In the wording of the Ministerial Statement after the recent AUSMIN meeting between Australian and US Ministers of Defence and Foreign Affairs, and in a subsequent on-the-record conversation, Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles strongly endorsed both AUKUS and a greater US defence presence in Australia. Unfortunately there are questions about AUKUS which the Government has never answered, and about how the US Government sees itself possibly using the stronger military presence which it is establishing in Australia and elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific.

At AUSMIN, Marles made it very clear that the Government is happy to have an expanded US military presence here, “involving every domain: land, sea, air, cyber and space”, and with a lot going on in Northern Australia (where defence activities could impinge on the position and rights of First Nations people).

Of course, close military engagement with the US is not necessarily unpopular with the Australian public. The US is our major ally, and saved us from invasion in World War II. We share a lot. And we are forever being told that China is “aggressive”, and the international situation is tense and dangerous, to an almost unprecedented degree. Our own defence procurement plan, especially AUKUS, even if it goes smoothly will not give us a much expanded — and adequate — defence capacity for decades. So is placing our current defence and security arrangements so clearly in US hands wise? According to press reports “senior people in Canberra” have concluded that this is the best thing to do.

But in a number of speeches, Foreign Minister Penny Wong has said that our aim should be an Indo- or Asia-Pacific where no one country is dominant, and all are secure. Does this apply to the US, our major ally, and the world’s strongest military power? Unfortunately, there are various points of concern.

The first is the extremely uncertain status of US domestic politics. Who will win the presidential election? What will be the attitudes of either candidate to the Asia-Pacific, let alone to AUKUS? Donald Trump is famously quixotic, and anti-alliances, and Kamala Harris is not experienced in this field. We simply don’t know what either will do.

Secondly, will any American administration be prepared to weaken the US military posture by transferring Virginia-class submarines to us, at a time when its own fleet is below the stated minimum, and its rate of building new ones about half the desired replacement rate? There are........

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