Turbulence characterises the international political order in the second Trump administration. Ostensibly a reaction to US trade deficits, Trump applied a 10 per cent tariff to Australia even though the US runs a trade surplus with it.
There was an emotional quality to the reaction in Australia. What about all those wars of choice Australia has fought alongside the US? What happened to all that talk of mateship?
Here are some facts to accompany the pathos: despite the upheavals, the US economy remains as powerful and alluring to foreign investors as ever.
Soon after the tariffs were imposed in March and April 2025, Australian Super, Australia’s largest superannuation fund, said it would continue to invest more than half its A$367 billion in assets in the United States. Mark Delaney, its chief investment officer, informed the Financial Times that ‘strong productivity growth, strong profit growth and, by any measure, many of the best companies in the world’ made the United States ‘an attractive place to store capital’.
CONTAINING CHINA
Trump’s focus on China stems from a recognition that the global order must be restructured in US interests once again. What his tariffs seek to do economically, his military strategy aims to do geographically—contain China inside its semi-enclosed seas.
Taiwan, on the edge of mainland China’s continental shelf, is described by US policy planners as ‘a critical node within the first island chain…from the Japanese archipelago down to the Philippines and into the South China Sea…anchoring a network of US allies and partners’.
China cannot reach the western Pacific Ocean without going through the Miyako Strait north of Taiwan or the Luzon Strait south of Taiwan. Both are within range of US forces in Japan and the Philippines, respectively. The Trump administration wants the ability to coerce China in the event of a crisis. Australia’s foreign and defence policies are highly relevant to this objective. Trump’s rhetoric may be new, but his instincts are well within the mainstream of US strategic planning.
United States General Douglas MacArthur’s farewell speech to the US Congress in 1951 is remembered today for its conclusion (‘Old soldiers never die; they just fade away’). The most important part of that speech had to do with dominating the Pacific Ocean all the way to the Asian landmass:
We control it [the Pacific Ocean] to the shores of Asia by a chain of islands extending in an arc from the Aleutians to the Marianas held by us and our free allies. From this island chain we can dominate with sea and air power every Asiatic port from Vladivostok to Singapore and prevent any hostile movement into the Pacific.
He expressed an assumption that is usually unstated: ‘Dominating with sea and air power every Asiatic port from Vladivostok to Singapore’ is benign and defensive if the United States does the dominating: ‘Under such conditions’, he said, ‘the Pacific no longer represents menacing avenues of encroach for a prospective invader—it assumes instead the friendly aspect of a peaceful lake.’
Taiwan (Formosa) was critical to US dominance of the region: ‘under no circumstances must Formosa fall under Communist control’. He had previously described Taiwan as ‘an unsinkable aircraft carrier and submarine tender’. US strategy is to position its bases and forces as close to the edge of China as possible.
What would happen if China controlled Taiwan, just 160 kilometres from its coast? According to MacArthur, the US,8,000 kilomentres away, would be threatened: ‘Such an eventuality would at once threaten the freedom of the Philippines and the loss of Japan, and might well force our Western frontier back to the coasts of California, Oregon and Washington’.
To accept this pronouncement as an objective analysis of reality, one would have to accept that the United States feels secure only if it can ‘dominate with sea and air power every Asiatic port from Vladivostok to Singapore’.
Happily, Australian policy planners accept this view and share it, too. However, the word to use nowadays is not ‘domination’ but ‘deterrence’. ‘Deterrence’ has a non-ideological meaning, but it is often used as a euphemism for dominance.
If China claimed it was ‘deterring’ Australia by conducting non-stop surveillance and intelligence collection patrols just off the coast of Fremantle or Sydney, others would recognise ‘deterrence’ as a euphemism for ‘dominance’.
The same logic applies when Australia’s politicians claim they are ‘deterring’ China in waters very close to its coastline, oblivious to the consequences of the positions they advocate.
A FORWARD OPERATIONAL DEPLOYMENT OF THE US NAVY
The chatter about nuclear-powered submarines, which Australia plans to acquire under the AUKUS agreement, distracts from perhaps the most important force posture initiative of the United States in the Indo-Pacific—the creation of Submarine Rotation Force–West (SRF-W) at Garden Island, near Fremantle in Western Australia.
