Their own interests will always come first: Australia warned not to repeat mistakes of Singapore Strategy with AUKUS

Australia’s position and stature in the world has always been characterised by a “strategic anxiety” about both intentional and forced abandonment by our primary security benefactor of the day.

In the psychological context, Australia, as a nation, has an “anxious attachment style”, that is an attachment style where a person, or in this case, a nation, “struggle(s) to feel secure in their relationships. While they long to feel close to their partners, this need is often driven by fears of abandonment, mistrust, and low self-esteem”.

Nowhere is this reality clearer than in Australia’s investment in its relationships with its two “great and powerful friends” – first the British Empire, and second, the United States – both of which saw their respective rise and fall of prominence in Australia’s thinking during the Second World War.

In the case of the Empire, it was ultimately a combination of arrogance, hubris, and being overstretched by very real threats closer to home in the European theatre that left it’s great fortress in the East, Singapore, woefully unprepared to withstand the might of Imperial Japan following its blitzkrieg-like war of conquest through Southeast Asia.

This, of course, came in the aftermath of Japan’s devastating strike against the US at Pearl Harbor and coincided with coordinated strikes in the Philippines and throughout the region, designed to push both the British and Americans out of the region in an effort to establish Japan’s colonial empire in the form of its rather benignly sounding, “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere”.

Bringing us back to Australia’s “anxious attachment style” and the precarious predicament of “forced abandonment” it found itself in following the Fall of Singapore in April 1942, with much of the Second Australian Imperial Force stranded in North Africa, fighting a desperate battle against Rommel’s Afrika Corps to maintain the lifeline of oil to Britain.

In response, Prime Minister John Curtin declared, “Without any inhibitions of any kind, I make it quite clear that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom” as it sought to mitigate its abandonment by the British with a formidable enemy closing in.

VIEW ALL

While the Allies would ultimately prove victorious in the Second World War, Australia’s deeply ingrained fear of abandonment continues to this day, with Australia serving as an invaluable “loyal deputy” to the United States in an effort to bank “relationship equity” and prevent a repeat of Britain’s forced abandonment of the nation in the aftermath of Singapore.

To an extent this strategy has worked, with Australia having a unique place in the hearts and minds of the US leadership, eventually paving the way for Australia to access the “crown jewel” of American nuclear-powered submarine technology among others, however, it hasn’t come without concerns, particularly the age-old concern of Australia: abandonment.

Bringing us to recent analysis by adjunct professor at the University of New South Wales Canberra, Dr Albert Palazzo, titled, AUKUS: The Singapore Strategy Redux’, in which Palazzo stated, “the government failed to spell out is that this agreement (recently tabled AUKUS documents) includes ironclad Australian obligations but no guarantee in return that the US will hand over the Virginia Class boats it promises. In effect, the government has signed on to a redux of the failed and discredited Singapore Strategy of the 1920s and 30s, and in so doing has demonstrated its ignorance of the nation’s past security experiences”.

A historic precedent or our anxious attachment style?

By establishing broad comparisons to the historical “abandonment” of Australia by the British at Singapore and the lack of “ironclad” commitment of the United States to “hand over” Virginia Class submarines as outlined in Pillar 1 of the trilateral AUKUS partnership, Palazzo effectively seeks to highlight the interests of our “great and powerful” friend will always come first in their minds.

Now this is entirely reasonable, and sorry to break it to people, but the primary responsibility of any national government is, first and foremost, the national interest and security of their nation, not any other nation, no matter the relationship or their position in the global order.

Palazzo added further historical context, explaining, “The Singapore Strategy remained the foundation of Australia’s defence into the Second World War up to the collapse of France. Now facing Germany and Italy alone, Britain informed Australia on 19 June 1940 that the fleet would not sail for Singapore because it was needed to protect Britain’s own territory. Following the Japanese onslaught in December 1941, all the British could spare was two battleships, which were promptly sunk.

“The fall of Singapore and Britain’s failure to meet its obligations should be an object lesson for today’s political leaders, yet it is one the government seems determined to overlook. The latest AUKUS agreement is reassuring in tone, impressive in length, and filled with the requisite diplomatic language. However, it affords the United States – in Article 1 – the right to renege at a moment of its choosing without any compensation or redress,” he explained further.

At the most charitable level, this, in essence, serves to reinforce Australia’s long-held strategic anxiety, fear of abandonment, and the “anxious attachment style” that undergirds the nation’s relationship with its allies and partners, but especially in this case the United States in its role as the global and regional security benefactor.

However, at its most uncharitable, but perhaps most realistic level, it is what economists refer to as “rent-seeking” behaviour, albeit at a national level whereby Australia has, for the majority of the last 75 years, managed to skate by doing the bare minimum when it comes to our own national security, with the economic, strategic, and security chickens now coming home to roost.

Now yes, I hear many of you say, “but Australia has paid its dues” in terms of supporting the United States in Korea, Vietnam, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, and that is entirely reasonable and indeed true.

