Last Saturday morning, mobile phones lit up across Canberra as officials, politicians, and diplomats watched in stunned disbelief as the dramatic confrontation between Trump and Zelenskyy unfolded in the Oval Office. The event served as yet another reminder, though they may not have needed it, that Trump has upended many of the assumptions that have underpinned Australia's security for decades.
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03-04, 2025The most succinct summary of this stark new reality came from Sir Alex Younger, the former head of MI6. Last month, he declared the end of the post-World War II international order on the BBC. "This is the world we are entering, and I don't think we are going back to the world we came from," he stated, highlighting the shifting global landscape.
Even if you think that's something of an exaggeration, it is still a powerful reminder that global rules are changing, bringing a visceral jolt to America's allies in Asia and Europe. Australia will have to grapple with a myriad of issues in this new era, and the Ukraine crisis will push two of them to the fore, demanding immediate attention.
The first question is basically this: How can Australia continue to support Ukraine and do its bit to support Kyiv without risking a damaging feud with Trump and his key aides? This is a tricky question, but not an existential one: Most observers believe that Australia can probably muddle through without abandoning its key principles or damaging vital alliance interests with the United States.
The second question is less immediate, but harder to answer, and more important. What do the divisions between the US and Europe over Ukraine, and Trump's naked transactionalism, mean for order in the Asian region and for Australia's own national security? If the Trump administration is willing to hand over Ukraine to others, how much confidence can Australia have in the US as its principal military ally and security guarantor?
Like most democracies, Australia has watched the US's sharp turn on Ukraine with anxiety and dismay. There is no sign that Australia will follow the Trump administration's lead. Both the governing coalition and the Labor Party are strongly supportive of Ukraine, vowing to continue to stand firmly behind Kyiv, offering continued aid and assistance.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told a cabinet meeting on Monday morning that supporting Ukraine was an "easy" choice for Australia. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has been even more outspoken and more critical of Trump. He has previously called the US president "profoundly wrong" on Ukraine. On Monday, he said that, if elected, he would lobby the White House to maintain military support for Kyiv.
But unlike European leaders, Albanese has tried to ensure that he does not get drawn into the wider debate about Trump 2.0 and its implications for European and global security. The prime minister has simply said repeatedly that he will not offer a "commentary" on every utterance of the president, avoiding direct criticism.
It's understandable why the prime minister is keeping a low profile. Like most of America's allies and friends, the Australian government is affected in many ways by changes in US policy, and he needs to choose his battles very carefully. Australia already faces steel and aluminum tariffs imposed by the Trump administration and may soon be embroiled in trade disputes over the Goods and Services Tax (GST), pharmaceutical benefits, and the regulation of big tech companies.
Even though key figures in the US administration support AUKUS (the Australia-UK-US security pact) and have said that the president is enthusiastic about the ambitious plan, Trump himself has only publicly said four words about AUKUS: "Very important." All of this, coupled with Trump's sensitivity to criticism, explains why the prime minister has been so reluctant to engage in what he calls "commentary" on the US's foreign policy over the past six weeks.
Australian officials may be quietly watching the impending massive cuts to USAID, but the emphasis has been on "quiet": Even as they weigh the humanitarian costs, neither the foreign minister nor senior officials have publicly uttered a word of criticism. The same has been true of Australia's reaction to Trump's withdrawal from the World Health Organization or from the Paris climate accord: You can sense a suppressed unease pervading multiple government departments in Canberra, but no one will say anything in public.
There are similar considerations at play on Ukraine: The brutal reality is that, while Australian officials believe a Russian victory would be a disaster, they don't think that public pressure from Mr. Albanese would have much impact on the US president. David Andrews of the Australian National University's National Security College says that the federal government has so far tried to "bend and gently accommodate the Trump 2.0 whirlwind."
He writes: "The approach to date has been quiet, slow, and steady." He says that the government's aim is not just to insulate Australia from direct trade retaliation or protect AUKUS, but to try to maintain US engagement in Asia by helping to convince Trump and his key allies that the security and diplomatic architecture that the US has built here is vital to US national interests.
And that's where the second question comes in. While calling Zelenskyy a "dictator" on his social media platform Truth Social, the president has revived a familiar theme about the war in Ukraine: That it is simply not a vital interest for the United States. "This war is far more important to Europe than it is to us – we have an ocean separating us that is wide and beautiful," he wrote.
