How fear of China and American pressure are reshaping Australia’s defence

Australia needs to decide what kind of international player it wants to be and risks finding itself on the wrong side of history.

The United States’ latest push for Australia to increase its annual defence spending to 3.5 per cent of GDP – $100 billion – is not about Australia’s security, but about Washington’s strategic game of regional politics with China. This increase, up from the current $60 billion, would largely serve American interests, and it remains unclear what Australia would receive in return – aside from more obligations, more weapons, and more entanglement in a potential conflict that serves no Australian national interest.

US Secretary of Defense Peter Hegseth has been pushing this rhetoric, warning of the so-called “imminent” threat posed by China over Taiwan. His remarks were manufactured to stoke fear: a Cold War-style speech packed with alarmist rhetoric and vague allusions to a looming catastrophe. While claiming that the US isn’t pressuring nations to follow its lead or its ideology, Hegseth did exactly that – pressuring Australia to spend more, commit more, and align itself more closely with American military objectives in the Indo–Pacific region.

In this context, it’s important to understand who Peter Hegseth actually is. Appointed largely for his loyalty to Donald Trump, Hegseth is widely regarded as one of the most unqualified Secretaries of Defense in modern US history – a former TV host whose main credential seems to be his ideological alignment to Trump, not because of his expertise. His tenure has been marked not by visionary strategy, but by empty gestures, like renaming the USNS Harvey Milk during Pride Month to provoke a backlash and ‘win’ the culture wars. It’s hard to take seriously the strategic advice of someone who appears to know more about cable news ratings – if that – than global military logistics.

This latest campaign feels like the same recycled script that resurfaces in Australia every few years: ramp up the fear about China, exaggerate threats that don’t materialise or ever existed in the first place, demand massive spending increases, and conveniently forget that China is our largest trading partner. It’s not just the contradiction that China is our biggest buyer of iron ore, gas, and food exports – it’s that Chinese investment is literally embedded in our infrastructure, from the Port of Darwin to Newcastle. China also has deep economic and social links to Australia, yet we’re now expected to prepare for war against them?

The reality is that China is a friend of Australia and gains economically from the relationship, just as we do from China. A war would be mutually destructive – and highly unlikely. But creating the perception of imminent conflict is a distraction from other American geopolitical failures, such as the ongoing genocide in Gaza and its rapidly thawing relationship with Russia.

The hypocrisy of this approach is predictable: while Hegseth solemnly declares that America won’t “impose its will,” the subtext is clear: bend to US priorities, or risk being left behind. It’s not a partnership, it’s the historical coercion that Australia always meekly accepts, and is then used to project American power in this region, under the guise of “shared interests” that seem to mainly serve the ambitions of Washington, and not of Australia.

The subservience behind Australia’s strategic identity crisis

This week’s reactions to the US defence pressure have highlighted the deeply ingrained subservience of Australian foreign policy to the United States. The old rhetoric of Australia as America’s ‘Deputy Sheriff’ in the Asia–Pacific region – most loudly championed during the Howard–Bush years in the early 2000s – is being revamped with new strategic clothing, Albanese’s so-called “progressive patriotism” – but the substance remains the same: follow the path of Washington, bark when told, sit down and shut up, and then foot the bill after being told what to do.

Those in the corridors of power in Beijing must be watching all of this with quiet bemusement and raised eyebrows. A nation grounded in centuries of patient statecraft, informed by the ancient philosophies of Sun Tzu and the principle of subduing the enemy without fighting, would surely recognise the pantomime act for what it is. Far from gearing up for an imminent invasion of Taiwan, China has long benefitted from maintaining a strategic ambiguity around the island – never striking, but never denying the possibility either. It’s better for China if a lingering threat exists in the minds of Western nations, not the action itself, and this seems to offer China the most leverage.

This subtle form of diplomacy seems lost on Washington’s hawks and war mongers, and unfortunately, on Canberra as well. The fear campaign built around the spectre of Chinese aggression – against Taiwan, against Australia, or against our regional neighbours – is not grounded in imminent threat, but in convenient myth-making. It’s an ambit claim by the military class designed to justify massive increases in defence spending, all to serve American interests, and propping up a military-industrial complex that thrives on conflict and suspicion.

Lost in all of this is the long, deep, and complex relationship between Australia and its Chinese population. Chinese immigrants have been contributing to the Australian story since the 1820s – long before Federation, long before anyone had dreamed up of the Cold War rivalries that linger up until today. It’s rarely acknowledged in national security debates just how central Chinese Australians are to our modern identity and economy. And for all the talk of Chinese authoritarianism or “foreign interference,” few stop to consider what might have happened if China had wanted to act aggressively towards Australia in the past. It didn’t act during the Vietnam War, even as Australia acted as a US proxy against North Vietnam, which China supported. It didn’t act during the Tiananmen Square crisis in 1989, or during the decades of strategic vulnerability in the 20th century.

