\u201cNo stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy-building exercise, no politically correct wars.\u201d This, from the United States\u2019 secretary of war, is the conflict to which Australia now finds itself bound.<\/p>\n
It is a war rapidly spiralling out of anyone\u2019s control, escalating in scope and geographic spread. It is one Australia \u2013 despite government sophistry \u2013 has already been dragged into.<\/p>\n
This week has shown yet again how deadly it is to be America\u2019s enemy, but also how very hard it is to be America\u2019s friend.<\/p>\n
Allies \u2018kept in the dark\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone, among the traditional US allies, is discomforted by what has happened,\u201d Dr Lachlan Strahan, a former Australian high commissioner and author of The Curious Diplomat<\/a>, tells Guardian Australia as the conflict that started with US and Israeli strikes on Iran last weekend, darkened and spread, to new countries, new regions, new theatres.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause it\u2019s very clear that Trump has gone into this without a well-defined strategy about where he\u2019s going to end up.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is another unpredictable, egotistical, muscular policy, which he\u2019s kind of dropped on everyone else. And I keep on thinking what Colin Powell used to say: \u2018If you break it, you own it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n War is chaotic, dynamic, unpredictable. Restraining any conflict is difficult, this one nigh on impossible. Retaliatory strikes have spanned the Middle East. Already, Australia may be part of this war.<\/p>\n The Australian government \u2013 after initially refusing to comment \u2013 has confirmed three Australian service personnel are serving on board<\/a> the US nuclear-powered submarine that fired upon, and sank, an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean off Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n There were up to 180 people on board the Iranian frigate Dena when it was struck by an American torpedo: 32 people were pulled alive from the water, 87 bodies have been recovered.<\/p>\n The government insists no Australian citizens have \u201cparticipated in any offensive action\u201d, but its personnel are part of the crew that sank an Iranian ship and killed Iranian sailors.<\/p>\n And the Australian people did not know, and for two days were not told.<\/p>\n Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><\/p>\n The war has claimed lives in Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Iraq and Syria, in other nations and at sea. US soldiers have been killed too.<\/p>\n But the impacts of this war extend far beyond the conflict itself; fuel prices<\/a>, stock markets<\/a> and global trade routes<\/a> are all cataclysmically affected.<\/p>\n Even as the US rammed up the drumbeat of gunboat diplomacy off Iran\u2019s coast, the US\u2019s most steadfast allies \u2013 with the notable exception of Israel, which launched the attacks alongside the US \u2013 were \u201ckept in the dark\u201d about exactly what was being planned, Strahan says.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have, of course, no control over Trump. He doesn\u2019t listen to allies.<\/p>\n \u201cInstead, he starts beating up on some of them in public, as he has done with [the UK\u2019s] Keir Starmer<\/a>, and with Spain<\/a>. So what does Australia do? We look at that and say, \u2018we don\u2019t like the regime in Iran, it\u2019s clearly brutal and horrible.\u2019 But behind the scenes Australia would also be thinking, \u2018this is not the way to deal with it,\u2019 including because of all of these very unpredictable second and third-order consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n US defence-supplied \u2018periscope footage\u2019 of an American navy submarine firing on and sinking an Iranian warship. Photograph: US Department of Defense\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Australia has a narrow path to walk, finding a way to indicate opposition to \u2013 \u201cor at least discomfort with\u201d \u2013 US actions, without provoking Trump, Strahan says.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause his ire is notorious. So I\u2019m sure in Canberra they\u2019re asking: \u2018how can we still stand up for things that we believe in, take positions which are not Trump\u2019s, without just getting into a brawl with him, which we will lose because he\u2019s so much more powerful.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cThat does mean, at times, punches are pulled. But it\u2019s interesting that with the Middle East now looking messier and messier, more western leaders are beginning to say more clearly, as the Finns, the Swedes and the French have: \u2018look, this is not right, legal or sensible.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The Aukus<\/a> deal \u2013 under which Australia will buy excess nuclear-powered submarines from the US, beginning next decade \u2013 \u201calso backs us into a corner\u201d, Strahan says. The forecast $368bn deal will consume a vast portion of defence budgets for decades, and governments now feel too much time and money has been committed to backtrack or seek an alternative.<\/p>\n \u2018Sycophants and clowns\u2019 around Trump<\/p>\n Since federation, Australia has looked to a \u201cgreat and powerful friend\u201d for security and succour, but Trump is a sui generis president, turning a once predictable ally into one that can no longer be relied upon, that no longer takes Australia into its confidence.<\/p>\n Strahan argues that even former presidents with whom Australia disagreed on significant policies \u201cgenerally appointed competent cabinets with professionals who knew their jobs, who gave good advice\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not apparent, really, that Trump listens to anyone, but even then, the people around him are a mixture of sycophants and clowns.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018He doesn\u2019t listen to allies\u2019 \u2026 Donald Trump speaks at the White House this week. Photograph: Win McNamee\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Acres of newsprint have been dedicated in recent months to the demise of the \u201cinternational rules-based order\u201d. Always more complex, and more compromised, than a single order, and under which rules were regularly bent or broken by those strong enough to get away with it, the order nevertheless provided so-called middle power countries like Australia and Canada (whose prime minister this week argued in Canberra for cooperation as \u201cstrategic cousins\u201d<\/a>) with a dependable and beneficial international stability.<\/p>\n But the American-Israeli campaign against Iran, waged in the absence of imminent threat or Security Council imprimatur, reveals further a realist, Thucydidean world in which powerful countries act as they wish, the weak suffer as they must.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat message does his current military campaign against Iran send to Xi and Putin?\u201d Strahan asks.<\/p>\n \u201cTo Putin it is \u2018keep going in Ukraine\u2019. And Xi, is this saying to him, \u2018Taiwan is a doable military operation\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n Australia enmeshed with US military<\/p>\n Trump came to office the second time promising to be the \u201cPresident of Peace<\/a>\u201d. He vowed to end the forever wars and not start new ones.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not going to start a war. I\u2019m going to stop wars<\/a>,\u201d Trump said on election night.<\/p>\n He possesses a Nobel Peace prize \u2013 which he didn\u2019t win, but was given by the actual recipient Mar\u00eda Corina Machado<\/a> \u2013 and which he chose to keep.<\/p>\n