Albanese is ignoring Trump’s demands – it will change our place in the world

When the world changes, it’s folly not to change with it.

Finding itself in an external environment that is in many respects full of shocks, the Albanese government is staking out a more independent – or at the very least, a less America-dependent – security and diplomatic stance for Australia.

As is its way, rather than galloping in this direction, the government is crab-walking. Anthony Albanese goes out of his way not to make a big deal of it and never wants to look like he’s undermining Donald Trump. He continues to send the hefty cheques to America to keep AUKUS alive and has said several times this week that Trump is an enduring “advocate for peace in the Middle East”, which is what the US president likes to hear. But the signs of the shift are mounting.

The AUKUS agreement was conceived chiefly to thwart China’s territorial and defence ambitions in our larger region. Knowing that the future of AUKUS is being reconsidered by the Trump administration and that Trump is capricious and often punitive in the way he applies tariffs against those who don’t dance to his tune, Australia under Albanese is nevertheless steadfastly building on a more accommodating approach towards China. The prime minister’s reasoning is simple: China underpins our economy and it pays not to overtly antagonise it. Meanwhile, America remains fixated on viewing China as its great economic competitor and geopolitical rival.

Albanese’s point-blank rejection of a series of direct and indirect demands from Trump’s Defence Secretary, Pete Hegseth, and US government factotums to almost double Australia’s defence spending to 3.5 per cent of GDP is perhaps the boldest stance he has taken as PM. Albanese’s continued dismissals are truly getting up the US administration’s nose; various underlings are now regularly briefing reporters against Australia. And this week Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong foreshadowed the recognition of a Palestinian state, comprehensively at odds with the stance of the US, which is the Netanyahu government’s chief military supplier and diplomatic enabler.

These positions are not without risk, given how deeply enmeshed Australia has become in its alliance with America, and how long Australia has regarded Israel as a friend. But given the twin shocks of Trump’s rapid transformation of the US government and Benjamin Netanyahu’s military strategy in response to Hamas’ diabolical attacks in 2023, which has failed to return all of the hostages, laid waste to Gaza, killed tens of thousands of civilians and led to widespread starvation, it’s difficult to see how a prudent government could not have taken this course.

The adjustments taking place in our relationships are in line with broader public sentiment in Australia. Trump’s Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has dismissed Palestinian recognition by countries including Australia as meaningless and driven by domestic politics. In a sense, he is right. Recognition is a mostly symbolic tactic designed to impose diplomatic pressure on Israel. It might not work and probably won’t while America continues to physically support Netanyahu’s every action. But is Trump’s foreign America First policy not also driven by his domestic political intentions? This week his vice president, JD Vance, said the US government would no longer send arms to Ukraine because Americans were sick of their government doing so. Instead, the US will sell arms to European countries which can give them to Ukraine.

Australia’s strategic positions should not chop and change, but they should develop over time and reflect the general sympathies and inclinations of the bulk of its people. Because of our geographical isolation and colonial past, with a nation-state built on immigration, Australia is an outward-looking country. Most Australians see Trump for what he is: a great disruptor. Trump bases all his decisions on his own self-interest. And because he is the president and is dedicated to accruing as much personal power as possible, to the extent that he is now ignoring his own courts and militarising policing in cities that don’t vote for him, those decisions and actions are expressed ultimately as being in America’s own best interests.

In the face of his behaviour, how could anyone expect that even the innately cautious Albanese would not also seek to base his decisions on what is in Australia’s best interests – and his own government’s political interests – ahead of an ever more indeterminate benefit from an alliance with a country whose leader wants to keep everyone guessing and uses standover tactics at will? The legacy of our alliance with America notwithstanding, we’re all ultimately on our own in Trump’s world because he wants it that way.

The recent decision by the NATO countries to lift their defence spending to the Trump-mandated 3.5 per cent (with an extra 1.5 per cent for infrastructure) was hailed widely as a brilliant exercise in negotiation by Trump. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte’s fawning show of obeisance certainly made it look that way. But was it? The member countries had also concluded that Trump could at any moment leave them high and dry, depending on his state of mind. Last year, he said he would allow Russia to attack NATO states that weren’t spending as much on defence as he expected. Keep in mind, his presidential term still has close to 3½ years to go.

If push comes to shove, will Albanese yield to Trump on the same issue? International opinion surveys tell us that the Australian public is close to world-leading in its loathing of Trump. One important aspect of contemporary Australian society is its make-up. More than 31 per cent of residents in Australia are foreign-born, a proportion not seen since the early 1890s, when the Australian land mass consisted of a bunch of British colonies. There are many reasons why so many foreigners come here to live, but an important one is that Australia is a long way from the rest of the world and its myriad troubles.

Twenty-odd years ago the Howard government took pride in how willing it was to get involved in conflicts to keep on side with its powerful friends. We were punching above our weight, it was said proudly. Today’s Australia is less convinced about the value of throwing punches.

Shaun Carney is a regular columnist, an author and former associate editor of The Age.

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