‘Vandals in the White House' no longer reliable allies of Australia, former defence force chief says
A former Australian defence force chief has warned 'the vandals in the White House' are no longer reliable allies and urged the Australian government to reassess its strategic partnership with the United States.
Retired admiral Chris Barrie spent four decades in the Royal Australian Navy and was made a Commander of the Legion of Merit by the US government in 2002. He is now an honorary professor at the Australian National University.
'What is happening with the vandals in the White House is similar to what happened to Australia in 1942 with the fall of Singapore,' Barrie said. 'I don't consider America to be a reliable ally, as I used to.
'Frankly, I think it is time we reconsidered our priorities and think carefully about our defence needs, now that we are having a more independent posture... Our future is now in a much more precarious state than it was on 19 January.'
Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email
'Trump 1.0 was bad enough. But Trump 2.0 is irrecoverable.'
Barrie said it was 'too soon' to say whether Australia should end its multibillion-dollar Aukus partnership, but raised concerns about a lack of guarantee that nuclear-powered submarines would actually be delivered. He also warned about an apparent lack of a back-up option.
Pillar One of the Aukus deal – which would see the US sell Australia nuclear-powered submarines before the Aukus-class submarines were built in Australia – is coming under increasing industry scrutiny and political criticism, with growing concerns the US will not be able, or will refuse, to sell boats to Australia, and continuing cost and time overruns in the development of the Aukus submarines.
'Let's define why we really need nuclear submarines in the first instance, given a new independent defence posture for Australia,' Barrie said. 'If they still make sense in that context, fine. But they might not. There might be alternatives. There might be alternatives with conventional submarines if we didn't want to go any further than the Malacca Straits.'
Barrie's warning comes after former foreign minister, Bob Carr, said Australia would face a 'colossal surrender of sovereignty' if promised US nuclear-powered submarines did not arrive under Australian control.
Carr, the foreign minister between 2012 and 2013, said the Aukus deal highlighted the larger issue of American unreliability in its security alliance with Australia.
Sign up to Breaking News Australia
Get the most important news as it breaks
after newsletter promotion
'The US is utterly not a reliable ally. No one could see it in those terms,' he said. '[President] Trump is wilful and cavalier and so is his heir-apparent, JD Vance: they are laughing at alliance partners, whom they've almost studiously disowned.'
The US Congressional Research Service has proposed an alternative under which the US would not sell any submarines to Australia; instead, it would sail its own submarines, under US command, out of Australian bases.
When asked if he trusted Donald Trump earlier this week, the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said 'what sort of question is that?'.
'I mean, he's the president of the United States,' Albanese said. 'He's elected as the president of the United States. I'm the prime minister for Australia. He's entitled to pursue his agenda, of course. But I'm entitled to defend Australia's national interest and that's what we're doing.'
Opposition leader Peter Dutton, speaking at the Lowy Institute this week, said 'the United States is still, and must always be, our most important partner'.
But he criticised the Trump administration's decision to impose tariffs on Australia.
'We disagree with president Trump's decision to apply these tariffs: they're not just unjustified, they benefit neither Australia or the United States.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
30 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Los Angeles responds with roaring backlash to Trump's dramatic escalation
Donald Trump's administration promised to crush opposition in Los Angeles. Late on Saturday night, the US president deployed national guard soldiers in LA following protests against immigration raids in the city – a stunning escalation in the administration's promise of 'mass deportations'. His administration has promised to quell protests, and warned local leaders to brace for at least 30 days of ramped-up immigration enforcement. But the overwhelming show of force may have awoken something else. The city is responding with a roaring backlash. The moment Trump was sworn in for his second presidential term, he unleashed a barrage of draconian immigration restrictions. Ice agents began ambushing people inside their homes, in schools and churches. Children were being detained in what activists have called 'baby jails'. Asylum seekers were exiled to a brutal mega-prison in El Salvador. There were protests across the US – but the resistance that marked Trump's first term seemed to have flagged. Institutions had begun folding to the president's threats. As the administration escalated immigration raids and stripped away immigrants' rights; politicians mounted muffled objections. And then Trump came after Los Angeles. Fueling the fury was the brutality with which federal agents had approached its targets, including a clothing manufacturer in Los Angeles's garment district, and Home Depot in the Westlake district and a warehouse in South Los Angeles. The arrests were carried out without judicial warrants, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) – advocates say that more than 200 people were taken. Lawyers reported that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been holding detained families in the basements of federal immigration facilities, separating children and mothers from their fathers. Agents have refused access to attorneys and family members, according to the Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef). As masked immigration officers ripped workers away from their jobs, other agents in riot gear attacked protesters with tear gas and flash bang grenades, escalating a handful of isolated demonstrations into a clash that roiled the city and spurred several hundred to join the protest. Among the protesters arrested was union leader David Huerta, president of SEIU-USWW and SEIU California. The images of a middle-aged man in a plaid button-down shirt who was shoved down to the ground have angered millions of union workers across the US, wrote LA Times columnist Anita Chabria. 'The battleground has been redrawn in ways we don't fully yet appreciate,' she wrote. Trump has responded to the protests with escalating force, bypassing the governor to activate the state's national guard for the first time since the 1992 LA riots, when police officers were acquitted over the beating of Rodney King. Pete Hegseth, the defense secretart, suggested that in addition to the 2,000 guardsmen promised, the government would consider sending in the marines – a suggestion that California governor Gavin Newsom called 'deranged'. JD Vance suggested that the administration was targeting this Democratic city in a Democratic state as part of a political lesson, referring to protestors as 'insurrectionists'. The show of might is all part of a deliberate strategy to 'flood the zone', according to the White House border czar Tom Homan, who told Fox News recently that the administration would be zeroing in on 'sanctuary cities' that refuse to cooperate with immigration enforcers. But communities don't like to see their friends and neighbors cuffed. 'These are workers, these are fathers, these are mothers,' said Angelica Salas, executive director for the advocacy group Chirla, said at a news conference on Friday. 'Our community is under attack and is being terrorized.' US representative Maxine Waters, who also was denied entry to the federal immigration office in downtown LA, said the crowds should 'grow and grow and grow' until Trump reversed course on his deploying of soldiers. Similar raids took place in Newark, Chicago, Nashville and other cities across the US. In San Diego last week, a neighbourhood mobilized as federal agents raided restaurants, yelling 'Shame! Shame!' at officers in military gear. 'The administration is testing Los Angeles to see if we break under pressure,' said Lindsay Toczylowski, president of ImmDef. 'But we won't back down.'
