The most obvious purpose of the alliance is to serve states with notice that should they attack Australian ‘territory_…armed forces, public vessels or aircraft’ in the Pacific, then the United States, New Zealand and Australia would ‘act to meet the common danger’ (ANZUS Treaty, 1951). Though it has been a low likelihood since 1945, and remains so today, any potential aggressor against Australia would have to consider the possibility that an attack on Australian soil or assets would provoke a military response from the U.S. At times, Australia has sought more specific assurances, though these efforts have not always yielded the results desired by Canberra. When, in the early 1960s, Australia contributed troops to defend the new Malayan Federation, Canberra enquired as to what support it might receive from the U.S. if Australian forces should come into contact with Indonesian troops. Washington’s pledge of assistance was carefully caveated, and nowhere near the level of support desired by Canberra (see Curran, 2015).

A similar dynamic played out in September 1999, when Australia led a UN-sponsored peacekeeping force in East Timor. Canberra requested not only a security guarantee, but a contribution of U.S. ground forces. When President Bill Clinton explained his decision to not send ground forces due to America’s commitments in the Balkans, this sent shockwaves through Canberra’s policy-making community. The Australian Defence Minister, John Moore, asked the U.S. Secretary of Defense for ‘a ship, a plane, at the very least’, in order to signal that the U.S. was firmly committed to the operation. When this request was rebuffed, Moore retorted: ‘well, so much for the ANZUS treaty’ (Henry, 2013, p. 106). Bitterly　disappointed in this outcome, Australian reframed its request for a more limited commitment of logistical and intelligence support, to which Washington quickly agreed. Though the U.S. did, eventually, provide military support and a security guarantee, these events again demonstrated that Canberra’s expectations within ANZUS might not always be fully met.

Though it is not mentioned in the text of the treaty – and actually predates it – Australia’s intelligence relationship with the U.S. is often considered as a benefit of the alliance relationship. Wartime signals intelligence (SIGINT) cooperation persisted after 1945, and in time ‘Australia found itself in the inner sanctum of the post-war U.S. intelligence network’ (Wesley, 2016, p. 151). While other Asian allies – especially Japan – contributed to regional security through the hosting of U.S. military forces, during the Cold War Australia sought to contribute through hosting U.S. SIGINT facilities, such as those located at Pine Gap, in central Australia (see Ball, 1980). Though Australia’s contributions to the ‘five eyes’ intelligence network are important, Canberra receives far more material than it contributes. Australia treasures this access, and the mid-1980s ‘ANZUS Crisis’ – in which the U.S. reacted to an alliance disagreement by suspending its security commitments to New Zealand, and drastically curtailing intelligence cooperation with Wellington – served to remind Canberra that Washington’s displeasure could have significant security implications (see Hensley, 2013).

The third key benefit associated with the alliance is Australia’s privileged access to cutting-edge Defence technology and research. Though Australia, in the first part of the Cold War, continued to ‘buy British’, Canberra soon realised the benefits of being able to access American military technology. Australia’s former Chief Defence Scientist has written that although ‘there are exceptions’, ‘Australia is drawn to the United States as the source of much of its strategically critical, high-technology equipment’ (Brabin- Smith, 2016, p. 184).¹ This privileged access extends beyond merely the platforms and assets, but to munitions as well. In the event of a high-intensity conflict, Australia’s advanced munitions resupply could come only from the United States.

Over time, however, Australia proved unwilling to fully support Washington’s policies in the region. The likely cause of this is that Canberra began to doubt the Obama administration’s commitment to the rebalance. Washington’s ineffective responses to Chinese actions – such as the 2012 seizure of the Scarborough Shoal – demonstrated the reluctance of the Obama administration to jeopardise the U.S.-China relationship for anything less than vital U.S. interests, and cast doubt on whether the rebalance would protect the interests of Asian allies. There are hints that some U.S. military officers advocated a more assertive response, but Washington ultimately acquiesced to China’s occupation of the Shoal (though some authors argue that the U.S. has successfully deterred China from building on it) (Cooper, 2016; Cooper & Douglas, 2016). These developments were closely watched by Australian Government officials, who were disturbed by the display of Chinese aggression and U.S. inaction.

