalling non-negotiable red lines will reinforce that while Australia is willing to cooperate, access to sovereign resources cannot be dictated under duress.

For the US, Ukraine’s rare earths are a short-term geopolitical play. In contrast, Australia’s strategic positioning and alliance role are long-term necessities. As the Indo-Pacific becomes the central theatre for global competition, the US needs Pine Gap, RAAF Tindal, HMAS Stirling and Robertson Barracks. The difference between Ukraine and Australia lies not just in geography but in bargaining power. In Trump’s transactional world, Australia must ensure it negotiates from a position of strength, not subservience.