Hard New World: Australia’s Post-American Future

End of history?

Hugh White opens his Quarterly Essay, Hard New World: Our Post-American Future, by recalling the optimistic geopolitical landscape at the end of the Cold War, in the early 1990s. This was the time when Francis Fukuyama declared the “end of history”. The US seemed unchallengeably preponderant in every dimension of national power.

White, an emeritus professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University, writes that it was thought that the US would be not just a benevolent power, but it would be accepted as such by other major powers, notably China, India, Russia and Europe. A possible retreat of the US was unthinkable. In this world, Australia faced a very secure and prosperous future, especially since it already had a strategic Alliance with the US.

At the time, White did have his doubts about this optimistic scenario. China’s reform had already propelled the economy forward for 20 years, and it was on a path to challenge US dominance, as it is doing now. It was on track to acquire the kind of weight and power which has traditionally been associated with countries seeking to challenge the existing international order.

US withdraws from global leadership

White sees Zelenskyy’s recent humiliation in the White House by President Trump and Vice-President Vance as symbolic of how much the world has changed, something which Australia seems not to have woken up to. Trump’s message to Zelensky was that the US does not care about Ukraine.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a blatant challenge to US global leadership, something which had been building up for some years. And Western response to that invasion has been ineffective. Russia had to be decisively defeated if the international order was going to be defended and the problem is Russia hasn’t been decisively defeated. In sum, America is managing a very serious erosion of the international order. This was very clear well before the White House encounter.

The White House encounter was also revelatory of the America which placed Trump and Vance in the country’s leadership. Trump is a very unusual character, but he is not an aberration or a transitory character. The US will not play the role envisaged in the early 2000s and which Australian political parties are still expecting the US to play in the future.

The US stepped back from the isolationism of the 19th and early 20th centuries, and made huge global leadership commitments after World War 2. Why? They were scared of a country – like Germany, Japan or the Soviet Union – becoming powerful enough to dominate the whole of Eurasia, and therefore being able to threaten the US at home.

But today – despite the rise of China and India, and the rogue behaviour of Russia – the US does not face an existential threat – surrounded as it is by two oceans and two benign neighbours. No country can dominate Eurasia because, in today’s multipolar world, power is distributed more evenly. Despite all the huff and puff, the US has not increased its military spending, diplomatic presence or economic engagement in response to the rise of China.

White is convinced that the US commitment to Asian security will fade over time.

The folly of AUKUS

A key Australian response to China’s assertiveness has been AUKUS, a trilateral security partnership between Australia, the UK and the US, whose headline component is the supply to Australia of nuclear submarines. This has been highly criticised by former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating who argues that Australia’s sovereignty is being compromised and that it puts Australia into a more combative relationship with China than we need to be.

Keating and other commentators have also pointed to the extraordinary expense of AUKUS and argued the nuclear submarines in question are not optimal for Australia’s defence requirements.

Ever since President Obama’s Asian pivot, announced in 2011, Australia has committed itself more and more to supporting the US in its push back against China. But White does not believe that the US is firmly committed to its rivalry with China – it has not increased military spending – nor does he believe that the US can win a war with China.

White believes that Australia should look for a diplomatic exit from both the Australia/US Alliance and AUKUS, and he doubts that the Trump administration would be troubled by this because AUKUS doesn’t work for either Australia or the US, the latter which has extraordinary delays in its manufacturing of submarines.

Australia’s independent future

White argues that Australia must disentangle itself from the Australia/US Alliance and AUKUS. But this must be done diplomatically, above all because the US will remain a very important country, and a country with which Australia should have a continuing good relationship – as was the case with the UK after 1942.

Perhaps the greatest challenge will be for the Australian security establishment, which is so embedded in the Alliance and which are not used to working independently. Australia will have to become a more normal country, like middle powers through history, who duck and weave and must be a little bit artful and sometimes a little Machiavellian.

White is confident that Australia can reinvent itself. After all, in modern Australia’s brief history, it has navigated dramatic changes before – the federation of six separate British colonies into a federation, the switch from the UK to the US as a strategic ally in 1942, diversifying immigrants from Anglo-Saxon English-speaking countries to continental Europe after World War 2, abandoning the white Australia policy in the early 1970s and welcoming migrants from much wider range, and abandoning high levels of industrial protection for manufacturing.

Confronting Australia’s Post-American Future is well within the country’s capabilities, but it requires strong leadership.