When the Obama Administration decided to target its Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPs) at Chinese claims in the South China Sea, this precipitated a more intense debate in Australia. Though the FONOPs were intended to ‘reassure allies_… that the United States would stand up to China’s efforts to unilaterally change facts on the ground’, there is little evidence to suggest they changed Chinese behaviour or assuaged allied concerns (Cooper & Perlez, 2015). Nevertheless, in early 2016 U.S. Defense officials privately encouraged Australia to do its own FONOP, and in late 2016 Admiral Harry Harris, Commander-in-Chief of U.S. forces in the Pacific, made the suggestion publicly (Beazley, 2016; Nicholson, 2016; Wroe, 2016). Many of Australia’s Defence commentators, and a few parliamentarians, also called for Canberra to conduct its own FONOP (see Riordan, 2017). Some shadow ministers in the Australian Labor Party, then in opposition, tried to criticize the Coalition Government for not following America’s lead, but the Government attacked this advocacy as ‘urging an escalation of tensions _…. that’s a highly irresponsible call at this point’ (Conroy, 2016; Karp, 2016). At the close of 2016, the Coalition Government’s policy was confused: it lambasted the Labor opposition for suggesting that Australia emulate U.S. FONOPs – conducted within 12 nautical miles of disputed features – but continued to insist that ‘Australian vessels and aircrafts will continue to exercise their rights of passage and overflight under international law in the South China Sea’ (Bishop, 2016).

Though, during the Obama years, Australian leaders talked as if there was no daylight between Australian and U.S. interests, Canberra’s unwillingness to fulfil Washington’s request for a FONOP was an important break in reflexive thinking about alliance loyalty. However, one year earlier, in 2015, two other decisions suggested that Canberra was becoming more willing to delineate between American preferences and Australia’s national interest. The decision to join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) – despite reports that the U.S. ‘lobbied Australia to steer clear’ – reflected China’s enormous economic importance to Australia, as did a decision to lease the port of Darwin, for 99 years, to a Chinese firm (SBS News, 2014). This decision caused a minor public rupture in ANZUS: when President Obama suggested that Australia had not consulted adequately with the U.S., the Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, dismissed this complaint on the grounds that the deal ‘was not a secret’ (Kelly, 2015).

The rise of China, and its economic importance to Australia, had begun to exercise an important influence on Australian thinking. Slowly but surely, leaders in Canberra were more becoming more willing to refuse U.S. requests, distance Australia from U.S. policies, and adopt positions known to displease Washington. These decisions demonstrate that by the end of 2016 – before President Trump’s inauguration – new tensions existed in the alliance. In the past, Canberra had often concluded that supporting U.S. policies in Asia was in Australia’s national interest and carried little cost or risk, and so had acted accordingly. But now, Canberra’s decisions were less reflexive. When it came to decisions involving trade-offs between China and the U.S., Washington was growing disappointed that Australia seemed to no longer be an ever-reliable ally. For its part, Canberra’s actions and inaction demonstrated the competing influences on Australian policy: Australia worried about the consequences of China’s rise, but declined to fully support the Obama Administration’s policy responses. Though Canberra continued to publicly affirm the importance of the U.S. presence in Asia, Australia’s policy choices suggested that Canberra had begun to doubt U.S. constancy and reliability.

In seeking to understand how Australia has reacted to U.S. policy under President Trump, it is necessary to examine how Canberra perceived the world immediately prior to his election. Australia’s 2013 Defence White Paper mentioned, on only nine occasions, the concept of a rules-based global order (RBGO). But the 2016 Defence White Paper used the concept – mentioned 56 times – to comprehensively frame Australia’s assessment of the region and the world.

The 2016 Defence White Paper states that the RBGO is a ‘shared commitment by all countries to conduct their activities in accordance with agreed rules which evolve over time’, which is underpinned by ‘a broad architecture of international governance which has developed since the end of the Second World War_…including the United Nations, international laws and conventions and regional security architectures’ (Australian Department of Defence, 2016, p. 45). This official depiction of the concept is notable for its suggestion that the RBGO is not immutable: the order involves ‘agreed rules which evolve over time’ (Australian Department of Defence, 2016, p. 15). But this nuance appears to have little or no influence on how Australian leaders have since talked about order. Instead, Australian politicians – most notably Prime Ministers and Foreign Ministers – have usually doubled down on their advocacy for an unchanged regional hierarchy with the U.S. at its apex. There is little sense in their comments that Australian politicians have any idea of how the RBGO might evolve in a way that maximises stability. Instead, it seems that the RBGO can exist only if China remains subordinate to the United States.