However, this has been done in the expectation that America, should the need arise, will place Australia’s national interests and security over their own and rush to our aid, echoing Australia’s similar, long-held belief that the British would do the same, but when the call came, that fell dramatically short of expectations.

Palazzo added further context, saying, “Should a future US administration defer or cancel the sale, it will be justified by one of the simplest tenets of international relations. In 1848, British Prime Minister Henry Palmerston observed that Britain had ‘no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow’.

“General Douglas MacArthur said something similar after he arrived in Melbourne to take command of the allied fight against Japan. He told his hosts that Australia’s sole utility was as a springboard to attack the Japanese and that he had no interest in its larger fate. The United States would always put its own interests first.”

Again, it should come as no shock that other nations, especially the United States, would take such an approach (even if currently most of the Western World is actively sabotaging their own national interests across a range of metrics).

Palazzo reinforced Australia’s strategic anxiety, saying, “The fall of Singapore was a traumatic experience for Australia. The nation’s defence policy was revealed to be built on false assumptions that successive governments always recognised but chose not to admit. Now, 90 years later, successive governments are making the nation vulnerable to a repeat performance. Perhaps the Virginias will arrive as planned, perhaps they will not. The only certainty is that it will not be Australia’s decision. This kind of precarity is not the foundation for a sound security policy.”

Now, I should clarify, I in no way support the premise of Dr Palazzo’s thesis, that being the US will renege on its agreement to provide us with at least three Virginia Class submarines ahead of our transition to the SSN-AUKUS boats in the late-2030s/early-2040s.

However, I do agree that Australia needs to stop being so naive when it comes to our national interest being more important to our allies and partners than their own. We also have to stop approaching the reality of our new and radically different, multipolar world in a dramatically different manner to the way in which we have done since the end of the Vietnam conflict.

Australia has to look after its own national interests

Shock! Horror! How could you say something so contentious?!

Well, I did, so enough with the pearl-clutching from those still gasping. It goes without saying that in this new world, Australia has to look after its own national interests.

Our partnership under the AUKUS agreement will, when the submarines are delivered, go a long way towards delivering on that; however, the future nuclear-powered submarines are not the silver bullet many hope they will be.

Rather, this new world will require a drastically different approach from Australia’s policymakers and the Australian public, it will also require an acceptance that the heady days of unchallenged US primacy on the global stage are indeed well and truly over.

Now that is not to say that America won’t try to help Australia should push comes to shove, rather, it is a realistic calculation and risk analysis that America, like Britain in the early days of the Second World War, is stretched and its priorities will always come first for its policymakers and we shouldn’t expect anything different.

Rather, Australia’s policymakers need to put our interests first and undergo a period of considered, detailed contemplation and reprioritisation to ensure that Australia can actively defend and promote its national interests in a contested, competitive, multipolar world.

Final thoughts

Despite the rhetoric, Australians seem reluctant at best or, indeed, even oblivious at worst that the world is increasingly becoming “multipolar” and our own home, the Indo-Pacific, in particular, is rapidly becoming the most hotly contested region in the world.

Declining economic opportunity, coupled with the rapidly deteriorating global and regional balance of power and the increased politicisation of every aspect of contemporary life, only serves to exacerbate the very reality of disconnection, apathy, and helplessness felt by many Australians.

This attitude is only serving to be compounded and creates a growing sentiment that we are speeding towards a predestined outcome, thus disempowering the Australian people and, to a lesser extent, policymakers, as we futilely confront seemingly insurmountable challenges with little-to-no benefit and at a high-risk/reward calculation.

Taking into account the costs and implications, it is therefore easy to understand why so many Australians, both in the general public and within our decision-making circles, seem to have checked out and are quite happy to allow the nation to continue to limp along in mediocrity because, well, it is easier than having lofty ambitions.

If both Australian policymakers and the Australian public don’t snap out of the comforting security blanket that is the belief in the “End of History”, the nation will continue to rapidly face an uncomfortable and increasingly dangerous new reality, where we truly are no longer the masters of our own destiny.

All of this combines to form a rather confronting and disconcerting outcome for our long-term national security and one that requires remedying immediately if Australia is to be positioned to capitalise on the truly epoch-defining industrial, economic, political, and strategic shifts currently underway across the globe.

After all, how can we ask and reasonably expect Australians, particularly young Australians, to put the national interest ahead of their own when the nation doesn’t seem to account for their own interests, particularly when taken to the end of its logical extension, the national interest is at its core, the individual’s interest?

Ultimately, Australia and Australians face these two concurrent yet interconnected challenges, which stand as the greatest challenges of our age, so which way, Australia?

Do we want to be competitive, consequential and thriving, or do we want to be “steady and sturdy” in our managed decline?

Get involved with the discussion and let us know your thoughts on Australia’s future role and position in the Indo-Pacific region and what you would like to see from Australia’s political leaders in terms of partisan and bipartisan agenda setting in the comments section below, or get in touch at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..