Former Trump national security advisor warns Australia on China

Daily Mail​

a day ago

Donald Trump 's former national security adviser has warned Australia needs to clarify its position on China, which had grown ambiguous under Anthony Albanese. John Bolton this week said the Albanese government was 'less vocal about what the problem is' in comparison to its predecessors. 'It is a little hard to get used to,' Bolton said in an interview. Just a few weeks ago, while Albanese was on Chinese soil, the Pentagon demanded to know if Australia would support the US if China attacked Taiwan.
Bolton warned that the US could treat its quieter allies with suspicion as tensions in the Pacific persist. The Trump administration is already reconsidering the AUKUS deal, which would provide Australia with nuclear submarines. The ex-national security advisor, who was fired in a tweet by Trump during his first term in 2019 after repeated clashes, said that 'back in the Cold War days, Labour governments in Great Britain were just as anti-communist' as the right wing.
'When you see a leftist government that's not willing to talk as openly about what the real threat is, it does make some people nervous,' Bolton told The Sydney Morning Herald. 'Why the hell are we worried about talking about what the threat is? The struggle is on, and we ought to be candid about it,' he said. Tensions between China and the West have significantly grown since the communist superpower began ramping up efforts to grow influence over the Indo-Pacific in the 2010s.
Chinese President Xi Jinping claimed in a recent speech that: 'No one can stop China's 'reunification' with Taiwan'. The continued pressure from Washington for Australia to make its stance on China public comes in spite of the US growing guarded over its own position. While former president Joe Biden repeatedly said the US would defend Taiwan from Chinese invasion, the Trump administration's style has been described as 'purposeful strategic ambiguity' to keep both friends and foes guessing.
So why should Australia, which sits much closer to the disputed region, be the first to stick its neck out? Naval operations expert Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute, believes it boils down to AUKUS. In 2023, Australia announced it would buy three American-made nuclear submarines. Those subs are set to be delivered in the early 2030s.
From there, the US and UK will share knowledge with Australia to help it be able to build its own nuclear submarines, SSN AUKUS subs. That submarine construction yard will be built in Adelaide's Osborne Naval Shipyard, which South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas toured alongside US congressmen on Wednesday. Mr Clark explained the US wanted clarification on whether the submarines it sells to Australia would be used to back America, should it find itself in conflict with China.
He said Australia had been 'reticent' to explicitly say they would be used against China, which had raised some questions in Washington about why the government was not more straightforward about the reason for purchasing the submarines. Australia is spending billions to procure the submarines, but there is not a guarantee they will arrive. The AUKUS deal contains a clause that the US can only supply Australia excess submarines not needed by its own navy.
Australia has so far paid the US two installments of $800 million twice this year, in February and July. By the end of 2025, Australia will have paid USD$2 billion to help expand America's nuclear submarine production, which is already worryingly behind schedule. All up, Australia plans to spend $368 billion over 30 years on the AUKUS submarine pact. The pact is currently being reviewed by US defence under Secretary Elbridge Colby, a vocal AUKUS skeptic.
While it's widely believed AUKUS will remain intact when the review concludes in the coming months, it has only served to further strain relations between the US and Australia following Trump's trade tariff spree. Bolton conceded it was detrimental for America to expect Australia to publicly call out China while it remained tight-lipped. However, he supported Washington's calls for Australia to lift its defence budget to three per cent of GDP.
Labor's existing policies promise just 2.33 per cent of GDP by 2033. 'Everybody is going to have to go up, I just think that's inevitable. It's not because of Trump's pressure, it's because of what's going on in the real world,' Bolton said. In response to the US' earlier demands for an official stance on Taiwan, Albanese said he would not bow to pressure to make 'private' discussions public. 'The sole power to commit Australia to war, or to allow our territory to be used for conflict, is the elected government of the day,' he told the ABC.
'That is our position. Sovereignty will always be prioritized and that will continue to be our position.' Albanese has still not had a sit-down meeting with President Trump since his January inauguration. The pair were due to meet in June but the Trump left Canada's G7 summit early citing urgent developments in the Middle East, preceding the bombing of Iran.