I’m quoted extensively in a new reported piece in The Guardian that’s raising critical questions about how Australian national security elites do their sub-imperialism.
It’s one in a series The Guardian has been running about Australian foreign policy, provoking—or at least promoting—a rethink in Australia, which has allowed the US military and intelligence services to absolutely swamp the place. The title of the piece cuts to the crux of the issue: “As China rises, Australia is increasingly enmeshed in the US war machine. Is the alliance still worth the risk?”
Some of my quotes are, how you say, undiplomatic:
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’s “pivot” to Asia.
“That pivot was about many things in relation to China, but specifically the geographic encirclement of China … in service of war fighting contingencies against China,” Jackson, an associate professor in international relations at the Victoria University of Wellington, told the Guardian.
“At the grand strategy level, it was about ensuring American primacy: global primacy is the principal means and ends of US foreign policy.”
Australia, as an ally, represents to the US an immensely useful piece of geography.
“Australia 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,” Jackson said.
Jackson noted the US-Australia alliance was often phrased in euphemism, around “mateship”, of shared values and of a commitment to democracy. Australia’s 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 “with us, even in our less-advisable wars”.
While Jackson believed “that romance” was authentically felt, it was secondary to the US’ interest in using Australia for “very exploitative reasons”.
“Every alliance is exploited … and geography is the purpose Australia serves,” he said.
Given the size of the US military – America’s military budget surpassed that of the next six largest defence budgets on earth combined (including two countries that were actively at war) – the contribution of American allies “in terms of boots on the ground, or the share of aircraft or of frigates, is always a drop in the bucket”, Jackson said.
“When military strategists in the Pentagon think about alliances it’s always about needing access to bases, ports, and airspace,” he said.
“It helps on the margins to have these almost-symbolic military contributions from allies, but it’s not decisive in any way, it doesn’t really ever shift the balance of power, it’s not the difference between victory and defeat: it’s about access.”
The timing of The Guardian’s expose on Australia is a bit too perfect, coming on the heels of South Koreans newly questioning their alliance with the US, the Trump administration posing an active security threat to Canada and NATO members, and a think-tank report from Washington last week calling for ending America’s mutual defense treaties with its Asian allies.
Everything has changed. Readers of this newsletter have known that for some time.
What’s especially disturbing though is that the national-security ghouls adjacent to my life—whether in Washington or Canberra or Brussels—seem stubbornly ignorant about how the world as it exists destroys their worldview. Facing an epistemic break, they simply take the path of cognitive least resistance, which is to double down on Uncle Sam, lash out with ad hominems at those they disagree with, and quietly insist either that Trump is an aberration (in 2026!?) or that MAGA’s doing three-dimensional chess and it’s all really about “winning” against China.
The failure of national security elites to update their priors makes them handmaidens of empire and oligarchy right now, but it also paves a future to something like fascism:
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