Some analysts have warned that this should set alarm bells ringing in Canberra, Manila, Tokyo, and Seoul, all of which rely on US security and all of which are located on the other side of an ocean that is wider and larger than the Atlantic. Few analysts are calling Trump an "isolationist" after his extraordinary statements about annexing Greenland, Panama, the Gaza Strip, and Canada.
But the US president has made it abundantly clear that, in every transaction, his first (and last) question is: What's in it for the US? What's in it for me? His confidence that the US can be insulated from faraway conflicts, and his frustration with "free-riding" allies, are also bound to fuel deep-seated fears of abandonment in Asia.
In Taiwan, the challenge is most acute. Taiwan faces relentless military and political coercion from China and remains the region's most dangerous potential flashpoint. Still, not everyone is convinced that Trump would treat his Asian allies the same way he has treated his European allies, saying that the president is unlikely to hand Taiwan to China in the same way that he has threatened to hand Ukraine to Russia.
Over the weekend, Ryan Hass, a former White House staffer and China analyst, warned against confidently drawing a straight line from Kyiv to Taipei when weighing the White House's next moves. "Ukraine is not Taiwan," he wrote on X. "The barriers to a military invasion of Taiwan are far higher than Ukraine." "One hundred miles of water is very different than a land border."
He also argued that Taiwan's extraordinary semiconductor industry, and the US's reliance on it to revitalize its own chip industry, would make it much harder for Trump to abandon Taiwan. "Economically, Taiwan is indispensable to Trump's goal of American industrial revival," he wrote. "Trump's goal of reviving American industry is unachievable without Taiwan. Yes, Taiwan needs the US, but the US needs Taiwan too."
While speculation persists that Trump could strike a "grand bargain" with China, most people who follow the issue closely believe that there are too many entrenched vested interests on both sides for it to become a reality. James Paterson, a frontbencher in the governing coalition, expressed a similar view on the Insiders program over the weekend, telling the program that he was convinced that a Trump administration would remain committed to maintaining the US's strategic position throughout the Pacific.
He said on Insiders: "I think it would be a mistake for China to think that the United States looks at the Indo-Pacific region the same way it looks at the European region... Meeting with most 'America First' people, in the Republican foreign policy space, they have made it clear to me that the US is a resident power in the Pacific."
Of course, isolation and engagement are only part of the story. The terms of engagement also matter. Even if Trump does decide that the US must remain a key force in Asia, the Australian government will have to brace itself for a potentially increasing array of demands and needs from Washington, requiring careful navigation.
As one Australian official joked last week: "Don't ask what you can do for your country, ask what you will have to do for Trump." David Andrews says that, apart from worrying about abandonment, Australian politicians and officials need to work out which fights they are willing to have with a new Trump administration, and which areas they are willing to concede easily.
He writes: "The key question for the government and the opposition to ask themselves now – although, realistically, they should have done so long ago – is where are Australia's red lines?" He argues that these questions could come thick and fast, particularly if Trump allies like Elon Musk fixate on any perceived injustices in the alliance or in our political system.
He writes: "How much are we willing to pay to get AUKUS submarines if Trump demands it? How much distortion of our tax base are we willing to tolerate? Is it worth sacrificing affordable healthcare and succumbing to the growing influence of big tech companies for the sake of the alliance?" Of course, drawing these red lines will be anything but easy for Australia, because the US remains indispensable.
As Andrews candidly acknowledges, there are simply no alternatives to the US in multiple areas for Australia. Without the US, Australia would be cut off from key military technologies that are vital for the government to build a credible deterrent force. Without the ballast and military might provided by the US, Australia's efforts to achieve regional "equilibrium" to counterbalance the rapidly swelling power of China would soon appear futile.
That's precisely why Albanese and his ministers are treading so carefully right now. The terrible plight now facing Ukraine shows how quickly leaders can find themselves mired in a quagmire in this unsettling new era. Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong alluded to this carefully at a Senate hearing last week, although even she could not have predicted what would unfold in the Oval Office just 36 hours later.
She said: "President Trump ran on a platform of change, and none of us should seek to diminish the impact of that change."