The election of President Trump thus came as an unwelcome surprise for almost all Australian observers: Trump’s disdainful rhetoric on alliances and multilateral institutions sparked new and frank discussions about the possible risks posed by ANZUS. Uncertainty over the direction of Washington’s policies – especially its policy towards China – worried Canberra. It was not clear, from events in 2017, whether the U.S.-China relationship would improve or worsen. President Trump’s phone call to Tsai Ing-wen, Rex Tillerson’s intimation of a possible naval blockade, Steve Bannon’s prediction of an inevitable U.S.-China war, and disagreements over North Korea illustrated the absence of a consistent policy towards China and the Asian region. At this time, Washington also laid the groundwork for escalation on issues of fair trade, intellectual property, and economic espionage, though it was, in 2017, uncertain as to whether these would be escalated (see Lynch, 2017). Generating further anxiety, Trump’s well-known dislike of alliance commitments raised the prospect that he would not consider allied reactions before making significant policy decisions.

Though the potential for escalating Sino-U.S. tensions existed, in 2017 the greater danger seemed to be that the U.S. was no longer interested in playing a significant global role. President Trump’s antipathy toward the ‘postwar international order’ was well known: he believed this order was ‘not working at all’ (Landler, 2017). Canberra feared abandonment, rather than entrapment, but this was not the usual worry of bilateral abandonment: this fear of U.S. global retreat, perhaps accompanied by the cutting of deals with adversaries like China, had not been felt in Canberra for decades. There was even concern in some quarters that the world had irrevocably changed: one former Australian Prime Minister assessed ‘The U.S. is rejecting its own globalism_…You can’t pawn the crown and then expect to repurchase it at full value’ (Sheridan, 2017). There seemed to be some not inconsiderable risk that Washington would abandon the order it had underwritten since 1945.

In response to fears that Washington might abandon its global and regional leadership roles, in 2017 Australian leaders emphasised two positions. The first was a critique of China: because it is illiberal and non-democratic, the region would not accept it usurping American leadership. The second was a plea to the U.S., signalling that if Washington did decide to defend its regional leadership, then Asian allies would share the burdens and risks of doing so. Thus, Australian language on China got noticeably sharper and confrontational. In March 2017 Australia’s Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, lectured China, proclaiming that ‘democracy and democratic institutions are essential for nations if they are to reach their economic potential’ (Bishop, 2017). When she launched the 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper in November, Bishop enunciated Australia’s aspirations even more bluntly: ‘We want to work with like-minded democracies to shape China’ (Tillet, 2017).

This confrontational rhetoric was accompanied by Australian efforts to reassure Washington that if it did decide to confront China, and preserve global order, then allies would share the burdens. In June 2017, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull gave the keynote address at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. After acknowledging that ‘we want to see China fill the leadership role it desires in a way which strengthens the regional order that has served us all so well’, Turnbull emphasised that ‘we understand President Trump’s request that those who benefit from the peace America secures do more militarily and financially to contribute’. In the same speech, Turnbull promised that ‘Australia will pull its weight in an increasingly multipolar region’ (Turnbull, 2017). Implicit in these comments is an acknowledgement that because U.S. power was declining relative to China’s, U.S. allies would need to assume greater security burdens.

Unsurprisingly, tensions in the Australia-China relationship intensified. In the second half of 2017, Australian media reported on Chinese attempts to influence Australian domestic politics. A major investigation found that Australia’s security intelligence organisation had warned the two main political parties about taking donations from businessmen linked to the PRC, and that such a donation had been withheld following comments critical of China’s conduct in the South China Sea (Sydney Morning Herald and ABC News, 2017). In response, laws designed to make foreign-funded or -directed lobbying more transparent were quickly presented to Parliament.² Though Prime Minister Turnbull insisted that the laws were not directed at any one country, he spoke in halting Mandarin to assert that ‘the Australian people have stood up’ (Gribbin, 2017). Displeased – perhaps more by Turnbull’s words, than the legislation itself – China put diplomatic relations with Australia in the ‘deep freeze’ (Shanahan & Riordan, 2018).

As 2017 drew to a close, Australia had responded to President Trump’s election by articulating its desired order – a U.S.-anchored, rules-based system which preserved American primacy – and pledging its willingness to work towards this goal. In doing so, it had implicitly acknowledged the relative decline of U.S. power, and promised to increase Australia’s own security efforts. But in 2018, both U.S. and Chinese actions tested Canberra’s position. The U.S. National Security Strategy (NSS), issued in December 2017, contained the promise of a more confrontational outlook in Washington. China and Russia were depicted as revisionist, thieving competitors of the United States, inherently hostile to U.S. interests and values. To respond, the NSS noted that Washington would have to rely on ‘close cooperation with allies and partners because…[they] magnify U.S. power and extend U.S. influence’ (U.S. Government, 2017, p. 45).

