{"id":888812,"date":"2026-09-12T01:50:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T01:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/888812\/"},"modified":"2026-09-12T01:50:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T01:50:11","slug":"as-china-rises-australia-is-increasingly-enmeshed-in-the-us-war-machine-is-the-alliance-still-worth-the-risk-australian-military","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/888812\/","title":{"rendered":"As China rises, Australia is increasingly enmeshed in the US war machine. Is the alliance still worth the risk? | Australian military"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cPhysical security matters,\u201d said Kevin Rudd<\/a>, at his axiomatic best before the National Press Club this week.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur first responsibility is to secure our people\u2019s future in this most contested region of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prime minister, to foreign minister, to ambassador, Rudd \u2013 on his self-declared, self-deprecatory \u201ccareer trajectory towards infinitesimal demotion\u201d \u2013 has an unparalleled perspective on Australia\u2019s place in the world.<\/p>\n

In a time of dramatic global upheaval, he argued, the nation\u2019s security alliance with the United States was neither trivial nor sentimental.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur alliance with the United States remains a force multiplier for Australia\u2019s defence needs.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, Rudd said, it did represent one of the seismic challenges Australia faced: countenancing \u201cthe rise and rise of China at a time when America continues to debate what sort of global power it wants to be in the future\u201d.<\/p>\n

Alliance with the US, he said, was necessary but not sufficient for the country\u2019s long-term national security.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe must also re-embrace national self-reliance to anticipate the full range of future uncertainties.\u201d A Rudd sentence if ever one was said.<\/p>\n

And the alliance, like any, carries risk.<\/p>\n

Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email<\/a><\/p>\n

Twice in a row, Rudd was asked whether Australia would even have a choice if the US were to become involved in a war with China over Taiwan, which Rudd judged a \u201cone in three\u201d chance in 2028 (the year of Taiwan\u2019s next presidential election).<\/p>\n

Or whether, in that scenario, Australian support would be automatically expected.<\/p>\n

Both times Rudd declined to answer, even as he was asked directly whether \u2013 if US nuclear submarines were steaming from Australian ports, and US bombers taking off from Australian airfields, heading for Chinese sea and airspace \u2013 Australia could decline to be part of another American war.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn Australian responses: I\u2019ll engage in classic duck and weave,\u201d Rudd said.<\/p>\n

Growing enmeshment<\/p>\n

This week, the Guardian published new data showing the US military and its defence industrial interests<\/a> control, or have access to, more than 100 military bases across the Australian continent.<\/p>\n

The enmeshment of the Australian military<\/a> within the giant US war machine has hastened over recent years, and is set to grow even further.<\/p>\n

US nuclear-capable bombers take off from Australian airfields on missions across the world \u2013 potentially carrying nuclear weapons (the US government won\u2019t say, Australia won\u2019t ask). From next year, nuclear-powered, conventionally armed submarines will port through HMAS Stirling off Perth.<\/p>\n

The US remains Australia\u2019s fundamental security ally, but it is also a country currently mired in what many international law experts say is an illegal, unprompted war<\/a>, and one seen by many in Australia as a superpower in decline and increasingly unreliable.<\/p>\n

The federal government maintains the US remains indispensable to Australian security. Marking 75 years of the Anzus Treaty<\/a> this week, the deputy prime minister, Richard Marles, said the US \u201cremains our closest ally and principal strategic partner\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor more than seven decades, the alliance has underpinned peace<\/a>, stability and prosperity in our region and continues to contribute to the region\u2019s strategic balance,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

But a growing cohort of military strategists and geostrategic analysts argues Australia\u2019s increasing enmeshment with the US military makes it less safe: that Australia is being exploited by an ally that could draw this country, however unwillingly, into war with China.<\/p>\n

\u2018An automatic target\u2019<\/p>\n

David Vine, the author of Base Nation and The United States of War, told the Guardian the expansion of US military<\/a> presence in Australia was of a scale unprecedented outside the conflicts in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s clear is that the US is preparing for war with China,\u201d he said, \u201cand for Australians, it\u2019s worth thinking about whether they want to go to war with China, especially given Australia\u2019s relative proximity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Australia did play \u2013 especially through Pine Gap \u2013 a significant role in the US global military system, Vine said, but the Australian military\u2019s main role was as \u201ca kind of auxiliary military force for the United States\u201d.<\/p>\n

Vine argued the current US-precipitated war in Iran had again demonstrated the \u201cmyth of the security umbrella\u201d in hosting US bases.<\/p>\n

\u201cHosting US bases turns a country into an automatic target; it makes host countries immediately complicit in anything and everything the US military might do, including waging war,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Instead of deterring potential adversaries, Vine said US military presence often escalated the risk of conflict.<\/p>\n

\u201cBuilding up US military power in China\u2019s region and encircling China only encourages the Chinese military to respond in kind, to continue to build up its military power,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Vine argued that the breadth and scope of US military presence went far beyond any deterrent capability and instead demonstrated that the nation was preparing for a war that \u201cfrighteningly, too many people in the US military establishment assume is inevitable\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are the same people who have been supporting a completely failed military strategy globally, who are making the world a far more dangerous place, and making it more likely that the United States and China and their respective allies will go to war.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Every alliance is exploited\u2019<\/p>\n

During the presidency of Barack Obama, Dr Van Jackson served as a strategic adviser in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, when Australia took on a new geostrategic significance, part of that administration\u2019s \u201cpivot\u201d to Asia.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat pivot was about many things in relation to China, but specifically the geographic encirclement of China \u2026 in service of war fighting contingencies against China,\u201d Jackson, an associate professor in international relations at the Victoria University of Wellington, told the Guardian.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the grand strategy level, it was about ensuring American primacy: global primacy is the principal means and ends of US foreign policy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Australia, as an ally, represents to the US an immensely useful piece of geography.<\/p>\n

\u201cAustralia is this almost-perfect location to be distant enough from the immediate battle space in a Taiwan or an East China Sea scenario, but at the same time, close enough for power projection, for flowing forces, and to function as a kind of rear area base for recovery,\u201d Jackson said.<\/p>\n

Jackson noted the US-Australia alliance was often phrased in euphemism, around \u201cmateship\u201d, of shared values and of a commitment to democracy. Australia\u2019s unswerving support for the US was part of that rhetoric too, he said, citing Elbridge Colby, undersecretary of war at the Pentagon, praising Australia for being \u201cwith us, even in our less-advisable wars\u201d.<\/p>\n

While Jackson believed \u201cthat romance\u201d was authentically felt, it was secondary to the US\u2019 interest in using Australia for \u201cvery exploitative reasons\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery alliance is exploited \u2026 and geography is the purpose Australia serves,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"USUS military presence in Australia, mapped \u2013 video<\/p>\n

Given the size of the US military \u2013 America\u2019s military budget surpassed that of the next six largest defence budgets on earth combined<\/a> (including two countries that were actively at war) \u2013 the contribution of American allies \u201cin terms of boots on the ground, or the share of aircraft or of frigates, is always a drop in the bucket\u201d, Jackson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen military strategists in the Pentagon think about alliances it\u2019s always about needing access to bases, ports, and airspace,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt helps on the margins to have these almost-symbolic military contributions from allies, but it\u2019s not decisive in any way, it doesn\u2019t really ever shift the balance of power, it\u2019s not the difference between victory and defeat: it\u2019s about access.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cPhysical security matters,\u201d said Kevin Rudd, at his axiomatic best before the National Press Club this week. \u201cOur…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":888813,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-888812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=888812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/888813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=888812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=888812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=888812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}