And while it’s entirely legitimate to criticise the Chinese government on human rights or its lack of political democracy – in the same way that we might criticise allies such as the United States or Britain – that critique doesn’t need paranoia, hostility, or economic self-harm. Foreign relations are not friendships built on ideological purity; they’re managed, transactional relationships – and Australia, more than many other countries, has benefited economically and culturally from its deep engagement with China.

What is often left unsaid in these maniacal appeals to defence loyalty is the quiet racism that underpins much of the anti-China hysteria. It’s not always overt, but it’s there – reflected in the assumption that Chinese people, by virtue of ethnicity or heritage, are somehow more threatening, more foreign, more suspect. The other. Meanwhile, the damage done by supposedly friendly powers – through security pacts like AUKUS, which ties us to US military doctrine and diminishes our sovereignty – is totally ignored.

This isn’t a call to overlook the actions of the Chinese government. Nor is it to ignore the legitimate concerns in international relations. But it is a call to approach China like we should any other major power: with pragmatism, respect, and a clear-eyed sense of national interest. Instead, we’ve become a nation caught in a reflexive foetal position, waiting for America to tell us what to do next – and writing billion-dollar cheques as the thanks for the following these instructions, and getting nothing in return.

Australia’s foreign policy incoherence

Australia’s foreign policy today resembles a house with too many builders but no agreed building plan, or any plan at all. It’s a muddled, contradictory mess – caught between rhetorical independence and practical subservience, led by figures who talk tough but lack the clarity and courage to act with true sovereignty. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the contradictions playing out across defence, trade and international diplomacy.

We have the US Secretary of Defense essentially dictating terms to Australia – calling for massive defence spending increases in service of America’s military agenda. At the same time, Defence Minister Richard Marles lectures China on the need for “strategic reassurance,” pointing to China’s military expansion without offering any corresponding transparency on AUKUS, Pine Gap, or Australia’s own militarisation under US directives. Then there’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese rejecting a French request for support on a two-state solution in Palestine with a vague statement about “following our own path” – which, in practice, always seems to mirror Washington’s desires.

Marles’ statement about China building the largest conventional military force since the World War II sounds serious, but it’s also selective. He ignores the key point: the United States still maintains the world’s most powerful military by a significant margin, with over 800 overseas bases and a military budget that dwarfs all others. Asking for “strategic transparency” from China while failing to demand the same from the US isn’t diplomacy – it’s the behaviour of an impotent lacky.

And this deference hasn’t provided any immunity from American economic insanity: Australia continues to face US-imposed tariffs – 10 per cent on most goods, 25 per cent on steel and aluminium, rising to 50 per cent – while finding it nearly impossible to secure exemptions unless Australia fully complies with US expectations in other areas: defence spending, intelligence cooperation, foreign policy. The message is clear: play by Washington’s rules or pay the price. It’s a strategic one-sided game dressed up as alliance, and Canberra continues to play along.

Despite the growing number of foreign policy experts calling for diversification of our foreign policy – whether it’s towards south-east Asia, Europe, or the new BRICS bloc – Australia remains strategically glued to a declining and increasingly erratic superpower, as shown by the dramatic escalation of violence on the streets of Los Angeles this week and the increasingly autocratic behaviour of a maverick US President. However, this argument isn’t just about Donald Trump or any single administration, remembering that the AUKUS deal was created when the Democrats were in office, under President Joe Biden. It’s about the structural instability in American politics and the risk of betting everything on a country that no longer offers predictable, principled leadership.

Australia should have walked away from AUKUS some time ago. It was a bad deal from the outset in 2021: opaque, costly, and dangerously provocative in the region. Instead, the deal has become a symbol of our strategic dependence, locking us further into US defence infrastructure and entrenching an adversarial position with China that doesn’t reflect our economic or cultural reality.

In the end, it’s not just the hypocrisy that’s irritating – it’s the lack of vision and focus. Foreign affairs will always need to involve a certain level of improvisation and agility: governments change, wars break out, pandemics hit, and trade deals collapse – the world is different every single day of the year. But inconsistency isn’t an excuse for incoherence. A sound foreign policy requires principles: sovereignty, peace, human rights, independence, and a firm understanding of the national interest – not just blind loyalty to a global superpower that’s doing its best to lose that position in world geopolitics.

Australia needs to decide what kind of international player it wants to be. If it continues on this path – obsequiously following the instructions provided by Washington, arrogantly rebuking China to impress its allies, and brushing off European partners with meaningless slogans – it risks finding itself on the wrong side of history. Not just because of the wars it might be dragged into, but because of the opportunities it will miss: for regional leadership, diplomatic credibility, and genuine sovereignty in an increasingly multi-polar world.