At first glance, it seemed that the NSS might fulfil Australian hopes for a firmer U.S. policy in Asia. But Australian leaders found themselves unwilling to wholeheartedly support the document’s idea of great power competition. Australia’s then-Defence Minister, Marise Payne, seemed to endorse the NSS when she said that Australia ‘shares similar concerns’ to the U.S. (Maley, 2018). But within a couple of days she backed down, clarifying that ‘Australia doesn’t see a threat in the region and we certainly don’t see China as a threat’. The Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, claimed that Australia had ‘a different perspective on Russia and China, clearly’, and Prime Minister Turnbull also played down Payne’s earlier comments (SBS News, 2018). Despite all of Canberra’s sharp language in 2017, when presented with the opportunity to endorse a more confrontational U.S. posture towards China, these same leaders balked.

As 2018 progressed the deep freeze in Sino-Australian relations grew more problematic. Ministerial visits to China were delayed until their inevitable cancellation, and when Australia’s Trade Minister was able to secure a rare visa approval, he did not meet with his Chinese counterpart. He did, however, offer a conciliatory speech on trade, which seemed to cast both Australia and China as struggling to deal with a ‘storm’ caused by unnamed actors threatening free trade (Needham, 2018). The deep freeze extended beyond governmental circles: increased scrutiny was applied to imports from Australia, resulting in some delays at the border, and Australian universities were unable to confirm meetings in China. In August, in a speech attended by the Chinese Ambassador, Prime Minister Turnbull attempted to restore some warmth to the relationship. He explicitly rejected Cold War analogies, warning it was ‘a mistake to assume_…that the United States and its allies would or should seek to contain China’ (Coorey, 2018).

Just as Canberra was talking down the prospects of Cold War-like competition, however, Washington was talking them up. In October 2018, Vice President Mike Pence delivered a speech which may, in time, be seen as a significant historical marker. Pence’s speech contained what, in Beijing, could be viewed as glaring inaccuracies at best, or offensive insults at worst. In more detail and with greater colour than the NSS, Pence’s speech presented China as a significant and growing threat to the U.S.: an implacable foe determined to ‘push the United States of America from the Western Pacific’. Pence vowed: ‘We will not be intimidated and we will not stand down’ (Pence, 2018). After Sino- U.S. trade tensions had intensified in the first half of 2018, Pence’s speech seemed to throw the gauntlet down.

In Australia, most commentators saw the Pence speech as proof that the United States was finally serious about competition with China. One described it as ‘Cold War 2.0’, while another assessed its ‘key message’ was that Australia needed to ‘get our own China thinking in order, reduce our dependence on Beijing’s money and set some realistic strategic policy goals’ (Dupont, 2018; Jennings, 2018). However few commentators – even those considered as ‘hawks’ on China – offered absolute endorsement of the speech. One said that ‘Australia is broadly comfortable with the Pence approach’, another said it was time to ‘build up our strike capabilities’, while others concluded that Australia needed to adjust its strategy in response to the new era of Sino-U.S. competition (Dibb, 2018; Perlez, 2018; Sheridan, 2018). Though Pence’s speech did not receive strong endorsement, only one high-profile commentator clearly encouraged Australia to ‘stand aloof from many of Trump’s emerging disastrous global policies, notably his campaign to weaken China and its economy’ (Kelly, 2018).

In 2017, Australia adopted a tough tone on China and hoped that the U.S. would demonstrate its desire to defend the postwar order. In the NSS and Pence speech, Washington had essentially answered – but perhaps gone beyond – Australia’s desire for a firmer U.S. policy towards China. While it is too early to say whether Australia will ultimately support a hard-edged and confrontational posture towards China, the initial signs are not promising. Given that Australian leaders had spent much of 2017 encouraging Washington to defend the rules-based global order, Canberra’s official reactions might seem perplexing. Prime Minister Scott Morrison gave an interview to the Chinese Caixin magazine only a few days after the Pence speech, noting that Australia has ‘independent relationships with both’ the U.S. and China, and would ‘always seek to de-escalate tensions_… from a position of friendship with both countries’ (Li & Ke, 2018). Three months later, then-Defence Minister Pyne rejected the idea of a second Cold War and said that it was ‘critical that US–China relations do not come to be defined in wholly adversarial terms’ (Pyne, 2019). This trend has continued: no Australian leader has yet commented on the Pence speech, nor on Secretary of State Pompeo’s assertion, in October 2019, that the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue countries will work to ensure ‘that China retains only its proper place in the world’ (Pompeo, 2019).

