When, in the course of close — some would say politically intimate — relations between allies, the dominant partner demands that the subordinate partner betray its democratic principles as a cost of receiving favourable treatment, the time has come to terminate the relationship. Such is now the state of the Australia-US alliance.

A repost from 25 September 2025.

This point was reached in July this year when US Undersecretary of Defence, Elbridge Colby, in the context of the Pentagon’s review of AUKUS, confirmed reports that the US wanted Australia to make commitments about how it would act in the event of war with China.

Specifically, the US requires of Australia a public declaration or private guarantee that the US-made nuclear-powered submarines would be used in the conflict – the prospect of which is widely forecast in many official circles in Washington.

There is no ambiguity on this demand. Nor is there any evasion of the threat dilemma Australia is subject to: the surrender of national sovereignty, or the termination (or something close to it) of the AUKUS agreement on the transfer of Virginia Class SSNs to Australia.

This, politically and logically, should be the inflexion point for a fundamental reappraisal and reconfiguration of the relationship.

To be sure, it will not challenge the compelling (but frequently truncated and/or poorly articulated) arguments by successive governments, for a future submarine force in the defence of Australia. But, given the urgent need for a successor to the Collins Class, it will almost certainly change its configuration, and some of its modes of operation.

More importantly it will reaffirm Australian sovereignty over decisions relating to the appropriate national means of defending the country.

The times require caution and change, and in that order. The old exhortation to act needs, for a while, to be reversed. We need to stand, and reflect, not just do something. The latter urge — impatience — has been master for too long.

The need, accordingly, is to make sense of the present rather than to react to it without understanding. The time spent will be well spent.

It is a time of large hopes, high risks, desperate efforts, and fearful culminations – many of which are self-sustaining. It is a time of death – and not just of physical death but, in so many places we are witnessing spiritual death, the death of global conscience, of democracy and international law.

In times past, Australia’s default option in such times would be a turn towards the US,........

© Pearls and Irritations