Bekymring Down Under - Defence Connect

US is central to Australia’s strategic security, but what if they’re not available?

31 MAY 2023

By: Stephen Kuper

Since the Battle of the Coral Sea, the US has been the foundation of Australia’s defence posture, providing, as former defence minister Kim Beazley states, the “top cover”, but what if the US isn’t available?

It is an undisputable fact that much of the peace, prosperity, and stability of the post-Second World War paradigm came as a direct result of the US-led global order.

In putting an end to the often-ancient rivalries between varying imperial powers, the United States, through its post-war economic, political and most importantly, strategic might, guaranteed the freedom of the seas and promoted an explosion of free trade across the globe paving the way for the modern, interconnected global economy, and period of innovation we enjoy today.

Through this might, both conventional in its strategic arsenal, the United States established what has become known as a “strategic umbrella” where for greater input into their ally’s security policy and easier access to their markets, the United States would do the heavy lifting on the global geostrategic stage.

Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Western Europe have served as the beneficiaries of this new globalised world and radically new approach, ironed out at the Bretton Woods Conference, and then more drastically implemented through policies like the Marshall Plan to reconstruct Europe following the devastation of the Second World War — this golden era of the Pax Americana is now coming to an end.

This epochal end was reinforced by comments made by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on 22 December 2022, when he stated: “When it comes to Russia’s war against Ukraine, if we were still in Afghanistan, it would have, I think, made much more complicated the support that we’ve been able to give and that others have been able to give Ukraine to resist and push back against the Russian aggression.”

Ready or not, this new paradigm presents new challenges for Australia’s geostrategic policy community and the planning surrounding the Defence Strategic Review (DSR) as for the first time in lived memory, both we, and our great and powerful friend, the United States, face an increasingly contested and competitive world.

Despite the challenges presented to both Australia and the United States, the DSR still highlights the centrality of the United States to our national defence planning, with former defence minister Kim Beazley, in an ASPI piece titled US the critical ’top cover’ for the defence of Australia, articulates reinvigorated role imagined for the United States in our national defence planning.