ANZUS (1951) sold Australia as a safe rear area while the U.S. fought in the Pacific. The author says that map is gone. Nautilus via The Guardian: U.S. forces or contractors touch ~110 of 168 surveyed Australian defence sites; Washington directly runs 17, including Pine Gap, a WA naval comms station for U.S. subs, and Tindal for nuclear-capable B-52s. Stirling’s Submarine Rotational Force-West and war-stock piles deepen the footprint. From Beijing’s chair, Australia is less host than base.

AUKUS, sold as boats and know-how, is read here as force-posture integration: rotations, pre-positioned kit, air and logistics nodes. Long-range missiles, hypersonics, and drones erase the old buffer. Opening shots in a Taiwan or South China Sea fight could hit Australian nodes before the U.S. homeland—as Gulf hosts learned when U.S. sites there became targets.

Two multipliers: China’s longer reach, and U.S. crises Canberra cannot veto. Alliance as faith, not a choice, maximises staging value and shrinks the option to sit out. Neutralism would not zero risk; it would cut the incentive to treat the continent as a first-night target. Mid-century assumptions vs 2026 weapons: the piece wants that audit before the next crisis.

The ANZUS alliance has underpinned Australian defence thinking since it was created back in 1951. For generations ANZUS had been presented as the ultimate security guarantee, a far-back platform that would keep the continent safe while the United States projected power across the Pacific. 

That assumption no longer holds with any certainty, as US politics has now drastically changed. With an expanding American military footprint across Australian facilities, Australia has become a potential forward operating base and, consequently, a more attractive military target, very much as certain Gulf states discovered when they hosted U.S. assets during recent conflict in the Middle East.

Recent reporting has made the scale of that footprint clearer. According to data compiled by the Nautilus Institute and highlighted in The Guardian, U.S. forces and defence contractors now control or have access to roughly two-thirds of surveyed........

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