Clinton Fernandes stands out as an original and incisive analyst of Australian security policy. His army intelligence background gives him insight into the mindsets shaping that policy, and his recent work exposes a worrying lack of independent thinking among Australia’s strategic elites.
Fernandes’ book Turbulence: Australian Foreign Policy in the Trump Era, and his earlier Sub-Imperial Power, explain policy outcomes by embedding them in historical and geographic context. That perspective makes his critique of AUKUS and the decision to acquire nuclear-powered submarines essential reading. What some call a nation-building project is, Fernandes argues, in practice a contribution of people, territory, materials, money, diplomacy and ideology to US war-fighting capability. The deal continues a long pattern of making Australian security subordinate to American power.
For eight decades Australian policymakers have defaulted to ingratiation: asking first whether a policy protects or advances US power and Australia’s relevance to it. That mentality is strikingly inflexible now that the US is led by Donald Trump and a team often hostile to the liberal international order Washington once defended. Fernandes shows how the Trump administration seeks to bend Europe, the Middle East and Asia to US industrial and strategic aims, often in ways that deepen tensions and undermine allies’ independence.
The US under Trump is cultivating a system of tributary relationships—states offering economic and diplomatic concessions to stay in Washington’s good books—without the cultural ties or reciprocal legitimacy that made earlier imperial arrangements more stable. Australia’s eagerness to please has helped normalise involvement in costly and dubious interventions, from Iraq to Afghanistan, and to lend legitimacy to US and allied actions that contradict stated Australian commitments to human rights. Fernandes highlights selective outrage: vigorous criticism of China over Tibet and Xinjiang contrasts with muted responses to Israel’s conduct in Gaza or US extrajudicial actions in Venezuela. Human rights, he argues, are amplified or ignored according to the need to remain aligned with US priorities.
Debates about the “China threat” often misrepresent strategic realities. Freedom of navigation operations, framed as defending international law, also serve to gather intelligence on Chinese assets; silence about that political purpose shields decisions from democratic scrutiny. China, as the world’s largest trading nation, has a powerful interest in avoiding conflict that would disrupt sea lanes. Its military modernisation can be read through the lens of deterrence and a rational response to a US posture that retains coercive capacity, including nuclear options.
On defence capability, Fernandes accepts that submarines are vital for a maritime nation. But he warns that the choice matters: cheaper air-independent propulsion submarines would avoid encouraging nuclear proliferation and better fit Australia’s defensive needs. Critics like Albert Palazzo and Hugh White share the view that the wrong platform choice is the real hazard. An effective, affordable defence for an island continent need not mirror great-power ambitions; New Zealand’s minimal approach offers a useful contrast.
Fernandes’ realism also reframes what should count as genuine security threats. Environmental collapse, driven by climate change, poses immediate and existential risks to Australia that dwarf the likelihood of conventional invasion or disrupted sea lanes. The US under Trump has become not only politically unreliable but actively obstructive on climate policy, branding mitigation a “con job” and undermining global efforts. In Australia, major parties remain close on narrow definitions of the national interest that prioritise extractive projects and fossil fuel expansions, such as approvals that significantly increase emissions. That narrow framing risks bequeathing escalating turbulence to younger generations.
Credible critiques like Fernandes’ matter because they broaden the debate beyond the realist turf of force projection and deterrence. They ask whether aligning so closely with a disruptive, increasingly authoritarian US administration serves Australia’s long-term interests, especially when cooperation with countries addressing climate change could yield better security outcomes. If policymakers persist in subordinating national policy to the preservation of US dominance, Australia may find itself invested in strategies that worsen global instability and compromise its own future.
Mark Beeson is adjunct professor, Australia–China Relations Institute, University of Technology Sydney
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.
