Comment

Paul Bongiorno
Albanese on the AUKUS sidelines

Donald Trump’s cavalier treatment of his supposed friends should have come as no surprise to Australia’s prime minister, left sitting on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Canada without so much as a phone call cancelling a much-heralded meeting.

The implications go beyond the United States president’s rudeness and further demonstrate the near impossibility of allies having any faith in the agreements or arrangements they make with the Trump administration.

This is particularly problematic for Australia, caught as we are in the region where the contest between the world’s two superpowers is at its sharpest.

Anthony Albanese’s embarrassment was compounded by the news conference he gave on the eve of the scheduled tete-a-tete with Trump. He revealed he had put in serious preparation for the encounter, including talking to the president’s golfing buddy, Greg Norman. He assured the gathered journalists that he was looking forward to the meeting taking place.

As Albanese walked out of the conference room, Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, posted on social media that the president would be returning to the US after an official dinner with the G7 leaders “because of what’s going on in the Middle East”. It was a piece of unfortunate timing for Albanese.

The Australian prime minister wasn’t the only leader to have been left in the lurch. He was in impressive company, including Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, India’s Narendra Modi and Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum. Unlike Albanese, Sheinbaum was given the courtesy of a phone call from Trump.

Albanese sought to excuse Trump for his sudden departure from a summit of seven of the world’s largest democratic economies. He said it was “perfectly understandable” given that the president was engaged with the “circumstances around Iran and Israel”.

At the group photo of the leaders, Trump explained he had to get back to Washington as soon as he could. He said, “I wish I could stay until tomorrow, but they understand this is big stuff.”

France’s Emmanuel Macron said Trump was working towards a ceasefire, only to have the president contradict him mid-flight. Indeed, there was a view on the ground at the summit that Trump did not want to support the other leaders calling for a de-escalation of hostilities and a return to diplomacy.

This view was strengthened next morning when the US president used his Truth Social platform to call for Iran’s “unconditional surrender” and raised the prospect of enforced regime change in the Islamic Republic.

Trump sent confusing signals during the week as to America’s willingness to get involved militarily to achieve this objective. The president left little doubt he fully supports Israel in its pre-emptive attacks on the Tehran regime, despite their problematic legitimacy in international law.

The prime minister said he would reschedule a meeting with Trump, which he hinted could occur as early as next week at the NATO summit in the Netherlands, where Trump is booked to attend. At the time of writing the prime minister’s office said he was considering replacing Defence Minister Richard Marles at the NATO event.

Opposition Leader Sussan Ley said the aborted meeting was “to the detriment of Australia” and Albanese should have been more proactive in seeking to strengthen this relationship. She encouraged him to “change his approach to advance our national interest”.

Ley’s office put out a list of leaders who had trekked to Washington to meet Trump since his inauguration at the end of January. It included Britain’s Keir Starmer and Canada’s Mark Carney. The list conveniently ignores the intervening federal election, but there is weight to the argument that the only way to advance Australia’s national interest with this mercurial leader is to engage him in person. Leaving it to ambassadors or even other senior ministers can only go so far with an administration that revolves around the uncertain whims of the president.

Indeed, on Air Force One Trump told journalists that the reason he was returning to Washington was to have face-to-face interaction with his national security advisers. He said he doesn’t like using the phone because, “people like to see you”.

Ley’s colleague, former diplomat Dave Sharma, was less diplomatic than his leader. Instead of blaming Trump for the “snub” he said it was “an abject failure of Australian diplomacy”. He noted that Starmer had negotiated a trade agreement with the US that was finally signed on the sidelines of the summit. It is an agreement that includes some tariff concessions. Sharma said, “PM Albanese has not even managed to meet President Trump.”

Sharma might have a point, but appearing to side with Trump against Albanese isn’t necessarily smart politics. Opinion polls show Australians lead the international pack in distrusting him.

The latest Pew survey finds 77 per cent of Australians have no confidence in Trump to do the right thing regarding world affairs; 92 per cent consider him arrogant while 81 per cent believe he is dangerous.

However, domestic political advantage should not override the crucial bilateral issues that only Albanese can effectively haggle.

The prime minister knows this and ahead of the aborted meeting enthusiastically spelt out the arguments he would use to gain tariff concessions and a firm commitment to the AUKUS nuclear submarine and technology exchange pact.

An answer Trump offered in a joint doorstop with Starmer gave Albanese some consolation that the AUKUS agreement might survive the review of the sceptical Defense under secretary for policy, Elbridge Colby.

Asked if the submarine agreement was still proceeding, Starmer replied that it was, despite the American review, which he said “makes good sense”.

Trump chimed in: “We’re very long-time partners and allies and friends.” He added the personal dimension behind his recommitment, however, referring to Starmer as someone with whom he had become “good friends in a short period of time”. He noted the UK leader was “more liberal than I am, to put it mildly” and went on to say, “for some reason we get along”.

That’s an outcome Albanese has not had a chance to emulate.

Trump’s answer was definitely Starmer specific, although if AUKUS survives in a US–British sense, then it survives for Australia too. The significant difference is that the agreement does not require Washington to supply London with any of its scarce Virginia-class nuclear submarines.

This was never the idea in the first iteration of the deal and only became a critical part of it as far as Australia is concerned when it became apparent the joint British-Australian nuclear submarines could not be produced in time to replace the ageing diesel-powered Collins-class submarines. The vast military asset gap bequeathed to the incoming Labor government was outlined by Defence Minister Richard Marles this week, with the prospect of Australia having no submarines into the 2030s.

On Monday, Four Corners documented the simple fact that points to this aspect of the agreement being undeliverable: there are not enough skilled workers to build the submarines. In all likelihood the Americans, despite our willingness to massively subsidise their naval shipbuilding, cannot remedy the shortfall beyond supplying their own needs.

Strategic expert Hugh White has no doubt Colby’s review will confirm this situation. White says, “It has always been clear that Washington will only sell us its submarines if it is absolutely certain Australia would commit them to fight if the US goes to war with China.”

He adds, “Colby’s review will also certainly confirm and conclude this position.”

Former prime minister Paul Keating says Albanese would face a grassroots revolt within the Labor Party if he commits to “being dragged into war with and by the United States over Taiwan”.

In a major speech this week, Marles appeared to commit Australia to such a scenario. He didn’t. Marles was merely noting that Australia’s geography today “is more relevant to great power contest than it has been at any point since the end of the Second World War, arguably at any point in our history”.

There is a view within the government that Keating has not kept up with the multi-polar reality that is our region, with a much more assertive China than was the case three decades ago when he was prime minister.

As one senior backbencher put it, “Does anyone believe if there ever was a war between America and China that we would side with China?”

Giving the rhetorical question potency is the way in which China has exercised its authoritarian governance and coercive diplomacy.

Albanese and Marles are firmly of the view that it is in Australia’s security interests to keep America engaged in our region. The test of our sovereignty is then resisting America’s coercion to jeopardise our economic relations with China, our biggest trading partner.

In a statement this week, Keating said that China had no intention of invading us or of going to war with America. Hugh White says rationality supports this analysis. Surely neither side wants to trigger a nuclear showdown.

Rationality and Donald Trump, however, don’t always appear to be warm bedfellows.

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