Australia’s carefully calibrated but confusing diplomacy has struggled to cope with the political and strategic consequences of the US-Israeli war with Iran.

The government’s problems in explaining its commitment to President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s war on Iran derives essentially from confusion about Australian roles and responsibilities in a Trump charged turbulent world.

It suggests the tight scripts and careful semantics employed by the Albanese government, which have successfully stabilised relations with China and allowed Australia to avoid attracting Trump’s ire, have genuine limitations in a crisis of the sort now unfolding in the Middle East.

Because of domestic concerns about how his support for the war in Iran might play out at home, Albanese employs the diplomacy of dipping his toe in the water. He knows he must be in, somehow, but wants to preserve the charade that Australia is not there for the same reasons as the Americans or the Israelis.

The approach however reveals a deeper lack of conviction when it comes to thinking about how to deal with Trump and what comes after.

Instead, it reels off statement after statement from which it is near impossible to discern what the position is. There is breezy talk of ‘collective security’.

But Australia’s foreign policy is beginning to resemble a stagger across a high wire, where the government veers from one side to the other hoping........

© Pearls and Irritations