ANZUS is dead!

From Domainfax comes Julie Bishop:

“We can judge from some of the statements and the speeches made during this very long presidential campaign, but it will be a responsibility of the Australian government and other governments in the region to impress upon the new administration the importance of US leadership in our region, the importance of the United States continuing to maintain a strong presence in the region,” she said.

“The new administration will have a number of challenges, including in our region, and we want to work constructively with the new administration to ensure the continued presence and leadership of the United States in our region.”

…America’s most senior diplomat in Australia at present, charge d’affaires James Carouso, predicted that the US-Australian relationship would thrive either way because it was based on “much more than who is in the house, the White House or the Lodge”.

“It is based on such a long history of military intelligence, economic, personal relations – this relationship is so deep, the alliance is so critical, because no matter who is going to be president, we are an Asian-Pacific nation,” he said.

“The fiery rhetoric in this campaign, from both sides, has clearly heightened the concerns in the region, but I think we have to sit and wait and see what the policies of the next president are going to be. I am confident that the critical nature of the Asia-Pacific region, whoever is president, they are going to have to engage with Australia to work with our best mate in the region and how we are going to deal with whatever the issues are.”

My old colleague at The Diplomat, Peter Hartcher, is worried:

Australia’s alliance with the US has always been based on shared values, as every leader of both nations has affirmed for generations. But what values do we share with Donald Trump’s America?

Until now democracy was a shared value. But Trump was not prepared to accept the people’s will unless he won. That isn’t democracy. It’s despotism.

Freedom and equality have always been core shared values. But Trump wants Muslim immigrants banned and has based his political movement on bigotry, disparaging women, Mexicans, Muslims, the disabled and many more.

Open markets and free trade have been another shared alliance theme for the last three decades. One of Trump’s great crusades is his promise to rip up existing trade agreements and impose 45 per cent tariffs on Chinese goods. He wants to restrict US investment abroad. His plan is to close markets, not open them.

And then there are US alliances themselves. Trump has scorned some of America’s principal allies, NATO, Japan South Korea. He’s said he’d walk away from them unless they paid more for American protection.

If, as Malcolm Turnbull and Barack Obama and their predecessors have told us, the alliance is based on shared values, then it’s foundations may be about to crumble.

That’s falling for the public relations of the alliance over the alliance itself. It’s not based on shared values. It’s based on shared interests. They remain intact, including:

• “five eyes” espionage sharing;
• Pacific defense posture including Pine Gap and strategic installations;
• huge reciprocal capital flows;
• and, yes, sustaining free trade and democracy.

Donald Trump is not a “despot”. He was just duly elected by the American people to look after their interests. My view remains that he more mercantile in his foreign policy statements than he is strategically determined to exit the Western Pacific. And, from the US perspective, rightly so. We’ve been trading on the alliance umbrella for decades while we under-spend on defense and feather our nest with money from the US’s rising strategic rival in China. Which is, I might add, run by an increasingly explicit dictator.

It’s not the US killing ANZUS. It’s us.

Chinese apologist The Pascometer (who really should leave this stuff to the grown-ups) is in no doubt about what to do:

If Trump keeps half his promises, November 8 2016 can go down as the end of the American Century. After 75 years, it would mark the end of America’s claim to political leadership of what’s been loosely called “the free world”.

While the US often enough betrayed its ideals, said one thing but did another, it continued to profess goals that much of the world could look up to, could aspire to, hunger for.

…By electing a sectarian, racist, braggadocios reality TV “personality” and real estate developer, the US has resigned that leadership.

…The United States represented and promised by Trump is not one with which Australia would want to be so closely associated. The days of remaining loyally and unquestioningly in step with American policy is finished. Australia’s best interests are not those of an abrasive, erratic American president. Trump’s America cannot be relied on, so it would be a foolish Australia to set its international course on the deluded, fading fantasies of American exceptionalism.

For example, buying the most expensive submarines to suit a long-distance role in American policy of containing China does not make sense. Playing a subservient role to America’s Middle East policy no longer makes sense if that becomes a principle-free zone of Trump-Putin empire games. With two of our nearest neighbours primarily Muslim countries, we should now shun the idea of being America’s South Pacific deputy.