Although some Australian commentators encouraged Washington to push back more firmly against China, the approach flagged in the Pence speech seems to have caused disquiet in Canberra. Washington appears less concerned about upholding an order which could peacefully incorporate China as a superpower, and more preoccupied with reasserting its place as a regional hegemon. If the Obama pivot was too conciliatory, then the new era of competition flagged by Pence and Pompeo may be too confrontational. This raises interesting parallels with the events of the 1950s, discussed earlier. Perhaps Australia, over the next few years, will again find itself encouraging a less aggressive U.S. posture towards China. Another possibility is that President Trump will, again, abruptly reverse course, and conclude some kind of grand bargain with Beijing (see Donnan, 2018). Perhaps this possibility, too, is encouraging Canberra’s hesitance.

None of this is to suggest that Australia is paralysed and unwilling or unable to push back against Beijing in any way. Canberra has passed new foreign interference legislation, vetoed Chinese efforts to purchase critical infrastructure, and excluded Chinese companies from participating in Australia’s 5G telecommunications networks. It has also worked to limit Chinese expansion in Canberra’s own ‘sphere of influence’ – the Southwest Pacific – by offering alternatives to Chinese investment (Wroe, 2018). This is what John Garnaut and Rory Medcalf have argued is a ‘reset’, ‘reality check’ or ‘recalibration’, which establishes a new baseline in Australia-China relations (see Garnaut, 2018; Medcalf, 2018).³ Though generally correct, this argument is sometimes exaggerated: it is important to note that Australia’s push-back has clear geographic limits and Canberra has, at times, carefully disassociated its own actions from Washington’s desires. In mid-2019, when there was intense interest in the possibility of Pacific nations switching diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to the PRC, Prime Minister Morrison sought to distance Australia’s initiatives from U.S. concerns. He acknowledged that the U.S. has ‘interests in the region, as do others’, but insisted that Australia’s ‘relationship with the Pacific transcends all that’ (Dziedzic, 2019).

Australia is countering Chinese influence on its own soil, and in the South-West Pacific, but has demonstrated no appetite to confront Chinese actions further afield. This is critical: to most accurately assess the current state of the Australia-U.S. alliance it is necessary to examine not only what Australia has done to confront China, but also what it has chosen to not do – sometimes despite strong encouragement from Washington. For now, it seems that Australia is prioritising the reset with China, rather than endorsing and supporting Washington’s new attitude of eagerly embracing great-power competition.

In an effort to conceal these policy divergences, Canberra has attempted to advance the alliance during the Trump presidency by doubling down on rhetorical support for the relationship. The Australian Ambassador in Washington, Joe Hockey, has orchestrated a campaign extolling ‘100 Years’ of ‘Mateship’, with grand appeals to emotion, shared values, and history (Embassy of Australia, 2018). This was accompanied by such trinkets as an official beer (‘mateship ale’) and song (Curran, 2018; kixcountry.com.au, 2017). A gala dinner in New York, on the decommissioned USS Intrepid aircraft carrier, was arranged to impress President Trump with tales of battlefield courage, celebrity guests, and business deal sweeteners (Stewart, 2019). Despite the pressures and tensions described earlier, an Australian Embassy publication proclaimed ‘There is no doubt that the mateship between Australia and the United States will further develop and strengthen over the next hundred years’ (Embassy of Australia, 2018, p. 1).

In such propaganda efforts, the risk is that divergent interests are not identified, discussed and debated, but are instead overshadowed by lofty rhetoric, wistful reminiscence, and perhaps a few too many mateship ales. As Walt notes, the real ‘litmus test’ of an alliance comes not at meetings ‘designed for the ritual incantation of unifying rhetoric – but when member-states are called upon to do something for each other’ (Walt, 1997, p. 170). Given the Australian Government’s assertive rhetoric of 2017, Canberra’s reluctance to unambiguously support the Trump Administration’s characterisation of China as a ‘growing threat’, and escalating Sino-U.S. tensions, it is likely that invocations of mateship will soon be challenged by hard questions about what interests are actually shared between the allies, and whether Washington’s expectations of security cooperation against China can be realised (Pence, 2018).