Australia caught in the fool-based international order

With the Trump Administration causing global chaos and disrespecting allies, surely the time is right to rethink our allegiance to the U.S., writes Mark Beeson.

ONE OF THE MOST influential ideas shaping and legitimating Australian foreign policy is that it is helping to preserve the “rules-based international order”. According to Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong, we do this by helping the United States maintain its strategic presence in the Indo-Pacific and because ‘we have deep cultural, social, economic and political links that reflect profound alignment around fundamental values’.

Even if this was true when Minister Wong spoke in 2018 during U.S. President Donald Trump’s first term, it certainly isn’t now. This time around, Trump has a plan and is surrounded by a coterie of advisers and flunkeys who are determined to help him enact it. As the tariffs imposed on Australia demonstrate, being a longstanding ally does not guarantee favourable treatment or respect.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is right about one thing, though — they are “not the act of a friend”.

Perhaps Wong can be forgiven for her earlier remarks because, during Trump 1.0, the “adults in the room” were supposedly keeping some of the President’s wilder and potentially illegal impulses under control. This time around, not only is Trump a convicted felon with absolutely no respect for the law, but his carefully chosen appointees are helping him fulfil an agenda that a growing number of commentators think is rapidly turning the United States into an authoritarian regime.

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Given that many of the people surrounding Trump are startlingly unqualified and chosen primarily for their loyalty, there is a good chance that some of his more improbable flights of fancy – invading Greenland, annexing Canada, turning Gaza into one of the world’s premier tourist destinations – will come to nothing.

The scandal surrounding the leaked plans to bomb Yemen, accidentally distributed to a journalist by national security adviser Mike Waltz, is but the latest example of remarkable incompetence at the highest levels, to say nothing of the complete contempt the Trump Administration seems to have for key allies in Europe.

Either way, we might hope and expect that other members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance are reconsidering sharing sensitive information with an American administration that plainly cannot be trusted not to share it intentionally or accidentally with unfriendly states. But perhaps there’s no need in Russia’s case as Steve Witkoff, an ex-real estate dealer like his boss, thinks that Russian President Vladimir Putin isn’t a bad guy.

For all the faults of America’s so-called foreign policy-making “Blob”, which regards the U.S. as having a unique capacity and even a historical obligation to underpin the international system, at least they knew something about international relations. Indeed, America’s role in the aftermath of World War 2 was instrumental in bringing peace and prosperity to some parts of the world, at least. The trade war that Trump has unleashed is the exact opposite of the world that American liberals claimed to be preserving.

But we also need to acknowledge that even under recent presidents who were more informed and intellectually competent than Trump – were there any who weren’t? – America only followed the rules and principles of the liberal order when it suited it. The U.S. invaded other countries and/or undermined their governments whenever it wished to and didn’t join key international institutions like the International Court of Justice or sign treaties such as the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Even China is in UNCLOS.

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Given this chequered record and the people who are currently running the country at the moment, the big question about the current administration is whether it actually understands the benefits that have accrued to the U.S. as a result of its “hegemonic” influence.

Hegemony is a word that’s almost never uttered in American policy circles, even among the Blob’s more seasoned officials. The idea that the U.S. might have created an economic and security order primarily designed to serve its own interests is unthinkable; just as it is in Australia, in fact.

Indeed, Australia is arguably the quintessential example of American hegemony at work: policymaking elites in Australia have bought into the idea that their ideals and principles are the same as ours, and whatever the U.S. does as a consequence must be right and worthy of our support — no matter what the cost in blood, treasure, opportunities foregone, or who is in the White House.

While this may have been partly understandable given Australia’s unique history and the concomitant congenital anxiety of policymaking elites since independence, it’s surely past time for a rethink. There really is absolutely no guarantee that the U.S. will come to our aid in the highly unlikely event that we ever needed to claim on the insurance policy we’ve been dutifully paying for since the Second World War.

This may not mean imposing reciprocal tariffs in response to Trump’s economic vandalism and petulance, or even signing up China as our next ‘great and powerful friend’. But it really ought to involve having a serious discussion about what the “national interest” actually looks like at a time when the United States can no longer be relied upon as an economic partner, much less the strategic variety. All of which begs the question: who is the biggest fool?

Mark Beeson is an adjunct professor at the University of Technology Sydney and Griffith University. He was previously Professor of International Politics at the University of Western Australia.