Belfast Telegraph
33 minutes ago
- Belfast Telegraph
Prime Minister to visit Canada for trade and security talks
The Times reported that the pair will meet on June 14, ahead of the G7 leaders' summit in Alberta, against the backdrop of growing concerns about Donald Trump's trade war against its northern neighbour and repeated threats to annex Canada. Mr Trump has repeatedly suggested turning Canada into its 51st state and imposed tariffs that led to retaliation from Ottawa. The Canadian prime minister made the trip to Washington DC last month in a bid to ease tensions, but was dealt a blow last week when the US president doubled tariffs on steel imports. Only the UK was spared from the White House's tariff hike, thanks to a deal struck between the two countries. Levies will remain at 25% for imports from the UK, however Britain could still be subject to the higher 50% rate from July. Sir Keir Starmer's trade pact with the US, struck last month, included relief on the steel and aluminium tariffs, but the implementation is yet to be finalised. The Prime Minister's trip follows a royal visit by the King, who warned Canada is facing a 'critical moment' in its history, with the world a 'more dangerous and uncertain place' in a speech to open the nation's parliament. Charles delivered an address written by the Canadian government that said Mr Carney's administration would bond with 'reliable trading partners and allies', a move that follows Mr Trump's economic tactics. Many Canadians have seen the King's two-day visit to Ottawa as a symbol of support for the nation that has faced the unwanted attention of Mr Trump. Charles told the parliament 'self-determination' was among a number of values Canada held dear and the government was 'determined to protect'.
New Statesman
33 minutes ago
- New Statesman
What Rachel Reeves can learn from Donald Trump
Photo byNext week, Rachel Reeves will publish the Government's Spending Review, outlining the financial settlement for the coming three years. As she makes her final decisions (they always go to the wire) she might consider lessons from an unlikely source: the US President. In recent months, Donald Trump has taken to trashing areas of deep US strength that were taken for granted so completely that they were invisible to most. Trump has done Reeves a favour, by paving paradise and putting up a parking lot. His actions are a reminder of the importance of investing in the unseen infrastructures that enable prosperity. The British Academy has just published a series of papers exploring what might pull the UK out of its long period of low productivity. The UK has powerful legal, financial, cultural and scientific institutions, but we're not good at organising the economy around our greatest strengths. We have a large population of skilled workers, for example, but they are unevenly spread and mismatched across regions. We do not make the most of our institutional, human and physical capital. Reeves has an opportunity to invest in these strengths and to make the UK more prosperous over the long term. In the US, the government is currently experimenting with the opposite approach. Trump has taken an axe to America's historic strength in research by attacking universities including Harvard, and cutting or freezing research funding. R&D is one of the drivers of long-term prosperity, and the US will be poorer as a result in the medium term. By many measures the UK already punches above its weight when it comes to R&D, particularly in universities. Reeves needs to continue investing in this long-term source of growth, and also find a model for the universities where much of this research is conducted to be financially stable. The Government has recently focused on heavy investment in advanced or 'frontier' technology but a significant share of innovation in the UK's services-dominated economy is not especially high-tech. We innovate well through the humanities, social sciences and the arts, in processes and services, as well as we do in cutting-edge technology. Trump has also reminded us of the dangers of unpredictability. A country whose word cannot be relied upon will suffer economically – even if it is currently the dominant power. The UK faces rather different challenges to the US on the global stage, in that we are not large enough to act unilaterally or bilaterally, nor are we still a member of a major economic bloc. But our deep roots in multilateralism mean we have an opportunity to become the world's most dependable broker. We have an historic role in shaping the major international organisations and we have substantial knowledge of global institutions and international legal norms and practices. In turbulent times this institutional infrastructure is something in which we should invest, with a strategic narrative that the UK economy remains open to the world. Our relatively stable political landscape, strong institutions and low levels of corruption are not just part of the furniture – they are a source of comparative advantage in an increasingly turbulent world. The openness of our economy is an opportunity to attract and develop human capital. We have a valuable infrastructure of knowledge and finance that is well equipped to support and commercialise innovation. The UK government has struggled in its first year to find a positive narrative, to move beyond dealing with a difficult economic inheritance. The public knows we have an economy that has suffered long-term stagnation and that we face mounting geopolitical uncertainty. The Spending Review should be couched in a narrative of investing in the UK's comparative strengths and its deep assets, in the infrastructure that is needed to help secure longer-term growth and resilience. If she can do this, the Chancellor might be even able to say that despite the tight economic circumstances, it is the Biggest, the Best, and the most Beautiful spending review ever. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe [See also: Rachel Reeves should fear the bond market vigilantes] Related
