Trump’s volatility in Asia distresses longtime US ally Australia

DARWIN — South Korea, Japan and the United States have grown accustomed to North Korea’s diatribes, but Pyongyang recently threatened a new target with a nuclear strike: Australia.

During a visit by American Vice-President Mike Pence to Sydney, the North warned Australia to think twice about “blindly and zealously toeing the US line” and acting as “a shock brigade of the US master”.

Australian and US troops have fought side by side in every major conflict since World War I, and there are few militaries in the world with closer relations: Recently, 1,250 US Marines arrived in Darwin for six months of joint exercises; the two countries share intelligence from land, sea and even outer space; and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is set to meet President Donald Trump tomorrow on an aircraft carrier in New York.

But North Korea’s threat against the country, far-fetched as it might seem, is an example of how Australia’s most important military alliance faces a new challenge: The risk that Mr Trump will draw the nation into a conflict or other unexpected crisis that destabilises the region, angers its trading partners or forces it to side with either the US or China.

“The question is: What might America drag Australia into?” said Ms Ashley Townshend, a research fellow at the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. “That is a very scary thought for Australians, many of whom perceive Donald Trump to be an erratic and highly self-interested commander-in-chief.”

Mr Trump has already embarrassed Australia once, with an abrupt phone call to Mr Turnbull that seemed to dismiss Australia’s historic role as a friend who often gives more than it gets. Now his unpredictable approach is fuelling a national debate about Australia’s relationship with the world, and especially the US. Last week, Mr Paul Keating, a prime minister during the Clinton years, reignited discussion by arguing that Australia must end its status as a “client state”.

Australia is essentially caught between two powers: China, its largest trading partner, and the US, its faithful ally, with a military connection that has been strengthened by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and more recent agreements to gradually expand the US footprint in Darwin.

What Australia and the US are now trying to work out is how to manage that military momentum in an increasingly tense part of the world. If the military is a hammer in the Trump era, at what point does every dispute start to look like a nail?

“It is always important that there is a balance between the military and the diplomatic — because of the scale of the military,” Mr Keating said in an interview. “In both economic terms and in strategic terms, they squeeze diplomacy out.”

Darwin, a humid, crocodile-infested coastal city at the northern end of this vast country, captures the past, present and future of Australia’s alliance with the US.

Japan attacked the city on Feb 19, 1942, killing 235 people, and residents are quick to point out that the raids were led by the same commander responsible for the attack on Pearl Harbor 10 weeks earlier.

Within a few months, Darwin became a hub for counterstrikes from bombers flown by Americans. A pocket guide for arriving US troops set the tone: “You’re going to meet a people who like Americans and whom you will like.”

During the Cold War, the relationship expanded. Mr Kim Beazley, a former defence minister and ambassador to the US, cited the rise during the 1960s of three joint installations to maintain contact with US submarines in the Indian Ocean and provide infrared detection of Soviet capabilities, increasing the warning time for a potential Soviet strike to 30 minutes from 15.

Those installations and the ones that followed — especially Pine Gap, a joint Australian-US spy base that helps provide battlefield intelligence and early warnings for missile launches around the world — “are never talked about, but they’re really the guts of the alliance”, Mr Beazley said.

On the ground in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan, Australian troops are also peers in battle, said Lieutenant-Colonel Brian S Middleton, commanding officer of the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines — the US unit that just moved into Darwin for six months of training with the Australians.

As part of the US pivot to Asia, the long-term plan, negotiated under the Obama administration, is to send up to 2,500 marines to Darwin — the largest deployment of US forces to Australia since World War II. “It will make us more effective in whatever conflict we end up serving in together,” said Ms Kelly Magsamen, the Pentagon’s top Asia-Pacific policy official at the end of the Obama administration.

Other US officials said that in space, missile defence and cyber warfare, the Australians are all in. Australia is working with the US to relocate a special radar that helps to track satellites better. The Australian military is also making a big push in innovation in undersea warfare, and drones in the air and underwater.

And in many cases, that means purchases of US equipment. An Australian defence planning report last year laid out a US$20 billion (S$27.9 billion) increase in the annual military budget by 2025, including money for fighter jets, surveillance technology, submarines, surface ships, and other equipment.

Regardless, there have been challenges. The toughest issues have involved China, the crucial lever of influence with North Korea and the region. Some US officials have urged Australia to engage in robust freedom-of-navigation operations in the South China Sea, where China has set up bases on disputed islands, but the Australians have resisted.

Last year, US officials also expressed alarm about a Darwin port local officials had leased to a Chinese company for US$361 million, possibly making it easier to collect intelligence on the US and Australian forces stationed nearby. “China is the elephant in the room for both of us,” Ms Magsamen said. “We need to have a more frank and structured discussion among ourselves about how to manage that relationship.”

Mr Allan Gyngell, who ran Australia’s intelligence agency from 2009 to 2013, argues in a new book, Fear of Abandonment, that Australia’s foreign policy is still driven by worries about being left isolated, without the promise of security from a powerful friend: First Britain, now the US.

Mr Keating, the former prime minister, is among those urging a more independent foreign policy in which Australia accepts China as the region’s dominant power.

In the discussion last week at the Lowy Institute, a think tank in Sydney, Mr Keating said Australia should say no to the US more often — as France and Canada do — especially on issues that affect its relationship with China.

Those who reject this argument include Mr John Howard, the prime minister who followed Mr Keating and was in Washington during the 9/11 attacks.

In an interview, Mr Howard warned against being “mesmerised by China”. He added that too many Australians were jumping to conclusions about Mr Trump.

“He’s different,” Mr Howard said. “Whether he’s good different or bad different is not the point; the world has to get used to him.” THE NEW YORK TIMES