The Reckoning Is Here

We were warned that this day was coming. We, like the Europeans, just hoped it wouldn't. My new piece on the implications for Pacific security of last week's geopolitical earthquake in Europe.

Image: Sydney Morning Herald

As I watched with growing unease the statements by Trump, Vance, Hegseth and Kellogg last week, it became clear that the political earthquake that hit Europe last week would also have aftershocks across Asia. In this piece, I conduct an initial assessment of the key impacts of the new Trump Doctrine for working with allies and authoritarian regimes, and the implications for Australia.

This piece was published yesterday by the Sydney Morning Herald.

It has been a fascinating and disconcerting week for observers of the war in Ukraine. Comments by Donald Trump apparently left open the way for Russia to absorb Ukraine or, at a minimum, accepting a Russian sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. His phone call to Vladimir Putin conceded all of the Russian president’s key demands before negotiations start in Saudi Arabia. It appears Trump may repeat his disastrous Afghanistan agreement by leaving Ukraine and Europe out of key negotiations.

Not long afterwards, Trump’s defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, issued stern statements about the US no longer being a guarantee for European security and that, even though Europe may be left out of negotiations, it would need to deploy troops as peacekeepers to Ukraine. Vice President J. D. Vance – while lecturing Europe on Friday that its greatest threat was from within rather than from Russia or China – has left open the possibility of more aid to Ukraine, including US troops, if Russia does not offer concessions.

Trump floated the idea of cutting a deal with China and Russia under which they and the US would all slice their defence budgets in half.

Add to all of this the fact that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned it was time to create an “armed forces of Europe”because the US may no longer be counted on to support the continent.

There have been many interpretations of the behaviour of the new US administration in Europe and America. Perhaps the best description might be offered by Vladimir Lenin, who is reputed to have stated: “There are decades where nothing happens and then there are weeks when decades happen.”

This shift has been described by the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal as peace through weakness. In an era in which aggressive, technologically advanced and industrialised authoritarians believe the time has come to reorder the international system, Trump’s retreat from the world will only provoke and embolden dictators like Putin and Xi Jinping.

The political shock-and-awe campaign launched by Trump on his inauguration day has extended to European security. It will almost certainly drift to the Indo-Pacific, too. The sentiments that underlie the new American view of its role in the world will have major ramifications for the future security of Australia.

The security environment in the Pacific region, described in the government’s National Defence Strategy as the most complex and challenging since World War II, is even more perilous because of the events of the past week. In accepting Ukraine might eventually return to Russia, Trump is implicitly accepting China’s claims on Taiwan.

In delivering mixed messages on Ukraine negotiations, he is building the environment for misunderstanding and gross strategic miscalculations by China and others in our region. The decreasing trust that US allies have in America means Putin and Xi have more gaps between America and its friends to exploit.

For Australia, the last massive transformation in our security outlook occurred after the fall of Singapore. It was the final nail in the coffin for the imperial defence strategy. We may be on the verge of another once-in-a-century security realignment. Our longstanding American ally, under Trump, threatens to reward the shared sacrifice of our soldiers throughout the 20th and 21st centuries with punitive tariffs on Australian exports. America might be too preoccupied elsewhere or too focused on competing strategic interests to help Australia in a future conflict. What does this mean?

You can read the full article here at this link.

Acknowledgements:

Thank you to my friend Eliot Cohen who pointed out the 2011 quote by Robert Gates in a recent article for The Atlantic.

Thank you Eli Hurley for pointing the way to the internet archive.