The US-Australia alliance has created a unique kind of subservience. What if we don't need the US to come to our rescue?

The Guardian

22-03-2025

Following in the footsteps of many fixtures of far-right America, Fox News turned independent commentator Tucker Carlson toured Australia in July 2024. Brought here by mining magnate Clive Palmer, Carlson found adoring audiences. At an event in Canberra, Carlson attracted the expected figures from the Australian right and a few sceptical journalists. Much was made of a 'viral' moment in which he berated the Australian media.
His audience, of course, loved it.
But Carlson is as slippery as he is ideological. At one point, he would no doubt have made that audience – a group of people deeply committed to the idea of American primacy and righteousness – rather uncomfortable.
Asked if China posed a threat to Australia, Carlson pivoted to the US-Australia alliance. He reflected on 'the fears that have pushed generations of Australian governments into a counterproductive alliance with the United States and Great Britain'. That enduring fear of hostile powers, Carlson continued, meant that 'the view here is that the US will rescue us if we ever really have a problem. And I don't think that's true. I'm sorry to say that … I just don't think it's true, and I think you're unwise for believing it's true.'
Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email
Tucker Carlson has abhorrent views on most things. But on this point, he is right.
That even Carlson can see this truth should be a source of great embarrassment. The myth that the Americans will come to our rescue should we ever need them has endured for evermore than 70 years, but it has always been just that – a myth.
The mythology of our security relationship with the United States stems, of course, from the experience of the second world war and our 'abandonment' by Great Britain. It was further ingrained by the 1951 ANZUS Treaty and the formalisation of the security alliance.
But despite unsubstantiated claims to the contrary, the ANZUS Treaty promises us nothing – it gives only the assurance that both parties will 'consult' when 'political independence or security of any of the parties is threatened in the Pacific', 'act to meet the common danger' and report to the UN security council 'all measures taken as a result'. All of this means nothing more nor less than what anyone wants it to mean.
Successive Australian governments' desperation to shore up this mythical security guarantee is what makes the alliance, as Carlson astutely observed, so counterproductive. It has drawn Australia into unnecessary and damaging wars reaching far beyond the Pacific and created a unique kind of subservience. It is what gave us the indefensible Aukus submarine pact.
Deeply ingrained fears have led Australian governments to believe that Australia must stick to the United States no matter what it does and no matter who is in charge – even if it is someone like Donald Trump.
At one particularly worrying point for American democracy, one Australian journalist even insisted that when it came to the US alliance, 'cosying up to a madman … [was] a necessity'.
But what if all of that failed, when and if it came down to it?
Or what if cosying up to madmen and handing them $368bn and our sovereignty actually made things more dangerous for us and our region? What if we listened to Tucker Carlson and understood that Americans aren't coming to save us?
Or, even better, that we don't need saving?
Sign up to Breaking News Australia
Get the most important news as it breaks
after newsletter promotion
That would not mean abandoning our alliance with the United States. It would mean changing the way it works and how we understand it. It would mean dramatically rethinking what we mean when we talk about 'security'. In our counterproductive alliance with the United States, security seems to mean only the temporary absence of war that political and military leaders on both sides of the Pacific believe to be inevitable – war that can only be prevented by projections of military might.
Security, though, should mean a lot more than that. It should mean collective human flourishing – not just the absence of war but genuine wellbeing grounded in equality and prosperity. That would mean identifying and working in genuine partnership on the things that do threaten us: climate change, nuclear proliferation, inequality. It would mean distinguishing between those genuine threats and risks – like our relationships with great powers – to be managed.
A productive relationship with the United States would be grounded in democratic solidarity – not fear.
At times, that democratic solidarity might make for some uncomfortable conversations.
Democratic solidarity would mean focusing on transparency and accountability and being consistent in those commitments – not something the alliance is particularly good at right now. But it is in Australian interests just as much as in America's that US democracy survives and thrives.
Australia – as a thriving, though imperfect, democracy – has a lot to offer in that regard. And we know we can have those uncomfortable conversations and survive them. The Australian government did that only recently when it secured the release of Australian citizen Julian Assange. For a brief moment, the Australian government demonstrated that it could advocate for its and its citizen's interests while simultaneously challenging Americans to see what is also in their best interests. Holding an Australian citizen hostage for publishing the truth was never in the interests of the most important democracy in the world.
Confronting the glaring hypocrisies of American power is difficult. But more than that, it is necessary. That was clearly demonstrated when, not long after Assange's release, the Biden administration secured the release of American journalists held hostage in Russia – something that arguably could not have happened while such appalling treatment of an Australian citizen was allowed to stand.
Assange's release was a preview of what the US-Australian relationship might be, and how it is possible to advocate for our own interests without succumbing to fear or subservience.
Because we matter. We just have to accept that truth and ask ourselves: what could we bring to the world if we weren't so afraid?
This is an adapted extract of Dr Emma Shortis' essay 'Democratic Solidarity' in What's the Big Idea? 34 Ideas for a Better Australia (Australia Institute Press, $34.99)