Enough Is Enough: Australia Must Stop Enabling Trump’s America

I’ve been writing for more than a year that Australia needs to find new friends. When Trump returned, I argued that America’s democratic decay meant our reliance on Washington was no longer tenable. In January I wrote that so-called “shared values” aren’t proved by rhetoric, and that Pine Gap isn’t symbolic but operational. Everything that’s happened since has only strengthened that case.

Donald Trump is no longer merely reckless. He’s unfit for office. But this is not just about one unstable President. It is about an American political and strategic system that’s no longer reliably restraining dangerous behaviour. And it’s about allies like Australia that still cling to the fantasy that the US will snap back to normal.

After his profane Easter Social Truth outburst, he doubled down in front of the cameras, saying Iranians were “animals” and could be “taken out” in one night. He vowed to destroy its bridges and power plants if his deadline wasn’t met. As I write, that deadline is Tuesday 8 pm EDT, which is Wednesday 10 am on Australia’s east coast.

So let’s stop pretending there is anything normal about this. Under international humanitarian law, civilian objects are protected from attack, and attacks on infrastructure essential to civilians can amount to war crimes. Threatening to blow up an entire country’s bridges and electricity system is not strategic clarity. It’s moral and legal collapse.

Meanwhile Canberra is hiding behind the fiction that Australia is “not an active participant in this war.” Anthony Albanese said exactly that in his address to the nation on 1 April and again at the National Press Club on 2 April, even while acknowledging that Australia “supports” the war’s objectives. But Australia has also deployed a Wedgetail to the Gulf, sent AMRAAM missiles, and joined international coordination against Iran. Three Australian personnel were aboard the US submarine that sank an Iranian warship in March. And Pine Gap intelligence is almost certainly being used by the US in this war. Whatever label Canberra prefers, this isn’t neutrality. It’s participation by instalment, dressed up in spin, lawyerly language and strategic euphemisms.

What makes Australia’s posture even more indefensible is that other US partners are showing more spine than we are. Spain barred the use of its joint bases for attacks on Iran and then ruled out joining any Hormuz mission because it considers the war illegal. Britain said it would not be drawn into a wider Iran war. Emmanuel Macron said trying to force open Hormuz militarily was unrealistic. Germany’s defence minister was blunter still: this is not our war. Australia, by contrast, remains on alliance autopilot, as if all we have to do is keep our heads down, mutter something about de-escalation, and wait for the Democrats to win the next US election. That’s not strategy. It’s cowardice and subservience masquerading as diplomacy.

Desmond Tutu put the moral issue plainly: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” This is the real test for Australia now. We can’t keep claiming distance while Pine Gap helps power the US war machine, while our aircraft and missiles support the wider campaign, and while our leaders repeat the tired mantra that we are somehow not involved. Silence is not neutrality. Evasion is not principle. And choosing not to confront what this alliance has become is itself a choice.

Enough is enough. Australia does not need to become anti-American. But we do need to stop outsourcing our moral agency to Washington. We need clear limits: no support for illegal attacks, no more automatic deference, an end to blind hosting of Pine Gap, and an honest national conversation about whether this alliance still serves our values, our sovereignty and our interests. Trump has shown us who he is. And the system in the US appears to remain unwilling to challenge him. So the question now is whether Australia has the courage to say: not from our soil, not with our silence, and not in our name.