A former Australian defence force chief has warned “the vandals in the White House” are no longer reliable allies and urged the Australian government to reassess its strategic partnership with the United States.
Retired admiral Chris Barrie spent four decades in the Royal Australian Navy and was made a Commander of the Legion of Merit by the US government in 2002. He is now an honorary professor at the Australian National University.
“What is happening with the vandals in the White House is similar to what happened to Australia in 1942 with the fall of Singapore,” Barrie said. “I don’t consider America to be a reliable ally, as I used to.
“Frankly, I think it is time we reconsidered our priorities and think carefully about our defence needs, now that we are having a more independent posture… Our future is now in a much more precarious state than it was on 19 January.”
“Trump 1.0 was bad enough. But Trump 2.0 is irrecoverable.”
Barrie said it was “too soon” to say whether Australia should end its multibillion-dollar Aukus partnership, but raised concerns about a lack of guarantee that nuclear-powered submarines would actually be delivered. He also warned about an apparent lack of a back-up option.
Pillar One of the Aukus deal – which would see the US sell Australia nuclear-powered submarines before the Aukus-class submarines were built in Australia – is coming under increasing industry scrutiny and political criticism, with growing concerns the US will not be able, or will refuse, to sell boats to Australia, and continuing cost and time overruns in the development of the Aukus submarines.
“Let’s define why we really need nuclear submarines in the first instance, given a new independent defence posture for Australia,” Barrie said. “If they still make sense in that context, fine. But they might not. There might be alternatives. There might be alternatives with conventional submarines if we didn’t want to go any further than the Malacca Straits.”
Barrie’s warning comes after former foreign minister, Bob Carr, said Australia would face a “colossal surrender of sovereignty” if promised US nuclear-powered submarines did not arrive under Australian control.
Carr, the foreign minister between 2012 and 2013, said the Aukus deal highlighted the larger issue of American unreliability in its security alliance with Australia.
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“The US is utterly not a reliable ally. No one could see it in those terms,” he said. “[President] Trump is wilful and cavalier and so is his heir-apparent, JD Vance: they are laughing at alliance partners, whom they’ve almost studiously disowned.”
The US Congressional Research Service has proposed an alternative under which the US would not sell any submarines to Australia; instead, it would sail its own submarines, under US command, out of Australian bases.
When asked if he trusted Donald Trump earlier this week, the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said “what sort of question is that?”.
“I mean, he’s the president of the United States,” Albanese said. “He’s elected as the president of the United States. I’m the prime minister for Australia. He’s entitled to pursue his agenda, of course. But I’m entitled to defend Australia’s national interest and that’s what we’re doing.”
Opposition leader Peter Dutton, speaking at the Lowy Institute this week, said “the United States is still, and must always be, our most important partner”.
But he criticised the Trump administration’s decision to impose tariffs on Australia.
“We disagree with president Trump’s decision to apply these tariffs: they’re not just unjustified, they benefit neither Australia or the United States.”