Does Australia really want US Troops from a Fascist Regime on our shores?

I wrote almost a year ago that Australia needs to find new friends given the erosion of democratic norms occurring in the US. After this week’s spectacle - where Donald Trump and former Fox host and ‘US Secretary of War’ Pete Hegseth rallied uniformed generals about domestic deployments and “war from within” - it’s no longer a warning. It’s urgent. If we don’t change course, we risk entrenching foreign forces on our soil that answer to a fascist commander-in-chief overseas. Does Australia really want that? No!

Let’s clear the fog first. Australia’s leaders keep insisting that there are “no foreign bases” here. Technically, that’s true - at least on paper. The 2014 Force Posture Agreement with the US says activities happen at ‘Australian-owned facilities’. But here’s the thing, it also guarantees the US access and lets it build, control and use these facilities, while we pick up the bills and give tax breaks to US contractors. That’s not a flag coming down and another going up; it’s something more subtle and, frankly, more binding. It’s a system designed to make US force presence routine, protected, and hard to unwind here.

So what does it look like on the ground? Let’s start in the Top End. Every dry season, the Marine Rotational Force Darwin arrives - now in its 14th rotation - bringing thousands of personnel, aircraft and kit to train and disperse around the region. It’s rotational in name, but embedded in practice.

Head 320 kilometres south-east of Darwin to RAAF Base Tindal. There, Canberra and Washington are sinking serious money into fuel and infrastructure so the US can rotate long-range bombers (B-52s among them) through northern Australia. This puts us squarely inside American strike planning. And that means we’re in the crosshairs of whoever they’re planning against.

Sail west and it gets starker. From 2027, HMAS Stirling outside Perth will host Submarine Rotational Force-West: up to four US nuclear-powered submarines (plus a UK boat). We’re re-engineering the base now to fit them. It’s pitched as a stepping-stone to Australia’s own subs under the dodgy AUKUS agreement. It’s also an open-ended invitation for US undersea operations to run out of Western Australia, no matter who sits in the White House.

Move inland to Pine Gap near Alice Springs. This is the brain and nervous system. Yeah, it’s called a ‘joint facility’, but we’re not actually allowed to know anything about it. What we do know is that it’s integral to US intelligence, targeting and global operations. When the US bombs something in the Middle East, the world asks whether Pine Gap enabled it. Canberra rarely answers. That secrecy should worry Australians precisely because we are accountable for consequences made possible from our soil.

Then there’s the Harold E. Holt base at Exmouth. It’s a transmitter station that talks to US subs across the Indian and Pacific Oceans - another “joint” node with strategic weight well beyond our shoreline.

And now in Toowoomba there’s talk of “a new US base.” What currently exists is an Aerospace & Defence Precinct where Boeing is building the MQ-28 Ghost Bat - an autonomous aircraft. This isn’t a US military base yet. But let’s not kid ourselves: industrial entanglement locks in strategic entanglement.

So here’s the core problem. The Force Posture Agreement and and other defence decisions with the US have created a dense web of access, construction, pre-positioning, and rotations across Australia. Think Darwin, Tindal, Learmonth, Curtin, Scherger, Cocos, etc. They’re managed by “implementing arrangements” Australians are never allowed to see.

Now overlay the politics. Trump and Hegseth just used a stage packed with US generals to normalise domestic troop use and loyalty politics. As the US slides further towards fascism, its military doctrine won’t magically draw a bright line at our border. Australia’s military cooperation with the US will, in practice, bind us to an unstable, centralised regime looking for “compliant” partners. That’s not far-fetched, it’s how entanglement works.

But we do have choices. We can keep telling ourselves the alliance is a neutral insurance policy. That’s basically what the Albanese Government is doing. Or we can act like a sovereign nation with democratic values and a multicultural Asia-Pacific identity.

Here’s what decoupling with the US should mean:

1. Freeze new posture expansions now. No new arrangements, no new US-funded concrete at “agreed facilities” until Parliament has debated and voted on them openly. With full disclosure of costs, liabilities, environmental and nuclear stewardship risks.

2. Time-limit rotations and pre-positioning. Convert open-ended rotations (Marines, bombers, subs) into sunset-claused access requiring annual parliamentary renewal. If Washington uses it’s military against its own people, renewal fails - automatically.

3. Reassert “full knowledge and concurrence” as a veto, not a vibe. Any operation planned with Australian-based data, fuel, runways or pier space should require explicit Australian concurrence - on the public record.

4. Diversify defence and industry partnerships. Pivot procurement, training and exercises towards Japan, South Korea, India, Indonesia, New Zealand and Europe. These are friends whose militaries aren’t being dragged into culture-war loyalty tests at home.

5. Invest in sovereign northern defence. If runways and fuel farms are strategic, build and own them for ourselves. Let others visit under our conditions, not theirs.

6. Democratic oversight of Pine Gap and Exmouth. Establish a standing, security-cleared parliamentary committee with the power to audit compliance with Australian laws and treaty settings for every activity on these sites. If we can’t see it, we shouldn’t be complicit in it.

This isn’t anti-American; it’s pro-Australian and pro-democracy. The US we admired - constitutional, restrained, outward-looking - may yet return. But our alliances must serve our values, not replace them. Until Washington proves it can keep partisan politics out of its uniforms and out of our neighbourhood, enough’s enough. It’s time to pause, disentangle, and chart a sovereign path that keeps Australia safe and free.

US Troops on the streets of Washington - photo from the Independent.