Surely, the members of the 75-year-old post-war US-led alliances must understand that the US’s role in security and the rules-based order is over, and act accordingly. Some are.
President Donald Trump has betrayed Ukraine in a slurry of lies. He thinks he can force a Ukrainian capitulation without any security backup to his friend and ally in authoritarianism, Russian President Vladimir Putin. He can’t. If European nations want to put troops on the ground in Ukraine and Ukraine wants them, they can, whatever the objections of the Russian-US alliance.
There are several lessons from the war in Ukraine from 2014 to today that demand a complete rethink about the security of European nations, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and other Asian and African allies.
The most important of these is that the US is an unreliable, greedy and ineffective ally. Trump’s withdrawal of military aid to Ukraine is just the latest, if the most egregious example. History is replete with US military failure: Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq come to mind.
In those theatres, the troops, military, and civilian aid ended and there was no democracy, rule of law, or freedom for the people the US purported to help – just large profits for the US companies that produce the weapons and supplies.
In a way, Trump has done us a favour by exposing the heart and mind of the US.
And it is important to define “the US” in that context. We come back to the question: what are American values? Are they the values of the sociopathic, transactional, insurrectionist, misogynist in the White House? Or are they the values of the vast mass of “ordinary, decent, thoughtful Americans”?
I think at least some of the former. Simply because enough “ordinary” Americans were not decent nor thoughtful enough, and they enabled Trump to gain the White House. Just as the ordinary decent Russians enabled and allowed the Putin dictatorship to happen. Just as ordinary decent Germans allowed the Hitler dictatorship to happen.
Trump is devoid of morality and truth. We must therefore treat the US as a whole in the same way as we would treat a lying, sexually assaulting, narcissist man. They voted for him. They enabled him.
The US citizens who voted for him and enabled him have betrayed the people of all of America’s allies. The betrayal cannot be easily undone.
Nations are not good or bad. And they are certainly not forever good or forever bad. England was once a mad theocracy under Cromwell. France was an autocracy under Napoleon. Many Latin American countries have gone from vicious dictatorships to democracies and back again,
The goodness or badness of a nation is essentially dependent on the people of the nation and the leaders that those people have permitted to lead them.
Flawed electoral systems aside, the fact that Trump was elected is a deep stain on the American people themselves. Let’s not mince words. The view that the American people are lovely despite Trump and that we should therefore maintain the alliances with America is surely untenable.
It would be the same as saying that the Russian people are lovely so we should not impose sanctions that would cause them hardship. The old adage is that people get the governments they deserve. The corollary is that the people deserve the consequences of the governments they enable and permit.
Australia and the UK should end AUKUS. Australia and New Zealand should dissolve ANZUS, and the Canadians and Europe should expel the US from NATO. Under Trump, the US is not an ally, it is a business hell-bent on screwing whatever it can from whichever nation is in a weak position.
Also, it has $875 billion worth of weapons orders on the books now.
It is no good all the defence hawks and the military-industrial complex saying that we must have the US as an ally to deter enemies and help us. Since January 2025, the deterrence has been worthless because Russian and China have only been encouraged in their aggression by Trump. And any future aid simply cannot be relied upon.
Building up our own forces and exploiting our geography will be a better guarantor of our security than the US with Trump in the Oval Office.
We have a choice here. Either we (the democratic, rule-of-law countries, which now does not include the US) ignore the fact that Donald Trump, the president of our principal ally, has traitorously treated our enemies as friends and our friends as enemies, or we change our relationship with the US.
As Trump’s actions get more and more disruptive, the rule-of-law nations should cut the US out and indeed form a new rule-of-law alliance. The rule-of-law nations – the EU, Britain, Japan, Australia and others have a combined GDP equivalent to that of the US.
Even before Trump came to power, the US was not a member of the International Criminal Court or the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Now it has withdrawn from the Paris Climate Agreement and is smashing the World Trade Organisation with random tariff imposition.
You cannot have a lawless leader of a rules-based order, nor an isolationist leader of an order underpinned by collective action.
The other reason for isolating the US is its pending economic decline on three fronts. First, Trump and Elon Musk’s swinging a wrecking ball and chain saw through the America public sector will substantially damage the US economy. Tearing stuff down with an ideological passion without a solid rebuilding plan is ruinous.
Of course, that was exactly what the US did in Iraq and Afghanistan – both remain hellholes.
Second, Trump has handed to China leadership on renewable energy. Economics and technology, not ideology, will drive the inevitable change and the US will be left behind.
Third, Trump’s tariffs threaten the prosperity brought by free trade.
As for Ukraine, Trump has under-estimated the resilience, ingenuity and determination not to be subjugated.
It is a waste of precious time to supplicate to Trump. He only values things in dollars and deals. It is time to cut him and the nation he leads out. The US should only be welcomed back if and when it respects the truth and the rules.
Crispin Hull
This article first appeared in The Canberra Times and other Australian media on 11 March 2025.
Yes we should ditch Anzus and kick the yanks out of Pine Gap. We are already in Eurovision so why not join a non US NATO with SE asian and Pacific island friends
Again, spot on Crispin – thank you.
What do we do about Pine Gap and the US Forces in the Northern Territory?
I think this is a great summary of the facts. I doubt our politicians, of any persuasion, would try to lead us as this article suggests; replace all our US alliances with reliable, trustworthy partners and cancel our US Defence contracts.
An excellent assessment of recent events. I fully support your conclusions. Unfortunately we are witnessing the fall of the American Empire. Trumpism and the Broligarchs are just symptoms of the United States’ inability to resolve its internal divide between Fascists and Socialists. The current turn to Fascism will destroy the US economy, knowledge advantage and in turn its armed forces. In the new dog-eat-dog world Australia has to take up the reins and show some leadership in forming a new coalition of the good that can uphold the rule of law against authoritarian rulers. Australians will need to fight to protect our values and freedoms.
Strong words but sadly true. It will be critical how the system of alliances with the US adapt to the cataclysmic changes unshackled by Trump. The theory that the US is dumping Europe to concentrate on the Indo-Pacific may well be a mirage if Trump cuts a deal with China and dumps Taiwan. That’ll scuttle Australia’s whole national security posture.
Until 1942 our ‘great and powerful friend’ was the ‘mother country’ – Britain. They failed us at the fall of Singapore and Prime Minister Curtin famously ‘looked to America’. We may not be able to look to anyone, except ourselves, if the Trump disaster culminates in a ruinous train wreck.
I agree with your comments. Examiner Tuesday 11th. Did you know that Trump is a multi times bankrupt? You do not recover from this when the US financial services do not want to know you. I suspect he refinanced with funds from Russia. Now that they own him, this would account for his pro Russia stance, and his preparedness to let Ukraine fall.
Some psychiatrists believe that Donald Trump has Behavioral Variant Fronto-temporal Dementia. He display all the symptoms. Mind you I don’t think you can be born with this condition.
An excellent analysis