Australia has committed A$8 billion to upgrade the wharves, maintenance facilities, and logistics infrastructure. The spin doctors describe SRF-W as an ‘optimal pathway’ for AUKUS.
In fact, it is a forward operational deployment of the United States Navy, independent of AUKUS, not a downpayment on Australia getting its own Virginia-class submarines. In the public’s mind, the two are erroneously believed to be the same thing. The AUKUS boats may never arrive, but Submarine Rotation Force–West will remain as an operational forward deployment of the US Navy.
During the Pacific phase of World War II, about 170 Allied submarines were based in that location, with quick access to the Indian Ocean and the Malacca, Lombok and Sunda Straits in the archipelago to Australia’s north. They were able to destroy enemy shipping.
Submarine Rotation Force—West is a potential threat to China because it can interdict and undermine Chinese energy imports, which must pass through the chokepoint that is the Strait of Malacca after making the long transit across the Indian Ocean. Former president Hu Jintao called it the ‘Malacca dilemma’ because he recognised that China is vulnerable to having its energy flows choked off there.
The base in Western Australia will become one of the most valuable locations for the United States, supporting sustainment, maintenance, repair and mission planning. As Michael McCaul, the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in the US Congress, said, Australia is ‘a central base of operations from which to project power’.
Michael Pezzullo, an Australian strategic analyst and dismissed policy planner, acknowledged that deterrence is an euphemism. ‘We’re actually so hardwired, in some cases going back decades, into what euphemistically is called US deterrence’, he said.
He noted that US forces would not be coming to Australia at the start of a potential crisis with dummy rounds but with their assigned war load. Logically, that would likely include nuclear weapons. He called for a more open discussion with Australians about the implications. (Don’t hold your breath.)
DEMONSTRATING RELEVANCE—THE STRATEGIC LOGIC OF AUKUS
Australian policy planners know that Australia could become a target if key US assets are stationed here—but that is not their greatest concern. Rather, they strive to show their relevance to American policymakers precisely because they know how little Australia features in US thinking. AUKUS and the rest of the military build-up in Australia ensures that the United States pays greater attention to Australia in its own self-interest.
All this fits comfortably into the trajectory of Australian defence policy. The Royal Australian Navy did not try to develop a balanced force in the years after World War II. Instead, it focused on anti-submarine warfare to support US naval strategy.
Australia converted ‘Q’ Class destroyers to ‘Q’ Class anti-submarine frigates in the 1950s. It conducted comprehensive research on anti-submarine warfare technology, producing the Ikara ASW missile, the Mulloka sonar and the Barra sonobuoy. The aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne used Fairey Gannet and Grumman Tracker aircraft and Westland Wessex and Westland Sea King helicopters in the anti-submarine role.
The idea, then and now, was inter-operability—operating inside the strategy of a superpower by contributing a well-chosen, niche capability to augment the larger force.
There is nothing new about a system in which the imperial power provides global maritime supremacy, sub-imperial powers such as Australia contribute forces as needed, and the entire imperial system cooperates during a general war or a major international crisis.
This system used to be called Imperial Defence. As the Minister for Defence, Joseph Cook, told Parliament in 1909: ‘We must remember, first of all, that Australia is part of the Empire, and that within our means we must recognise both our Imperial and local responsibilities. The Empire floats upon its fleet. A strong fleet means a strong Empire, and therefore it is our duty to add to the fleet strength of the Empire’.
Cook could have been speaking about AUKUS in 2025, apart from the word ‘empire’, which has its own euphemism today—a ‘rules-based international order’.
Australia’s purchase of nuclear-powered submarines, along with many other aspects of its defence and foreign relations, is designed to show its relevance to upholding a US-led global order. ‘Deterrence’, not ‘dominance’, is more in line with contemporary public sentiments.
Nevertheless, from a military perspective, the idea is not new: put your bases on the edge of enemy territory and patrol as far forward as possible. The military purpose is recognisably MacArthur’s.
The public may support the goal of demonstrating Australia’s relevance to the US as it dominates from a distance—but that question has not been put to the public in a meaningful way.
The strategic logic of AUKUS is to demonstrate Australia’s relevance to the US goal of ‘dominance’. That logic is alive and well, and Trump, his tariffs and the resulting turbulence have not altered it one iota.
A version of this article first appeared in Arena Magazine.
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